Avian Triumvirate

> *"I can't help but be frustrated that my fellow chroniclers focus on whether or not Faerin's claim was true; to me, the claim being true or untrue is not the point. What we should take from this is that they all believed it was the truth, and thus their goal was an assuredly noble one in their minds. How tragic is it then, that an initially noble goal would be morphed into something unrecognizable over the course of the war? What greater proof is there that war itself is the true evil?"*
>
>

> —Luggington on the Avian Triumvirate
>
>

## Avian Triumvirate

The insignia of the AT; the shape representing Phoenix, the light blue color representing the Eagles and Peacocks, and the one violet wing representing The Purple City

### Species involved

* Phoenix
* Peacocks
* Eagles
* Gryphons (Galvanor only)

### Base

* The Purple City
* Eagle Spire
* Lion City (Formerly)

### Status

Defunct

The Avian Triumvirate was a faction founded by Faerin, the Eagle King, and the last Peacock King 824 years before the events of the Roleplay. Lasting from 824 to 819 BR, it was an alliance between the Eagle Tribe, the Peacock Tribe Remnant, and a splinter faction of Phoenix led by Faerin, under the pretense of containing the Fire Wing Harnesses to prevent a complete Great Illumination. It was also the first known faction in Chima's history to be stationed in the Arctic; incidentally the catalyst for the Leopards to discover the existence of the Elemental Balance, which in turn led to the Avian Triumvirate—Mammalian Confederation War. Despite having an initial advantage in the war thanks to utilizing geurrilla warfare, a then-technologically advanced HQ and the determination of their three leaders, even conquering Lion City (being one of the only factions in existence to succeed in doing so), the Avian Triumvirate ended up destroying itself from within, as the mysterious deterioration of Faerin's sanity proved to be the alliance's undoing.

## History

(Excerpt from the Avian Triumvirate—Mammalian Confederation War page.)

### Formation

In 824 BR, the current incarnations of the Phoenix Triumvirate regrouped, and Faerin made a move to take over the Phoenix Tribe, despite her allies urging her not to. She managed to convince some Phoenix of the forgotten truth about the Great Illumination, and a sizable portion of the tribe split off, taking some of the Fire Wing Harnesses with them. Unable to destroy the harnesses, Faerin began building a heavily fortified city to the far north in the Arctic, intending to keep the Fire Wing Harnesses there perpetually, and had her Phoenix spread the word about the Great Illumination, hoping to gain more allies. The Peacock King, whose tribe had been reduced to a smaller nomad group after the Tiger—Lion War, allied with Faerin to live in the Purple City, and the Eagle King also decided to ally with them, to keep the Fire Wing Harnesses locked up; the three factions formed the Avian Triumvirate. The main Phoenix Tribe, not wanting to risk a civil war that would damage their tribe and its public image even more, elected to leave it be.

### The Inherent Problem

Soon after, there began to be earthquakes rising in magnitude, and the Leopards made the correlation that the earthquakes began after Faerin and her Phoenix moved to the Arctic. In a valley on the north-south border, leopard philosophers, historians, and scientists converged and analyzed the phenomenon, becoming the first tribe to learn about the Elemental Balance. The Leopard King ventured to the Purple City to urge Faerin to leave the north, explaining that the presence of Phoenix there would eventually destroy the continent. Faerin refused to leave without tangible evidence, and drove the Leopards away. The Leopards related this information to Chima's other tribes, and the tribes that believed their claim, the Lions, Foxes, and Mammoths, allied with them, forming the Mammalian Confederation.

### A War of Attrition

The Leopards and their allies, now having no choice but to forcefully drive Faerin out of the Arctic as the earthquakes slowly worsened, attacked the Purple City after a few more failed negotiations, beginning the Avian Triumvirate—Mammalian Confederation War in 823 BR. Despite the AT being the smaller faction, the MC wasn't able to break through the defenses of the most technologically advanced city at the time, leading to a long stalemate in the war as the tribes fought small battles across the north and south. In order to keep their four Fire Wing Harnesses contained, Faerin, the Eagle King and the Peacock King eventually decided on using their full force in swift and brutal attacks on each of the enemy tribes' headquarters consecutively (with the exception of the Lion City, which Faerin believed was as impenetrable as the Purple City), to severely weaken the Mammalian Confederation and leave it without proper bases in the south. This began when the Mammoths' Headquarters was destroyed by the AT in 821 BR.

In 820 BR, the AT regrouped and launched a brutal surprise attack on the Foxes, who'd been weakened during the war; the Fox Headquarters at the time was destroyed, and the tribe was scattered. The Peacock King, angered at his tribe's former allies the Lions for not taking in his ancestors after the Tiger—Lion War, eventually suggested that the AT attack and conquer Lion City to gain a significant foothold in the south, convincing Faerin and the Eagle King that this would be possible with the AT's full strength. The Avian Triumvirate, using all of its soldiers, actually managed to slay the Lion King and drive out the Lions, taking control of Lion City and Mount Cavora, and cutting off the chi supply to the Leopards and Mammoths. Despite this enormous victory for the Avian Triumvirate, it was soon after this that Faerin's mental health began deteriorating, for currently unknown reasons.

### Self-Destruction

In early 819 BR, the other two Phoenix Triumvirate members (believing the Leopards regarding the Elemental Balance, and having sent Tenebrae/"Severen" to infiltrate the Purple City to take the Fire Wing Harnesses) confronted Faerin over her actions. However, Faerin, who'd seemingly gone insane by this point, turned on all her allies, killing the Peacock King, the Eagle King (but not before he helped his adoptive son Galvanor escape), and the current incarnations of Fal'qar and Zarak, before bringing her Phoenix under her direct control through a progenitor to hypnotism. The Peacock Tribe, at the Lion City in its entirety, was nearly wiped out by Faerin's Phoenix, and left scattered and leaderless, unaware that their king had an illegitimate son. The Eagles retreated back to their homeland, where they selected a competent leader to falsely claim as the Eagle King's biological son, so as not to put the half-breed Galvanor on the throne.

#### Aftermath

Field Marshal Lynne, temporarily leading the Lions in place of the very young prince, launched an assault to retake Lion City now that the AT had fallen apart. Her campaign succeeded, and Faerin retreated back to the Purple City with her brainwashed Phoenix. Severen successfully escaped with the liberated Fire Wing Harnesses just before Galvanor arrived ahead of Faerin, planting explosives on the phoenix' airship to sabotage her planned voyage to The West Sea. The Leopards and Mammoths followed Faerin to the Purple City and attacked even as she and a third of her army made it out on their airship, after which the Leopards destroyed the Purple City and the Phoenix left there. Galvanor's sabotage worked, and Faerin's ship crashed in the northwest icecaps closer to Forneus; as such, Faerin and her remaining Phoenix were all frozen instead of killed (see the Arctic page for explanation).

## Legacy

In the year 219 BR, Faerin and her Phoenix were found, thawed out, and "revived" by the Manta Ray Empire using chi. This proved to be the catalyst for the Imperial Civil War. While Faerin's small group didn't have an official name, they were aligned with the pro-Mantax faction during the Civil War, eventually succeeding in putting the Mantax family on the throne in 215 BR. However, Faerin herself was slain during the final battle, freeing her brainwashed Phoenix from her control; they were all killed or captured by the Empire before they could fly back to Chima, and the Phoenix in the latter category were forced to create fire chi for the Rays, though they were treated fairly beyond that, and eventually granted citizenship in the Empire. The Imperial-aligned descendants of these Phoenix continue to live on the continent of Forneus at the time of the RP.

## Leadership Structure

As the name implies, the Avian Triumvirate was led equally by its three founders: Faerin, the Eagle King, and the Peacock King. This oligarchy (with Faerin essentially being the "Empress" of her group of Phoenix, though never addressing herself as such) would have to come to an agreement with one another over every major action they'd take during the six years of the Avian Triumvirate's existence. The first of these actions was the goal that had brought about the alliance's formation to begin with: the perpetual containment of the four Fire Wing Harnesses Faerin had taken from the Phoenix Islands, in order to prevent a complete Great Illumination, which Faerin warned would bring about a literal reset of the universe. Despite this initially noble goal (albeit one born from paranoia, since the Phoenix hadn't been planning at the time to initiate an Illumination in the first place), the Avian Triumvirate's leaders lost sight of themselves over the course of the war, going from preventing a hypothetical destruction of the world as they knew it, to ironically trying to tear down the status quo of Chima's society, in addition to almost destroying the world themselves, through their stubborn refusal to leave their Arctic stronghold after the Leopards warned them of the Elemental imbalance.

Additionally, a fatal flaw of the Avian Triumvirate's leadership structure was the fact that none of the alliance's three leaders (with the exception of the Eagle King) had heirs to succeed them, should they fall in battle. Faerin had no real second-in-command among her Phoenix to take her place (her relationship with her former Phoenix Triumvirate compatriots being strained at best), and while she could've set up a Senate to elect the faction's emperors, her devout rejection of the main Phoenix Tribe's customs ensured her refusal to do so. On top of that, Faerin's complete lack of a fear of death due to her unique reincarnation conditions also resulted in her never giving much thought to needing a successor.

The Peacock King, meanwhile, was not married and had only a bastard son hidden among the Peacock population, a secret he took to his grave. The advent of the war meant that he had no time to marry and have a legitimate heir while constantly fighting and defending the Purple City, and after his death, the only peacock who knew about the King's offspring was that son himself, unable to prove his royal blood to the other Peacocks. These circumstances resulted in this Peacock King being the literal last in existence, with the power vacuum resulting in the surviving Peacocks scattering (though they were mostly reunited by the founding of the Minor Tribes in 50 BR, and the royal bloodline is survived at the time of the RP through Petricoff).

Even the Eagle King, who didn't have a biological offspring, but had made it clear that kingship would pass to his beloved yet mysterious adoptive son, Galvanor, was defied by his own tribe following his death. The majority of the Eagles, refusing to allow the gryphon to lead them due to him being only "half eagle", retreated to Eagle Spire following Faerin's betrayal, where they chose a competent leader among them to falsely claim as the late King's biological son; most of the tribe, despite knowing this wasn't true, simply pretended that it was, outright ignoring Galvanor's existence and collectively sentencing him to an unofficial exile.

## Trivia

* It was originally stated that Tenebrae "nearly wiped out" the Peacocks during the Tiger—Lion War, yet the Peacocks were implied to very much still exist as a tribe when the events of the Avian Triumvirate—Mammalian Confederation War were written; to rectify this, it was clarified that Tenebrae merely destroyed the Peacock HQ during the former war, weakening the tribe by rendering them nomadic, and that Faerin was the one who wiped out most of the tribe's population during the latter war. This retcon was also due to ruthlessness of such an extent being out of character for Tenebrae, but not for a then-insane Faerin.
* In the Roleplay, JGREAD originally planned for Galvanor to form the "New Avian Triumvirate" with the Eagles, Bats, and Phoenix. However, events ended up unfolding differently, with the Bats joining the Chima Alliance, and Galvanor instead founding Primordium (itself a former unused name for the alliance that became Unichi) with the Eagles, Wolves, Crocodiles, and Phoenix.

## References

1. ↑ The Last Reincarnations: A Chima Roleplay Tie-in Story