In 362 the Waldrum family birthed a man whose name was Joshua. Although his direct lineage is unknown, the eventual discovery that he was in the thrall of The Countess Essemile leads historians to believe that he was magically engineered in some way. He was born under many portents and mere moments after he arrived in the world, he spoke words, and those words were of Empire. He was marked for greatness and grew in stature and wisdom very quickly, eight years after his birth he was a grown man and leading military forces at a time when the first Gabrak Wars were beginning.
Joshua led the people in the War against Gabrak, a battle that saw the majority of the continent engaged with the Unholy power and his Daemonic allies. This led to Joshua declaring himself Emperor and claiming the throne of Daer Akmir as his own, in many ways winning a prize that Gabrak himself was fighting for. Joshua provided more than just a unifying factor, he inspired the people around him to be better, to be selfless and provide a truly whole and together continent.
When the war ended in victory in 410 Joshua still appeared as a man in the prime of his twenties and set out the foundations for the new Capital of Haven, as Maryat, the previous one, had been lost to War. When the temple square had been completed, although with much of the City still to be built, he took to the speaker’s podium and declared to a small crowd of the faithful that it was time for him to leave Daer Akmir but that he would return should the land ever be imperilled again and lead the people to a great victory. His exact words vary from priesthood to priesthood but all agree that he was swallowed shortly after by a powerful golden light.
For the next seventeen hundred years Emperor Joshua was reported to have appeared several thousand times by members of the Royal Basin. Sometimes he had messages and on other occasions he was on time to save the day but the truth of these appearances has never been verified. It is doubtless that some of them were true and that his appearances were designed entirely to keep his legend alive. However, his big return occurred in the year sixteen fifty five just ahead of an enemy that had been pivotal in providing Gabrak with power during the wars that had brought him fame centuries before hand: Arkithane.
Joshua was welcomed on his return and despite skepticism he was soon proven to be the man that he said that he was. He warned that Arkithane was gathering strength in the North, in what remained in the lands of the Chosen and that he intended to control the power of the lineages of those ancient peoples that had come from there. Immediate doubt was placed on the aristocracy as belief spread that they may be under the control of the enemy and more than that the enemy controlled the bestial forces of the ancestors, which was in itself an incongruous description.
The Basanic military threw up a line of forts across the southern part of the Ancestral Lands and went to war with their forces to oust the evil of their master. The war was terrible and the cost to the assembled forces of the rest of Daer Akmir that had answered the call was intolerable. Many strange things happened in the battle against the Ancestrals but eventually a Guildic force, directed by Quinn Shadowreaver and Christine Rivers, uncovered truths which brought the war to an end and revealed that the Emperor was using the forces of the continent to fight for his own personal gain. Eventually he was arrested and executed for war crimes and treason and the Basin was forced to a humbling apology on the behalf of the now disillusioned and disassembled Empire.
Long years later it would be discovered that he was a pawn of the Countess and may have been a man that was removed from stasis on occasion to do her will. Whether this was true, or he was a reincarnated being or even a construct we may never know. Regardless it is clear that he was both a dupe and a blip in the concept of aristocracy and a new regime for the Royal Basin that occasionally touched back on the concepts of Empire that were introduced by Fasteron thousands of years beforehand.
More information about the Aristocracy can be found in The Codex of War: The Beginning of the End, The Cataclysm and the Lions Pride, and The Rise of Dazak North.
Holly Goodall
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