Empire of Aldera

Alderans in battle with soldiers of Ibbathis.

The **Alderan Imperium**, commonly known as the **Empire of Aldera** or the **Southern Empire**, was the southernmost and longest enduring of the Three Great Empires. Originally forming a third of Edos' Thousand-Year Empire, it was established upon the death of the Creator God and the end of the Second Age. Gaius Remigius, one of the three Grand Lieutenants of Edos, planned to divide the south of the Thousand-Year Empire between himself and his two corrupt, unfit sons. Three great generals of the South rose up and overthrew Remigius, reuniting the South to be ruled from Alderium by their Triumvirate.  This established a precedent of Triumvirates ruling the nascent Imperium; three Triumvirs were chosen by the Imperial Senate each decade, one each from the Western, Eastern and Southern reaches of vast Aldera. This system of divided electoral rule would endure throughout the Third Age and the War of Holy Succession, the Imperium contending in seemingly endless war with its enemies in Anderia and Ibbathis for a millenia. Alderan culture evolved and diverged greatly from its fellow Empires during the Third Age; the conscript-based and impeccably trained Imperial Legions came to symbolize the militaristic, extravagant and elitist world of the South. Though a time of war, the Third Age was nonetheless known as the Golden Age of Aldera, as culture, politics and art flourished in the Imperial heartlands. This state of affairs, however, was not to last. The onset of the Fourth Age Collapse very nearly shattered the Imperium, as it did Anderia to the north. The Triumvirate fractured as Daemonic influences and magical catastrophes plagued Adovias, plunging the Imperium into a multifaceted civil war that would last much of the Fourth Age. In the chaos and ruin, numerous small successor states broke away on the frontiers of the Imperium, shrinking its dominion considerably.

Aldera was only saved from total destruction by the strength of Aurelianus Laevinus, a famed general of the Western Empire. Near the end of the Fourth Age, Laevinus led a searing campaign across the vast expanses of Aldera, crushing each Triumvir in turn and curbing the disentigration of the Imperium's frontiers. Declaring himself Imperator, Aurelianus transformed the face of the ancient empire, doing away with electoral rule in favor of an absolutist, revanchist regime empowered by the Cult of Edos Majorum. By the dawn of the Fifth Age, Aldera had regained much of its strength, standing tall as one of the few nations to emerge from the Collapse mostly intact. The lavish, exorbinant culture of the early Imperium was replaced by one that venerated war and glory above all else, with its Imperator acting as a voice for the Gods.

The reforged Imperium faced one of its greatest challenge only a few years after the dawn of the Fifth Age. The Elves of the Centharii Dominions, themselves wracked by the Collapse, deigned humanity unfit to govern itself in the wake of the Fourth Age. In an invasion of unprecedented scale, the Centharii flooded into Ibbathis, Sethuria and the eastern provinces of Aldera, crushing all resistance in their path and beginning the Centhariite Wars. The Imperial Legions scrambled to react, and soon, east Aldera had become a field of blood. For three long centuries, the Imperials battled the Centharii back and forth across the eastern provinces, millions perishing in a constant and vicious war of extermination.