An Angel Called Eternity

Lore Chapter: The Sotenari Empire

Thirtieth Day, Second Month, 871 AD.
Lykourgos Sperakos, Prince.
Kingdom of Teleytaios.
Aenirhen.
The River Keep.

My Dearest Lyk,

It worries me so to read of your own observations. I will confess that having been away from my homeland for so long I have been left with little news of affairs within the Heptarchy, and so your letters are vital to ensure my peace of mind not only because I know that you continue to stand taller and taller in the face of adversity, but also because your observations of happenings both in Teleytaios and abroad have always been excellent, if somewhat cynical. Still, by the time this letter reaches you I will likely have returned home. If what you say is true then I will need to be home see Polaeros through to safety.

Some of the things I have seen down here have beggared belief, Lyk. I have seen things I did not believe man to be capable of in this city, both in terms of majesty and cruelty. By the Angels, what cruelty! Half a million men kept as chattel on an island smaller than that of the Anatolikoi, some of whom are nothing more than living trophies kept as reminders of the conquests of the lost empire which once dominated the southern continent alongside the Kingdom of the Kikhepis. The level of cruelty required to ensure that the blood of long forgotten peoples survive in chattel for more than a hundred generations for no other reason than to gloat at them was something that, open minded as I may have needed to be on my travels, I was unable to stomach. This is not 'merely' slavery, as deplorable as that may be by itself. This is sin of the highest order. No deity would condone this.

I was able to find passage to Gorratar in the end, but I was unable to see my journey through. That is a place I shall never go, not after feeling such dread merely from looking upon its walls from a distance. I have seen many, many things in my travels, and have been to places of great danger. Long have I shunned the ideals of curses and the like, but that is one place no sane man should ever go. Let the jungle take it as it creeps north, let the savage tribes within tear it apart. That place should never have been.

I am not ashamed to admit that even looking upon its walls gave me nightmares of what might lie within, but then the city is certainly strange; were they truly nightmares, or something more sinister? Premonitions, perhaps? I have spent several nights pondering this question, and am no closer to an answer. Either way it matters not, for I will never enter that accursed city.

It is unlikely that we will meet again for quite some time, even longer than the normal interludes between our liaisons, but so long as we draw breath we shall never be apart. I will speak to you further below.

The Sotenari Empire was once the foremost power of the world, with all the splendour that such a title brings. Before the Age of Silence, before the collapse of civilisation on the southern continent, Sothena was regarded as the centre of the world with the northern continent of Kliskorios being seen as little more than a backwater filled with squabbling barbarians and backwards city-states. It was the Sotenari that pushed the boundaries of what it meant to be an empire, of what it meant to rule, of what it meant to be human. Theirs was a nation built on the blood of slaves and the broken, on the iron fist of their legions and the gaping maws of the flesh-crafted abominations they kept by their side.

It was a nation of war, plain and simple. Not war in the way that we understand it now, not wars fought with pitched battles and skirmishes. No. To the Sotenari a foe who fled and lived remained a foe, a foe who fought and died may become a martyr to their people, but a foe in chains?

That was delightful.

To them treaties, reparations, ransoms, and battles in their favour were not the marks of victory. The complete destruction of the foe, the eradication of their realms, the death of their religion and culture, the enslavement of every man, woman, and child? That was victory.