Kingdom of Aretoze

The **Kingdom of Aretoze** (アレトゼー王国, *Aretozē Ōkoku*?) was a country in the ancient world from six thousand years ago, located within the heart of the Land of the Six Shields in the continent of Mu. It was a small kingdom which soon expanded as a great power with new territories and nearby lands annexed into it, including its rival kingdom, the Grand Nation of Birenkofen.

## Description

The kingdom was a small entity comprised of several small nearby villages encompassing three whole forests and connected with a capital city called the Aretoze Royal Capital (王都, *Aretozē-Ōto*?), which located at the very center of the kingdom. However, after Eric took charge of military leadership, the boundaries of the kingdom expanded across nearly the entirety of the Land of the Six Shields with new territories added as a result of a series of victorious battles and campaigns.

## Government

The Kingdom of Aretoze was an absolute monarchy, ruled by a family for which the nation was named after: the Aretoze Royal Family. Prior to the formation of the Six Shields Empire, the King was Gregor Aretoze who ruled for thirty years before his abdication due to poor health and offer of the throne to his son Eric. The second-in-command in charge of the kingdom's internal affairs was the Marquis (侯爵, *Kōshaku*?), which was occupied by Eric's uncle Karl.

## History

For an unknown period of time, the Kingdom of Aretoze and the Nation of Birenkofen had a bitter rivalry over dominance of the Land of the Six Shields and the opportunity to take over the surrounding nations in that Land. However, they haven't fought a war around the period during the Dark Lord Aldrych's rise to power in Ancient Egypt. At that time, the young prince Eric Aretoze was held as a hostage within the borders of the Birenkofen Nation, where he became childhood friends with its princess Lotte Birenkofen. After an uneasy agreement between Lotte's father, the ruler of the nation, and Eric's father Gregor Aretoze, Eric returned to his homeland.

The Aretoze Kingdom however would be slowly influenced by the forces of darkness, in particular, by the Evil Eye Emperor Romanov I, a powerful being from the Underworld and ruler of the Empire of Tamazemlya in the shadows, when he sent insiders, warlocks and agents within the nation. This was out of Romanov's fear of the prophecy that he would be overthrown by "a prince of the Six Shields" and that an all-out invasion would only serve to seal his fate, so he sought to manipulate a small fledging nation to make it powerful, destroy the Land of the Six Shields from within and ensure that the "Prince" would never be born. These dark agents would train new witches and sorcerers and teach several soldiers and generals in the Kingdom, including Eric in the ways of demonic magic, such as casting dark spells and summoning demonic beasts to help them in battle, a move that raised suspicion across the nations of the Six Shields and Mu and even within the Kingdom itself.

Fifteen years later, around the time when the Great Ancient War started spreading across the world, under the rule of their King and the military leadership of Eric, they would expand across the Land of the Six Shields, win battle after battle and conquer nation after nation. Eventually, the armies of Aretoze besieged and destroyed the Birenkofen Nation with ease, killing most of its population, with very few who escaped or were imprisoned, including Lotte. In the aftermath, knowing Lotte was captured alive, Eric requested Gregor that his childhood love be spared, but she would only be if she was successfully made into Eric's personal slave maid within a month.

During the month of Lotte's training as a slave maid, Gregor's younger brother Karl Aretoze and his supporters feared that Eric continuing to help Lotte become a slave maid would only put the future of the kingdom at risk and decided to take over the kingdom and the place of being next in line to kingship from the prince. One night, assassins loyal to Karl infiltrated the Aretoze Mansion, murdered Burckhardt Breitner, Eric's aide and attempted to kill Eric in his sleep but were instead slain by Lotte. With the help of the witch Keela who was able to look into the minds of the assassins and further investigation, Eric confronted Karl about the attempted coup and assassination and killed him instead. Before he died, Karl handed to Eric a list of names of his supporters who sought to seek the prince's head and throne. Eric and Lotte's quest to rid the kingdom of all traitors and end the coup against him lasted a week.

Shortly after Lotte's completion as Eric's slave maid, they were sent into an expedition to the southern lands of the Mu continent. There, they and their armies fought new rival kingdoms, unfamiliar monsters and demonic hordes for months before returning home. During a battle against the dark armies, Eric and Lotte met with a powerful and friendly dragon kaiju named Lord-Dragon, who would be Eric's new aide in war and help their kingdom win even more confrontations. Several months later, Eric and Lotte would bear a new baby boy who they named Kunimi. Some time after the birth of Kunimi, Gregor abdicated from the throne and named Eric and Lotte the new King and Queen of the nation. Afterwards, they unified the Kingdom of Aretoze with all the lands of it conquered into a single entity known as the Six Shield Empire. They built political relations with other states inside and out of the Mu continent, repaired and resettled lands previously destroyed and formed alliances to fight in the Ancient War.

Romanov, enraged that the prince of his feared prophecy was born, decided to take the matters into his own hands and mobilized the innumerous dark armies of Tamazemlya for war against the Six Shield Empire.

Finally, Romanov personally led a surprise attack of the Six Shield Imperial Capital and laid great destruction upon it. Eric and Lotte, carrying their baby son Kunimi, with the accompaniment of Keela, and help by Lord-Dragon and his fellow dragon kaiju compatriots GENJI and Momoking, retreated to a remote area in the Yamato archipelago (present-day Japan) where they would've formed a government-in-exile. However, they were pursued by Romanov who revealed to them that he was the mastermind behind everything that started from the Aretoze Kingdom's rise as a great power up until that point and that he sought to kill Kunimi to prevent the prophecy of his fall from coming to pass. After Kunimi, along with Lord-Dragon who was holding the infant, were sealed below the Earth by an incantation by Keela, who was in turn killed by Romanov, Eric and Lotte transformed into the powerful Six Shields Dragon Deity Hiyoku and at the cost of their lives, sealed away the Evil Eye Emperor and his fellow kaiju Galzark and Death Phoenix back to the Underworld. After the Great Cataclysm, the Kingdom of Aretoze, along the Six Shields Empire, ceased to exist, as the entire continent of Mu was sunk beneath the ocean. The infant Kunimi and Lord-Dragon would remain buried under the earth for the next six thousand years until the year 2022 A.D., when he was discovered and raised by a small kindred Japanese family, to be renamed Hajime Hinobori.

## Places of Interest

* Aretoze Royal Palace
* Aretoze Mansion

## Notable People

* Eric Aretoze
* Lotte Birenkofen
* Kunimi Birenkofen-Aretoze
* Keela
* Gregor Aretoze
* Karl Aretoze
* Burckhardt Breitner
* Yan Bittner (frequent visitor)