Lyskeiön Capital Territory

The Lyskeiön Capital Territory consisted of the great and most ancient city of Lyskeiön and a small amount of its minor outlying suburban villages. The city was built upon a dense network of limestone karsts, islets, tidal flats, and ria coasts at the narrowest point of the massive Morna'la inlet. Lyskeiön was the home of the Euluskan Empire and the largest and most powerful city in the world from the year zero until about the 1200s, when Felonil became larger. In the 1510s, the Empire crumbled and collapsed, the capital was sacked, and went from almost 7 million people to barely 350,000. It remained into modern times as a small-medium city with one of the most important histories behind it. 
== Names ==
The city of Lyskeiön came from the name Lyzkeiön in Old Euluska. This name probably either came from the name of the Euluska people, or possibly from the name of the literary hero Luska (Old Euluska: Lykza) plus eön "city". In modern Euluska, it was pronounced /lʏs.ˈkɛi.ɔn/ or /lʌs.ˈkɛi.ɔn/. Lyskeiön was the name bestowed on the city in the year 0 when the Empire officially unified - before this, it was Vonz-zelur-kanos, meaning 'the bridge over brackish waters'.
Many speakers local to the Horn informally referred to Lyskeiön as iönul /ɪ.ˈɔn.ul/ or casual pronunciation [jɔnˡ], meaning 'The City'.
The Capital Territory was referred to under the official name Lyskeiön Rixa Noäru /lʏs.ˈkɛi.ɔn ˈrɪ.ʃʌ nɔ.ˈa.ru/.
The city was also variously described with such epithets as City of Giants (not actual giants, but the Empire), City of Bridges (for the bridges that spanned the karsts), or The Imperial City (for obvious reasons), amongst others.
== Flora, Fauna, Food, and Features ==
The area was home to a lot of interesting flora and fauna, some of which the Euluskans tamed, some they ate, some they farmed, etc. The most notable include ibexes, antelopes, giraffes, wyrms, buffalo, whales, sharks, killer whales, birds, wolves, boars, coyotes, bears, oryxes, lions, doves, birds of prey, and moa/rhea/cassowaries. The 
Euluskans made good use of the mineral-rich soils and farmed olives, apples, cereals, grapes, corn, brassicas, strawberries, raspberries, kiwis, and citrus fruits. They made made cheeses, breads, jams, cured meats, fish, and wines as their staple crops. A traditional Lyskeiön farmer's meal consisted of corn- or olive-bread, various cheeses, marmalades and confitures, spiced cured raw pork, olives, fish paste, and wine. Yum. The climate was forgiving and mediterranean, with beautiful hot summers and warm damp winters.
The farming seasons were long and bountiful, the weather predictable, the sea limitless and the land fair. The ocean was very warm and brought good hunting. The winds were warm and fair, and rarely harsh. Storms were infrequent, but the rainy season was certainly beneficial.
The landscape around the capital territory was full of limestone cliffs, chalky soils, tidal flats, sandy beaches, caves, and teeming with life beneath the waters too. It was not as exploited or stripped compared to the land around Felonil/Halcyon. 
== History ==
=== The Cradle of Civilisation ===
The original inhabitants of the area were the Euluska race of people. They were coastal hunter-gatherers who explored, built boats, hunted megafauna, and fought amongst themselves. Around about the year 300,000 RTE (before 0) the people began waves of migrations northwest out of the Horn, slowly but surely searching for new lands. Those who stayed behind developed 6 key inventions: agriculture, the wheel, metallurgy domestication of horses, complex language, and ocean sailing. These six inventions defined and dominated the Euluskans and soon, the world. This area was one of the two worldwide cradles of civilisation, the other being central Rakkimar. These people here spoke early languages that were surely ancestors of Proto-Swordic, which eventually became Proto-Euluska in the 5th millennium RTE, and eventually Old Euluska by the first millennium before zero. An abundant trade economy naturally sprung up because of their rich resources, centred around an array of hospitable islands in the middle of the Morna'la - a cluster of forested islands and warm beaches connected by rope bridges, which soon became wood, and stone, and at last, a city - Vonz-zelur-kanos!
=== Growth of a City ===
So, to recap, Lyskeiön as a collection of unrelated settlements across the Morna'la was founded some time at least 12,000 years ago, grew slowly, and by about 5,000 years ago could certainly be considered as one conglomerated urban locality. In Proto-Swordic, the city was known as Vonz-zelur-kanos, meaning 'the bridges that span brackish water'. The city grew steadily throughout antiquity and the early modern era. The surrounding areas of the Fallo, the Horn, and the Moors also grew full of various other independent city-states ruled by feudal lords and governors. They warred, they allied, they got rich, they collapsed, but Lyskeiön and other famous ones endured.
=== Unification of the Empire ===
Conflicts throughout the first century waned and waxed between various neighbouring city states. However, after various conflicts, in the year 32 RTE, the patriarch Olos of Vonz-zelur-kanos's ruling family, the House Azoälda, led an army to unite the two largest city-states/countries/kingdoms (in Euluska, the distinction is not so significant; they are called rettu) on the southern coast - this one, and Vristhim (modern Brist). After unifying the two great cities, the entire southern coastline of over 1200 miles was unified under one banner. Olos took the title Reku, connoting something between a King and an Emperor, and took the epithetic name Rekuölos Rekuäiza Ylvala Azoälda - or anglicised, Regulus of House Azoälda, the King-Maker. From the year 32 to the year zero, Regulus worked his way around the Horn and the southern Fallo, uniting five more kingdoms, making seven total united rettu by the year 0. In the year 0, the seven unified lands conglomerated into one central power - the Euluskan Empire. 
=== Imperial Era ===
From 0 to 1519, the Empire stood proud and firm. Lyskeiön was its capital, and it grew significantly. It traded, it sent colonists, it took tithes, it grew fat from strength and lazy from power. It became glorious and grand, advanced and world-leading. Only in the 1200s did it get displaced as the largest city in the world by its rapidly rising colony of Felonil, the Euluskan Empire's capital of the Danderillon. Lyskeiön was a city of marvel and invention, of clockwork and brass, of bridges and ships, and a melting pot of colonial and non-colonial cultures. 
=== Sack of Lyskeiön ===
In the 1510s, the Empire began rapidly crumbling. Its nearby, massive tropical colonies, Lakay and the Wolcott Straits, suffered pirate-related disasters in 1512-13 and a native revolution that led to independence in 1513. Also, the following year, Felonil and the Western Danderillon colonies declared independence too. The Empire's hold was weakening. In 1519, as an army was raised to try to march north and take back Felonil, an alliance of the Vortic Mercatorium and the Lakayan Federation formed the Vortais-Lakayan Navy. They attacked the southwest Fallo coast and the Horn, leading to days of naval warfare, coastal bombardment, inland raiding, and fighting. A short and bloody war culminated in the Sack of Lyskeiön, where Vortic and Lakayan troops stormed the city, bombarded it, and killed many Imperial leaders, including publicly lynching the final Emperor. The Empire fragmented over the next three years. The city of Lyskeiön became ruined for some years, a little lawless, only barely considered a Vortic protectorate. Its population plummeted massively from 6.75 million in 1500 to only 340,000 by 1525. It got back on its feet by the 1540s or so, although it was never even a shadow of what it once was. The city continued to exist as an independent city-state of trade, owing allegiance or fealty to none, but protected by none either, until the early 1600s. When the God Wars broke out in 1622, Lyskeion formed an alliance with Brist and Halcyon, united by ethnicity, known as the Euluskan League. They suffered a little in the wars, as everyone did, with sporadic mage-damage and magic-battles. 
=== Modern Era ===
In the Collapse Era, Lyskeiön was a city built on layers of its own history, yet it was a shadow of what it once was. Yes, it was still quite nice, full of industry, artisanship, good food and great people, but it was also full of preserved ruins and historical plaques that hinted at the fact it was once the capital of the world. It was once home to almost 7 million people at its height before the Empire's fall, then reached its lowest of 345,000 in the 1520s, but had built itself slowly up to 2.54 million people in the mid-1900s TE (250s C).
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