Hepsia/History

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While having been interacted with far longer than the existence of the Commonwealth the **history of the planet of Hepsia** is most often considered within the world’s interactions and relationship with the Commonwealth of Ankat, and is generally considered to have a noteworthy history spanning over the last 767 years. It is generally noted, however, that major events regarding the planet and its inhabitants have occurred prior to its discovery by the former Ankati Commonwealth.

## Prehistory

The recent prehistory of Hepsia is a well-defined and researched time, with various archaeological sites and geologic features uncovered by glacial recessions allowing Ankati and independent developments in discovering evidence of the world’s geological and archaeological heritage.

### Pre-Glacial Period (300 Mya - 12 Mya)

Although the planet-spanning glaciers have made any attempts to find any trace evidence or fossils from the last approximately five million years impossible, as it is believed that is when the glacial processions reached their climax as seen when Ankati interests discovered the planet, sedimentary layers beneath the shelves have been dated to as far back as three hundred million years and show that the environment remained relatively temperate for the majority of that time, with evidence of variable changes occurring with the gradual evaporation of the planet’s singular ocean before it disappeared entirely around twelve million years ago.

### Glacial Period (12 Mya - 15,000 BNE)

#### Development and Collapse of the Adhene (11.75 mya - 10.38 mya)

A period of aridity and gradual lowering of temperature followed the dissipation of the ocean, a period which many paleobiologists believe prompted the emergence of a species of sapient creatures referred as the **Adhene**, the name deriving itself from the description of a mythical nature spirit of the planet’s settler culture. Discerned from scattered remains found across the Rim, the Adhene were a race of small, cervine-like mammals with a limited range of manipulation, a characteristic “hoof thumb” on the sides of their forelimbs allowing them to use complex tools such as stone-headed hammers, spears, and irrigation tools. Thought to be originally simple migratory herbivores, the Adhene are believed to have developed their intelligence in competition with increased predation from the ferocious "Tatzels"-- a lineage of two-limbed paravians directly ancestral to the modern Shelf Phantoms and a myriad other predators-- and a reduction in potential food supplies from the loss of the ocean. With the underlying mentality of an herbivorous creature, the Adhene are believed to have organized themselves into large herd-like clans led by communal or hereditary chieftains that followed extensive migration paths, often meeting other clans with either friendly integration, commerce, or paranoia and conflict.

Agriculture was first developed within Adhene cultures sometime around 10.5 and 10.4 million years ago and seemed to have staying power, causing most of the world's wandering herds to begin to stop, cultivate the areas surrounding the remaining freshwater resevoirs and downstream from them, and irrigate the soil using crude stone and copper tools. Evidence of free-standing buildings, such as fragmentary evidence of clay bricks or large rocks that could not have been moved to their location via glacial shifting (i.e. materials for the creation of dolmens and other similar structures) occur around the same time, as well as the forging of copper, gold, and silver into intricate tools and fineries. It is believed that various clusters of closely connected city-states began to arise, an era of cultural development following with numerous artifacts depicting what are believed to be the pantheon of several Adhene cultures and historical documents written in a simple pictograph language.

However, the Adhene race and their artifacts would abruptly disappear from archaeological record after these accomplishments, having seemingly undergone a rapid extinction event that decimated their civilizations and populations within the span of a few centuries. While many argue on the source of this sudden downfall, many conclude that it correlates with a layer of volcanic ash found across the majority of the planet's sedimentary layer, suggesting a period of extended vulcanism. This would have caused various effects that would have proved catastrophic to the nascent Adhene peoples, such as the complete devastation of their crops due to a combination of thick ash clouds blocking sunlight and condensing acid rain killing a majority plant life and toxifying water. The Adhene societies would degenerate, forced back into a long period of wandering gathering cultures before ultimately disappearing from the fossil record around 10.38 million years ago. It is believed that this would be the beginning of the glaciation of the planet, as plant material from that time is notably scarce or gradually more oriented towards taiga and polar environments as time progressed.

However, there are some within the archaeological community who believe that the Adhene may have survived the collapse of their civilization and the ice age itself, citing several artifacts found near the Sarylander frontiers that are extremely similar in nature to documented material cultural artifacts of chalcolithic Adhene sites. These artifacts, including several copper chisels, tool heads and a small statue believed to depict one of the old Adhene gods, are typically dated to having been made approximately 10,000 years before the Ankati settlement of Hepsia, correlating with the local Tesari myths of 'deer spirits' and believed sightings of cryptids, though the majority of archaeologists believe that these findings are either scientifically inconsistent in terms of their research or a hoax altogether.

#### Late Hepsian Glaciation and Abzuan/Tesari settlement (10 Mya - ~15,000 BNE)

Shortly after the disintegration of the Adhene peoples, Hepsia's ice caps rapidly expanded towards the equator, causing water levels across the world to drop even further as the planet's remaining land reverted into cold desert tundras or vast lichen-encrusted glacial plains. These were the harsh conditions that would remain relatively intact or in flux with the northern and southern ice shelves for the majority of the next ten million years in a still-ongoing geological period referred to as the **Late Hespian Glaciation**. While several interglacial and interstadial periods have interrupted the progression of the ice caps, a majority of the planet would be covered in vast glaciers and icebergs for the majority of the time, leaving only gaps of five to ten thousand years between interglacials that were considered viable by the later Ankati civilization.

One such interglaciation and the last known before the current artificial interstadial period, the **Abyzos interglacial**, occurred from around 19,000 BNE - 14,000 BNE. It was during this interglacial period that the Hepsian system was discovered by the Abzuan Empire in the late imperial era. It is unknown the exact reasoning, but numerous Aoshanti settlements established themselves on the planet over the approximately thousand years of continued colonization by Abzu, utilizing the tilled fields of glacial plains as an agricultural base for the region. The existence of the Abzuan colonies was unknown to the modern Ankati settlers until 34 BNE, when the hypersteel structure of an ancient Abzuan temple was discovered submerged under the waters of Lake Vafons, hence being dubbed the "Bantry Shrine" due to its proximity to the settlement of the same name.

However, a majority of these settlements would either be abandoned or destroyed in planetary conflicts even before the Tesar arrived to the planet, invading en masse to raid and colonize the world for another jumping off point for further advances against local powers. However, the glaciation periods of Hepsia continued as they had before the interglaciation, and Tesari populations living on the world could not maintain the structure of a singular khasarate overseeing the planet, degenerating into various clans and hives that sprawled out across the ice sheets in semi-nomadic fashions. These Tesar, known today as the **Gholori cultures**, became hunter-gatherer societies unable to subsist off of anything save for the mammoths and shelf phantoms that became prevalent across the ice caps. While some groups still herd the mammoths as beasts of burden, livestock and war animals, many others remain more resolute and headstrong, living in both active and inactive networks of tunnels made by mature shelf phantoms or fjordwyrms, hunting and being hunted by the predators they live within proximity to in a competitive coexistence that has taken on a deeply spiritual nature to the Tesar which follow the "tunnel-fang" lifestyle. These populations, while noteworthy in terms of their size for polar and tundra settlers, have remained relatively stagnant in terms of history and development since their colonization of the planet.

## Ankati History

While Hepsia was not properly settled until the 500's BNE, the system and the surrounding region's history would be just as important in Hepsia's founding.

### Post-Colonial History (159 BNE - Present)

#### The Tantric Reign (49 BNE - 27 BNE)

Lasting over a period of twenty years, the **Tantric Reign** is considered by many to be the most bloody and devastating period of history within Hepsia's years of independence. It is marked by years of violent warring factions and untold numbers of casualties across the entirety of the Rim, including the extinction of various cultures and groups under various purges by the ruling party, a dominant military junta known as the Delphic Circle, which propagated various radical utopian ideals.

##### Background

The origins of the Tantric Reign and the organization that created it can trace themselves back approximately twenty-two years prior to the Reign itself to the small township of Tantri. Founded by the local business magnate Kasbar Simmamp in 60 NE, Tantri was to serve as a cultural center, populated by a large and diverse group of artists, scholars, philosophers and theologians that were planned to be instrumental in the development and diversification of culture across the Rim for the betterment of all Hepsian peoples.

The town itself was the first settlement to utilize the "auto-commune” model, put in place first for Tantri by Abahim Hest, a regionally-renowned engineer, former Lessoan priest, and Popularist advocate. Abahim was well-regarded among the community as a pioneer and a general leader, a second pillar to contrast the oversight of Simmamp. Despite this supposed rivalry, the two were actually on good terms with one another, often engaging in intensive philosophical and political discussions regarding their ideologies, with Abahim criticizing the normalization that cybercratic society encourages and Simmamp arguing against the ineffective nature of the popularist belief of awaiting the fall of cybercracy. Eventually, the two would form a synthesis of ideas in their shared talks, a proposed means by which to ensure the freedom of the people and the rule of law remaining.

Abahim would begin to share this nascent ideology among the commune during meetings and in community gatherings, the discussions further changing the nature of this unborn movement into one of radical ideas regarding the role of science, faith, culture, and freedoms in the societies of Aoshtai and how one might go about preserving and promoting all of them. Eventually it was determined in a majority agreement that the peoples of Hepsia, as diverse and as conflicting in beliefs as they were, could never come to such a conclusion themselves and must be guided to such an end. Spiritual truth and esoterica made its way into the ideology, and influenced many within to consider their shared belief a divine truth that needed to be shared and implemented— first upon Hepsia, then across Aoshtai and the Cluster beyond. It began under many names— *the Right Cause, the Purpose for Many, Rhya's Variance*— but they would all eventually fall under the shared and agreed-upon name of the Tantric Thought upon the ideology’s finalization, and would either convert or repel all of the people of Tantri, with those who did not fall in line with the new beliefs allowed to peacefully secede.

As they began to expand their horizons and preach their beliefs to those who would listen, their connections to the upper echelons of society via their relationship with Kasbar Simmamp and his various colleagues, who were among the first to begin to financially support the movement and spread the gospel through their own cliques and convey it to numerous political figures. While many of the politicians and national leaders would decline to even acknowledge the beliefs of the Tantrists, several groups and powerful individuals who held positions of power across the planet- economists, academics, governors and monarchs were among the many who swelled the ranks of the growing inner membership of the movement, a secretive and closeted organization that began to emerge as the first iteration of the **Delphic Circle**.

At the same time as its inception and first official meetings at the refurbished commune of Tantri- beginning to appear more and more like a well-funded compound as time went on- the Circle’s innermost members were in the midst of finding allies that would be less amicable to the ideals of their proposed Tantric society, but would still rather align themselves with the interests of the Tantrists than the people they were opposed against. To delegate both general matters and sensitive issues at meetings of the circle in his many months of absence inbetween his expeditions to the regions he believed he could make most of an impact, Abahim would leave a well-informed representative in the form of the Nibling Duke of Bastwin, Sir Erbine Canber-Lasstwin Effen. Erbine was a loyal supporter of Abahim and his original mission, having been one of the first inducted into the movement by the leader after their formation at Tantri, and was thus a confidante of the philosophical leader. While many among the Circle considered Sir Erbine to be *too* close to their leader, Abahim dismissed their concerns of paternalism within their ranks as a personal matter that they would need to take up with the man himself.

Abahim himself would lead a group for several years of travelling on foot and by horse to meet with the various tribes and coalitions of the Erekheran peoples in the Lake Peton Plains, who Abahim viewed as a potentially useful ally in the coming years as their opposition to the status quo at the time and previous history of successful warfare to maintain their lands made them ideal targets for conversion. However, Abahim refused to proselytize to the Erekherans, even chastising several of his followers for attempting to do so without his knowledge or consent; Hest knew that the tribes of the Lake Peton Plains were staunchly against change of their naturalist and primitivist beliefs, and that even suggestions to sway the traditions which had guided the Erekheran way of life for the last three hundred years would be an offense that could lead to failure in their efforts. Despite these potential setbacks, many of the Erekherans agreed in quiet councils to assist the Tantric movement upon its revelation to the world at large, though vowed that this would be the extent of their commitment and that they would not bow to the philosophy itself. Abahim found this agreeable, and made numerous blood-pacts with various tribal leaders across the Lake Peton region, with dozens of chiefs and warriors pledging their allegiance and their hereditary allegiance to honor their pacts.

With the Erekheran alliances formed and fomented, Abahim traveled southwards, taking a ship to the ice-covered southern shores of Lake Vafons to meet with the other local peoples he most considered useful *(or potentially most troublesome)* in his movement’s efforts. Travelling through the taiga and eventually ice-covered wilderness with a small but well-equipped team of volunteers and guides *(including an influential spokeswoman from one of the allied tribes he had encountered)*, Abahim would eventually stumble upon his quarry in the form of the Tesari hive of the Renagh clan, a group of mammoth herders and, in recent years, slavers of both Tesari and other Hepsians in their raids across the lake. Being careful with his words and what he offered them, Hest would provide them with useful materials to sate their interests and would seek out and speak with their leader, a powerful and influential khasar by the name of Varkag Re'Montar, a figure whose sway and influence among the region’s leaders could give his words legitimacy.

However, he knew that would need to be cautious with his meetings with the Tesar and to take his words with measured seriousness. Before his travel to the south, historians and anthropologists within the Delphic Circle had warned him that the Gholori hives were even more insular than the Erekherans by a significant degree; their oral tradition and insular cultures still held much animosity over the bombardments of their hives and the slaughter of the greater mammoth herds by the Hepsian Commonwealth and the spacer warlords in centuries past. Many of the clans even held contempt for the act of terraforming the Rim to what it was, seeing it as a means of destroying their ancestral way of life.

Despite this, Abahim persisted in his efforts and, after some traditional bonding sessions with Re'Montar in the form of tracking and hunting a young Fjordworm, offered the khasar and by extension all the Tesar of the southern shelves two proposals of their choice. He proposed that the southern Gholori would either aid him and his cause in the coming years, helping his cause secure the southern regions of the Rim or supplying the vast armies he knew that even the glacier-bound Gholori could muster to their cause, or that their kind would stay beyond Lake Vafons and stay amidst themselves without raiding the southern hinterlands. Re'Montar laughed at the gnome before him and demanded derisively to know what consequences would come to the Gholori if they declined to abide by Hest's compromises, amusement in his tone rather than anger at being commanded by a being lesser than himself. Abahim answered in a quote that was survived by the Erekheran spokeswomen:

> "I will ensure that the Gholori forget the bombings of their hives, for they will only remember what I will do.
> "I will ensure that your ancestors no longer mourn the loss of the great mammoths, for they will mourn the actions I will commit.
> "They will have no means by which to compare the suffering that will be inflicted to their past.
> "These threats are not hollow, but I wish them not to pass into action."
>
>

 - *Abahim Hest.*

Despite his diminutive nature as a Nibling, the Khasar took Abahim at his word; weeks of camping and surviving the polar blizzards with the man had shown Re'Montar that Hest had always stuck to his word regarding anything he had done. Something about the man’s conviction had made it eerily apparent that, somehow, the same would be true of his threats. The Gholori khasar begrudgingly agreed to the terms of Abahim, pledging to send his personal retinue of Tesari warriors when the time had come and to spread word of Abahim's offer and warning of what would come if they were to denounce it.

Satisfied with the results of his trip to the south, Abahim and his group would return to Tantri and report their success to the Circle. The response was middling. While many among the Circle praised Abahim for his efforts in aligning the Tesar to their side, others held reservations about such a set of agreements. They were concerned mostly with two potential issues with their relationship with the Gholori. The first was that the hives and their clans would break the agreements and continue to raid and pillage as they saw fit, which was a generally shared sentiment that even Abahim agreed had plenty of merit after having witnessed the Tesari proclivity to betrayal several times in his visit. The second, however, would bring further concern. Many within the Circle including Sir Erbine believed that the agreement with the Tesar placed their plans on a rapid timescale; it was a well-known fact that any agreements made with the Tesar would only last as long as their current leaders were in place and, with the varying power struggles that were commonplace with the draconic race. This would mean that if the Circle wanted to make use of their agreements with the Gholori, they would need to take action within the next year or else they would risk either losing the Gholori’s agreement or being exposed by the Tesar themselves.

Abahim agreed with that sentiment. As such he enacted a timeline- a schedule of their plans for all of the Circle to see. He did not plan to reveal themselves within a year. He planned for their action to begin immediately.

> "I believe that we have waited too long already for this day. I believe that Hepsia, our beloved world, has been waiting for too long for our revelation to take shape. The enactment begins today. We must take the future for not ourselves, but for all of Hepsia and to bring the good word of Tantri to all. This is the right of the Circle, and it shall be done."
>
>

 - *Abahim Hest, upon the enactment of the **Tantric Reign**.*

##### Year of a Thousand Wars (49 BNE - 48 BNE)

Although the conflict that would be known as the **Thousand-War Year** would begin a week after the proclamation made by Abahim that the Circle’s plans were to be set in motion, various elements noticed the changes coming, with many finding themselves suspicious of various actions taken in that week; militaries of nations that were seemingly completely unaffiliated or even at odds began to partially mobilize or move forces in such a way that put much of Hepsia’s unaffiliated nations on edge. This, paired with the arrival of a pair of formerly-unknown Hamerlan ships in orbit that refused nearly every hail save for those from a minor settlement in the south, led to a foreboding feeling that no one could shrug off. Several of the larger nations, such as the ancient Kingdom of Jaina and neighboring Saryland, began to form short-lived informal military agreements; whatever was to come, they agreed that they would not be the aggressor against one another, or at the very least they would not order it upon them. With as many troops mustered so as to be prepared and their borders defended, the coalitions turned their weapons both outwards and upwards, with many cities becoming bastions of artillery and anticipating an imminent attack.

On the 9th of Prigemen, 49 BNE, their anticipations would be met with overwhelming force. Across the Rim, there would be countless reports of border skirmishes, full-on invasions of nearby countries and communities, civil strife in both the cities and the militaries supposed to protect them, and so on. Private military forces and what seemed to be Tesari warbands working under the command of a hitherto unknown group spearheaded many of the military operations and were considered the face of what was quickly becoming a global war against an unknown enemy and international coalitions. Important military infrastructure and installations were constant war zones, with infighting among those loyal to their states and those devoted to the new cause of the so-called "Tantric Reign", the name that the attacking forces had given to their uprising and invasion of the free peoples of Hepsia.

It would not only be the militaries of the world that would descend on the free states of Hepsia, which rapidly organized themselves into an emergency coalition known as the *Hepsian Alliance Against Destruction*, or HAAD. From the southern shelves rushed hordes of thousands of Tesar and their war-mammoths, pledging their support to the revolutionaries as they advanced and joined with nearby Tantric forces or even took part in attacks of their own against the opposition in the southern hemisphere, such as the razings of the cities of Haidal and Kelons and the surrounding countryside. It is said that Khasar Varkag Re'Montar and a number of other Gholori leaders honored their agreements with Abahim Hest to the fullest, appearing by his side and in their advanced forces as they supplied their personal retinues and vast hordes to the invasion of various cities in the Lake Vafons region. The cities were conquered, but on the behalf of Abahim the civilian populations were only displaced and forced to other settlements or to work camps being set up by the Circle for "dissenters" as early as the beginning weeks of the war.

In the northern plains, where the fighting did not come as intensely as it had in places such as the northern mountains or near the various temperate lake countries, the various outback villages and townships found themselves under siege and destruction by countless Erekheran horsemen, their war-cries echoing through the grassy valleys and countrysides as they burned every settlement of the "encroachers" they saw and slaughtered every man of their towns, taking the women and children as prizes to be either returned to the Circle when the time had come or to serve as their own property. While Abahim and other inner members of the Circle often demanded that the brutality of the attacks against these homesteaders cease and that they simply assert dominance, many of the more warlike tribes refused to acknowledge their demands, as their nomadic way of lives meant that there would be little blowback if they continued to do what they considered to be acts of ancestral revenge. Among the most ferocious and brutal of these tribes were the Uchyans, mask-clad warriors in thick leather hides who were said to leave their victims crucified to watch their towns burn before they died. Their leader, a war chief by the name of *Uly'Boteh Hefa*, was recorded as saying this about the slaughters:

> "We do not hold care for these people, these invaders of our old land and tainted folk of the world. If they are true lovers of their goddess, then they will find they have been given what they wish. It is not what they deserve, so we make sure that their faith in Rhya is lost with the burning of their churches, the felling of their homes and the taking of their families. It is a balanced response to the actions of their father’s and their father’s before."
>
>

 *- Uly'Boteh Hefa*

Even in the initial few days of fighting, the losses were devastating for both loyalists and Tantric forces. They had taken many locations in their surprise betrayals and assaults, but the Circle’s advances would only make so much headway before organized defenses and resistance would withhold them from advancing any further. Advances by the Circle’s forces, henceforth known as the "Tantric Reign" in proper detail, would halt at various strategic points across the world, gridlocked by a plethora of military setbacks, counteroffensives and the weather itself beginning to push back as numerous storms and hurricane-force gales turned the ground across much of the Rim’s innermost regions to a muddy pulp that was near impossible to traverse. Losses began to mount for the second time in the war; only three months into their conflict, the Circle had begun to *lose* ground against HAAD operations on nearly all fronts. Without defined superiority in anything but their networking, the Tantric Reign seemed doomed to failure.

However, on the 1st of Hydrenia, a factor that had long since either been forgotten or well enough ignored came back into play. Cyphers working under the Kingdom of Jaina detected a number of narrow-beam transmissions directed between Tantri, a settlement that many within the HAAD concluded to be the headquarters of their enemy’s intelligence and higher-ups, and the pair of Hamerlan corvettes that had remained in geosynchronous orbit with the planet for the past three months. Hours later, HAAD soldiers would begin to report a number of Tantric movements- some advances on positions that could withstand their attacks, while some appeared to be retreating from previously held posts. Realizing what the enemy may be doing, HAAD commanders ordered that all protective shields that could be brought online be so immediately. Several military bases brought their shields to bear, bubbles of energy rising above them, as did the ancient city of Jaina itself, having gained its shielding from the time of the original Ankati Commonwealth. Other bases and cities, however, could not do so before the play had been made; the pair of corvettes dived into the upper atmosphere, using their auto-cannons to make short work of several strategic locations and emplacements before they diverged, one making a slower, deliberate beeline for the city of Jaina while the other pursued numerous military bases and emplacements across the Rim.

At the same time as this, a message was sent across all possible wide-band signals, carrying the voice of the leader of the Tantric Reign, Abahim Hest.

> "This is an offer to all peoples who oppose us. We, the leaders of this Tantric Reign, do not wish for this violence, but understand it to be a necessary step forwards against the resistance of modernity against the new age that comes before you. However, what is modern cannot stay. We must change, and we will ensure that we will change- that *everyone* changes.
>
> "As we speak, a warship approaches the city of Jaina, perhaps the oldest place on this world to have been graced by culture, with which it and its many inhabitants made great strides to continue and flourish such a beautiful way of life in the last five centuries. This warship will end that if the surrender of the city does not come within the time it takes for the ship to reach the nearby mountain peaks, upon which point it will fire its weapons. It *will* pierce the city’s shield, and it *will* end Jaina.
>
>
>
>
> "This is both a warning and an offer. A knife made of a laurel branch. Do not force our hand. Let us end this suffering. Let us take your worries and we will end this all. It is the way of things. It must be."

There was a silence across the world as Hest’s speech concluded, both of awe and rage as many considered the futility of the war, while others felt as though such a man and his despot army had little say of every aspect of their society. Despite the openness of the Tantric intention to raze Jaina if it did not surrender, the shields of the city remained up and operational all the way up until the ramshackle form of the Hamerlan warship rose over the mountains, careening towards the city at a low altitude but rising quickly. As soon as the corvette came into sight, numerous artillery emplacements surrounding the besieged city began to fire, both conventional shells and expensive particle-fire bombarding the dome of energy from a thousand different directions. After several minutes of sustained bombardment, the shield began to flicker and falter, its blue hue gradually growing red and patchy. Civilians in the city began to panic and run wild through the streets, hoping to reach the nearest subway or underground bunker as soon as they could. However, nothing of the sort could save them as the corvette streaked above, dropping its payload on equally-distanced points across the city’s center. A combined total of ten tungsten rods and three streaks of auto-cannon fire would descend across the city with no regard for where they would land or what they would hit directly. Jaina, a city that had stood against countless threats since its founding over four centuries prior, since the fall of the Commonwealth against hordes of northern Gholori and Erekheran warbands, against nearby warlords with tanks and armies of their own, could not stand any longer. The shields could not fully repel even the first of the bombardment rods, failing as its kinetic energy made contact and pierced it as if it were tissue paper, and the following rods suffered no resistance as they struck their intended targets, causing the ground to implode beneath their intense force and buildings to vaporize around their wakes. The once-gleaming walls of the city, painted with dozens of stories of old Jainan heroes and figures, were all that remained standing, serving as a blast wall to ensure that the flying rubble and sudden destruction did not spread beyond the city itself. Few would survive the attack.

The catastrophic fall of Jaina and the recording of the event by numerous Tantric forces made many of the HAAD members begin to question their ability to continue fighting. If one of Hepsia’s great powers such as the mighty Kingdom of Jaina had been rendered to mere rubble in mere moments by their enemy, what hope did the rest of Hepsia have against such an insurmountable power? Within the next few weeks and months, numerous holdouts across the Rim began to either lower their defenses and allow the attackers to march into their cities unopposed or declare their surrender more formally. Old power struggles that had been previously put aside were reinvoked, and the Hepsian Alliance Against Destruction fell into disarray and fragmentation in the next several months of warfare. The tides had turned for good, with Tantric forces winning on nearly every confrontation despite heavy losses still mounting.

Despite what looked to be impending victory on their horizons, the inner membership of the Delphic Circle was in dire straits among its own members. The involvement of the Hamerlans, who were wired a significant amount of cubits after being contacted months prior and offered the opportunity to do a short attack on their opponents, was a sudden and potentially disastrous outcome for many within the Circle, who argued that Abahim had gone behind the backs of their meetings and had involved off-world forces without the approval of the Circle, expanding the potential for deviating outcomes and consequences in the greater Ankati region. Dissent began to rise among the leadership, not of their progressing victory, which all agreed was in the interests of those within the Delphic Circle and for the Rim as a whole, but as to what the Tantric Reign would truly be. Many had considered it a religious order, some another form of government, while others believed it was to be a grand cultural revolution. Abahim had accepted all of these interpretations in the years prior, but the enacting of the planet-wide war forced pressure onto the leader of the circle to finally define what their rule would be in totality. It was a move that Abahim detested and put off as long as he could, speaking in private with his confidante that he could not decide upon what the reign would be in form without alienating a significant portion of the leadership and potentially throwing their plans into disarray or even conflict among the Circle.

Instead of catering to one faction or another, however, he would choose another path. In a meeting held on the 9th of Aresen, Abahim would stand before his various colleagues and underlings and begin to explain the complexities of the Reign as he had come to envision it with the consideration of the various ideas and concepts that all had come to imagine it as. Hest would prosily describe the Reign as a blend of government, religious movement, and cultural and technological revolution in such a manner that drove many in the audience to applause as he concluded. It was a bold move, one that had secured him his position as uncontested leader of the Tantric Reign as none of the upper members of the Circle dared to attempt to question or upheave him, lest they lose the incredibly unique vision that Abahim held for the future of Hepsia and all those who lived in the Rim.

After the powerful and deeply moralizing speech from Abahim, the war’s fate was decidedly affirmed. A united Tantric front would make short work of remaining holdouts within the next few months, with the final battles such as the Standoff at Hagan Hill and the Battle for Jillian Island being considered the true end of the Year of a Thousand Wars, ending on the 10th of Murrius. However, many contest that the conflict never had an ending; many resistance organizations remained after the declarations of victory made by the Tantric Reign, such as those who fled to the northern icecaps and eventually formed settlements such as Bergmi and others like it.

What is clear, however, is that by that point the Tantric Reign held undisputed power on Hepsia. And what would come of that power would change the Rim forever.