Episurian Empire

**Episurian Empire**
"**One of the many peripheral states allowed to continue trade and relations through the beneficence of the Seer Council, the Episurians were wiped clean from the Cosmos for the crime of defying the might of the Imperium, harboring Apostates, and stealing the Holy secrets of Aetherics from the Mage Princes. The current state of Dwarven subjegation should be a lesson for all those who think to challenge the Imperium in the future...**"
 — Encyclopedia Imperia, 1st Edition

**The Episurian Empire** was a dwarven state that existed for millennia before the rise of the Mage Imperium and survived until roughly the 18th century after the Covenant with Adalna.

## Historical Significance

Episur is remembered as the last dwarven Great Power: it extended over close to a hundred worlds before being destroyed and its people massacred, enslaved or exiled by the Mage Imperium. The Episurian Diaspora is believed to be source of the smattering of dwarven enclaves (mostly extinct) in Celestial and Naga Space.

Episurian collaborators with the Imperial occupation played minor but notable roles as material scientists in a variety of secret Imperial projects at the twilight of the Imperium, including the Karaval occultworks and the Keith labs involved in transmutation and the Imperial Navy's D-Bomb project. At least one Episurian dwarf is believed to have survived to join the scientific corps of the Encyclopedia Foundation.

Some Episurian refugees are known to have joined with lesser dwarven clans beyond Episur's former frontier, and to this day, some clans such as the Harnods claim descent from the great families of Episur.

## Culture and People

*This section is incomplete. You can help The Aeldrum Wiki by expanding it*.

## History

### The Imperial-Episurian War

In the early 18th century After Covenant, a rogue faction of the gnostic Valander movement in the Hybern Sector of the Mage Imperium began to trade restricted technology with the dwarves of Episur. Several of the Valander Mage Princes accused of apostasy and technology violations even fled to the court of Episur and became scholars in residence. Demands of extradition by the Imperium were rebuffed and the diplomatic situation deteriorated rapidly, culminating in a standoff between a dwarven clan caravan and an Imperial warship. What should have been a simple show of force by the Imperium became a humiliating reversal when the caravan refused Imperial orders to allow boarders: the resulting firefight revealed stolen Imperial etheric weapons aboard the dwarven craft and ended with the Imperial warship defeated and captured. For the first time in two centuries, the Imperium had lost a capital ship level engagement.

The resulting panic and outrage on Aeldrum was adroitly manipulated by a senior naval officer, Grand Admiral Horatio, to convince the Seer Council to authorize a policy of "total war" against the Episurian Dwarves. Horatio would use the war to become de-facto master of the Imperial Navy, marking the high water mark of Naval autonomy and military power.

The war was masterminded and executed by Grand Admiral Horatio as a brutal object lesson in Imperial firepower: if the dwarves had Imperial etherics, then the Imperium must overmatch them at every turn and, failing that, in the Grand Admiral's words: "spend as much blood and treasure as necessary towin **every. last. battle.**" so that the humiliation of the war's first engagement should never be repeated and the Imperium's preeminence within the cosmos would be restored.

To this end, Horatio and his officers committed not only to a policy of stubborn brutality but outright genocide. The ferocious resistance of the dwarves and the uncompromising assault of the Imperium served as a proving ground for several significant figures of the Imperial navy at the twilight of the Imperium, including Hybern Sector Admiral Roland Drumpf, Commodore Astrid Keith, Admiral Clara Keith and Grand Admiral Hiram Klausman. The surprising brutality of the war meant a meat-grinder even for relatively senior Imperial commanders, leaving ample opportunities for daring heroism, field promotion and war crimes (see: Clara Keith, Roland Drumpf).

The Imperial-Episurian war was ultimately won by the Imperium, and the resultant generation of officers in the Hybern, Kartak and Norel sectors was scarred physically and emotionally, fulfilling the dual role of heroes of the Imperium and stains on any pretense of the Mage Princes to greater mercy or civilization than the rest of the cosmos.

### Occupation by the Imperium and Legacy as Pirate State

In addition to the military occupation of Episur's capital world, Kartak, the former core of the Episurian Empire was broken up into three administrative districts, each of about half a dozen worlds.  These were run locally by dwarven rulers, often members of fringe political groups and disgraced clans under the old Empire, but also kept in line by substantial garrisons of Imperial Marines in the so-called Fleet Concessions, large districts on each world used by the (navy-controlled) Kartak government.  The so-called Episurian Administrative Confederacy was kept intentionally weak, and infighting and rebellion were overlooked so long as the tithes kept coming and no dwarven population dared to attempt to rebuild the Episurian Fleet.

About half of the Episurian worlds were not part of the Confederacy, considered too poor or too far-flung to be worth administering.  These, of course, became centers of piracy, but the Imperium appeared to believe that policing Episurian space was cheaper than directly conquering and rooting out the renegades and raiders that emerged from the fractured Episurian navy.

One of the lesser families of the Episurian Empire, the Boldur Clan was spared the worst of the destruction that affected Kartak and other major worlds.  Under the Clan’s elders, the Boldurs evacuated en-masse to the periphery of the Empire, were they became the core of a pirate state. Though other clans and tribes survived the destruction of the Empire and went into exile, the Boldurs became notorious for continuing what they call “The Eternal War” against the hated Mage Imperium.