Ceriadis

The Empire under the Sun, what Ceriadis means in the Ceridian Language

## Ceriadian or Ceridian?

Ceriadian is the demonym for citizens of the Ceriadis Empire, Ceridian is an ethnonym. The Ceridian autonym is *Ceriden* from which the name *Ceridenis* comes from. Ceriden means people of the Sun, while Ceriaden means People under the Sun.

## Geography

    Ceriadis lies in the southern Herlet Arlaran. The historical core of Ceriadis is in the south-eastern corner of the peninsula. The land of Ceridenis reaches west to the Ajesa River. At its maximum extend Ceriadis reached north up to the Iren and bordered Eshenta and Arin in the west. The climate of Ceriadis is mediterrean at the coast and temperate in the inland.

## History

### The Union of the Sun

The prelude to Ceriadis began already five decades before the Union of the Sun, in this time the four states of Derial, Erelas, Larein and Jerim came closer. In the year 0 the Union of the Sun was founded. The four lords King Ezhjel of Derial, High Councilman Ulim of Erelas, Highpriestess Gjera of Jerim and Sealord Aras of Larein came together on the Sunhill north of was should become the city of Ceriadis.
Each of the four brought fifty of their most loyal subjects with them to the Sunhill. They debated for hours and came to no conclusion on who should lead the Union. A legend says that in the early morning hours as the sun rose its first light set on the soldier Ijeriel, the Highpriestess announced that the sun had made its judgement and the Soldier Ijeriel should become King of Ceriadis, but Ijeriel was of humble nature. He refused this honour. The King of Derial brought a sigil, which was specially forged for the future leader of Ceriadis, to Ijeriel in the hopes of convincing him. Still Ijeriel was of humble nature and refused again. The other leaders also brought him gifts, a crown of gold and a mantle of green silk. Then, although he was still of humble nature, he gave in. He accepted his burden under the condition that his reign shall only last 5 years and after that the leaders should come together again and elect another King.

### The First Dynasty

The Union was a loose construct. The King of the Union was more a moderator than an actual leader and all four of the Union states continued their own form of government and sovereignity, using the Union only in times of war to conquer and to defend themself.

In the year 238 for the first time since the formation of the Union war broke out within the Union. A peasant revolt in the border region of Erelas and Larein. Rumours came up that the Erelasene nobility was agitating the peasants against Larein. The Lareine made short process and sent their army into the rebellious regions and massacred the population.
Deeply ashamed by this incident the King of Ceriadis Elisal III., a cousin of the High Councilman of Erelas, abdicated. The Lareine military began thereon to mock the Erelasene for their weakness.
Although shortly after the abdication the Highpriestess called for a new election, nobody of the four leaders came or sent any adverssaries, instead the tension between Erelas and Larein grew.
In the spring of 239 High Councilman Uderi of Erelas had enough and declared war on Larein, the Kingdom of Derial quickly took their side, Jerim stayed neutral.
Many of the people at the border who were decimated in the previous year also took the side of Erelas.

Sealord Vierun split his army and wanted to capture Ceriadis by sea, while the rest of his army would battle the Erelasene. However the weather destroyed his plans.
The Lareine land army was defeated in battle by the Erelasene and as they reached Ceriadis no fleet was in sight. The fleet and with it their Sealord had vanished and to this day nobody knows why.

In 240 was Uderi of Erelas crowned Ceriadadar of Ceriadis. He founded the First Ceriadian Dynasty and build a centralised state out of what had been a loose Union. He also made Erelasene laws the law of all Ceriadis.

In the year 399 the end of the world came or at least that was what the followers of Iletaris proclaimed. Iletaris was a disgraced Eshentene priest who thought of himself as the sixth prophet of the marist faith. He denounced the Ceriadadar of Ceriadis and called them worthless heathens and demanded that the Kingdom of Eshenta should go to war against Ceriadis. In 399 the followers of Iletaris, called The Disciples of Truth did a successful coup against the King of Eshenta and proclaimed the Theocracy of the Last Days.
At first the Ceriadians didn't pay attention. The ruling Dadar Onar II. was a merciful regent and still thought of peace with Eshenta and even hoped to prolong their friendship. He paid with his life for his naivety. The Dadar died under mysterious circumstances in the year 400. The next elected Dadar was Utilas I. and his first act was to make Etan, the brother of Onar II. his High-General.
Etan wanted his revenge and marched with the full might of Ceriadis against Eshenta.
Although Iletaris had the common masses behind him, he was a terrible military commander. His very first battle was a catastrophe for Eshenta and soon they had to retreat to the city of Eshenta and hide behind its walls.

Soon a revolt turned the city of Eshenta to chaos and Etan's siege didn't have to last long. The eshentene people had turned against their Prophet, now called the Prophet of Heresy. They publically executed him and gave his corpse to Etan as a gift.
The Ceriadians gave the power over Eshenta back to the Eshen Clan and gave them the title of Prince of Eshenta. Still Eshenta was now conquered territory and to punish them it was denied the rights the other provinces of Ceriadis had.
Around this time also the faith of Marism spread in the Ceriadis Empire.

### The Interregnum or Second Dynasty

In 486 the Adilan broke their peace with Ceriadis and attacked. The superior cavalry of Adilan advanced quickly into Ceriadian territory and conquered the Capital in the same year. The Dadar Afeiret coul flee from the Capital and took refugee in the city of Arin. The Adilan however couldn't hold power in Ceriadis for long and only two years later the Adilan were driven out of Ceriadis. Although Afeiret wanted to return in the same year his councelors advised him not to. The Commander Beruzhj Ulim took over in Ceriadis and declared himself Dadar. Many other provincial lord, foremost the Osinei Clan, did no accept him as their ruler and rebelled, thus the Ceriadian Civil War ensued. In Arin the righfull Dadar Afeiret died in 503 and his son Elat became Dadar in exile. After Elat became Olin II. Dadar in 521. Just in the year 526 the Dadar Olin II. decided to return. With an army of Arinian and Mentasillian forces he started an incursion into the Civil War. relatively quick he conquered Ceriadis and stabilised his rule. These three Dadarje are known as the second Dynasty or the Dynasty in Exile.

Dadar Olin II. was never before in Ceriadis and he felt more that Arin was his home than Ceriadis. He began to reform and change Ceriadis. One very important change was the change from an elective monarchy to an heriditary one. The Senate was downgraded to mere advisors of the Dadar and their number was limited to five instead of ten. Olin wanted to further the spread of Marism and make it the state religion of Ceriadis, but faced heavy opposition of the clerical elite. In the end Olin had to compromise. He put the Marist religion on par with the Ceriadian sun cult and personally never entered a temple to Cerdadar, but his son Onar III. war crowned Ceriadadar by a Sunpriestess.
All Dadarje after Olin II. belonged to the third Dynasty.

### The Third Dynasty

The third Dynasty is often held as the greated Ceriadian Dynasty. In this time the Empire reached its biggest territorial extent and reached from the souther coast of the Herlet Arlaran up to the Iren River in the north.

But not everything was perfect in this time. along the northern border tensions grew with the Akken people and the Riverfolk realms. Minor battles and squirmishes regularly broke out in the region of Sedenis and Moledial, were the Molekken people lived.
In 636 the Diadenr Empire united and thus began the beginning of the end of Ceriadis. The Diadenr quickly pushed east and brought the Marsimach tribes into their sphere of influence. They also sealed in alliance with the Akken people. In 700 again smaller rivalries broke out in Sedenis and Moledial, but this time the Diadenr took the side of the people north of the Iren against the Molekken south of it, thus the First Diadenr-Ceriadis War began. Ceriadis at the time greatly underestimated the treat the Diadenr posed to them and disregarded them as lowly mountain barbarians. The Ceriadians only sent a small force against the Diadenr. The Diadenr won their first battle and greatly impressed the surrounding realms, both Akken and Riverfolk.
The next time the Ceriadians wouldn't repeat their mistake and sent a much bigger force against the Diadenr. However this time the Diadenr also had a large force of Akkene troops on their side and Irnken warriors blocked the Iren passage up to the land later called Nagalra.

The Ceriadians were defeated a second time and the Diadenr were in charge to put up their conditions.
Together the Diadenr, the Akkene and the Irnken forged a treaty that dictated Ceriadis its northern border. The so called Herlet Arlaran Treaty should last the 120 years and forbade any Ceriadian claims on the lands north of the Iren.
The Dadar had to begrudgingly accept the treaty yet as the Diadenr made no direct claims of Ceriadians territory (the land north of the Iren was quasi Terra Nullus and the Ceriadians made no claim yet to not provoke a war with the Akken, the Akken on the other hand had no real interest in that land, but had alliances with various smaller tribes.) the Ceriadians still tought of the First Diadenr-Ceriadis War as a victory.

The Diadenr didn't need to claim any territory south of the Iren, they used the time to effictively and undisturbed build up the Wasler-States. The first of these new settlements was Nagassa. In the way the Diadenr organised this settlement and set up the Waslerst they had a general advantage against the Ceriadians. The Diadenr brought in Marsimach people and on the flipside offered Sedaras people protection and created an inclusive form of settlement. The way of Ceriadis was exclusive. Over the course of the centuries the ceriadian societal structure had changed drastically from the original Erelasene society. Provincial elites and powerful Clans had used their right of self determination to erode the Ceriadian state. The rights which in the beginning made the Union of Ceriadis attractive made them now exclusive.

The people in the Wasler-States became the Taran. Nobody surely knows how this name began. Many suppose the people gave it to themself (Wasler means Coloniser) and it stems from "Taras" (Honour) and that the settlers were calling themself the honorable. Other believe that it came from Diaran. Then again the word was already used during the time were many smaller Kingdoms ruled in the Dian and therefore as a term for all people steming from that region.

Eight years before the Herlet Arlaran Treaty ended the Irenland War began in 813. The Riverfolk realms were known allies of the Diadenr, but their political disunity made them never enter a formal alliance with the Diadenr. Ceriadis used this to their advantage and invaded. The Irenland War surely didn't went as planned.
The Ceriadians had a huge disadvantage against the Riverfolk in the swampy terrain of the Irenland.
In 821 the catastophe happened and the Dadar died in battle without an suitable heir.
Ulim Asafan, a distant relative of the last Dadar on the mother's side, quickly rose in the capital to power and was crowned Dadar. Although the first year of his reign was marked by the assassination of various powerful nobles his rise to power was generally not bloody and relatively swift.

### The Fourth Dynasty

Ulim Asafan was the first Dadar of the Fourth Dynasty. He feared that Ceriadis was soon to end and wanted to stabilise the Empire again. He was also a staunch supporter of the Irenland War, but he also realised that the war could not be won by conventional means and that the people of the Iren could not be subjugated like any other people before.
He was the one who ordered a genocide against the Irnken. The whole culture and society of the Irenland had to be obliterated in order for Ceriadis to win. Ulim Asafan died in 832 and the war still was going on. Finally in 836 the General Ulim Aretar moved his troops out of the Irenland and ended the war without the consent of the Dadar.

The Dadar and the nobles were enraged by the audacity of Aretar to end the war on his own. By this time the Irenland had been vastly depopulated. The society of the Riverlords was largely gone aswell. Most were killed by the Ceriadians, many had migrated into Ki'in to the Northern Riverfolk along the Renbrogo and Borgata Rivers, few still remained in the Irenland. Those who did remain allied themself with the Taran, who gave them land along the central Iren loop.

As the Ceriadians gave up and moved out the Taran went in and founded the city of Stillwater on the northern Iren loop. The common Riverfolk, who had seen their whole society collapse in the last decades flocked to the Taran who gave them new hope.
The fact that in the end the costly Irenland War had even benefitted the Taran greatly angered the Ceriadians.

In 852 three of the five Wasler-States; Nagallra, Mentral and Ireneia desclared themself to be independent Kingdoms and demanded of Ceriadis to recognize them as such.
The Dadar was outraged and instantly went to war with these three new Kingdoms, so broke the Second Diadenr-Ceriadis War out.
The War ended in a Ceriadian defeat and the demands of the Taran were first to recognise Nagallra, Mentral and Ireneia as sovereign states and second to pay tribute to the Diadenr.

The Second Diadenr-Ceriadis War began a crisis within Ceriadis, which lead to its decentralisation.
Many provinces began to rebell against the authority of the Dadar and Ceriadis broke slowly apart.

### The Fifth Dynasty

The Arinian Incursion brough in 925 and end to the agony of Ceriadis. The King of Arin Morak Erinei made it his goal to conquer Ceriadis. His fleet landed directly at the capital, while an arinian army attacked simultaniously from the south-west. In the next two years he managed to reunite Ceriadis. When he was finished he accused the Asafan Dynasty of neglecting the Empire and being the reason for its downfall. In a staged trial Orin IV. Asafan was found guilty and publically executed.
In 927 Morak Erinei became the new Emperor of Ceriadis and began the fifth Dynasty.

Many call the fifth Dynasty also the Morakidian Dynasty and say that Ceriadis ended already in 927.

Morak abolished the old pagan state religion and installed Marism as the new state religion. . Morak established his absolute rule with almost totalitarian methods, he wanted to form the Empire entirely to his bidding. The reason for his Arinian incursion is still unclear, he himself said in his lifetime always that: He could not bear to see such a great country falling apart. Another factor was that the downfall of Ceriadis also lead to a significant decline in the Molay States. His Morakidian Empire quickly rose to power again and intimidated the Taran. The Iren became a highly militarised border in that time.
Morak Erinei the Great died in 964 as a successful man, who restored one of the greatest Empires known to history. His successor was his son Agun I. who ruled from 964 to 999. One of Aguns great deeds was to reform the old ceridian administrative system. In the year 1000 Morak II. , nephew to Agun I. , became Emperor. At his coronation ceremony the Ceriadians celebrated that after thousand years Ceriadis was still a great power, but the sign for the beginning of a new decline began already to surface. By 1036, when Morak III. ascended to the throne, many new conflicts had arisen, especially between Eshenta and the Kingdom of Mentral.

It is said, that Morak II. reign was mostly an illussion of power. Morak the great did good to reunite Ceriadis and establish a new dynasty, but he could not undo his enemies. Old conflicts were already resurfacing at the borders and ultimately, Ceriadis's demise would come from an unforeseen threat. Morak II.began with a great celebration of power and it would mostly consist of these. When Morak II. died and his son Morak III. became the fourth Emperor of the fifth dynasty. The Diadenr Emperors never liked the Morakidians and neither did the Kings of the Taran Kingdoms in the Herlert Arlaran. Nevertheless they tolerated them as long a there was no treat of another great war.

In the 1040s all of this changed suddenly, as the Nebrech entered the stage. A massive draught had devastated the plains of Maraun and driven the Nebrech further to the East. Unfortunally the Nebrech entered a region which was long heavily contested between the Kingdom of Mentral and the Kingdom of Eshenta. The Nebrech sought the Taran for help for they remembered their alliances in the past. The Eshentene saw the Nebrech on the other hand as a danger to their claims and threatened to slaughter everyone who would dare to settle on their territory. The Diadenr Emperor Ashkantr was a wise man and he rightfully feared that this Nebrech Crisis could lead to the bloodshed of thousands. He send his son the Crownprince Ardrik in 1043 to Ceriadis to negotiate with Morak III. and find a solution for the Nebrech Crisis.

Morak III. was a fool. He thought negotiating with his enemies was a weakness and he wanted to demonstrate power. So he had Prince Ardrik publically executed and sent his mutilated corpse back to his father. Emperor Ashkantr was stricken with grieve and so in 1043 the Diadenr Empire, all Taran Kingdoms, the Akken and the Nebrech went together to war with Ceriadis. The war lasted five years and tens of thousands were butchered in a bloodsheds that could have been prevented, if only it wouldn't have been for Morak's arrogance.
The Capital of Ceriadis fell in 1045, but Morak had already fled the city to regroup in the Adulos Mountains, but with little success.
The Third Diadenr-Ceriadis War lasted until 1047. Even after the Taran purged the land from ceridian forces they never
found Emperor Morak. Some say he forsake his own men and commited suicide somewhere in the Adulos mountains, other more supersticious folk say the God of Traitors took him after he fled Ceriadis. Today Taran and Ceridians hate him alike.

### The Ceridians under Taran rule

The first decades of the Taran rule are called the Years of Blood, by the Ceridians. During the reign of Ashkantr the conquered territory was put under military rule. It was already known that Prince Illodjier planned on creating a united Taran Empire and so countless massacres on the Ceridians population were orchestrated to make way for Taran settlers. In 1051 died Ashkantr and his second son became Emperor Illodjier II.. Soon brought Illodjier his plan into motion and declared the United Empire. The Diadenr Empire and the Kingdoms of Nagallra, Mentral and Ireneia were united with the conquered Ceriadian territory.

Small rebellions already ensued during the reign of Illodjier II., but were quickly repressed.
When in 1077 the War of Succession broke out the Ceridians also decided to rebell.

## Culture

### Religion

#### Cerdadar

The old religion of Ceriadis praised the Sun. The Sun was known under the name of Cerdadar, Lord the Sun. The sun was however not the only deity. Other heavenly bodies were also worshipped, but the Sun was above all. The closely related Sarin people for example worshipped the Moon above the Sun even and the Adilan people thought of the Morning Star as the one to lead all.

#### Marism

The Marist faith spread in Ceriadis since the fourth century. At first only a small community, mainly consisting of people of Molayan ethnicity it later became the dominant faith of the Ceriadians.
The four Dynasties however never formally adopted Marism as their religion, although a few tried it.
So did Marism for most of the time exist in a compromise with the state cult. Marism did even adopt some syncretic elements.
With the ascension of the fifth Dynasty Marism became the state Cult and the old Sun Cult was disregarded by the Morakidians.

#### Ceridian Neopaganism

After the Taran Civil War and the following oppression of the Ceridians within the Taran Empire, but also the alienation with the Molei Union many Ceridians began to embrace the old Sun Cult again.

### Language

"Dadair inun'eb Azhjetirjal ón enjadain etamun'eb enjay atemis, ushjai ten Dadar"
"The King went to the peasant and gave him a gift, he thanked the King"

The Ceridian Language is part of the northern branch of the Molei Language Family.
Like most Moleian languages it is an ergative language. It is closely related to the Adilan and the the Sarin languages. Ceridian is written in the Ceriadian Writing System.