History of Vephrall

Initial civilization and tribal warfare

The first organized settlement in what is now Vephrall was founded by local tribesman Diindohtis Viivryl. The settlement, which at first consisted of just a few small houses, was given the name Myza. Over the course of some seven hundred years, the descendants of the first inhabitants of Myza explored their landmass, discovering other tribes in the surrounding areas. Some of the most important tribes in the area included:

• the Lobarik tribe, west of Myza (main settlement Elola)
• the Entruuga tribe, east of Myza (main settlement Flaarrikku). Diindohtis Viivryl was himself Entruuga, but had been cast out of the tribe six years prior to the founding of Myza.
• the Eklotaktik tribe, northwest of Myza (main settlement Uni)
• the Rasbih tribe, east of the Entruuga (main settlement Spe-grih)
• the Iti tribe, southwest of Myza (main settlement Svektra)

The Viivra, as the inhabitants of Myza and the surrounding area were now called, lived in peace with these five tribes for nearly 700 years. Conflict finally came to the area in 679 when Lobarik leader Gunsig Kritunis became jealous of a large gold reserve in Eklotaktik land to the north. Kritunis was successfully able to pressure Viivra leader Bes Roness into an alliance against the Eklotaktiks. While the Lobarik tribe would have almost certainly been unable to invade Eklotaktik territory alone, help from the somewhat reluctant Viivra was enough to overwhelm the opposition. Eklotaktik main settlement Uni fell to the combined forces on 28 Tilep 686. Unfortunately, neither of the invading forces would allow the city to be ruled by the other. As a result, the Lobariks turned on their Viivra allies. The Second Battle of Uni was relatively brief by the standards of the period, and by 18 Figix of that same year the Viivra forces had been driven out of former Eklotaktik land all the way back to Myza. Defense of the Viivra capital was, by all accounts, rather weak, likely because the populace had never approved of the war in the first place. Myza fell on 11 Breceurs 688, after a lengthy siege. The war had gone much better than expected for Kritunis, as his army had conquered not only the Eklotaktiks, but the Viivra as well. Uni was renamed Junhī by the victorious Lobariks, and Myza became Mēz.

The people of Mēz were very unhappy under the oppressive Lobarik rule. But for many years, any attempts at resistance were very quickly crushed by one of the many tyrannical Lobarik rulers. However, the royal lineage began to weaken in the early 10th century, and a rebellious soldier from Mēz named Kilstim Sikanūt decided to take the opportunity to attempt to free his people from the Lobariks. Successfully gathering a force of nearly 120,000 men, Sikanūt marched westward directly to Elola. His army stopped about sixteen kilometers short of the city, and Sikanūt then proceeded to send a group of just five soldiers into the city. Such a small force was not noticed, and they were able to gain entry to Elola very easily. These soldiers were able to infiltrate the local defense force and sneak into the king's castle, where they assassinated the Lobarik leader. Without leadership, all of Elola went into a panic, and the remainder of Sikanūt's force was able to conquer the city with little resistance. Sikanūt proclaimed that the city of Elola would now be known as Sikanūstim in honor of himself, and Mēz was renamed to Mīs-ha, a more modernized spelling of its original name.

Death and rebirth

The new Vēv nation lived in peace for several centuries, but disaster struck in 1484 when a plague overtook the land, wiping out over eighty percent of the population over the course of fifteen years. The cities were abandoned, and all civilization in the area seemed to be lost. Eventually, on 9 Breceurs 1592, the city of Meice was founded on the old site of Myza, and the nation of Vephrall (from Middle Vephra Vēv-rell, "Vēv union") was established.

Early expansion

Not all of the six thousand settlers who founded Meice would be content to remain there. In just two short years, four more cities had been founded. These cities primarily drew their population from the few survivors of the great plague who roamed the land in desperate search of food, brought together by those who had left Meice. Some of these settlements were quite far away, including the coastal city of Tuffir over 160 kilometers from Meice. The locals near Tuffir told the settlers of bountiful fishing areas in the sea to the east and their inability to make use of them due to not having the necessary materials to construct boats. The settlers were overjoyed by this news and promptly sent out expeditions to determine whether these reports were true.

One day in May 1594, a group of nine fishermen were caught in a storm that sent their boats off course, causing them to sail east rather than back toward the mainland to the west. Three days later, this resulted in the discovery of Calamen Island. As the fishermen did not know how they would return to Tuffir, they instead created the settlement of Solonds at their landing site and claimed the island in the name of Vephrall. Again with help from the local tribesmen, Solonds grew into a full-sized city and was officially recognized by the Vephrese government on 7 September 1594 when a journey was successfully completed across the sea back to Tuffir, 150 kilometers to the west-northwest.

By 1597, the king of Vephrall recognized six cities and determined that the settlements were too far apart to be effectively managed entirely from Meice. As such, the land that had to this point been claimed by Vephrall was divided into five states, with each city being named the capital of a state (except for Netlas, which was placed in the state of Sumbobor along with its capital, Speilers). The limits of Vephrese claims at this time were denoted in part by the Prilizuas River on the east, the Brincubseny and Bleesarters Rivers on the west, and the Trirat River on the north.

The land to the east of the states of Shentarong and Riestre remained mostly unexplored at this time. However, an Oliverrian immigrant would change all that. Laurent de la Salle came to Vephrall in 1609 from Bettia, where he had lived for four years previously after leaving his homeland. The Oliverrian aristocrat was unhappy with life in Meice, where he lived from 1609–11, and finally left the capital to explore the eastern unknown. De la Salle spent nearly two years traveling this land, which measured about 250 kilometers from north to south and a similar distance from east to west. Seeing no apparent resistance, de la Salle claimed the land for his new home nation. The land would later be named Salle Territory in his honor, with its first settlement, Pallona, being founded in 1617.

During the 1620s, Vephrese expansion was mainly to the west. Rumors of fertile land suitable for farming beyond the mountains of northwest Sumbobor attracted many settlers. Dettune Territory, stretching west from Sumbobor and Bektys to the newly-discovered west coast, was organized in 1620 and granted full statehood just eight years later. This farmland was found to be even more plentiful than previously believed, stretching well over 200 kilometers to the south. As the southwestern half of Dettune began to be filled by farmers, new settlers started to go south, and with the founding of the trading post at Hyllesme in 1632, Seibeng Territory was officially formed.

After the creation of Seibeng Territory, there followed a period of decades with no additional territorial expansion. Throughout the 1630s and '40s, some of the formerly rural areas in the interior of the country began to congeal into significant settlements, many of which incorporated and became true cities in the eyes of the king and his state governors.

Depression and resurgence

In the summer of 1649, the vast farmlands of Dettune and Seibeng suffered a tremendous blow from a particularly severe drought. The farmers had no crops to sell, and in turn the rest of the nation began to suffer from a food shortage, with little to rely on besides the fish of Shentarong Bay. This sent all of Vephrall into an economic downturn that lasted for fourteen years. King Mopukest I seemed content to ride out the storm, certain that all would right itself in time. He died in 1659, the nation no better off than it had been a decade before. His son, Mopukest II, took the throne and did something as yet unprecedented, donating some of the royal family's fortune to the impoverished western farmers in the hope that this would allow them to bear the costs of returning to full functionality again. It did, and by the mid-1660s the nation was again booming.

The end of autocracy

With the death of King Mopukest II in 1671, the people of Vephrall began to grow uneasy. They felt that their nation had become too large to be ruled by one man, no matter how many state governors he appointed. The new city of Jishmid, founded in Seibeng (which simultaneously gained statehood) in 1672, refused to recognize the authority of the new king, Jehoepe I, demanding that the people be allowed to rule themselves. This idea quickly spread to the nearby city of Hyllesme, and from there along trade routes to the rest of the nation. Fearing an increasingly likely armed revolt, the king decided to compromise and relinquish a large portion of his power. The nation became, for all intents and purposes, a republic, with the new office of Prime Minister created to act as the head of government. The king did retain one very powerful weapon – the ability to veto any decision made by this new government, a power that was used quite often initially, though current king Hahnea II is known for only using this power very rarely and generally allowing decisions made by the legislature to stand.

Speocacks Tomprism, a cousin of the king, was appointed the first Prime Minister for the sake of convenience; since then, Prime Ministers have been elected in the same way as they are today (see below).

Paving the way

The western farmlands continued to be filled, and as such new development was pushed further south and west. The far southwestern flood plains were a considerably more dangerous place to settle than the grasslands to the north, but they were nevertheless an excellent area for growing various cash crops. All of the remaining land southwest of Vephrall's existing borders was organized into the Baseng Territory in 1684. On the other side of the nation, hunters found the lands north of Riestre particularly attractive, with food sources being plentiful there. The town of Cloohends was established in 1686 as a base of operations, and the surrounding land organized into the Till Territory. This finally left just one true frontier for the nation: the northwest. In nearly a hundred years of Vephrese existence, land claims had never advanced beyond the Trirat River.

By 1680, Vephrall's population had grown to nearly five million, but about 45 percent still lived outside the cities. There was an increasing need for the people to have high-quality routes to and between the cities, especially with the recent advent of the automobile. This resulted in the passage of the National Road Act of 1682, which set a goal of connecting all "centers of population of greater than five thousand inhabitants" with roads capable of safe travel at speeds of at least 50 kilometers per hour within the next twenty years. This goal was accomplished, with the last stretch of roadway, a portion of what is now National Road 13 and National Highway 413 between the southern boundary of the Darnai Territory and the city of Spess officially being opened to traffic on 11 June 1700. In 1707, the Ministry of Transportation opened the new Roads Bureau to oversee the maintenance of these roads. It was at this time that the roads were numbered for the first time; the Bureau identified twenty-four major routes covered by the National Road System, and assigned them numbers from 1 to 23. (Due to miscommunication within the Bureau, the number 19 was used for two different routes. This error was corrected in 1713 when route 6 was extended over one of them.)

The "twenty-sev'ners" and Kura-Pelland

The main economic activity in the state of Dettune during the first quarter of the 18th century was gold mining. By the mid-1720s, however, gold reserves in the Dettune mountains had been significantly depleted, particularly around the mining town of Unee, founded in 1703. Exploration of the vast wilderness north of the Vephrese states had surged throughout the 1710s and '20s, at last coming to fruition on 16 October 1726 when Menburid Taclik discovered gold in the Six River Mountains. News quickly made it back south, and the following spring saw a tremendous rush of settlers hoping to get rich quick as they made the trek several hundred kilometers north to the other end of the continent. The Vephrese government ambitiously laid claim to the entire northeastern quarter of the landmass, recognizing it as the Northern Territory. The "twenty-sev'ners", as the English-speaking people of Vephrall called all those who made the rush north, were quickly followed by the construction crews, who had the long road to the mining headquarters of Cimnersog complete in just six years. The mining operation in the Cimnersog area remains quite lucrative to this day.

On his way back from the Six River Mountains, Taclik, who had very little interest in gold mining himself, turned west in an attempt to begin exploration of the far northwest. He was understandably quite surprised when he happened to find a thriving city of over a million population. The city of Prangren, in the so-far unknown nation of Kura-Pelland, utterly bewildered Taclik, primarily due to the fact that Kura-Pellandi technology at this time was about sixty years ahead of that of the Vephrese. Diplomatic relations were quickly established, and the Vephrall–Kura-Pelland border was officially set.