Zarcos
Steampunk Industrialist Imperialism vs Nationalist Environmentalist Tradition
Anthologica Universe Atlas / Universes / Maikros / Salenzis / Zarcos

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Above: a map of the Kingdom of Zarcos.

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Above: the flag of the Zarcos Empire. In front is the Phoenix Insignia; behind are a gray cross upon a green field. The cross represents crossed swords and only appears on the Imperial flag. The flag of the Kingdom does not have it. The green represents the importance of the environment - especially forests - in Zarcosian culture.

The Zarcos Empire



Zarcos proper consists of the easternmost peninsula of Salenzis. When speaking only of it, it is referred to as the Kingdom of Zarcos. The Zarcos Empire is reserved for speaking of both it and its colonies together. As of 3:776, Zarcos is one of the Three Powers currently participating in the Wary Peace, the other two being the Talurmen Empire and the Trade Union of Toletska & Valimaa. While Zarcos controls the northwestern third of the Dotted Ocean, it is actually the smallest of the Three Powers - however, it is the most feared. Zarcos holds a huge technological advantage against the other two Powers, outside of magic, and it has no qualms with using said advantage militarily. It is an industrialized nation, with factories, steam power, and airships - the last of which being what is most feared. Various "skirmishes" before the Wary Peace started showed off their destructive potential. Despite being an imperial state, Zarcos is also known for its isolationist policies, especially concerning its technological advantage, wherein the paranoia of the current Hatiianzo Dynasty is most evident. However, said isolationist tendencies are not purely paranoia - they run deep into Zarcosian history, exemplified by the Kingdom's most famous piece of engineering - the Great Wall.

The Great Wall of Zarcos spans the entirety of its only land border - that to its west, which it shares with the Kingdom of Antiem. Its construction is intimately tied with the origins of Zarcos. A thousand years ago, the Prophan Empire tried to invade the land. At that time the people of this land were foragers and tuber horticulturalists, though wheat agriculture was beginning to make headway. The Prophans had conquered Zarcosic peoples before, mostly in Antiem and Giel, though some tribes could be seen as far west as Gallar. However, the Prophans were met with much resistance in the form of guerilla warfare. This warfare was organized by a collection of tribes living around what is today the capital city, Kanduria. These tribes were able to get many of the western tribes involved. While the Prophan forces were properly militarily trained, they were not so numerous as to simply roll over the western forests. The Prophans were routed after many battles, but as they retreated into the province of Antiem, General Eupraxia ordered one of the most massive magical assaults in Maikrosian history, the Rain of Flames. From then on, she was known as Eupraxia the Spiteful. The Rain of Flames rather well describes itself - much of the forests west of the river Halstriok and north of the river Edonet were destroyed. The main reason that the Prophans didn't immediately conquer it after their enemy's main advantage had been removed is that the Rain was too large a use of magic. Eupraxia angered the mana spirits, who fought against the Prophans in Antiem until Eupraxia and her mages were all dead.

Meanwhile, the Zarcosic tribes were beginning to coalesce into a state, as they recognized the need for more organized defense. The name Zarcos comes from the chief of the foremost tribe - Mariond Zariko, who became the first Zarcosian monarch, the first of the Zariko Dynasty which ruled Zarcos for its first three centuries. Seventeen years after the formation of the Kingdom of Zarcos, construction of the Great Wall began, to keep out the Prophans. The Great Wall has been a major project ever since, getting upgraded every few hundred years throughout Zarcos' thousand-year history.

The Rain of Flames scarred Zarcosian culture as it birthed it. Ever since, there has been a strong environmentalist bent in Zarcosian culture. This is exemplified in the reign of Queen Celen Zariko. Celen, Mariond's daughter, is most famous for organizing the replanting of the forests destroyed in the Rain of Flames, a project that lasted her entire reign and beyond. To this day, foresting regulations in Zarcos are strict, usually requiring replanting of every felled tree. These environmentalist tendencies were encouraged by the state religion, the Phoenix Clergy. Since time immemorial, Zarcosic peoples had worshipped the Phoenix King, a vastly powerful entity that visits Maikros every thousand years. One of his visits coincided with the formation of Zarcos - the Kingdom was considered to be blessed. Phoenixianism promoted preservation and order. While the great upheaval of the formation of a state was anathema to the phoenix shamans at first, once the Phoenix King passed overhead and one of his feathers fell to Mariond, the shamans immediately backed Mariond up and followed in his footsteps, organizing themselves into the Phoenix Clergy.

In the latter half of the Zariko Dynasty, Zarcos slowly opened itself up, mainly for the purposes of trading with its only neighbour, the Prophan Empire. It was, of course, quite wary, but Zarcosian merchants had been clamouring for trade routes for quite a while. The Phoenix Clergy, of course, opposed this, but the cries of a hurting economy were louder than them. None of them could foresee what happened during this period of openness. During this century and a half, Salenzian culture from the Prophan Empire flooded in along with the trade, and despite the best efforts of the Kingdom and the Clergy, Zarcosians eventually started to speak Old Salenzian. By the end of the Zariko Dynasty, the Zarcosian language was functionally dead, relegated to being the liturgical language of the Phoenix Clergy.

When the Zariko Dynasty ended, nobody knew what to do. There was no heir. The question of who would rule Zarcos was answered in the Zarcosian Civil War, and it was answered by the powerful Hatiianzo family, rulers of that same province. The Hatiianzo Dynasty was quite a different thing from the Zariko. They were, and are, quite paranoid and power-hungry. One of their first edicts was to restrict Zarcos' borders again. Without such a massive influx of Salenzian culture, the Clergy tried to get people to speak Zarcosian again, but only met with limited success. The Hatiianzos didn't bother to support this endeavour - they couldn't care less what language people were speaking. The Hatiianzos and the Clergy continued to butt heads as the Hatiianzos started to encourage research. Ever since the formation of Zarcos, the Rain of Flames was representative of the outside world. Just as it fueled environmentalism, it also fueled a hatred of magic that eventually came to be represented in Zarcosian law.

The illegality of magic was one of the few things the Hatiianzos didn't try to fiddle with. Even they considered some things sacred, apparently - or, perhaps, they considered it too risky, inviting rebellion. Either way, they were acutely aware of Zarcos' disadvantage against the other Salenzian kingdoms - by the Hatiianzo Dynasty, the Prophans had been done with dismantling their empire about a century ago. The other kingdoms all had mages, and Zarcos did not. So, the Hatiianzos got the best minds in Zarcos together and had them do research - as best as pre-scientific thinkers could do, anyway. Even this brought them enough new ideas that they continued to do it. The Clergy was, of course, not pleased. This conflict came to a head with the invention, production, and implementation of the crossbow. The Hatiianzos had the military adopt it, and encouraged its adoption by guard forces across the kingdom. The crossbow was, to the Hatiianzos, a symbol of progress. The great new weapon to protect the kingdom. The Clergy couldn't stand by any longer at such an obvious power play by the Hatiianzos, and so actually condemned them. In response, the Hatiianzos used their new crossbows to hunt down the entire Phoenix Clergy. In ten years, they had eradicated their own state religion, and now considering priests to be too much of a threat to their power, made the practice of religion illegal. This also had the effect of making the Zarcosian language even more obscure than it already was, since most surviving Zarcosian-language texts in that day were religious, and many religious texts were destroyed in the priest hunts.

Thus, Zarcos was the first, and to this day only, atheist state on Maikros. After destroying the Clergy, the Hatiianzos felt more free to encourage research. The rate of discovery quickened once Zarcosian thinkers figured out the scientific method three centuries ago - by which time, the Zarcos Empire was in full force. Steam power was invented fifty years ago, and no time was wasted before applying it wherever it could be applied.

While Zarcos desperately tries to keep its technological secrets to itself, as to preserve its advantage, it can't do so forever. A couple examples of this are the cannon, which even Talurmen ships now bear, and the printing press, which is now common across southern Salenzis.