The History of the Sacred Marintes Empire
Much of our civilisation traces its origins to the Reialme de l'Aument, on the Eastern coast of the Marinta. Once a small republic, a league of city-states banded together for prosperity, fraternity, and mutual defence against pirates and barbarians. In time, it grew, it crushed enemies that sought to crush it, and when pushed to the brink, they crowned a king, Antoine, who led them to glory. He and his successors established the Aument as the preeminent civilisations of the Marinta. Enemies were forced into tribute. Barbarians were civilised. Colony-cities spread the light of civilisation, promised open pastures for patricians and veterans, and brought wealth back to the Aument proper. But in time, the kings grew despotic, tyrannical, and corrupt, and the frivolity of arrogant children wasted the inheritance their great forefathers left them.
Into these trying times came the prophet Caroline. She saw the Angels in Heaven, and spoke to them, and through them, spoke to the One. The one true God, our Lord. Her miracles were too numerous to recount here, but most famously, she stopped a flood by commanding the sea to halt, and she conjured an eclipse lasting an entire day. As the Aument began to fall apart around her, she could not forestall its demise, or perhaps did not wish to save the petty and heathen kings that now lorded over it. Instead, she taught the people. She taught of faith, of charity, of compassion. She taught of God, the Angels, and Heaven. She taught of salvation and destruction. She taught the truth. The only truth that matters. The truth above all truths. She was beaten, dragged in chains before the king, and ordered to renounce her faith and decry her teachings as lies. She refused, and was burned at the stake. She burned alive, starting beneath the new moon, until vanishing suddenly as the full moon rose directly overhead. We know from her followers that her visage and voice, in ghostly form, continued to appear before them until the moon was new again, and that she was ascended to Heaven.
The true faith, which some call Carolinisme, and which others know as the Sacred and Universal Church, outlived Caroline's tormentors. The Aument disintegrated, becoming overrun by barbarians, with only the area around the former capital kept relatively safe by the Mythe, one of the preeminent religious leaders, and now recognised as the head of the Church, who also exercised temporal authority over the Hallowed City where Caroline's final breaths were drawn. Carolinisme spread across the Marinta and even beyond, and there are stories some tell of lands that follow a form of Carolinisme despite having no contact with the Church.
When a great army of heathen warlords threatened the Hallowed City, the Mythe could not muster the force to protect it, but had to call upon a prince from across the Marinta, whom we call Roger I, often called "the Great" or "the Uniter" in contemporary genealogy and histories. Roger not only defeated the heathens, but subjugated them, and forged a great empire of laws and morality, being crowned at the culmination of his conquests, by the Mythe herself, as the Emperor of the Marinta. A High Court was appointed, who formulated a legal code, managed the bureaucracy, and elected the Emperors. It was just, it was prosperous, it was pious. Unfortunately, in time, it became weak. It was ruled by politicians, not princes. Bureaucrats, not warriors. Orators, not generals. Corruption set in, this time not with decadence and immorality, but with placidity and cowardice. The ones who were brave became foolhardy, aggressive, respecting neither law nor custom. It was an Empire of laws, not of men, but was powerless to rein in such men's worst impulses. When yet more barbarians came, this time not as pirates or raiders, but as a massive horde of vicious horsemen, the Empire's armies were slow to respond, its generals excessively cautious, its Emperor, Marcel III concerned more with negotiating favours with the High Court than with leading armies to repulse the invaders.
When the Empire was saved, it was not by the High Court, not by the Emperor, not by the basest of the warlords, but who combined the ferocity and impetus of the warlords with the honour and diligence of the men of laws. The greatest of these men, Guy de Maronha, was crowned Guy IV, and instated a great reform of the Empire into its contemporary form, as the Empèri Marintés Sacrat. Things continued well from this point, justly and righteously, and the Empire was both safe and prosperous, until thirty years ago. Emperor Carles Francés, while hosting a grand celebration and session of the Senat Imperiau, at which all the Princes attending were to hear which of his children he had selected as an heir, and at which the Electors were to assent to his choice, was unfortunately met with a tragic fate, alongside his guests, his children, and his entire citadel. An explosion, greater than any bomb which has ever been constructed, annihilated the palace, the grounds, the fortifications surrounding, and all of the people within.
The Electors, or more properly, their heirs, have yet to reconvene. It has been three decades of interregnum, and no consensus has yet emerged on who should next rule our Empire. There is no end in sight. May our grandchildren someday know peace again, for we may have already forgotten it.