The Spiran Imperium

To the Diaspora the name Spira is one of many meanings. Foremost, it is the world above and below - the first world, a homeworld they long to return to; watching as it rises and fall across their skies, once believed forever out of reach.

Epilogue of An Empire

The name carries a grimmer memory as well, that of the Imperium. The origin for their exile. Once, in the mists of the past, the two Lord races of the world battled for dominance on the continent of Ideni. The lesser races at the time in awe of their power called them the Demons and Angels, avoiding their presence when possible, and offering supplication when they could not. For millennium the two clashed, their battles roiling over the world consuming and stripping bear the lesser races trivial kingdoms and clans for resources and foot soldiers.

Within the chaos and conflict arose a challenge to the Angels and Demons and their endless war. Within the hinterlands of Iskirk the half-elven king Pyrik, born heir to both the elven and human throne united his peoples in defiance of their continual occupation. The lords of light had bolstered their armies with conscripts from the elven lands, and the lords of shadow with humans from their realm. As the two forces clashed, their fodder turned against them - elf and human rallied in the center as a single army and turned upon the ranks of  

angels and demons to each side, routing them completely. Their victory rallied the lesser races of Iskirk - the noble but brutish Ogres first, then stoic and reclusive Dwarves. All allied under the banner of the coalition.

Yet Pyrik knew they were still no match for the otherworldly magic and weapons of the Lord Races. Their insurrection only bought the lesser races an opening to strike a true mortal blow against their masters. Pyrik's spies within the realms of the two races spoke of a singular source for the terrifying magic of both the races: The Celestial Engine. It was said to be a great machine, left behind by a third Elder Race who had abandoned the world rather than be caught in the continual warfare of their cousins. It was this engine which allowed the two powerful races to draw upon powers much greater than what The Anima, the life magic of the planet, could provide. Without it, Pyrik knew they could not stand up to the combined might of his coalition.

Pyrik gathered the greatest warriors of the lesser races and while his army fought the Lord Races struck at the celestial engine hidden in the bowels of The Sacred Mountain - and in doing so, he doomed us all.

Pyrik has made a grave miscalculation, that the rancor between the Lord Races would never allow them to cooperate. Yet, seeing the possibility that they could be entirely usurped by the lesser races they banded together, combined their armies and crushed Pyrik's coalition even without access to their sorcerery. When the elven king returned home he found both kingdoms reduced to ash and salted fields. His companions were overcome with rage and loss, knowing their trust in the king had doomed their homelands as well. As Pyrik howled in sorrow over his kingdoms of ash beneath the haunting glow of the many moons, they cut him down. Pyrik's victory had resulted only in their own destruction by uniting ancient enemies.

The Imperium Treaty

The Angels and Demons, or as they refereed to themselves: The Aas and Tief realizing that without the celestial engine their war had ended in mutual defeat. Millennia of conflict had nearly destroyed them both and they vowed they would not let the mistakes of the past repeat themselves. At the site of the destroyed engine they signed the treaty of unification and the Imperium was born. The two races, divided for so long, found the sudden peace draw them together in utter fascination of their long mysterious cultures. It was not long before the first half Angel, half Demon was born; something neither had even thought possible. She was named Nelephim, and from her the hybrid race took their name. Within ten generations pure blood Angels and Demons were a rarity - their people had united as one.

The lesser races suffered greatly during the times of the early empire - the Imperium swept the land in retribution, laying waste to civlization wherever it coalesced in what would be called The Barbarian Principle - that the lesser races could not ever rise above barbarism, lest they become a threat again. However, in time, as the Nelephim became the dominant force within the Imperium, the perception of the lesser races changed. The Nelephim were, by nature, both wiser and less forceful than their predecessors. In time the Nelephim came to realize they had the ambition and passion of the lesser races to be thankful for their very existence, that of the Imperium and the age of peace it had ushered in. When the first Nelephim majority senate took session, they forced Tidus, the Last Angelic Emperor to abolish The Barbarian Principle and began the task of bringing the Imperium to the far reaches of the world and the lesser races into their fold.

However, a dark truth belayed this seeming altruism. With the destruction of the celestial engine, the remaining Angels and Demons were cut off from the source of power they burned with a tremendous craving to restore. They had tried as they could to draw magic directly from the Anima as the lesser races did, and their children could to a lesser extent, but thousands of years of being bound to the engine had forever severed their ties to the Anima.

The Imperium is all, all are Imperium. 

Tens of thousands were brought to Ideni, by invitation or force if necessary, the brightest and best from all of the races - Man, Elf, Dwarf and even the savage races, Troll, Orc and Minotaur were civilized and given station. They returned to their people in time, bringing legions of Imperium soldiers with them, technology and order. At first the lesser races resisted being civilized, distrusting the Imperium and even waging frequent open rebellion against it. However, in time, all the promises of the Nelephim came to pass. Scholars mark the day Kaerl Gleemeye, dwarf prince of The Emerald Hall, became the first senator of the lesser races as the official end of the rebellion. He would be followed by many more of the lesser races, though the Nelephim would hold forever the position of Emperor until the fall of the Imperium.

With the celestial engine gone, came the adoption of The Imperial Currency as a means for the remaining Demons and Angels to regain their lost power and deathlessness. The Imperium opened thousands of schools in the art of their unique form of artifice, derived from the wreckage of the celestial engine. The lesser races used their connection with the anima to imbue artifacts with magical life, draining power from both the Anima and their own lifeforces. Through the tithing of these artifacts the artificers could rise in rank, and eventually to the senate themselves. While the cost was significant, depletion of one's own personal life force made them weak, frail and prone to organ failure those seeking the ladder to power frequently tithed to those who had tithed. Those who ascended to the highest ranks found the investment well worth it; as their organs failed they would be replaced with the artifice passed up to them, hearts, livers, kidneys all substituted with magical prosthetics far superior to their originals. For the first time, a rare few of the lesser races had achieved the immunity to old age and disease enjoyed by the Angels and Demons, who were able to regain it themselves - in a lesser form. Soon into the process Imperium artificers developed a means to bind a sentiment being's life force and along with it a portion of the Anima into gems called phylactery's - which quickly became known as The Imperial Currency - life itself. Even non-artificers began selling off some of their life force to weather bad harvests, fund investments or even spend recklessly; giving rise to the term wasting one's life.

Fall of the Imperium

Early into the lesser race's entrance into the Imperium many shaman and spiritual leaders denounced the act of trading away one's life force. They decreed it as heresy against the natural order and life it's self, issuing grave warnings which often went unheeded outside of their hermit kingdoms. They were, of course, absolutely correct. The Anima was not an external force, but a field in which all life exists - it is inside, outside, through and around and connects all living things. Every time a sentient being drew out part of his own life essence, they ripped out a part of the very Anima as well. The magic of Shamans and the mages of old only distorted or borrowed power from the Anima, they did not degrade it as the artifice of the empire did. Occasionally artificers discovered this knowledge, or in studying the celestial engine realize it had been consuming an entire Anima of a distant world and were quickly silenced by the blades of Imperium whisper-keepers.

The warnings of the Shaman and priests went unheeded though as the Imperium spread to all quarters of the world, the vast majority of its population becoming Imperium willingly, even eagerly. All around the world, the Demons, Angels and Senators drank up the Anima. The end began with plague and famine. Nearly everyone sold their life essence to some extent and they became weak and vulnerable to disease, which spread through the frail populations. Soon after, the Anima being damaged as it would could not give life to crops which withered in the field. The old gods and great spirits went silent, their prophets unable to hear their faint, pleading whispers. Birth rates declined as infertility grew and women, weak from lack of spirit died in labor. The beasts of the world, grew desperate and crazed sensing the peril the Imperium posed and instinctually fought back - oxen turned against master in the field, owlbears stalked and ravaged any hunters outside city walls. Yet, the new celestial engine, an economic engine, could not be stopped. As chaos and collapse spread, so did tithes to the still stable core of the Imperium, desperate to buy position within the still prosperous lands of Ideni -or at least food to feed one's family and weapons to fend off beasts.

Finally, it was the world its self that rebelled. The Anima, riddled with holes, ripped. The land itself rose up in fury, spewing magma and ash from volcanic rifts. Waves as high as mountains smashed into the coasts, forests ignited blowing cinder clouds along dry fields, sudden torrential dounpours caused raging lahars to wash entire villages into muddy abysses. The world ended.

Yet as the world revolted against the belligerence of the Imperium, the arrogance of Demons, Angels, Man and Elf a light appeared in the darkness. Littered across the world, ancient circles of stone, overgrown and uninteresting, flashed to life with crackling bolts of magic; portals. Wherever such a portal could be found, refugees poured through it oblivious to what could wait them on the other side, the silent hope among most it was the Imperium bringing them to Ideni. That the Imperium would yet save them. As new arrivals poured through, disoriented and dizzy from the reality warping tanslocation they found those before them simply staring upward, pointing to the sky, mouths agape. Above them Spira hung in the sky like a moon, green, blue and white - serene and peaceful despite the apocalypse.

They had left the world behind entirely. Across the thirteen moons of Spira, crowds of exiles drew themselves up from the strange new tera firma to gaze upon an old world, and a new one. Home was gone, the Imperium dead - but life, life would go on.