The Empire And The Citadel

Chapter-3:

/continuation from chapter 2,//

It's all started on the continent of Hadestisis, just a year ago, before the formation of Viyeshak by the natives and heretic scholars.

The continent of hadestisis, where exist four countries at present including viyeshak , 

There used to be a single country known by the name "Empire of Elenore". The empire was so vast that it occupied the whole area of hadestisis including the tundra landscapes of viyeshak.

Although there was an imperial monarchy ruling all of the continents, the royal family started to lose grip on their vassals.

The economic reforms and policies introduced by the royal capital were disastrous for the noble houses. 

The reforms were restricting the nobles' rights to keep their private army and focused on the centralization of power towards the capitals.

In simple words, the royal decree ordered that any feudal lord below the rank of a duke cannot keep any stationed army in their territory but they can only keep Fifty knights to maintain law and order, and the ducal house must keep their army troops below one thousand.

The nobles were very dissatisfied with this decision, including the dukes.

And henceforth the nobles backed their support for rising dukes and their political rebellion against the emperor, the power struggle between the three dukes and royal family was rising rapidly, the distrust between them grew so much that the dukes secretly prepared armies for revolt, the royal family too decided to increase military and put heavy taxation on peasants and serfs.

The final nail on the coffin was the forceful Acquisition of the donation given by the common class to the monasteries and church.

The three dukes were already prepared to revolt.

 But they just needed some excuse to gather the support of the public.

 But afterward, not just the public but also the church had fully denounced the royal family and declared them heretics and enemies of God.

That was the golden opportunity for dukes, they succeed to corner the emperor and then they formed an alliance and formed a joint alliance army to battle against the emperor. 

 Backed by nobles, The church, and common people, the three dukes finally besieged the capital for half a year.

The emperor was stalling the direct battle on the field.

He used formations of archers, catapults, and balistas on high walls surrounding the royal capital to fight a defensive war,

For the first few months, it appeared that the emperor will win this war, it was due to the smart arrangements of war machines like catapults, crossbow, and ballistas on the high walls.

The joint alliance army lost many of their siege towers and battering ram, the gate was just too far to reach due to the moat between the high walls and alliance army's position 

 Unfortunately for him, Eventually the provisions ran out in the capital and the people too were starving and tired from a month-long siege.

The emperor made a bitter decision and realized that he cannot stall the battle any longer. 

He has to make his last stand. 

The emperor and his very few loyal subjects led the army against revolting dukes outside the capital's gate.

Most of them were foot soldiers, probably recruited as militia and few cavalry units, but the imperial army's morale was already low from a half year long siege. 

They fought in despair against the armies led by the three dukes, but eventually got outnumbered, in the end, the emperor died on the battlefield 

And remaining soldiers on city walls surrendered unconditionally. 

They put down the drawbridge over the moat and opened the portcullis, eventually resulting in the Acquisition of the royal capital of now late "empire of Elenore", the remaining member of the royal family were hanged on gallows, some of them drank poison even before king set out for his last battle, thus it was the end of one of the biggest empire in Iskhvak

In the aftermath of the civil war, the three dukes decided to split the empire's territory for themselves, the dukedoms thus gained more land and finally converted into three new kingdoms which were Almetis, Amhor, Vielina.

And for the story about the formation of viyeshak, it was a land recognized under the previous Elenore empire as imperial territory of nomads, observed by the court officers which were sent occasionally to accommodate tax-related operation, hear native people's complaint, and help to solve minor disputes or sometimes to escort criminal condemned with the death penalty.

It was like that until Elenore ruled over Viyeshak, after the fall of Elenore, The situation of Viyeshak became somewhat tragic. 

The lands of Viyeshak were not fertile with tundra landscape and cold mountains in the north and northwest. 

Although it's blessed with many rivers that originated from glaciers, It was still not enough for people to survive here,

Basically, the natives of Viyeshak were hunting nomads who were dependent on seasonal hunting and farming pattern, even though when the Empire collapsed, none of the three dukes showed any interest in this barren land because its tough to accommodate any governance far from the mainland as well as there is not too much revenue to gain from tax either as the population is very low and scattered throughout vast tundra.

 One can say that providing for the need of the people of Viyeshak was more of a burden on the economy, thus they were just abandoned, there was nothing in the vast tundra landscape, just a bunch of farming and hunting villages and some wandering nomad clans living by their pacifist way of life,  

As it has always been since the beginning of human civilization, necessity is the mother of invention, the people scattered in Viyeshak were constantly trying to improve their living conditions with small inventions.

 It was easy for them to leave Viyeshak but they refused to leave their pacifist way of life and their ancestral home.

After around 2 months later since the fall of Elenore, the scholars from the yellow rift city, which is situated 0further southeast from Viyeshak, became fugitives after declared heretics by the church and hence fled towards Viyeshak as their last hope. Because the influence and presence of the church and their believers were negligible in Viyeshak

The yellow rift citadel was built merely 2 years before Eleanore empire fell due to rebellion, the citadel was personally established by the last Elenore emperor in order to establish an observatory tower for scholars and researcher to keep records of the moon, stars, and sun for maintaining imperial calendar0, it was also required to maintain prediction of weather and season for agriculture benefits.

 

There was a very high observatory tower in mid of citadel premise and the top of the tower was Equipped with a heating furnace and conical glass roof.

The shape of the roof was made conical in order to keep it free from the pile of snow during heavy snowfall in winter and the warm air from the furnace was used to clear the haze on the glass roof, thus makes it a perfect place to observe the sky and stars.

The influence of the yellow rift city as an academic establishment spread all over the country and so does their moral and ideological conflict with the church of Ermeshine,

Many people gathered in the city to learn the knowledge of the world from the scholars and the more they learned, the more doubted the ideology of the church.

In fact, the ideological conflict was far more intolerable for the church of Ermeshine as the inquisitors were already prepared with Paladins to crusade against the yellow rift citadel.

But they didn't dare to do so because the emperor himself assigned the imperial knight order to protect the yellow rift city. 

There was also a secret purpose of the yellow rift city that was to develop new weapon technology, metallurgy, and military science and thus the reason why the emperor was very serious about protecting yellow rift citadel, 

 

On the other hand, a royal decree for centralization of empire stirred a huge political destabilization among dukes and nobles as they were very dissatisfied with the emperor's decision, 

The church was also dissatisfied with the emperor's decision for favoring scholars instead of the church in the imperial territory and henceforth took advantage of this political turmoil and secretly backed the dukes to strengthen their armies for rebellion.

The emperor also got the words on the wind about the mischief of the 3 dukes and church and he started to prepare the imperial army for war, but in order to gather funds, he increased taxes on peasants and also took away the church's donation to weaken the strength of holy order, 

But his strategy backfired on him and the inquisitors used this decree as proof to appeal in front of common people where they declared the emperor as sinful, heretic, and cruel ruler.

It was a perfect vendetta from 3 dukes and church and the emperor got very little time to prepare his army and hence he decided to fight a defensive war from inside the wall of the royal capital

Indeed the scholars did produce the prototype of new weapons for the imperial army, but it was too late. The capital was besieged by the dukes and the yellow rift city lost connection with the royal capital.  

 Afterward, the emperor was defeated by rebel forces. The church was fearless and turned its eyes towards the yellow rift citadel, the Paladins of holy order marched towards the yellow rift city to punish the scholars who once refused to bow to the gods.

Fortunately, the Ravens released by some remaining loyal subjects of the late emperor from the capital city reached the citadel, they were warned about the arrival of holy order. 

The scholars of the yellow rift citadel thus gathered their research notes, parchments, equipment, and their belongings together in order to vacate the citadel 

At last, they destroyed the prototypes of weapons they produced for the imperial army to keep the technology safe from holy orders.

Finally, when the Caravan was prepared, they decided to flee towards the tundra landscapes of Viyeshak in the north west which is far from mainland cities.

And that's how unfortunate it was, a paradise of knowledge and a great empire fell together.

But again, why feel despair? , The scholars doesn't kneeled before Despair, they didn't cared for politics, neither any theological ideology.

Even when the time was against them, they didn't give up and moved towards Viyeshak as their last hope for refuge.

 What they wanted was just a place where the advancement of human civilization can spread its wing and perhaps some day it bring the glory of knowledge and research into the darkness of mankind.

*//end of chapter 3//**

//ps:-If you find any grammatical mistakes or spelling mistakes, please, kindly let me know, I Appreciate your help//