5001-HârnWorld/3rd Edition/45

After a brief respite, the victorious rebels surged out of Golotha intent on winning an empire. Several battles were fought but nothing could prevent the Balshan onslaught. The city of Coranan was soon under siege. The defenses of the Imperial capital were very strong and it is possible the rebellion might have petered out. However, at this crucial time, Horahnam, the ambitious Corani governor of the city of Shiran, embraced the jihad, surrendering the city in 564. After an investment of Coranan for two years, Emperor Medak was captured as he attempted to flee to Aleath with many of his court and kin. Their stores exhausted, disease rampant, and with a clear view of the hill where the emperor and his retainers were impaled, the morale of Coranan’s defender’s crumbled. Coranan surrendered to the Balshans in 565.

THE THEOCRACY OF TEKHOS
Although the city of Aleath was to resist the rebels for seven more years, forming an independent republic from 565 to 572, the Corani Empire was dead. With the fall of Coranan, a power struggle ensued among the victorious Balshans. The Morgathian Church, itself chronically disunited, also proved incapable of forming a government. After two years of internecine butchery, Horahnam of Tekhos emerged as the sole leader after an astute combination of political maneuver and assassination. He founded the Theocracy of Tekhos in 568 with Shiran as its capital.

Casting a malevolent eye southwards, Horahnam ordered the city of Aleath taken. Tekhosian forces swept down and gave siege to “the fairest city of man” in 569. Although the city held out for three long and bitter years, there was no hope of relief and its defenders resigned themselves to their eventual doom. Hundreds of Aleathians slew themselves and each other rather than witness the fall of Aleath and the rape and pillage that would follow. When the city’s walls were breached in the late spring of 572, very few Aleathians survived the terrible bloodbath; those who did remembered it as the “Agony of Aleath.”

One month before Aleath fell to the Tekhosians, a few hundred Aleathians fled by sea to undertake what is now known as the “Aleathian Odyssey.” This group, made up of nobles, priests, artisans, merchants, farmers (supposedly chosen by lot), and many children under 12, boarded a motley fleet of some 50 ships and sailed eastward into the Gulf of Ederwyn with the intent of founding a “New Aleath.” Written accounts of the Odyssey describe horrific storms and fanciful sea monsters. It is known that fully half of the vessels disappeared, although other legends recount that some of these unfortunates actually survived to found colonies at various likely and unlikely spots around the Gulf of Ederwyn. The remaining fleet eventually made it to the island of Keboth, where they were succored by the Sindarin. There (or possibly before, the records are ambiguous) the refugees met with a Melderyni mage called Genin. Under his guidance, the weary Aleathians sailed through the Indatha Straits to found the city of Thay in 573.

A Reign of Terror
The capture of Aleath removed any possible threat to Horahnam and he quickly turned the Theocracy of Tekhos into a violent and repressive dictatorship. Many Thardans had rejoiced at the casting down of the corrupt empire. Soon they came to realize that their old masters had known little of real tyranny when compared with the butchers of Tekhos. Dozens of religious tribunals were established to crush opposition to the new order. Thousands of the nobility, their retainers, and sympathizers were impaled or forced into outlawry to escape the purges. In the cities, perverse Morgathian rituals, spectacles, public torture, and execution became commonplace. It must be admitted that the spectacles were popular among the masses; many cheered the butchers on, until they themselves were carried off at midnight by the dreaded inquisitors.

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