Xain
Map: Basic Map
Capital: Gyrehorn
Ruler: Omala Vindicar, Queen
Government: Hereditary Absolute Monarchy
Primary Race: Human
Primary Language: Ixish
Regional Bonus: Memories Past - Drawing on the glory of their old ways and memories of times long past, modern Xain is a dim reflection of everything the country once was, giving you a +2 racial bonus to Knowledge [History] and Knowledge [Nobility].
Regional Feat:Bloody but Unbroken
Description
Though a place of cruelty, violence, and oppression, it is their star that is in ascension following the disastrous Sunset War. When the other major powers of the world were either falling victim to the Empyrean Academy or uniting to fight them off, Xain was husbanding its resources and biding its time. The dust had barely settled when they launched their ruinous Reconquest, targeted at the breakaway provinces who had long been a blight on the egos of the nobility. Those same provinces had selflessly provided troops and resources they could ill-afford to the war effort and now found their allies too weak to protect them in turn, toppling before the cruel scythe of Xaini revenge.
Amantara and Seliune have both fallen, thousands dying in battle and tens of thousands more in reprisals so bloody that Xain's own military stepped in to quash the nobility's bloodlust. Now, Queen Vindicar has turned her attentions to the remaining provinces: Western Xain and Ofir. With the cold, competent Karakalla Vonostre--the Wolf of the West--as her general (and one of the 70-year-old Queen's many lovers), none doubt Vindicar's dream of a Great Xain or her assertions that unification is only a prelude to her life's ambition: the conquest of the Empire of the Sun.
Within Xain itself, meanwhile, the nobility has only grown more decadent and obscene, the last borders of conscience worn away by the absence of the Empire's nebulous moral authority backed by their military might. The Cult of the Moon operates openly now, with even Queen Vindicar having sacrificed victims to Feyoon in return for power. Peasants live in constant fear of being raped or murdered by their overlords, sacrificed to dark gods, or dragged screaming into the wilderness by monsters that seem more common with each passing night. What little they manage to produce is taken as ever-greater taxes by the government and no story of cruelty is too wild for the beleaguered masses to believe.
History
Mighty Xain was born from the dreams of the Scholar-King Reah Amun, who had been the lover of Xaina Brightarrow, one of the Namitha Ardrua who had died in the battle with Klad Skathika. Hoping to build a world in which his and Xaina's daughter could grow up happy and safe, he convinced many of the veterans from the war with the Orodravian to join him in taming one of the least-damaged sections of Faengleis. From the Dome of the Central Archive--the great library at Gyrehorn--he instituted public eduction, democratic reforms that placed the King under the power of an elected council, and progressive laws about the treatment of commoners and non-humans.
Under the rule of his daughter Mahala Amun, the west entered a time of great expansion and optimism, eclipsing even the elves of the Ascendancy for a time. Mahala's sons and granddaughters and further descendants ruled for centuries, overseeing the settlement of not only the Liongrass Steppes but deep into the mountains of the Shield of the World and across the oceans, to the Fangs of Joo'a. The world was Xain's, until the War of Rod and Scepter in Tower Age 611.
It wasn't until the War for Xaini Independence in AG 1192 that the ill-used people of Xain learned they could fight back. Though Xain could not be out-right destroyed nor the entrenched nobility cast out, many large chunks broke away to form Western Xain, Ofir, Amantara, and Seliune. Xain continued its moral and civil decline until the peasants were no better than slaves, ruled with a vindictive glee by nobles who no longer allowed themselves to be constrained by either human decency or concern for their country's future.
That self-centered arrogance served Xain well when the other nations were uniting against the threat of the Empyrean Academy. While the Empire of the Sun's forces were dying on battlefields in Darminia and the Elven Ascendancy, Xain was preparing for a conflict of a different kind. In AG 1265, they launched the Reconquest, rolling over the wounded Amantara and Seliune, ushering in a new age of atrocity on tides of innocent blood. Now, they turn their greedy eyes to the few provinces that remain "uncooperative."
Foreign Relations
Xain is arguably the most powerful nation in Faengleis now, between an over-sized army with frighteningly competent leadership, abundant resources, and a string of misfortunes plaguing its only real rivals: the Empire of the Sun and the Elven Ascendancy. Even after the Sunset War, they underestimate the threat the Empyrean Alliance could represent and openly mock the less traditional powers such as the Court Aquatic or the fledgling giant and orc nations to their east.