Tsarainese History
The recorded history of Tsaraine begins around the Eleventh Century AD, in the first year After Conquest by the Tsarainese calendar, when the Tsakh warlord Tsalin I led his hosts out of the West to conquer the Hyazinari and Sche'dayach peoples, establishing the Dominion of Tsaraine (for ease of understanding, the Christian calendar is used in this article).
The Dominion, a feudal society with it's capital at Kel Tsaraint on the Eastern shore of the Lake of Shadows (from where the name Tsaraine was derived), thoroughly opressed the Hyazinari and particularly the Sche'dayach, and waged regular campaigns against the Ekatorik barbarians to the East.
Around 1250 a new wave of barbarians showed up from the West, the Ktrazirha. Culturally related to the Tsakh, the Ktrazirha carved their way through the Dominion almost to Kel Tsaraint before being defeated by the Dominion cavalry a few miles outside the city. For their valour in battle, the survivors, led by the Ezkhar Eketerrak, were granted pardon by Dominar Radukh VI, and were granted the Tekhat of Scheighu to rule over.
The years 1423-1451 are notable as the only period the Dominion possessed a sea port; the Ekatorik were finally subjugated, and the city of Rakenno was captured as the capital of the Tekhat Ekatori.
In 1450 AD an interstellar dreadnought of the Kymnari race, the Kiija, crash-landed on the North-West side of the Lake of Shadows, beginning several decades of intermittent warfare between the higher-technology, matriarchal Kymnari theocracy and the lower-technology but more numerous Dominion. Eventually, sheer numbers caused the Kymnari to lose the majority of their military technology, settling into uneasy peace. In the East, the Ekatorik took advantage of the fighting to drive the Dominion out of Ekatori once again.
Kymnari concepts, however, were harder to still, and the political views of the more advanced species seeped into Tsarainese thought. Two centuries after the landing, the peasants were agitating for a looser rule, the army was agitating for officers based on merit rather than birth, the merchants were agitating for industrialisation, the intelligensia were agitating against the grip of the priesthood, and the stage was set for revolution.
Revolution's agent was Kail tsaIngult, second son of a nobleman of a distant branch of the Imperial household. Statesman, general, and philosopher, Kail I wrote the Principles of Sound Governance, which was to influence Tsarainese political thinking until the present day. Sound Governance argued that there were some fundamental necessities and amenities which should be granted to all people by right, and detailed the governmental structure ideal to carry it out - which Kail I believed to be a burecratic collectivism, taking in the products of the state and redistributing it to all as needed.
Sound Governance was the most coherent call avaliable for the restructuring of the Dominion, and the peasants rose beneath the black-and-blue scales of collectivism to defeat the old order. While Kail I had originally called for a peaceful transition of power, he was quick to lead the uprising and overthrow the Dominion (aided in part by Kymnari artillery support). Breaking the crown and skull of the last Dominar, Ykhat V, on the steps of the Imperial Palace, Kail I assumed the Obsidian Throne as Lord Protector Kail Seingult, first ruler of the Tsarainese Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth rapidly became less than the perfect utopia Kail I had envisioned; private enterprise was outlawed, religion was outlawed, dissent was outlawed. The state ruled all, and the state was all.
This system was refined and adapted throughout the next four hundred years, and saw the Commonwealth expand greatly to the West, until the ascencion of Kail IV to the Obsidian Throne in 2002. From his mother's family Kail IV inherited a variety of insanity, and was quick to declare Tsaraine a closed state; not only was contact with the world beyond the borders not permitted, the outside world did not exist.
Fortunately for the Commonwealth, this policy was gradually relaxed, and finally abolished completely. The establishment of a space program followed soon after, headed by Division Two (Air Command) Commandant Rene Seingult, Kail IV's neice. The space command proved it's use in a short-lived invasion by the nation of Canales, and as part of an international coalition against alien invaders several years later.
Economic woes in Kymnar caused the alien race to break their isolation and seek union with the Commonwealth, providing their technological expertise to the Commonwealth. The first Tsarainese interplanetary craft, the Tsalin I, was launched soon after, and was en route to the outer solar system when disaster struck the homeland.
A Kymnari hellformer, a weapon of mass destruction salvaged from the Kiija, was repaired and installed upon Yseult Station, the orbiting Tsarainese starbase, for testing. The weapon worked far too well, irradiating everything within a thousand kilometers of the capital. A few million people survived unknown in the deep bunkers underlying Tsarai - the former Kel Tsaraint - and Reio, and a few million more were rescued from the outlying Tekhati by international effort - particularly by Lavenrunz - but almost five hundred million people were killed, and the heart of Tsarainese industry was destroyed.
Rene Seingult, Commandant of the Space Command, on the far side of the world at the time of the Obsidian Event, returned to the Commonwealth, along with Kasene tsaKinai, the captain of the Tsalin I, and Schaden tsaKell, a diplomat in Lavenrunz. The three comandeered a spaceplane from the border town of Sargali, on the Eastern border, and vanished into the Obsidian Wastes (then a glowing, irradiated hell of rock fused to volcanic glass).
Over the next thirty years, the Tekhati left unscathed by the disaster formed states of their own, based on varying political creeds. Harikhai became the theocratic capitalist state of Aestrakhant, while the larger Tekhat of Undant, further west, adopted a creed of Sound Governance mixed with Communism under Premier-Commandant Eirkhanz Rejiya. Kynarai, now with a mixed Kymnari-human population, adapted Sound Governance to the Kymnari politics it arose from, adding to the mix the Kymnari theocracy. Szekedan to the North remained the most true to Sound Governance, but without the support of Tsarainese industry it withered.
In contrast to the failing of the Border States, the Ekatorik finally became a nation under Rega Qosin Ra, becoming one of the most economically successful of the Border States through a mixture of unbridled capitalism and harsh control of politics.
But unknown to the world the Commonwealth had survived; Rene Seingult had reached the underground bunkers of Tsarai, and rebuilt the nation beneath the lethal radiation of the Obsidian Wastes. The industries of Deep Tsarai and the sciences of Nova Reio carved out a new state geared to survive the radioactive surface, and thirty years later they returned to the view of the world.
The discovery of the tomb of Tsalin I prompted Rene Seingult to take up the Iron Crown of the Dominion and crown herself Domina Rene Seingult I of the Second Dominion of Tsaraine. Under the Second Dominion, religion was legalised, and the state relaxed many rules upon the lives of the citizenry. Tsaraine joined the Non-Democratic Alliance, and radiation-consuming bacteria created by the Empire of Treznor returned the Obsidian Wastes to something if not the match of what it was, at least less hostile than it had been.
Tsaraine reached back into space, salvaging the Tsalin I and using it to return an asteroid from the Belt to the L3 point of the Earth/Moon system. This became High Stone, the crux of Tsaraine's space efforts, and further expansion followed - Far Stone in the Asteroid Belt, Kel Meralkharant in the Leading Jovian Trojans (which were later moved to Jovian orbit following the collapse of the NDA member the Imperial Hordes of Burninatonia), the Tsarainese-administered NDA Protectorate of Burninatonian Io, and the Tekhat Maraldi on Mars.
The Second Dominion expanded on Earth too, establishing the subaquatic naval base "Pearl" on the bottom of the Sea of Storms, and annexing the stone-age peoples of the Katai Archipelago when population growth in Tsaraine threatened to outstrip the hydroponic food supply.
With the provision of FTL technology by the Empire of Treznor, Tsaraine established the Tsarainese ExtraSolar Exploration Corps (TESEC), which has explored in depth many worlds surveyed by the Empire of Treznor's survey ships, and rediscovered the ruins of the ancient Kymnari Empire.
Recently, social pressures resulting from the reexposure of Tsaraine to the world caused the Second Dominion to become the Greater Ascendancy - an ambitious piece of cultural engineering designed to supplement and improve Tsarainese culture, although politically the government remains much the same as it did under the Second Dominion or later Commonwealth.
Population pressures are also pushing against the three great arcologies of Tsaraine, and although the Star Command has set up an extra-solar colony, Tenebris, and expansion is continuing in Maraldi, the Motherland remains overcrowded.
Tsaraine - back to the nation page.
