Bergonian History:

Prakai Eleusi

The most evil man in Bergonian history

Summary:   The Necruruean Empire came to a sudden chaotic end when its military rose up against a bad emperor.  The generals slew the emperor and his entire family and then fought one another in a fruitless, horribly violent civil war. 

In the fractured, unhappy peace that followed, there emerged Prakai Eleusi, a charismatic panitei leader who called for a return to ancient panitei values and a purified political order. 

Prakai united the Necruruean remnants, created a huge army, and initiated a wave of conquest.  He created a dictatorship that was cruel beyond measure.  He caused the death of several millions.  He successfully attacked the Ceiolaian Empire, and ended up conquering a third of Bergonia.  He died alone one night in his private garden, stabbed by a clever assassin who disappeared into the dark.  After the short reign of his son, his realm disintegrated in a war of succession that lasted 35 years.  He left a great scar on Bergonian history.

For background see the History of Medieval Bergonia and the History of the Imperial Era.

This the story of western Bergonia from 530 to 622 AD, including Prakai's aftermath.

The Sudden, Bloody End of the Necruruean Empire:

The victor gets the privilege of writing history, and the generals who assassinated the emperor in 530 AD wrote that their motive was proper vengeance.  One of them, a great nobleman of the Spider Clan, had a beautiful daughter, fifteen years old.  When she properly rejected the old emperor's advance, he had her brought to his chambers.  She kept her dignity, and he raped and then severely beat her.  Word got out of the palace that he was detaining the girl, and her father came storming to the palace gates demanding her release.  At the decisive moment the emperor prevaricated and then he released her, showing weakness.  The general was outraged at what the emperor had done to his daughter.  He and other nobles petitioned the emperor to give an account for himself and to make amends, and the emperor reacted by commanding total silence on the subject.  

A few weeks later he tried to appease the generals by hosting them at a grand banquet.  Before the servants could bring the second course, the generals all jumped forward with daggers drawn and killed the emperor with a hundred cuts.  They murdered his retinue and his male kin.  It was said that the blood flowed from the palace down the steps onto the great plaza, and then across to the other side, horrifying all the people.  

The generals immediately fell into violent quarreling about who would take over.  There was more blood in the palace.  Soon the banda warriors and the army was dividing up into four opposing factions.  

Up until then the empire had been stable for three centuries, but the generals' competing greed unleashed a civil war on all western Bergonia that lasted  __ ugly years.  The panitei in how they waged the war were totally heedless of the commoners.  No one suffered more than the citizens of besieged cities.  Usually the defending army roughly imposed itself on the city, and when the siege began the panitei turned the citizen into slaves.  The attacking army often tried to propel fire over the city walls, either with a barrage of fiery arrows or a catapult propelling pitch or some other flaming substance.  Many civilian casualties resulted.  If and when the siege finally succeeded, the victorious panitei quite often ordered their men to brutalize the surviving population.

One siege in 541 AD came to an abrupt end when the archers refused orders to shoot their fire arrows over the walls.  The panitei-officers yelled and screamed at the commoner-soldiers, but the soldiers remained stubborn.  They had grown weary of murdering civilians, people like themselves.  Soon armies everywhere faced mutinies by weary soldiers against their panitei masters.  Nothing like this-- common soldiers defying the glorified warrior-officer class-- had ever happened before.

As armies froze in place, a cold peace spread over the land.  All fighting ceased by 543.  The people were relieved, and very satisfied with the peace the soldiers had wrested from the panitei.   For their part the panitei were still formally in charge, but facing potential mutinies at every turn.  The people had utterly subdued them.  They had comfortably dominated society for centuries, since before the time of the Prophet; no one could conceive of such defiance.  The panitei, in their pride, overlooked the their own unprecedented misdeeds during the war that wounded cities and killed thousands of commoners.  

563-587 AD--  Prakai Eleusi's murderous reign 

In the next twenty years the panitei criticized themselves harshly.  A new generation of panitei criticized the generals who had waged the disastrous civil war.  They extended the criticism to all the high-ranking panitei of imperial Necrurue (and by extension to the very similar panitei of imperial Ceiolai, to the east).  Many of the younger generation denounced their imperial ancestors for their bureaucratic careerism, their softness and their luxurious materialism. 

In 560 a panitei leader, Prakai Eleusi, of the Fox Clan, stridently appealed to the priesthood and the panitei warriors among all the autonomous factions to join him in unifying the remains of Necrurue.  Prakai pledged to restore Necruruean power over the entire Western Ifuno.  This unrestrained glory-seeking struck a loud chord in the hearts of his contemporaries.  He praised the assassins of the last emperor for upholding proper panitei rectitude, and for exercising proper panitei aggression, like the righteous aggression of the ancient feticinai.  But then he criticized them for falling into greedy competition.  He accused them of not having shed their decadent imperial attitude.  He also proclaimed fervent loyalty to Shufrantei orthodoxy.  His allies, the old priesthood, feared their domination was slipping.  Revisionist denominations that arose in the Clacupo cities had started winning converts in the Ancita heartland itself. 

Three years later, in 563, Prakai felt confident enough to launch a campaign.  His army was small, composed only of panitei, immune to the possibility of mutiny by common soldiers.  Most pantei supported his program and flocked to his banner.  Little fighting was actually necessary as he assumed control of the old Ancita center of what was once Necrurue.  The warriors and the orthodox priests saluted his ascendancy.  

But once in charge of central Necrurue, Prakai's behavior changed dramatically.  What had begun as a broad-based movement to strengthen panitei traditions and Shufrantei rectitude he soon led in a different direction.  People quickly saw that neither his imagination nor ambition knew any bounds.  He proclaimed that all Shufrantei society had strayed from Ierecina’s pure way, so that the world had sunk into a mire of pollution.  Prakai would rectify this deviation by imposing upon the whole world a new reign that would please the Gods—as had been done before.   In short, he intended to repeat the Subanei conquest of the world.  

For his banner he flew a white cloth bearing the twin ideographs for "brushfire” and "axe,” drawn in red & green respectively.  These symbols spoke loudly to the people of the times.  The herder and the peasant of the grassy Ifuno have always seen brushfires as total devastation, leaving behind blackness and emptiness, out of which life springs anew.  The axe was a weapon used by the Ancita panitei warrior and his soldiers, but for the panitei it lacked the symbolic allure or mystique that surrounded the bow, dagger and spear.  However, the panitei traditionally employed the axe to behead the most dishonorable criminals as they were made to kneel.  Therefore the axe implied a great insult to Prakai's enemies.  It meant judgment, while the Brushfire meant devastation.  The combined symbology spelled out something quite unsettling to the Bergonian, the idea of total judgment of society, which would exact the ultimate penalty and spare no one.  Prakai Eleusi, then, burst forth as the Ifemrae-- "Axe of God."  

From his very first public address, he manifested an unremitting and irrational hatred for the Feocarine.  Most of the orthodox priests at first supported him, but too late realized how brutal he intended to be.  He ordered arrests and murders of all Feocarine priests.  He banned all Feocarine books and communications, confiscated their temples and monasteries, and threatened to expel from the ranks any panitei who showed interest in Feocarine put all their believers under suspicion.   

Too late, for Prakai had already obtained a firm grasp on the reigns of power, and he did not lack support, for he had hypnotized the panitei.  Moreover Necrurue’s trading establishment supported the military conquests that Prakai openly schemed, in hopes of obtaining control of all the roads and markets in the West.  Enough of the priesthood lent Prakai their unconditional support, since he always argued that, like the Naithitieri, he was bonded to the priesthood.  

In time he started hinting to the people around him that Arkan and Icotesi whispered in his ear.  He then implied that every command he gave was nothing less than the Divine Couple’s direct wish.  He wore the most bizarre attire, ignoring any convention that conflicted with his own predilections and moody whims.  Prakai was overly fond of wearing pelts of fox fur-- he did belong to the Fox clan, after all.  He fastened flashy colorful bird feathers to his jacket and made a tall crown of them.  This attire shocked the reserved traditionalists among the Ancita.  All of their previous rulers had dressed in simple kilt and tunic of wool, not unlike the common warrior, though covered by a long tailored jacket.  Prakai also painted his face in the old pantei manner, much to the delight of his adoring masses.   

Wherever he went he rode in a gold gilded wagon with huge wheels, which sixty soldiers enthusiastically pulled.  The people amassed around the wagon, raised their hands into the air in balled fists and shouted, "Ifemrae!"-- "The Heavenly Axe". 

The Pupreisani-- Prakai's blade-welding zealots  

Like most successful revolutionaries (whether religious or political) Prakai surrounded himself with a coterie of followers who took on distinctive manners.  These panitei he dubbed the Pupreisani-- the "Supporters of the Righteous."  The Pupreisani zealots thought nothing of murdering those whom they suspected of disagreeing with Prakai’s theological pronouncements.  The Pupreisani amended the injunctions contained in the Book of Anger with Prakai's many commandments.  He inveighed against licentious living and slothfulness.  They cast aside all liquor and, save for the special occasions when they became intoxicated in wild orgiastic celebrations.   The Pupreisani wore simple white shirts and kilts, tied their hair back in a knot, wore no jewelry or other ostentation, kept their small empty abodes perfectly spotless, abstained from illicit sex and drinking, meditated, chanted, trained in weapons, scrupulously honored the old pantei traditions, and despised all the secular art of the current renaissance and reformation.  They organized one marathon running race after another and strived, according to Prakai's commandments, to stay in top physical condition.  In the era before Ierecina, the pantei warriors commonly engaged in such marathon competitions, but over the centuries the marathons died out.  Now the Pupreisani revived the practice. 

Above all the Pupreisani showed great cruelty.  Prakai and the Purpreisani repeatedly denounced an underground conspiracy and credited it with numerous violent acts of rebellion.  They called these conspirators the "Ants."  Thousands of people were arrested, tortured and imprisoned because of their alleged connections with the Ants.   They liked to cripple and maim the suspects-- cutting off ears, fingers, toes, genitalia.  Their propaganda linked the Feocarine with the "Ants," and they tortured people in order to get information about the Feocarine.  They took the remarkable step, quite rare in the voluminous annals of torture, of holding their session in public, forcing an amazed and fascinated audience of commoners to watch the extraction of information.  Historians are now fairly certain that the Ants were wholly a fiction to justify terror and persecution of individuals.  However the Feocarine were quite real.  

With Prakai's approval, the Pupreisani established a horrid prison, known to us more by the tales told by the jailers rather than the jailed, few of whom survived.  They built cells four feet wide and seven feet long-- and only three feet high, compelling the occupant to remain prone on a filthy surface of cold stone during the entire time of his incarceration.  A small door permitted a person to crawl in or out, but the jailers opened it only to shove inside scraps of food and water in a ladle.  Other than this once-a-day feeding the door remained shut, and the prisoner remained encased in darkness.  The cell was never cleaned, so a prisoner befouled his small enclosures until he died.  Then the jailers compelled a new prisoner to pull the body out before ordering him in to take the dead man's place.  Sometimes they neglected to remove the corpse of the old prisoner before making the new prisoner climb into the cell.

Prakai wanted a concrete expression of his power.  He ordered the construction of a huge temple in Ancitaselticoi.  Its shear size made it horrifically ugly.  It was little more than a huge cube capped with a dome.  The builders initiated work on the building in 565, his second year of power.  Prakai poured vast resources into this project, impressing into the service of his engineers over twenty thousand workers to cut and haul stone, lay the foundation and build the walls.  He completed the project in a mere five years.  Few could honestly say that they found any beauty in the huge temple, but no one could speak an honest opinion about it without incurring the wrath of the Pupreisani.

Prakai initiated a campaign of conquest.  His armies spread out from Necrurue in all four directions.  The armies first marched southeast toward Letlari, then they went thundering southwest toward the Clacupo.  Next they attacked Muonatli, the state that had remained independent of Necrurue for centuries.  And as they conquered they burned the temples of the sects Prakai disliked.  They took many panitei prisoners.  Typically they lined up the prisoners and demanded immediate conversion to their way, and those who displayed the slightest equivocation met a swift turn of the blade.  They burned several cities whose leaders resisted, in this respect imitating the Necruruean generals whom Prakai had criticized.  They sometimes irrationally mutilated and slaughtered populations even after their leaders had surrendered.  They maimed thousands, cutting off arms and legs.  As the conquest proceeded-- and as tales of his army’s cruelty spread-- his foes fell into panicked retreats or surrendered in abject terror.  Never before had Bergonians seen such savage bloodletting.   

Improving upon the practice of dragooning that the generals invented during the Necruruean civil war, Prakai enforced conscription on a grand scale, and men of all social classes swiftly divined that they had better serve his bloody will rather than risk even the appearance of opposition.  Some historians estimate that he had as many as 700,000 men under his command, a huge army considering that he drafted this number from a total population of seven or eight million.   

Prakai Eleusi's greatest campaign-- invading the Ceiolaian Empire

In  579 Prakai Eleusi initiated a new campaign eastward, facing the Imperial Army of Ceiolai which still occupied the central Ifuno Plateau, including the area around the grand city of gold, Crisitoni, the acknowledged center of Bergonia.  After two months of skirmishing and maneuvers, two huge armies clashed 40 miles west of Crisitoni, 120,000 of Prakai Eleusi's men versus 88,000 Imperial soldiers.  This was the battle of Atlacroi, "Cold Creek," where the Army of Ceiolai suffered its worst defeat ever.  The decimation of the Ceiolaian Army allowed Prakai's army to capture Crisitoni and sweep eastward.  Prakai's men hailed their victory as a repeat of the destruction of the armies of the First Ceiolaian Army by the forces of the Prophet.  Everyone prophesied the capture of Ceiolai.

But  for reasons unknown to history Prakai Eleusi ordered his army split, and he sent a contingent from Crisitoni southward toward the Letlari region.  The small cities there, formerly under Ceiolaian control, fell quickly to that contingent.  The remainder he ordered to press eastward toward Ceiolai.  With fewer men under arms their chances for victory were clearly less.  We do not know if Prakai's generals objected, but we do know that he executed a number of them around this time, demoralizing the rest.  We also know that Prakai, perhaps realizing his error, held up his army and dispatched another 20,000 men eastward on a forced march, hoping to catch up.  But the first force was too close to the Ceiolaians' remaining legions, and even though the Ceiolaians were outnumbered they decided to take the offense.  They inflicted heavy casualties on Prakai's army.  Both armies reeled away from the scene of bloodletting badly injured.  This was as far east as any of Prakai's armies had ever come, and now they retreated back into the verdant Crevase region and encamped on the shores of one of the lakes, waiting for the reinforcements to come.   The Ceiolaian commanders did not want to give the reinforcements a chance to arrive, so they attacked again, this time catching them on the lakeside.  Prakai’s army had the waters to their back and nowhere to go.  It was said that the floating bodies covered the entire surface of the Lake.  This ended Prakai Eleusi's eastward expansion, and Ceiolai was saved.  The two forces clashed many more times, but with reduced numbers and with Prakai less willing to place so much at stake.  Prakai Eleusi apparently accepted the limits to his expansion.  

But Ceiolai had lost a third of its territory.  It lost its centuries-old grip on the central Ifuno Plateau, including Crisitoni and the nearby gold mines.  The Ceiolaian army had lost a total  of ninety thousand men in the campaign.  The defeat showed the world that Ceiolai's armies were vulnerable, and presaged the ultimate collapse of the Empire.  Prakai Eleusi now had conquered a third of all Bergonia, and half the Shufrantei world.

Prakai Eleusi's death

Prakai Eleusi died at the hand of an assassin in 587.  A frenetic Feocarine dissenter-- who was also an accomplished gudazhe-- had seen his entire family murdered by Prakai's agents in the persecutions.  Animated by the spirit of revenge, he managed to scale the walls of Prakai's  palace and then lurked through his gardens.  Prakai, it was known, often attended to his private pleasures in the peace of his walled garden.  There the Feocarine charged and stabbed  Prakai one time in the gut.

After the stabbing he lived for three days, during which he summoned  twelve priests, fifty pantei commanders and eighty-four bureaucrats and proclaimed to them that his 24 years old son, Aruli Eleusi, should succeed him.  The chronicles record that Prakai's followers built a  pyre sixty feet tall and kept it burning for days.  With bizarre cruelty Aruli ordered that the prison  guards kill all the inmates and fling their bodies onto the flames.  It was said that nothing  would  grow on the spot for the next five hundred years.   The next day Aruli became naithetieri in a hurried ceremony.

Prakai Eleusi was 37 years of age when he seized power in 563 A.D.  He was 61 years old when he died.  He reigned for 24 years, the most violent time in all Bergonian history.  It is accepted by all historians that at least a millions died—making Prakai the worst killer in all Bergonian history.  But some modern historians take very seriously the claims of contemporaries who held that he killed over two million, as much as twenty percent of the population under his rule, though others ascribe such assertions as hyperbole.  During his reign a flood of refugees swamped cities in the east like Ceiolai and Varsca.

This man typified the most frightening of recurring phenomena in  Bergonia  history-- the Hero-Priest-King-Conqueror, set on transforming the face of human society in accordance with  his own version of the ancient and archetypal Godly Kingdom on Earth.  Though some shed blood with savage abandon, others employed careful strategy in combination with genuine consideration for the masses, every single one of these redeemers sought to repeat the most failed  aspect  of Ierecina's career, that of holy emperor.  Every one of them sought to reclaim a lost vision of the perfect harmonious society.  They were revolutionaries following  a reactionary vision, both loved, hated, but especially feared in their own time, and setting  into motion  ripples  that  lasted far beyond their own years.  In the quest of  a harmoniously pure society,  they invariably disturbed the natural blemished harmony that  prevails in real life.  Some of them left permanent marks on the stream of Bergonian history, but none left such a stain as bloody as Prakai Aruli.

The Western Wars of Succession: 587-622  

How the war began

Aruli Eleusi was what in Nacateca is called aiertale, which means "distracted by one's body," which is to say chronically ill.  The chronicles describe what we today recognize as uncontrolled grand mal seizures.  The chronicles state that he remained in his bed much of the time because of unspecified illess.  He apparently also have suffered bouts of mania.  But in his lucid moments he possessed a dangerous shrewdness.  The Pupreisani remained loyal to him.  The climate of terror and  revenge that had enveloped Prakai's Ancita hierarchy now claimed his son.  It is not clear why Aruli turned the Pupresani goons on the Mrilitashi priests and their followers. but he did direct several of his purges against them.  In 591 Aruli was in his turn assassinated in the very same palace garden where his father met the blade.   The assassin was one of his valets, a man who had served Aruli for a decade, presumably of impeccable loyalty.  History does not record a motive.

Aruli's death sparked a fierce struggle between the orthodox Mrilitashi partisans and the Pupreisani.   Aruli had no sons, and so he had designated a Pupreisani leader to succeed him in the preposterous office of naithetieri.  The Mrilitashi would not brook the choice and revolted.  The two groups competed in the battlefield for the power to select a new emperor.  Coninpati tribesmen from north of the Sutretamos came south in droves; for a fair price they would involve themselves in just about anyone's war.  The war continued without either side gaining a decisive victory, and after a few years generals defected and militias organized to form new armies to oppose both the Pupresani and the Mrilitashi.  Reformists, including the Feocarine, supported a general named Tuleri, the "Hopeful  One,"  had assembled a large force which was primarily loyal to himself and to no religious  orthodoxy.   Tuleri  had served under Eleusi, although he turned out a most liberal man,  very  tolerant of most views, but motivated by a singular urge to become emperor.  Everyone recognized  him  as a moderate, careful, fair man, and this made  him appealing  to many.   Tuleri adorned his blue flag with an emblem of six lilies, because lilies were in bloom at the time he established his own army of six legions.  

The White Avengers -- dedicated to destroying Prakai's legacy

Many Feocarine supported the new movement known as the White Avengers, organized by survivors of atrocities to hunt down and kill off all surviving Pupreisani.  The White Avengers disseminated anti-Pupreisani propaganda in the towns and villages.  White Avenger commandos attacked Pupreisani troops and assassinated Pupreisani leaders.  They had no particular love for the Mrilitashi  who  had just a few years earlier had walked hand in hand with the Pupreisani, but they now found Mrilitashi convenient partners in resisting the Pupreisani.  The White Avengers ironically shared many traits with the Pupreisani-- their fanaticism made them capable of horrible atrocities themselves.  But they also displayed amazing heroism in battle, and the bravery they showed in their occasionally preposterous attacks upon the Pupreisani inspired the imagination of millions who also feared and hated the Pupreisani.  The White Avengers had virtually no doctrine or theology beyond denouncing Prakai, Aruli and the Pupreisani as black and hoary demons spawned from the offal of moral pollution.  They embraced a mission, not of truth, reflection or transformation, but of action and redemption.  The intensity of the White Avengers' dedication frightened some and comforted others, but few who lived in those chaotic times had the luxury to reflect upon the similarity between the Pupreisani and the White Avengers.  

Foot races had for centuries been popular among the Ancita people of the windswept Ifuno plateau.  Under Prakai's rule the Pupreisani sponsored all foot races.  The White Avengers assumed that all competitive runners were either Pupreisani or allies, and so for a time made it habit of murdering anyone they saw running in a race.   But they reversed themselves and began sponsoring their own races, declaring that the people had to have athletic as well as military skills to enable them to match and defeat the Pupreisani.  The Avengers used the races as vehicles to spread propaganda and solicit recruits.  Soon all people all throughout western Bergonia participated in White Avenger athletic competitions.

The parties end up stalemated

For ten years war continued gnashing and grating all across the breadth of Prakai's empire, achieving little more result than the slaughter of thousands of soldiers-- stalwart believers, burly mercenaries from the northern mountains, and young draftees-- and the reckless and wanton decimation of towns and cities.   

The campaigns, however, finally resulted in the parties effectively partitioning Prakai's empire three ways.  

(a) Tuleri, the dispassionate general, persisted in his modest aims of destroying  the remains of Pakai's regime, amassing lands and a fortune, and influencing the selection of any new emperor.  His forces organized at the city of Iutafaca, having liberated all the territories to the west.  Tuleri faced the independent power of  Muonatli to the north, and their armies regarded each other warily, but without real enmity.   

(b) To the east both Tuleri and Muonlati faced the regiments of the Pupreisani.   The Pupreisani occupied the old Ancita heartland, from the frontiers of Ampelicu all the way to Crisioni, including the holy city of Ancitaselticoi.  

(c) The armies of the Mrilitashi and their moderate allies occupied the big cities on the Cuanta River upriver from Muonatli.  The White Avengers, for all their ferocity and impact, were of small numbers  and had no interest in occupying territory, only in killing Pupreisani; therefore they moved in small groups in guerrilla  fashion  across the countryside, like panitei warriors in the ancient times. 

The fortunes of war shifted like the shapes of cumulus clouds on a windy  day.  Alliances of convenience dictated the course of the war and, like those alliances formed between the competing commanders in the Necruruean civil war sixty years before, they often ended in one side's betrayal of another.  Tuleri, especially, was always ready to replace one promise with another and it became apparent to all that the war of attrition had claimed as a casualty his honesty and integrity.  Such debilitation of character, sadly, occurs often in war.  

The final campaigns and the destruction of the Pupreisani 

In 613 Tuleri died in battle against the army of Muonatli, but his forces retreated in order, and his three surviving generals bought peace by ceding territory to Muonatli.  Then they divided the remainder of Tuleri's territory among themselves, forming three new states, two in the Clacupo basin and one in the Ciarepepina Hills called Ampelicu.  In 614 the Mrilitashi forces achieved such a degree of control over their territory that they organized a new state, Tiericoatli, which contained a little more than half of the territory formerly included within Necrurue's borders.  The Mrilitashi generals gathered under a plane tree and drew lots among themselves to select an emperor, imagining that they were imitating the Ceiolaian generals who had disposed the last Shumalo emperor. Obviously they operated under a faulty recollection of history.  The Ceiolaian generals had not left for posterity any clues about how they selected Areshe Velorec, but in all probability they engaged in hard bargaining.  Nothing in history suggests they used lots.  Thus they founded a new dynasty.  Their new emperor promptly established a capitol in city of Paslanicreno and ordered the construction of new walls.   

In 617 the general who established a state in Ampelicu joined  with  the  Mrilitashi forces to attack the Pupreisani in one last terrible engagement out in the grasslands of the Ifuno, but the Pupreisani managed to flee, and they sought refuge in a vast pine forest.  All their enemies came from miles around, and hemmed them in.  

News of this reached the ears of the White Avengers who, in a forced march that supposedly covered seventy miles in just two days, hunted the Pupreisani remnants down and joyfully massacred them among the pines.  Doubtlessly their frequent footraces had conditioned them for this moment.  The victors bathed in the blood of their victims, soaking their kilts and tunics, and then went about the villages and  towns for many miles around singing victory hymns and displaying  their weapons.  For days they wandered over the countryside, waving their bloodied clothes, eschewing bathing, and creating a ghastly sensation thereby.  In this way the last of Prakai Eluesi's legacy died.  

Once peace came, the remnants of the White Avengers turned their attention to a new task-- the destruction of Prakai Eleusi's huge temple in Ancitaselticoi.  The Mrilitashi regime which had power there allowed them to attack the building that everyone disliked with picks and bars.  The White Avengers put the word out, and people came from near and far to demonstrate their bitterness against Prakai's regime by helping in the demolition.  The White Avengers never again exercised military power, but they did evolve into an order of panitei dedicated to athletics and service, not to mention opposition to tyranny.  Because of the White Avengers, athletic competitions became a staple of life in the West and, in time, throughout all medieval Bergonia.  The White Avengers continued doing good work for centuries. 

622:  The "Basket of Flowers" -- the Final Peace Treaty

The territories once contained within Prakai's empire remained unsettled, and war still threatened.  And to make things worse, a new calamity struck between 615 and 620-- famine.  All Bergonia, except the perpetually rainy northwest, experienced famine during this time, particularly the south, southeast and western Ifuno.  The peasants and their rulers habitually accommodated the inevitability of bad harvests and stockpiled grain.  Both peasants and city-dwellers could easily withstand two or three years of famine, but five years of severe famine exhausted all granaries and wrought great suffering.  Throughout the region the cities faced grain shortfalls.  The diminished harvests caused drastic shortfalls in state revenues, and the generals discovered that they could not feed their troops.  Tiericoatli's new leader and his attending clique begged their foes and neighbors to negotiate peace.  As a result Tiericoatli entered into a series of treaties with the ten other states that had emerged from the civil war.  Everyone hoped that these treaties would bring an era of peace to the West.  The negotiators completed these treaties, completed in 622--  a year of good harvests-- and they named them Susrecale, the "Basket of Flowers."  The new Tiericoatli leadership urgently promised abstention from religious discrimination and persecution, although its members remained devoted to the Mrilitashi sect.

At long last, peace came to the exhausted West. 

 

 

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