Grand Duchy of Karameikos
History
The ancient history of Traladara is the same as the canonical history in this version. The Traldars had been disunited before Halav and the war with the Beastmen, and the devastation caused by that war made it easy for the fragile unity to collapse. Only one thing survived to provide any unity for the Traldar nation, the custom of the Assembly of Warriors. Once every decade, every community would select two of its warriors who would attend the assembly along with the community's leader. The Assembly had little real power, but it provided a forum in which old feuds could be settled and some degree of unity provided in the face of outside invasions by electing a war leader for the Traldar nation.
As time passed, Traldar society slowly became more stratified. Instead of everyone being a warrior, most people became farmers and craftsmen while a hereditary military elite ruled as lords and knights. Increasingly, only the lords and knights attended the Assembly of Warriors. Each community was its own petty state, ruled by a hereditary chief/ duke/ king/ lord/ whatever, supported by a group of knights. Efforts to unite Traladara failed because no centralized government could adequately deal with the decentralized threats posed by the roaming humanoids; anything that strengthened localities sufficiently to deal with such threats soon made them no longer have any need for a central government.
As time passed, very slowly more lands were carved from the wilderness by the knights and lords, but instead of those lands becoming more free farms like those of the oldest communities, the farmers who came had to submit themselves to the authority of the warrior class, and became serfs. The continual pressure of rising population made many willing to do so, as it beat starvation. The old free villages themselves sank into poverty as large families divided and subdivided lands to the point where many were just an inch away from starvation.
For centuries, Traladara remained a quiet rural backwater (well, quiet when people weren't being eaten by werewolves or having their blood sucked by vampires). It is difficult, however, for a nation to remain a complete backwater when it is right next door to one of the most civilized, sophisticated, and complex nations on Mystara. The humanoids of eastern Karameikos cut off most possibilities of trade by land, but the ports of Karameikos became stopping points for Thyatian, Five Shires, Ierendi, Minrothadi and other traders, especially Marilenev, which grew in sophistication.
Thyatian ways came into style in Marilenev, especially Thyatian religion, and increasingly, it came to be seen as a pit of decadence by the stout country folk, who clung to traditional ways, and by the rural aristocracy, who disliked the growing merchant class, who they saw as uppity. Religion became the especial flashpoint for conflict between the nobles and the merchants, for the nobles could draw the rural country folk, especially the free farmers, to support them more wholeheartedly on this issue.
The crisis came during the great humanoid migration of 435-440 AC. In the first years of fighting the disunited Traldar principalities all fought separately against the invaders, and as a result, they were crushed. Panicked, the merchants of Marilenev tried to appeal to Thyatis for aid. But Thyatis was busy fighting off invaders within their own domains, and the appeal only led to a mercenary company hiring on to help defend Marilenev. The nobles accused the Thyatianized merchants of treason, but were too busy fighting off the invasion to do anything. Fearing the Thyatians would sooner or later come and conquer them if nothing was done, after the war, the nobility directed a crusade against the heretics of the port settlements. Unable to resist effectively, they chose to flee instead, sailing west to the Savage Coast.
The towns were fairly permanently crippled by the nobility and the angry farmers, reduced to little more than fishing villages. The Traldars forgot how to build anything much larger than a small fishing boat, and every petty village was effectively its own tiny state, often isolated from the others by long dangerous tracts of forest. For a long time, it wasn't very safe for foreign traders to come, and so few did. This went on for centuries, as Traladara quietly stagnated.
It was the successful revolt of Al-Kalim that indirectly led to the Thyatian conquest of Traladara, for defeat to the North and an almost impossible to budge Alphatian Empire to the East meant that West (and the far North or Far South, both of which were much harder to reach) were the main options available to an emperor who sought glory in war as Gabronius IV did. Thyatian traders had been beginning to operate in Karameikos in the last half a century before 900 AC, as new markets were sought to make up for the loss of the colonies in Ylarum. However, these traders faced great local prejudices.
Finally, in 900 AC, a Thyatian trader was killed in a 'duel' with a Traladar noble; it remains debatable to the present day as to whether it was a fair fight or effectively murder. Whatever the real reason, Gabronius declared he was acting to protect Thyatian Citizens and sent the 20th Cohort into Marilenev. A Thyatian fort was built to serve as a trading post, and the resulting counter-strike by the Traladar nobility was squashed casually. It soon became apparent that establishing full-blown Thyatian control over the entire region of Traladara would take years, cost huge amounts of money, require scattering one or more cohorts permanently across the area in small garrisons to deal with the localized problems of humanoid raids, and not bring much glory or wealth to the empire. The commander on the scene, Maxentius, contented himself with requiring oaths of fealty from the Traladaran nobility, who surrendered their titles and received new, Thyatianized titles (Typically Baron or Lord Knight). In theory, they now owed allegiance to the Thyatian emperor. In practice, the Imperially appointed Governors who ruled in Marilenev (now renamed Specularum) were generally content to leave them to their own devices so long as they didn't interfere with or impose taxes on trade.
Marilenev boomed, as did several other coastal settlements such as Halag where small Thyatian garrisons were placed. Traldaran disunity had long prevented the reclamation of more wilderness from the humanoids who infested it, but the population continued to grow, and the trading communities provided a place where people could move and quickly prosper. Such folk tended to become increasingly Thyatianized, and were seen as traitors by those rural folk who stayed home because they had actually inherited enough land to get by. Some of the nobility became involved in trade as well, such as the Torenescu (much as they now trumpet their Traladar heritage), and increasingly became Thyatianized as well. Foreign cults prospered under Thyatian protection.
The nobility and some of the rural folk began to grumble impotently, though enough benefited from the rising trade that little happened. All was fairly peaceful for decades, until 966 AC. A massive army of humanoids descended from the mountains and forest, crushed the Thyatian forces and those of the Traldar nobility (many of whom waited too long to assemble for fear the invasion would turn to ravage their lands first), then besieged Specularum.
Units were pulled from the western regions of Thyatis and shipped by sea to Specularum. One of those Thyatian soldiers was a nobleman named Stefan Karameikos, the heir to the Duchy of Machetos, who had become a Thyatian Cavalry officer at a very early age. He showed great promise in the war which followed, swiftly rising in the ranks due to his talent for military leadership. Already fluent in the Traladaran tongue due to the trade links which had arisen between Machetos and Traladara in the last century, he became a liason coordinating the cooperation between the feudal hosts of the Traladaran barons and the Imperial cavalry. During that time he made good impressions on some Traladaran nobles, while others saw him as a child thrust into a situation beyond his capabilities. The same could be said of the Thyatian army officers he interacted with. Still, he functioned reasonably well, and made many friends whose aid would stand him in good stead later.
Three years of campaigning followed as the humanoids were driven back each fall, only to return in the spring. During that time, Stefan saw much of the Traladaran lands and came to realize the great potential the land possessed.
When he returned to Thyatis, he was commended by his commanding officer, General Callastian Jowdynites for his good service, and this helped to bring him to the attention of Emperor Thincol, with whom he began a friendship. Thincol seemed to be grooming him for a long-term military career when the surprise death of his father and his three elder brothers in a dragon attack led him home to Machetos to assume leadership of it.
Duke Stefan had never expected to actually inherit Machetos, and certainly not so early in life. What loomed ahead of him was many years of administration, a career for which he had not really been trained (as his family had expected he would make a life for himself in the army), instead of the life of excitement followed by perhaps settling down in retirement to rule a dominion which he had expected. (Indeed, he'd begun to hope that perhaps his contact with the Emperor would enable him to eventually found a dominion in Traladara, which he had come to like in his time there).
Stefan did his best to rule Machetos, but there was, in fact, little for him to do. The network of administration largely ran itself, and there was little scope for him to create anything himself. Indeed, a little study showed him that he would be unable to accomplish his dream of the emancipation of the slaves of Machetos. Stefan disliked slavery intensely, and had hoped to end slavery in his domain. Unfortunately, none of his subjects who owned slaves had any interest in emancipating their slaves, and Stefan discovered that Imperial law forbid the emancipation of more than 100 slaves per year by any given person, a law passed long ago at the behest of a Thyatian duke who sought to prevent his emancipation-inclined son from dissipating the family fortune. Stefan tried to mount a campaign to repeal the law, but in the process stirred up a political storm against himself. The campaign failed and he withdrew to Machetos to nurse his social wounds, feeling frustrated and trapped. He did emancipate as many of his slaves as he could, but given his family owned thousands of slaves, it was a drop in the bucket.
Meanwhile, Thincol had come to see Traladara as more a liability than a benefit. The recent war had been far more expensive than the amount of revenue gained from Traladara. He began looking about for someone he could grant the lands to, in order to get rid of the expense.
In 970 AC, General Callastian began to make noises about retiring and hinting he would like a grant of a dominion, preferably somewhere reasonably settled and peaceful. Thincol offered him a portion of Traladara to develop, but he turned it down, as he didn't want to live in the wilderness. Stefan saw the chance to make all three of them happy, offering to trade his dominion to the Emperor in return for the grant of the Traladaran protectorate to himself. The emperor would then have an appropriate plum to award to General Callastian when the time came, and in the interval, he could direct the normal revenues of Machetos into the imperial coffers.
Thincol agreed, although Callastian tried to talk Stefan out of it, telling him he was insane to give up what he had. Once Stefan demonstrated his determination, however, Callastian was willing to go along with the scheme, as Machetos was exactly the sort of dominion he would like to have. He consoled his conscience with the thought that he'd warned Stefan.
The trade was made, and Thincol and Stefan signed the official papers. The creation of the Grand Duchy was a fairly standard Thyatian procedure for encouraging the settlement and civilizing of an area. Grand Dukes gained internal autonomy in return for largely following Thyatis' lead in external matters. Should foreign powers invade, he could call on Thyatian help, but it was up to him to deal with internal matters such as the humanoids.
Stefan now set about recruiting supporters from the second and third sons and daughters of Thyatis, people who had been trained to rule, but whose fate was likely to simply watch while their elder siblings ruled, unless some accident or disaster took place. Some of his choices were wise, such as Alexius Corrigan. Others were not, such as his cousin Ludwig von Hendriks. Virtually all of them were men with Thyatian military experience.
Stefan offered these men the grant of lands in return for their military service, as he had fairly limited funds. Each of them was expected to gather a group of retainers who would form a military unit under their command. Stefan himself led a squadron of recently freed slaves from his own lands who he trained to function as a small cavalry unit who would serve as his personal bodyguards.
He then spent a fair amount of his remaining funds on ships to transport his small army to Specularum, where he presented his new credentials to the Thyatian garrison commander, and then sent out messengers to assemble the Assembly of Warriors, so that he could inform them of the new state of affairs.
Things began to go wrong almost from the start. Soldiers (including a large force of Storm Soldiers) who had sworn to Ludwig's service entered Halag and stormed it at Ludwig's command. The Thyatian garrison fled, only to be attacked by humanoids and slain.
The Traladaran nobility felt insulted by the fact that the Emperor had chosen to give the dignity of Grand Duke to an outsider instead of raising someone from among their own ranks to that status (never mind that none of them would have been very happy to see one of their own elevated above them if Thincol had chosen to do such a thing), and the reports drifting in from Halag caused some to fear that the Assembly of Warriors was being summoned to make it easier for Stefan to slaughter all of them; they still remembered the story of the Night of the Long Knives. And it quickly became apparent that Stefan intended to exert his authority beyond Specularum, unlike the Governors, who had largely left them to their own devices.
In addition, Stefan had been joined by men such as Olliver Jowett and Sherlane Halaran, leaders within the Church of Thyatis, and their presence led many to fear that Thyatian religion was going to be forcibly imposed upon Traladara. The first thing Jowett did upon arriving was to buy land for a new and better cathedral for the Church of Thyatis. The news of this sparked rioting in Specularum, much to the surprise of Stefan and Olliver.
The final blow, however, was the abolition of serfdom within the Grand Duchy. Stefan knew that the Assembly was unlikely to agree to such a thing, but he knew he would have to root it out early on if ever. He believed, however, that it would ease the transition regardless, as it would create a large body of men beholden to his regime for their freedom and determined to support it. He hoped to soften the blow by assuring them that they would not be deprived of their lands, only of authority which was unlawful anyway under the Thyatian law which theoretically held sway over Traladara. This was a rash decision, but Stefan, remembering his inability to free the slaves back home, insisted on it.
The result was a revolt by the Marilenev clan, who knew their holdings of serfs would be the first to come under Stefan's scrutiny. They stirred up the countryside with the claim that Thyatian religion was to be imposed on all, and that the coming Assembly of Warriors would be another Night of the Long Knives. Many Traldarans joined them fired simply by the hope that if Stefan was defeated, Traladara might win free of Thyatian control entirely. Many others stayed aloof, not wishing to support Thyatis but believing that if Stefan was wiped out, the result would likely be a massive punitive expedition from Thyatis which would scourge the land far worse than Stefan would.
The revolt of the Marilenev clan might have succeeded if not for several factors. First of all, the Marilenev clan struck too soon before support could arrive from other nobles of similar mindset. Secondly, Stefan's followers were experienced military men, and the bulk of the Marilenev forces were farmers who had little military skill. And finally, the serfs of the Marilenevs saw their chance for freedom and were determined to not let it slip away. They rose up and burned portions of Castle Marilenev, set the crops of the nobles on fire, then marched and joined Stefan's forces.