The Melting Pot
The overall
Migrant arrivals led to consternation in the Videan, with some lamenting the
arrival of uncouth, barbarian savages barely worth their citizenship, some
fleeing for the comfort of the burgeoning Remnant in the south (at the time,
only a faint rallying cry), and Vaneisa (Vaneis-Hilde) pre-emptively burning
their bridges in a misguided fear of invasion.
The Northband
and Hinterland populations grew steadily for a time, as the Migrants made homes
for themselves in and around the populous centres, depending on prevailing
attitudes towards them. Indifference to
their arrival was common, though Montilida (Monte-Hilde) was most proactive in
welcoming outsiders, seen in the expansion of its silver and iron mines, and
the increase in land taxation. While
known at the time to favour its wealth more than anything, conditions in
Montilia were vastly improved at the same time, the foreigners swiftly becoming
equals of the Videans.
This growth
continued the movement of conservative Videans into the South, some passing the
Tualbid centre of the peninsula and making new homes at least in the
Middings. By 225 motions had settled and
in some cases reversed, a number of Soithics moving up the peninsula in pursuit
of Montilia’s burgeoning wealth.
The next motions
to shake the Videan came from Ghomal, as the kingdom grew rapidly enraptured of
the new religion brought from out of the Near Mosels by the traders. Truth be told, the early Cistinian faith took
its hold on the port-cities, though withered before reaching the interior,
stayed by the pulsing movement from disparate versions of the same Edda swiftly
becoming the Esieric faith prominent in Talbadic rule.
However, this
was nothing next to what happened in Ghomal that transformed the
relatively-small, well-meaning faith into the being it is today. In the parables, Ghomalans seemed to find
common ground, folk delighted by tales of miracles and hope, folk frightened by
the darkness of the chief deity’s vengeful wrath. Soon enough, the first churches were built,
reshaping the centre of life from the common to the church; but it was met with
resistance from the most conservative Galls, who had fought the Old Empire to
reinstate its own practices.
Formality became
paramount, the faith turning from its travelling preachers into a council, and
then into a war council. The faith
represented power, and soon members of the Ghomalan aristocracy and the
disparate overlords gathered to the centralised beacon. As history shows, Ghomal became a singular
entity almost overnight, using its faith to bring its people into union. What the Church baulks at, however, is memory
of the underhanded tactics used to achieve that union.
Force applied,
whether through misinformation, pleading, cajoling, or at knifepoint, is force
applied. And once Ghomal had a taste for
it, getting it down to a fine art in 253 with the capitulation of Massivs
city-states, their attention turned outwards.
The Cistinian Church, and more importantly the Cistinian Conquest,
began.
The Haernic Banner
At a time of
centralisation in the Videan, Migrant tensions settled by the steady thrum of
trade between north and south, Ghomal was bringing the light of salvation
across the Pyrineis. For an invasion, it
was amongst the most peaceful division and conquest, those who would listen to
the sermons through allied translators and accept baptism became Sapics, while
those who would not listen or did not agree became the Iberics.
Soon enough,
Sapia left behind its tribal roots and adopted the unified kingdom initially
under Ghomalic rule before it would shun the influential tide and create its
own identity by 365. With enough
territory under its belt, and enough funding to embolden its purpose, the
Cistinian Church came to rule all parts of life in Sapia, until its moves into
the Catalic centre came not with the light of salvation, but with sword and
fire.
Enough is told
in Sapic history of how tensions arose, and apologists in the Church have since
denounced the lop-sided Pogroms as a dark day in the early Church. It led to the disparate south-western tribes
to band together, putting aside all debts, enmity and rulership and sign to the
Haeren banner.
In tradition, a
haeren banner is a blank banner used to signify neutral ground used for the
purpose of signing treaty. Indeed, it
was a tradition upheld by the Imperium to promote fair meetings with the barbarian
nations that came to fuel the Empire itself.
A sign of mutual cooperation, when the Far Sapic Caelt tribes
acknowledged it, it became instead a desperate sign of survival against all
odds.
Their very
existence threatened by the Cistinians, who routinely adopted the Imperial
standard of flushing out and slaying the Druids (the traditional lore-keepers
in Caeltish society), the Haeren Caelts made fearsome enemies for the Church
and its early crusaders, visiting the wrath of the Pogroms upon the instigators
in the dead of night. While it led to a
rallying of Cistinian forces in Sapia, ultimately seeing the Far Sapics fleeing
their homelands, it cemented something inherently Talbadic in the Videan.
For those who
cannot make the connection, these Haeren Banner tribes, known best to history
as the Haerenic Caelts, took a perilous path up the Iberic’s western coast, crossed
the Pyrineis behind the Cistinian press, and transferred through southern Ghomal
and into the Axial reach. From here, as the
Cistinian press into Gemain and the Northlands in the late 280s ruptured the
barbaric civilisations, leading to a similar exodus through the treacherous
Alpes, Haernism became unique in the Videan.
It even became a
people: the Hearnes.
© Copyright 2013 Trent Michael
Shannon - All Rights Reserved
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