Alaria: Holy Wars

Alaria

Holy Wars

Epoch 1

Alaria is a feudal and theocratic palatinate state of the god of conflict, Alar. Alaria was once a divided realm of multiple warring kingdoms until united under the guidance of the leader of the temple of Alar, the Alarian Palatine. Alaria's original kingdoms and tribes were restructured into a single feudal state that built a kingdom paying homage to the god of conflict in its structure and foundation. Alaria has some of the most fervent worshippers of the Pentaphany in the world and has produced the greatest amount of clerics, paladins, and priests dedicated to Alar in all Pentaphandom. However, it has also produced some of the largest multiple religious divides within one temple of the Pentaphany. 

Holy Wars

Alaria and the Alarian temple have gathered great hosts of the militant faithful in defense of civilization many times over the millennia. These were paid for by coffers filled with tithings from the faithful. Many threats have had the Temple of Alar and Alaria involved in providing manpower and direction including great undead incursions, dragon invasions, monster hordes, heretical nations, vampire overlords, and more. Alaria's populace are readied to be levied at any time via realm-sponsored training and outfitting to march at the will of Alar. Their recreation and traditions are very martial based and great coliseums, arenas, and tourney fields have been built to inspire the populace to hone their skills and body in service of Alar. This is what accounts for their stability and continuation along with the natural downsides one has by trying to invade a nation dedicated to a god from a religion with a very large following.  

Knights and Chivalry

Alaria did not create knights but it did become a sanctuary for them when over time they had become obsolete in the face of realms wanting to remove the landed gentry's power from the military in exchange for professional soldiers, levied forces, and the phenomena of contractors. Along with political reasons, knights had a horrible reputation across the lands as being thieving bullies and sanctioned brigands that would steal from the people and act like thugs and kill peasantry with little repercussion. One constant mission of the Temple of Alar was the rehabilitation of knighthood into a respectable and worthy class that would honor Alar. One invention in pursuit of this was the knightly system of chivalry that would lead knights into being honorable, respectful, and dutiful warriors of the war god that would protect the weak, uphold the honor and dignity of the lowly, and serve their god and lords well in life. This had mixed results. Many knights paid no mind to this and barely gave lip service, but the most successful attempts at instilling chivalry came from knightly orders that grew from monasteries and had its laws and values enforced socially and physically upon their members. From these knightly orders came a great militant force for the Pentaphany to use in pursuit of their goals whether they were the destruction of monsters terrorizing the laypeople, joining conflicts in the name of the gods to exert their influence militarily, or as sources of social influence that they could lay upon secular nations that were faithful to the Five. 

Knightly Orders and Errant Knights

Knightly orders were one of the few groups of warrior classes that would change to keep up with changing times and stay relevant. The older landed knights fell away but orders stayed and prospered in the contractor system by acting as religiously-aligned contractor guilds and companies with funding from the temples and resources for training paladins and clerics. Along with this, errant knights, paladins, and clerics fell into the contractor system as either solo workers or parts of parties. The changing reputation of errant knights gave them leeway with lawful individuals as their status and level of respect could open doors that would be closed to mercenaries or other contractors. Errant arms and armor were often paid for by the temples and they were trained by the faithful and serving as proper paragons and models to the faithful which gave the temples even more influence. Knightly orders could also fall to selfish or greedy ends, however, or hew to interpretations and zealous readings of religious scripture and become fanatics or simply fall into old habits of knightly past. Along with this, the temples did not have time to root out every single order that went bad and the use of inquisitors was a time consuming and possibly agitating process even for the truly faithful that were investigated. All this while the temples still paid their salaries, paid for their equipment and training, and had an interest in keeping these orders and errants respectful on the back of the laypeople's tithes. Inquisitors, contractors, governments, and militaries have had to deal with orders and knights that have gone bad. 

The Firmament's Creation in Alaria

Alaria is responsible for the foundation of the Firmament, a crusader state that rules over conquered land in eastern Aizarin. The Firmament came out of a conservative grouping of Alarian clergy, paladins, and laymen that rejected changes to the structure and rules of the Pentaphany over time; especially those that came from the Great Unburdening but they took issue with those that had come before as well. They reject the emancipation of fallow and their ability to worship and join the temples seeing their devil, demon, and anathema blood as corrupting to their own souls and the other faithful. They reject the addition of women to the Five's hierarchy seeing them as only worthy to bare more warriors as mothers or as cloistered ascetic nuns. They reject the Epiphany of Saint Bromae which emancipated magicians and magic use along with other use of energies like Heka and Kah; seeing only will as a properly pure method of power and all else being sinful deviations from the will of the gods. The Firmament movement named itself after their ideal of a holy society untethered by worldly sin that resembled their vision of how world fits it's symphonic purpose in the hands of the gods. They were given the chance to make such a society in their invasion of the Wahdali Sultanate. A vast majority of Firmament followers left Alaria.

Aggregationists and Reconciliationists

Two religious sects grew in Alaria that conflicted with each other based on centralization and decentralization movements. Similarly to the Firmament, Aggregationists believed that temples should reverse the course set by the Great Unburdening and take on more secular power to steer the world to stability and peace. Reconciliationists were those that had aligned themselves with the values of the Great Unburdening and even considered the removal of the temple's power over Alaria itself, seeing the Firmament and the Dominion as evidence that wordly control of the realms at a nation level was doomed to fail. More can be found about that argument under the Alar heading here: https://riddleofflame.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-deities.html.

The Alarian Civil War 1 PR to 22 PR

The civil war that took place in Alaria had the sectarian split as a driving factor. Multiple reasons could be cited for this war. The loss of the scroll of Saint Bromae, a very important figure in Alarian theology, and with it the loss of theological teachings that the palatine of Alar held along with important abilities including the ability to speak to Alar directly. The death of Queen Arabelle, the uniting monarch who left no heirs. Another factor was agitation by equitianist rabble rousers that were inspired by the methods the Uhlionic army used along with much larger harmonist agitators from Thrale and Mekkhor like Beauvoir, Arkoun, and Eco. The last and largest reason for the war were the main factions of the Reconciliationist League and the Aggregationist League coming to a head after a long time of feuding. The Reconciliationist League fought for an absolutist monarchy that would transition into a parliamentary system to remove Alarian religious influence over secular power structures. This would allow the Alarian clergy the ability to pursue their personal goals in a method similar to Sothian clerics and templars. The Aggregationist League fought to create a martial state ruled by a knightly order and a grandmaster chosen from the best of the order. They would oversee the ruling dukes and those dukes would use martial law to sustain order and stability. They were each led by a palatine, the Aggregationists by the chosen Polemarch and the Reconciliationists by the original Bellarch, and each palatine declared excommunication upon the other. This had the exact same effect of cutting each other off from their ability to perform miracles. Why this happened is still debated by theologians, and it was kept silent until decades after the war.

The harmonist and equitianist factions were kicked out of the war by the middle mark due to not being able to gather enough influence or power to truly challenge either of the leagues. The Reconciliationist League won the war and planted the right-hand man Utharic Lograthi to Palatine Rellic Rathian as the absolute king. The Aggregationist remnants fled to the Firmament. The Lograthi dynasty would hold up their promise of creating a constitutional parliamentarian system by 53 PR.

Epoch 2

Alaria's Dissolution