TEXT: 3.5 SYSTEM COMPATIBLE
  LPJXX22
  world of Exodus
  Ne o e xo du s  C hr o nic le s :
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
  Page 2
  History of Exodus
  Exodus boasts a long and turbulent history, from the 
  rise of the Kaga and the defeat of the First Ones, to the 
  Twilight War and the founding of the Imperial Alliance, 
  to the present crisis that threatens to tear that alliance 
  apart.  Great heroes and terrible villains drove its march, 
  though even in hindsight the two are not always easily 
  separated; theirs were the titanic passions, the deep loves 
  and hates, the burning obsessions and base treacheries, 
  by which modern Exodus was forged and tempered.
  the Reign of the First Ones
  Before the dawn of recorded history, the humanoid 
  races labored under the domination of powerful beings 
  known as the First Ones.  More than two thousand years 
  of shadowed antiquity lie between the reign of the First 
  Ones and the modern age, but they remain bogeymen 
  and nightmares to the people of Exodus.
  Because the First Ones lived and ruled so many centu-
  ries ago, historians have few concrete details about their 
  reign.  Modern sages do not know if the First Ones were 
  one race or many, or even if they were humanoids whose 
  immense power and wickedness rendered them like unto 
  gods - or devils.  Only the half-mythic hates and fears of 
  mankind remain.
  the Kaga and the Era of man
  Two thousand years ago, the greatest sages, strategists, 
  scientists and sorcerers laboring in the cruel service of 
  the First Ones concocted a plan so bold it would change 
  the world of Exodus forever.  This plan became the 
  Kaga, the collective sentience of the one hundred most 
  brilliant minds of an age, an artificial afterlife.  The 
  Kaga became a repository of all human knowledge - and 
  the greatest weapon against the monstrous First Ones.
  Soon after the Kaga’s formation, the huddled masses 
  of humanity rose up against their overlords.  With their 
  greatest minds united to direct them, the humanoid 
  races overthrew the reign of the First Ones in a series of 
  apocalyptic battles.  No record remains of those primeval 
  struggles, no clue as to the eventual fate of the First 
  Ones - only this: when the dust cleared, the world of 
  Exodus belonged to the humanoid races.
  Rather than rule as a god-king, immortal and nigh-omni-
  scient, the Kaga retreated into solitude and contempla-
  tion.  For centuries, its wisdom remained hidden from 
  humanity as its component geniuses pooled their minds 
  to further hone their powers of reflection.  Even now, 
  with the Kaga once more accessible, sages are at a loss 
  to understand why this guiding light chose to shut itself 
  off.
  While the Kaga withdrew, the surviving humans set 
  about rebuilding in the ashes of the civilization that had 
  enslaved them for countless centuries.  These early men 
  were primitive and barbaric; lacking the pre-human 
  science of the First Ones, they dwelt amidst ruined spires 
  and huddled beside still-latent sorceries, unaware of 
  the powers almost within their grasp.  In time, the ruins 
  crumbled to dust, the magic faded from time-worn arti-
  facts, and the humans moved from the decaying cities to 
  the wilderness beyond.
  The Age of Mind and Magic
  While most of humanity descended into barbarism in the 
  early years after the fall of the First Ones, a few learned 
  to command the arcane sciences of their former masters.
  These arcanists became the first Sorcerer Kings of 
  Abaddon.  There, they raised the first human civilization, 
  binding to their empowered wills hundreds of the savage 
  humanoid tribes.  They repaired the shattered cities of 
  the First Ones and raised new glories in their own name.
  Although they were not as monolithically wicked as 
  their former masters, the Sorcerer Kings soon acquired a 
  reputation for heartless tyranny.  Humans all, they drove 
  members of the other humanoid races into slavery or 
  exile and sought to bind the whole of Exodus under their 
  power.
  Even as the Sorcerer Kings were rising in Abaddon, 
  however, another power had grown in the frigid hills 
  of Nas.  The Cavians, a race of ratlike humanoids, 
  had taken a very different path to power.  Rejecting 
  the arcane sciences that had once enslaved them, they 
  focused entirely on honing their own innate powers of 
  the mind.  Through their study and meditation, psionics 
  entered the world of Exodus.
  Cavian and Sorcerer King soon came to blows - blows 
  that shook Exodus like nothing since the fall of the First 
  Ones.  Titanic magical and psionic energies literally 
  reshaped whole sections of the landscape.
  When the dust faded, the Sorcerer Kings were a shadow 
  of their former power; of their hundreds, only a half 
  dozen survived, and those barely beyond the level of 
  apprentices.  Most of the surviving legacy of the First 
  Ones perished, for good or ill.  Of the Cavians, however, 
  even less seemed to have survived - their race, once 
  among the most populous and powerful on Exodus, 
  vanished completely from the face of the planet.
  the Seeds of Nationhood
  The War of Mind and Magic, as the Cavian-Sorcerer 
  King conflict came to be known, shattered both belliger-
  ents’ dreams of conquest.
  The barbaric tribes of humanity, long held back by the 
  supernatural might of civilization, surged into the power 
  vacuum with fire and the sword.  At the same time, the 
  
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  long-silent Kaga, perhaps roused by the War of Mind 
  and Magic, again lent its timeless wisdom to mankind.
  From the Kaga, barbarian chieftains learned the arts 
  of statecraft and barbarian shamans learned the arts 
  of magic.  These young, virile peoples, held in check 
  too long by arcane powers, washed across the face of 
  Exodus like a tidal wave.  In short order, the servile 
  peoples who had labored for sorcerer and psion bent 
  knee to warlords who ruled by force and cunning.
  In the Cordel region, which had been one of the primary 
  battlegrounds of the War of Mind and Magic, the 
  barbarian chieftains and the descendents of the Sorcerer 
  Kings interbred.  In short order, both races were much 
  altered; the region’s tribes remained nomadic herders 
  and raiders, but their ruling caste became one of natural 
  magicians who blended sword, spell and stealth.
  In frigid Nas, abandoned seat of Cavian power, humanity 
  quickly replaced the rodentfolk civilization.  The hardy 
  people of Nas united under four clans calling themselves 
  Brauner, von Breit, Hanstrom and Olsson.  Already more 
  civilized than most of the suppressed humans of other 
  lands, they quickly accepted the wisdom of the Kaga and 
  carved out the beginnings of a feudal system that would 
  hold for centuries.
  In the Wyldlands of Bal, where neither of the great 
  powers of the last age had enjoyed success, humans 
  fought animalistic Enukas and brutish Orcs, matching 
  savagery for savagery.  Here, civilization rose for the 
  first time, at least since the fall of the First Ones, in the 
  form of isolated city-states slaved to bloodthirsty gods.
  Abaddon remained the seat of the surviving Sorcerer 
  Kings, threatened only by scattered uprisings and raids 
  from their estranged kin in Cordel.  Though much 
  reduced from their greatest glories, the arcane scientists 
  of Abaddon remained the mightiest living creatures on 
  Exodus, and for a time it seemed, even with the opposi-
  tion of the Kaga, that they would regain their power.
  the Unification of the Dominion
  Even with the infusion of sorcerous blood into their 
  ruling caste, the nomadic tribes of Cordel found them-
  selves at a disadvantage against the better-organized 
  baronies of Nas and the spells and armies of Abaddon.  
  For centuries, they had been at turns mercenaries for 
  greater powers and raiders pouring across their borders; 
  now, they found their own lands menaced.
  Individual khans found their hosts, while more than 
  adequate for striking at unsuspecting foes, too few and 
  too scattered to stand against a determined assault.  At 
  best, they could fade into the desert and avoid battle.  At 
  worst, they were caught and either killed or enslaved.
  The nomads might have been driven deep into the track-
  less wilderness to perish, if not for the efforts of the first 
  Khagan of the Dominion.
  Ironically, the identity of that great chieftain has been 
  lost to the sands of time - if it was ever known at all.  
  The nomads of Cordel had no written writing until more 
  than a century after their unification, and their neighbors 
  knew of the rising power only by rumor and hearsay.  
  With conflicting oral traditions the only source of infor-
  mation on the Khagan’s life, each tribe and faction of the 
  modern Dominion claims him as one of their own.
  The Khagan’s modus operandi did nothing to confirm 
  his identity.  In the years leading up to his reign, he trav-
  eled among all the tribes of Cordel as a landless warrior.  
  During this period, he was often called the Desert Shade 
  because of his habit of appearing seemingly from the 
  very sands and vanishing in the night after a battle.
  The one-day Khagan’s tactics were as unusual as his 
  solitary lifestyle.  While many Khans of the Cordel tribes 
  could use magic and some had become quite powerful, 
  few had learned how to use it effectively.  The “Desert 
  Shade” blended matters magical and military to set up 
  seemingly invincible ambushes, even when he and his 
  allies of the day were outnumbered ten-to-one.
  The future Khagan also broke with the tradition of 
  Cordel’s humanoid tribes by having extensive deal-
  ings with the region’s large Sasori enclave.  While 
  Dominion legends have him anticipating the plans of 
  his enemies by his rare genius or, in some tales, by the 
  Dominion
  Alignment  Lawful Neutral
  Capital Qijom
  Largest cities  Iamar, Qasim, Saidah, Zayna,
  Official language(s)  Common
  Regional languages  Qijomi, Iamarian
  Government  Mageocracy Monarchy
  1st in Charge  Khaganate Malik Ibn Al’alim
  2nd in Charge  Executor Sultan Nasser Ibn Al’alim
  3rd in Charge   Grand Vizier Khan El Leila Um Adu 
  Bakr
  Legislature  Consultative Assembly
  Upper House  Council of Ministers
  Religon  Various
  Population  40 million+ (estimated)
  Currency   Standard Currency, Imperial Raven (2 GP), 
  Imperial Royal (25 gp), Imperial Crown 
  (10 gp), Imperial Eagle (2 GP), Imperial 
  Crescent (2 sp)
  Elite Military / Soldiers  Dominion Wyrdcasters
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
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  After over a decade of such wanderings, the “Desert 
  Shade” revealed his then-hidden city of Qijom, a capital 
  he had reared in secret with the profits from his merce-
  nary work.  He called for a council of the khans and 
  proclaimed himself Khagan - Khan among Khans.  None 
  dared contradict him, for he swiftly proved he was the 
  warrior who had, acknowledged or not, led them all to 
  the only victories they had known in a generation.
  Just as the enigmatic Khagan eschewed any personal 
  name for himself, so it was with his newly unified 
  nation.  He called the federation of desert tribes and 
  desert sorcerers simply the Dominion, refusing even the 
  regional name of Cordel.
  In the next five decades of the Khagan’s life, his people 
  defeated a half-dozen armies from Abaddon and as 
  many from Nas.  More, they pushed back into both 
  neighboring countries and seized two broad fertile belts 
  outside their desert homeland.  From the jaws of defeat, 
  the ‘Desert Shade’ had snatched victory after victory.
  His soldiery was matched only by his genius at schol-
  arship and statecraft.  Taking the throne of a race of 
  barbaric nomads, he left his people with their first 
  written language, their national identity, and the skeleton 
  of the caste system that holds to the modern era.  He 
  reorganized the Khanate into the modern Ibn Al’alim - 
  the ruling mageocracy -, the raiders into the Dammar, the 
  shamans into the Khepri, and the casteless workers and 
  merchants into the Rafik.  He also personally created and 
  gave paramount importance to the Sihr, the historians 
  and scholars who implemented his written language and 
  plan for national literacy.
  Johan Darre, a bard from Nas permitted to witness 
  the council of Khans and the Khagan’s coronation, 
  penned the only surviving record of the event.  
  His tale, converted to the Imperial dating 
  structure, places the Khagan’s coro-
  nation at 837 BU.   Concluding 
  his dramatic chronicle, the 
  original manuscript of 
  which resides in the 
  Caneus Royal Library in 
  Nyssa, Darre wrote of the 
  Khagan: “He hides his face 
  in desert robes at all times, 
  but he is known to all by his 
  voice, by his bearing, by his 
  unmistakable presence.  He 
  is the first king of true men 
  and his coming heralds a 
  new age.”
  Darre’s prediction would 
  prove entirely prescient.
  gift of prophecy, most scholars agree that his extraordi-
  nary intelligence network owed much to the Sasori, who 
  served him loyally in return for the first peace they had 
  had with humans since their mutual enslavement under 
  the First Ones.
  The barons of Nas and the Sorcerer Kings of Abaddon 
  loathed the “Desert Shade”.  They called him the King 
  of Lies for the rumors he spread about them to rally his 
  people; displaying uncanny knowledge of their move-
  ments and their most embarrassing secrets, he called 
  himself the King of Truths.  They called him the Human 
  Sasori, hoping to play on age-old racial hatreds; he 
  embraced the name, saying he was a friend of the desert, 
  not any one of its peoples.  They threatened to wipe out 
  any tribe that sheltered him; he taught the tribes to wipe 
  out their armies instead.
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
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  the Coming of the Armans
  The rise of the Dominion weakened the already flag-
  ging power of the Sorcerer Kings of Abaddon, but they 
  retained their hold over that region for another century.  
  It fell, not to their rapidly civilizing western neighbors, 
  but to an entirely new set of barbarians to bring down 
  the last remnants of the ancient arcane empire.
  These were the Armans, a race of seafaring raiders from 
  the island of Ablis.  Though geographically remote from 
  the fledgling knights and barons of Nas, the Armans 
  came from similar stock - much taller and bulkier than 
  the other humans of Exodus, often fair-haired, always 
  savage.  The Armans themselves denied this connection; 
  living in isolated and forbidding climes, they had never 
  labored under First One enslavement and believed them-
  selves uniquely free among all humanoids.
  They were also uniquely ferocious.  The few inhabitants 
  of Sametia, Bal and Abaddon who dwelt near the eastern 
  coast spoke of the Armans as demons in human form: 
  fearless, pitiless raiders before whom other barbarians 
  seemed tame.  Even the Sorcerer Kings at the height 
  of their power had bought off the Armans rather than 
  fighting them.
  In 752 BU, the Armans did more than raid mainland 
  Exodus.
  According to the sagas of the migrating Armans, their 
  journey began with a prophecy.  Grigori Vyskos, a 
  shaman of the Kryszkas clan, had visions of his people 
  wiped from Ablis by ‘fires that walked like the sea’ - but 
  of their descendents reigning in glory on the mainland.  
  The former prediction terrified the thralls and women-
  folk who remained behind while the raiding bands 
  sought plunder among civilized lands, while the latter 
  fired the imagination of the thanes of those bands.
  The clan’s high thane, Vladimir Kryszkas, decided to 
  believe the shaman’s warning and his promise.  He 
  rallied his raiders to him, not to pillage and retreat to the 
  sea but to invade and hold.  In the first moon of 752 BU, 
  he led his horde to Sametia and overcame the enclaves 
  of plains tribesmen and the border outposts of the 
  Sorcerer Kings.  Traveling swiftly by boat, they sailed 
  south from this colony, sacked two northeastern cities 
  of the Sorcerer Kings and bound their arcane rulers with 
  primitive, primal shamanic magic.  After four moons, 
  however, the rulers of Abaddon rallied their legions and 
  smashed the Arman invaders back.  Vladimir was forced 
  to fall back on his conquests in Sametia; his people’s 
  prospects of empire looked bleak, and of survival little 
  better.  Grigori Vyskos, hailed as a visionary just months 
  before, was now seen as a fraud.  He was executed on 
  midwinter’s day of 752 BU, proclaiming to the last the 
  truth of his visions.
  Events bore out the shaman’s prophecy.  Even as the 
  Kryszkas were hanging him for what they saw as 
  condemning them to annihilation, the island of Ablis 
  erupted, its long-dormant volcanoes belching lava 
  onto the mountain pastures of the Arman shepherds.  
  Hundreds, perhaps thousands, died in the initial eruption; 
  thousands more surely would have if they had not been 
  able to find new sources of food, for their pastures were 
  smoldering ash and their fishing holes steaming ruin.  
  Skalds and shamans reminded their thanes of the words 
  of the Kryszkas prophet; if Grigori Vyskos’s dreams of 
  apocalypse had been true, why not his dreams of empire?
  Eventually, five other Arman clans joined the migra-
  tion: the Babinovichs, the Ivanovenas, the Chapaevonas, 
  the Dyakonoviks and the Krestyanovskis.  They set out 
  between the last moon of 752 BU and the first of 744 
  BU, half-fleeing their increasingly volatile island home, 
  half-seeking the glories of the mainland.
  Swamped by multiple invasions from the Armans 
  and losing legions and lords in terrifying numbers, 
  the Sorcerer Kings abandoned first their press of the 
  Kryszkas, then, in 743 BU, their entire coastline.
  Retreat proved a fatal mistake.  The Armans had previ-
  ously feared and respected the power of the Sorcerer 
  Kings and concentrated on subduing the disunited plains 
  barbarians of Sametia.  Now they scented weakness 
  from the gilded halls to the south - and like the lions the 
  Sametians likened them to, the Armans pounced on any 
  sign of weakness.  One sorcerous city after another fell 
  to the invading barbarians.
  In 740 BU, the legion of the port city of Galeathan cast 
  their sorcerous monarch from the walls and opened 
  the gates; Vladimir Kryszkas, grown wiser since his 
  mistaken execution of a prophet, took the city blood-
  lessly and kept his horde from sacking it.  Soon, other 
  cities followed suit, welcoming the Armans as liberators 
  from centuries of sorcerous tyranny.
  By 737 BU, the six Arman hordes encircled the Sorcerer 
  Kings’ ancient capital of Mureath.  The siege outlasted 
  the year.  When the garrison sought to surrender, 
  Xalthotan, the High King of Abaddon, slew every last 
  one with his magic and staffed the walls with their 
  animated corpses.  He and his colleagues waged titanic 
  magical battles against the Arman shamans, pitting 
  ancient knowledge against elemental power.  Even with 
  their empire lost, the Sorcerer Kings might have wiped 
  out the Armans on that battlefield, but the Kaga, long 
  troubled by the legacy of the First Ones, lent its immea-
  surable wisdom to the Arman shamans.
  The Kaga’s secrets, mated to the untamed power and 
  vastly superior numbers of the shamans, bought the 
  Arman warriors enough time to storm the walls, cut their 
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
  Page 6
  way through an army of undead and fouler deviltry, and 
  break the Sorcerer Kings’ power forever.  In 736 BU, 
  Arman barbarians raised the head of Xalthotan, the last 
  Sorcerer King, proclaiming their mastery of all Abaddon.
  the Founding of the Caneus Empire
  While their distant, untamed cousins conquered 
  Abaddon, the people of Nas concerned themselves 
  with advancing their civilization.  Nowhere else on the 
  continent had the subtle influence of the Kaga spread 
  further, and nowhere had purely humanoid civilization, 
  unencumbered with the legacy of the First Ones, reached 
  greater heights.
  With the rise of civilization, however, came new 
  dangers.  Men whose ancestors had been chieftains now 
  dreamed themselves kings.  Men whose ancestors had 
  fought at the heads of burgeoning warrior-aristocrat hosts 
  now commanded armies of professional soldiers without 
  ever leaving their capitals.  Far from the increasingly 
  gilded cities of Nas’s powerful families, the ceaseless 
  snows ran red with the blood of knights, mercenaries and 
  peasant levies.  To the dukes and merchants who ruled 
  in Nas, sending a local knight to die alone on a hundred 
  mercenary swords became another play on a chess board.
  Not all of the minor nobles and commoners shared 
  this sentiment, however.  In 657 BU, during a particu-
  larly brutal border contest between houses Brauner and 
  Olsson, one of those minor nobles found his patience 
  taxed beyond its limits.
  Gregory, Baron Eland, came from a long line of 
  warriors: he traced his ancestry to sub-chiefs serving 
  under the Brauner warlords when they first swept over 
  Nas in the wake of the Cavian Empire.  In the last 
  century, however, his proud heritage had been repeat-
  edly disgraced.  Because the barony of Eland was on the 
  contested border between Brauner and Olsson territories, 
  it was a battleground whenever the two dukes went to 
  war.
  In Gregory Eland’s great-grandfather’s time, the barony 
  was captured by Duke Olsson’s men; the Baron Eland 
  accepted his new allegiance philosophically and raised 
  his sons as loyal vassals of house Olsson.  Fifty years 
  later, in 680 BU, Duke Olsson foisted a greater disgrace 
  upon Eland by selling the barony, along with several of 
  its neighbors, back to Duke Brauner in exchange for a 
  temporary alliance against raiders from the Dominion.  
  Thus, young Gregory grew up in vassalage to the lord 
  of his ancestors, raised by parents and grandparents who 
  had spent their whole lives serving that lord’s hereditary 
  foe.
  Because of this conflicted background, neither Brauner 
  nor Olsson placed much trust in the young Baron Eland.  
  When hostilities between the houses inevitably resumed, 
  Duke Reinhardt Brauner declined to give command of 
  the local army to Gregory; instead, he placed the baron 
  and his retinue under a mercenary commander, an Arman 
  raider called Ivan Harskolff.  Baron Eland and his 
  knights, along with the retinues of other local lords, were 
  repeatedly thrown into the heat of the fighting - against 
  men of similar background or against peasant levies - 
  while the Duke’s professional soldiers claimed the glory 
  for one against-the-odds victory after another.
  Worse, at Duke Brauner’s orders, mercenary soldiers 
  quartered in the very castles of the local lords.  The 
  mercenaries showed no gratitude toward their unwilling 
  hosts.  They roistered, they depleted winter stores, they 
  chased serving wenches and beat servants.
  General Harskolff, who quartered at the castle of 
  Ravenspont south of Eland, did worse.  He took a 
  fancy to Baron Ravenspont’s daughter, Liesel - Gregory 
  Eland’s betrothed - and demanded she be given to 
  him as a concubine; the Armans of that time still prac-
  tice concubinage.  When Baron Ravenspont refused, 
  Harskolff killed him on the spot and locked Liesel in his 
  quarters.  His men also put to the sword the Ravenspont 
  bannermen in attendance.
  Gregory Eland’s younger brother, Chauncey, was a 
  squire at Ravenspont.  He broke away in the confusion 
  and spurred his horse to his brother’s lands, heedless of 
  a crossbow bolt lodged in his shoulder.  By the time he 
  reached Eland castle, Chauncey was feverish and nearly 
  incoherent, but he managed to gasp his story to his 
  brother before he fell unconscious.  Baron Eland imme-
  diately raised his own knights and sent messengers to 
  the surrounding baronies.  The resulting army, patterned 
  after the older feudal hosts of Nas’s past, descended 
  on Ravenspont and assailed the walls.  They found the 
  mercenaries drunk on Baron Ravenspont’s depleted wine 
  cellars and slew them to a man; Gregory Eland person-
  ally threw the outlander Harskolff from the castle walls.  
  Of the Ravenspont family, none survived, Liesel having 
  taken her own life rather than be subjected to Harskolff’s 
  cruel affections.
  Gregory Eland’s wrath did not die with a single rapa-
  cious mercenary, however.  He turned his host against 
  the remaining mercenaries, wiping them out before they 
  could reorganize.  This action did more than avenge 
  the offenses done the local folk, from serf to baron.  It 
  branded them traitors to Duke Brauner’s service - and so 
  bound them to Eland’s.
  Recognizing the sudden and inescapable bond between 
  he and his host, and that their only chance to survive lay 
  in total victory, Eland marched them northeast.  With 
  Brauner’s armies professional armies ringing the duchy’s 
  borders rather than holding its interior, Eland’s host 
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
  Page 7
  reached the gates of the duke’s capital, Nyssa, nearly 
  unopposed.  In the waning moon of 657 BU, Eland’s 
  desperate band of knights and men-at-arms stormed the 
  city walls, overwhelmed the duke’s retinue, and seized 
  Nyssa.
  Eland spared Reinhardt Brauner, even allowed him to 
  retain his title - in exchange for an oath of fealty.  For a 
  baron to thus turn the tables on his lord was unheard of, 
  but Brauner could not do otherwise.
  Of course, once Gregory Eland had a duke for a vassal, 
  he ceased to be a mere baron.  In 656 BU, Brauner 
  offered to crown him King of Nas.  To the shock of his 
  enemies and retainers alike, Eland refused, saying he 
  would not squabble over a crown like the dukes had.  
  He would not rule by taking the power of his rivals; he 
  would restore the feudal system of old.  Eland crowned 
  himself, not King, but Emperor, and he called his 
  domain Caneus, the Old Nas word for Union.
  The other dukes did not take kindly to this upstart 
  ‘emperor’ and his meteoric rise.  In short order, Eland 
  smashed armies from houses Olsson and Hanstrom.  
  Again, he spared the dukes, taking from them only their 
  autocratic power and an oath of fealty.  Their knights 
  and barons, reluctant to fight a man they saw more as 
  liberator than foeman, eagerly pledged themselves to the 
  renewed feudal order and the young Caneus Empire.
  Ludwig von Breit, the last of the independent dukes, 
  grabbed territory from the defeated houses and incorpo-
  rated their mercenary armies into his own.  In 653 BU, 
  von Breit’s army, swollen by every imaginable type of 
  mercenary, from Sametian horse archers to skirmishers 
  from Bal, met the heavy cavalry of Emperor Eland at 
  what historians would later call the Battle of Caneus.
  Three times, Eland’s host charged the professional 
  soldiers of von Breit, and each time were repulsed.  With 
  his army reduced to nearly half its original size and 
  night fast approaching, the Emperor took up his war 
  banner and led a last, seemingly suicidal charge against 
  the center of von Breit’s army.  The knights finally 
  broke through, splitting the ducal forces.  More impor-
  tantly, they reached the caravan of treasures looted from 
  Olsson and Hanstrom, with which von Breit intended 
  to pay his mercenaries.  Seeing their pay lost, most of 
  those soldiers withdrew from the battlefield, leaving the 
  stunned, exhausted knights of Caneus the victors.
  Gregory Eland was crowned emperor a second time 
  in Baron von Breit’s palace in Hadensburg in late 653 
  BU.  This time, his ascension was acknowledged by 
  the Dominion and the Arman clans - and presided over 
  by a country priest from a small Canean religious sect 
  that had already given him a greater gift than a crown, 
  and was soon to make itself felt with his descendents’ 
  patronage.
  Prophets, Preachers and Prelates
  The Sanguine Covenant had existed in isolated commu-
  nities in Nas for at least a few centuries before it 
  exploded onto the stage during the rise of the Caneus 
  Empire.  It might have remained a footnote in the 
  history of Exodus, if not for the two tragedies that insti-
  gated Gregory Eland’s rise to power - the death of his 
  betrothed, Liesel Ravenspont, and the terrible injuries to 
  his brother Chauncey.
  Chauncey Eland convalesced for over a year after the 
  fall of Ravenspont in 657 BU.  He barely survived at 
  all, and constantly struggled to breathe in the frigid air 
  of Nas.  After his brother defeated Duke Brauner and 
  proclaimed himself Emperor, Chauncey was sent to the 
  extreme north of the new Caneus Empire, where the 
  weather rapidly warmed as it approached the Wyldlands 
  of Bal.
  There, the invalid young noble entertained many 
  shamans, witch doctors and snake oil salesmen at his 
  brother’s expense, seeking a cure for his shattered body.
  At the same time, Lucius Horst, a priest of the Sanguine 
  Covenant, saw a vision of himself healing the emperor’s 
  young brother.  In his vision, he drew forth diseased 
  blood from Chauncey Eland’s body and cleansed it.  
  Then the blood flowed from his hands and spread across 
  the whole of the Caneus Empire - the whole of Exodus! 
  Caneus Empire
  Alignment  Neutral
  Capital  Nyssa
  Largest cities  Amara, Hadu, Perahta, Solvig
  Official language(s)  Common
  Regional languages  Nyssan, Haduan
  Government  Feudalist Monarchy
  1st in Charge  Empress  Cassandra Eland
  2nd in Charge  Vicereine Queen Sienna Eland
  3rd in Charge  Archduchess Crimson Sage Madelyne
  Legislature  Imperial Assembly
  Upper House  House of Kindgoms
  Lower House  Council of States
  Religon   Dhazvok, Koliav, Laita, Makash, Perun, Rylos, 
  Sanguine Lord
  Population  50 million+ (estimated)
  Currency   Standard Currency, Imperial Raven (2 GP), 
  Imperial Royal (25 gp), Imperial Crown 
  (10 gp), Imperial Eagle (2 GP), Imperial 
  Crescent (2 sp)
  Elite Military / Soldiers  Caneus High Guard
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
  Page 8
  priest in humble, silent prayer, lending his memory to 
  guide Lucius’s supplication.  He sent the rest of his court 
  away and sealed the throne room.
  An hour later, an exhausted priest and emperor emerged 
  from the throne room - in the company a dazed young 
  noblewoman with raven hair, whose last memory was of 
  taking her life before a mercenary could defile her.
  From that point on, Emperor Gregory and Empress 
  Liesel were converts to the Sanguine Covenant.
  By the time of Lucius’s death in 639 BU, he had gone 
  from the pastor of a tiny village sect to the prophet of 
  national religion.  A humble man, he declined the posi-
  tion of Archprelate of Nyssa; only with duress did he 
  accept the lesser position of Imperial Confessor.  The 
  explosive growth of his church happened because of his 
  works, but not by his hand.
  The church continued to grow in the ensuing century, 
  taking on many of the modern, familiar forms.  The 
  Sanguine Cathedral in Nyssa was completed in 601 BU; 
  the even larger Caneus Cathedral rose in Hadensburg in 
  597 BU.
  However, despite imperial sanction and the tales of 
  Lucius’s miracles, the Sanguine Covenant remained a 
  minority in the Caneus Empire as late as 562 BU.  Much 
  of the lesser nobility and even more of the peasantry 
  clove to their old, pagan traditions.  The clerics of these 
  gods might not raise the dead, but they had healed and 
  led their flocks for centuries, and their power was still 
  evident.  More, after Lucius’s death, few Covenant prel-
  ates demonstrated powers surpassing their pagan coun-
  terparts.  Were the prophet’s achievements indicative of 
  the strength of his one god, the people wondered, or of 
  his own holiness?
  Gregory Eland, his son Emperor Caspian Eland, and 
  his grandson Gregory II all left their pagan subjects in 
  peace, trusting to imperial-built cathedrals and the theo-
  logical arguments of the clergy to win people over to 
  the Covenant.  That changed in 564 BU, when Vincent 
  Eland, Gregory’s great-grandson, took the throne.
  Emperor Vincent was Gregory II’s third son, an often ill 
  and always ill-tempered youth whose only peace, such as 
  it was, came from his devotion to the Covenant.  Since 
  he was third in line to inherit the throne, he became a 
  Covenant novice in 567 BU and was nearly ready to 
  assume the duties of a junior prelate when his brothers, 
  Chauncey and Lucius, were killed during an expedition 
  to the Wyldlands of Bal.
  Forced to abandon his religious studies and assume a 
  throne for which he was entirely unprepared, Vincent 
  at first listened to his advisors and made few decisions 
  of his own.  By 562 BU, however, Vincent became 
  - like the life-giving blood of Tarac, the one god of the 
  Covenant.
  Lucius, a poor country clergyman who held ceremonies 
  in a barn because his village lacked the resources to 
  raise a temple, made a pilgrimage of nearly five hundred 
  miles to reach the villa where his destined patient 
  waited.  Because he had no money for clothes, he was 
  turned away at every inn he passed, called beggar and 
  worse; by rights, he should have starved or died from 
  exposure.  When he finally reached Chauncey Eland’s 
  villa, the guards turned him away, again mistaking him 
  for a beggar.  He waited outside the villa for four days, 
  ceasing his prayers only to sleep and to politely request 
  entry.  At last, one of the serving girls took pity on the 
  old cleric and brought him in through the servant’s 
  entrance.
  Once inside, Lucius immediately invited himself in to 
  Chauncey Eland’s presence.  The young noble, unlike his 
  guards, was willing to try anything to cure his ailment 
  and invited the priest forward.  Lucius offered up a 
  prayer to Tarac and laid his hands on the young noble’s 
  - and, with a last cough, Chauncey Eland rose from his 
  bed, hale and hearty as the day of his fateful ride from 
  Ravenspont.
  Sponsored by the dramatically converted younger 
  brother of the emperor, Lucius’s story spread like wild-
  fire through the Caneus Empire.  In 654 BU, Emperor 
  Gregory himself called Lucius to the capital in Nyssa.  
  The emperor thanked the priest for healing his brother 
  and expressed interest in learning more about Tarac’s 
  teachings - but with reservations.
  Gregory explained he was a less gentle soul than his 
  brother, and less trusting; he had seen the mystical 
  powers of the Kaga and read of the mental ones of the 
  departed Cavians.  Both could reputedly heal the sick 
  and wounded - but there was one miracle neither could 
  achieve.  Gregory begged Lucius, if it was within Tarac’s 
  power, to restore life to his betrothed, Liesel Ravenspont.
  Lucius, who had always taught that Tarac’s power was 
  bound only by his believers’ faith, was taken aback 
  by this request.  He had once revived a child who had 
  drowned in the lake near his home village, but that had 
  been seconds after the tragedy, not years.  No human 
  cleric had ever achieved a resurrection after such a span, 
  and tales of the dark priests of the First Ones doing 
  so were surely just legends.  Yet, he remembered the 
  prophecy and knew he must win the emperor over to the 
  Sanguine Covenant.  He swore to try.
  Gregory had meant this merely as a test of Lucius’s 
  sincerity, fully expecting an honest man to refuse.  When 
  Lucius seemed to think it possible, however, the emper-
  or’s whole demeanor changed.  He agreed to join the 
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
  Page 9
  convinced that his brothers’ deaths and his unwelcome 
  rise were part of a divine plan - that he was destined to 
  purify the Caneus Empire and bring it into proper devo-
  tion to the Sanguine Covenant.
  The Archprelate of Nyssa at the time was also a third 
  son of a noble house: Maximilian Brauner, of the 
  Elands’ former liege family.  He warned the emperor 
  against imposing the church on his subjects, begging 
  him not to stain the hands of the servants of Tarac with 
  forced conversions.  For the moment, Vincent toler-
  ated, but ignored, the archprelate.  He banned the prac-
  tice of pagan religions and confiscated the property of 
  non-Covenant clergy.  Cynical members of the court 
  suggested it was the expense of his brothers’ expedi-
  tion to Bal, not the alleged meaning of their deaths, that 
  spurred the emperor on, but they were soon to discover 
  otherwise.
  For a few years, Vincent contented himself with his ban 
  on the pagans, in part because the inhabitants of Bal 
  had retaliated in force and he was occupied fighting the 
  northern savages.  In 559 BU, however, he returned to 
  Nyssa and began the next phase of his plan to convert 
  his empire - imprisoning the druids and pagan clerics, 
  along with any lords who sheltered them.  This drew 
  outcries from across the empire, nowhere less than from 
  Archprelate Maximilian. The archprelate threatened to 
  declare the emperor a heretic; the emperor, unphased, 
  ordered the archprelate arrested, accused him of diab-
  olism, and had him executed in the palace courtyard.
  The next three decades became a nightmare for the 
  Caneus Empire.  Vincent appointed a new archprelate 
  from among his loyal clerics - violating the precepts of 
  the very church he meant to spread.  His persecution 
  of the pagans grew more and more severe.  His efforts 
  at forced conversion were largely successful, as terri-
  fied commoners and knights flocked to hastily raised 
  churches to show their devotion, but more and more of 
  the clergy refused to participate.  The emperor some-
  times ignored the ‘disloyal’ prelates and sometimes 
  executed them en masse to set an example.
  By 548 BU, Vincent was widely acknowledged as 
  a madman.  He rarely appeared in public, spending 
  most of his time shut up in his summer palace near 
  the Dominion border.  Duke Brauner, whose clerical 
  brother was among the first executed, Duke Hanstrom, 
  who controlled the land around the imperial summer 
  palace, and the emperor’s cousin Prince Albrecht Eland 
  conspired to assassinate him before he could do more 
  damage.  Their plot was discovered and all three men 
  executed.  Almost universally reviled, the mad emperor 
  managed to hold power for another twenty years.
  Finally, in 524 BU, another rebellion rose, this time 
  backed by Dukes von Breit and Olsson, by the displaced 
  heirs of Dukes Brauner and Hanstrom, whose lands 
  and titles had been confiscated, and by Hadensburg’s 
  Archprelate Castor Jung.  The archprelate, although 
  an imperial appointee, was horrified by what Vincent 
  had done to his church.  A warrior-priest in his youth, 
  Archprelate Jung had accompanied the expedition to Bal 
  and fought beside the emperor’s brothers.  Because they 
  had fallen under his care, he saw the present reign of 
  terror as partly his fault.
  The ducal army, with Jung at its head, marched on the 
  poorly-defended summer palace before the emperor real-
  ized he faced a rebellion.  Jung and a small group of elite 
  warriors entered the palace; none ever spoke of what 
  they saw within, but their haunted expressions spoke 
  volumes.  They found the emperor and ended his cruel 
  reign at sword’s point, emerging a full day after they 
  entered the palace.
  Archprelate Jung, realizing that the empire would 
  descend into anarchy and feuding baronies again without 
  an Eland emperor they could trust, decided to attempt 
  to replicate the feat of the priest Lucius.  Unlike Lucius, 
  he had the mortal remains of the unfortunate Prince 
  Albrecht Eland, but those remains had decayed far worse 
  in twenty years of ill-use than Empress Liesel’s would 
  have in a few years safely entombed.  Jung realized he 
  might fail, or unleash a worse horror on the empire, but 
  he saw no choice.
  Jung’s gambit paid off better than he could have imag-
  ined; he was able to restore Albrecht to life - and, 
  swiftly, to the vacant throne in Nyssa - and also, by 
  duplicating Lucius’s miracle of resurrection, to turn the 
  people’s fear of the Sanguine Covenant into faith.
  Nonetheless, the Covenant was forever changed by the 
  terrible reign of Vincent I and the reforms of Archprelate 
  Jung.  It remained an armed church, ever wary of heresy 
  that might plunge it back into darkness; it remained 
  armed against pagans and unbelievers as well, and 
  though it no longer persecuted them within the Caneus 
  Empire, nor did it look kindly on them in other lands.
  Within a hundred years, the Covenant would receive an 
  unprecedented opportunity to convert those lands.
  the Unification of the Arman 
  Protectorate
  Purely human civilization had come late to Abaddon 
  - and when Arman barbarians brought it with fire and 
  the sword, it was only loosely civilized.  Two centuries 
  of ruling the prosperous domain of the Sorcerer Kings 
  changed the continental Armans a great deal, however.
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
  Page 10
  By 500 BU, the Armans had settled completely into civi-
  lized life.  The six clans that had brought the Sorcerer 
  Kings low ruled in their abandoned palaces as indepen-
  dent princedoms.  Unlike their distant kin in Nas, the 
  Armans never possessed a true feudal structure.  The 
  clan leaders became princes without ever surrendering 
  any of their autocratic power to a network of barons and 
  knights.  If they had flirted with the idea, the fall of the 
  dukes of Nas to a baron-cum-emperor surely laid the 
  notion to rest.  Instead, the strong mercenary culture that 
  sent thousands of Armans to fight wars for foreign lords 
  also kept them busy in their home princedoms.
  The Armans of 500 BU had difficulties of their own, 
  however.  The rich plunder they had taken from the 
  conquest of Abaddon had sustained them in splendor for 
  years; the wages of mercenary work in Nas flooded their 
  economy with big-spending warriors for years more.  
  Both sources of wealth had run thin over the centuries.  
  The raiding culture from their island days would not 
  have paid for their palaces; the pickings from the neigh-
  boring nomads of Sametia and the Dominion hardly paid 
  for the price of expeditions to those lands.
  Of the Armans’ two neighbors, the Dominion was by far 
  the more prosperous.  The princely houses did not bother 
  organizing raids against the Cordel desert, but when their 
  warriors took it upon themselves to launch such attacks 
  - bringing back what wealth they could to fill Arman 
  coffers - the princes offered no complaint.
  Unfortunately for the Armans, the Dominion’s Khagan, 
  Faisel al Kasim, took a dimmer view of this privateering.  
  In 492 BU, he struck back.  Moving under the cover 
  of a magically-created sandstorm, his army traced the 
  steps of a particularly large raiding party to the lands of 
  the Arman Prince Sergei Babinovich.  The Dominion 
  forces exploded into Abaddon, firing fields and raising 
  fortifications.  Prince Babinovich raised his own army 
  and rushed to meet the “unprovoked invasion”.  It took 
  the Armans months to bring al Kasim’s swifter army to 
  battle, and when they did, their exhausted axemen and 
  spearmen were mowed down by well rested and magi-
  cally supported cavalry.  Prince Babinovich himself was 
  captured and taken back to Qijom as a prisoner, forcing 
  his horrified daughter, Olga, to pay a ruinous ransom 
  to the Dominion.  Prince Babinovich returned a broken 
  man, half-mad with disgrace and despair.
  The other Arman rulers were shocked by their brother 
  price’s humiliation.  For hundreds of years, they had 
  considered themselves invincible; defeat at the hands 
  of the Dominion, who they considered the banished 
  Sorcerer Kings’ “little cousins”, was the most terrible 
  disgrace imaginable.
  The Arman princes lacked the insight to recognize 
  their limitations and reevaluate their relationship with 
  the Dominion.  At the same time, theirs was still too 
  vigorous a civilization to allow a single defeat to break 
  them.  The other five great houses concluded that the 
  weakness was limited to the Babinovich princedom.  
  Rather than retreat and regroup, two other princes, 
  Nicola Kryszkas and Josef Chapaevonas, joined forces 
  to retaliate against the Dominion.  Their path took 
  them through Babinovich lands, where a rage-mad 
  Princess Olga gladly pledged marriage and aid to Nicola 
  Kryszkas, the younger of the vengeance-minded princes.
  Thus, in 494 BU, the hosts of three Arman princedoms 
  joined forces to invade the Dominion.
  The Khagan was waiting for them.
  Al Kasim understood the Armans better than they under-
  stood themselves.  They had become more citified than 
  civilized - no less warlike than their sea reaver ances-
  tors, but possessed of a sense of warfare entirely based 
  around capturing territory and holding key points.  In 
  the Cordel desert, there were no key points and only a 
  handful of cities, but a great many mirages and tribes 
  of fierce nomads.  The Khagan again led his enemies 
  a merry chase, refusing to give them the pitched battle 
  they dearly desired.  His mages, rather than confronting 
  the Arman shamans openly, mazed them with endlessly 
  shifting sands and mirages.
  After four months in the desert, the Arman army had 
  gone from a gleaming host of professional soldiers to a 
  ragtag band of hired swords desperate for food, water, 
  even shade.
  Still, the Khagan waited.
  Prince Chapaevonas, realizing the futility of the inva-
  sion, advised a retreat.  Prince Kryszkas might have 
  listened, but his young wife would hear none of it.  Olga 
  Babinovich demanded vengeance for her father - at any 
  cost.  Reluctantly, her husband agreed.  After another 
  month of sweltering in the desert, Prince Chapaevonas 
  despaired for his allies and withdrew his forces to his 
  own border, but the Kryszkas and Babinovich armies 
  remained.
  They would likely have died to the last man without ever 
  bringing the Dominion to battle, if they had not chanced 
  upon the cave of a Sanguine Covenant hermit.  Though 
  the old cleric seemed at least half mad, the Armans were 
  by now far further gone than that.  More, their culture 
  had long venerated wild holy men of a similar type.  
  The hermit told Nicola and Olga that they were sure to 
  perish in the desert, because their sinful natures left them 
  vulnerable to the Khagan’s powers.  Only a man pure 
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
  Page 11
  of heart, he explained, could see the truth in all things.  
  The hermit promised that, if they would embrace the 
  Sanguine Covenant, the god Tarac would show them 
  the true path to victory and lead them safely home; not 
  only that, their sons would one day rule all the Arman 
  peoples.
  At first, the Arman rulers scoffed at this; they knew the 
  Sanguine Covenant from afar and despised it as a crutch 
  for the weak peoples of Nas.  Heedless of the hermit, 
  they plunged back into the desert - and found themselves 
  back at the cave the next day.  Five more times, they 
  tried for the Dominion capital of Qijom, and five more 
  times they found only the hermit.
  After the fifth time, they listened.
  By now, al Kasim, judging his enemies thoroughly 
  broken, at last decided to put an end to the inva-
  sion.  His army crept up on the Arman host in 
  the night, planning on their waking to the sight 
  of his huge body of troops.  The Armans, he 
  judged, would be completely exhausted and 
  willing to bargain their lives for water, certainly 
  unwilling to fight a much larger force.
  Instead, he found a force of well-rested warriors, fed and 
  watered despite the total absence of any sustenance in 
  that part of the desert, wary and ready for battle.
  Nicola had arrayed his troops in the crags around the 
  hermit’s cave, hiding his wife and a handpicked force 
  of elite warriors in the cave itself.  Al Kasim’s light 
  cavalry could not charge into the rocks without riding 
  beneath the spears of the entrenched Armans.  Rather 
  than waste his troops in a suicidal attack, the Khagan 
  decided to flush his enemies out by magic.  He and his 
  sorcerous khans called up a powerful sandstorm to blast 
  the Armans from the crags - and watched in horror as 
  a thunderstorm, entirely unnatural in the desert, over-
  whelmed their sorcery.
  The sand between the Dominion and Arman forces 
  turned to thick mud, trapping horses and camels and 
  men used to the shifting sands.  The red sand became red 
  mud, like a sea of blood - and gave the coming battle its 
  name: the Battle of the Rain of Blood.  At Nicola’s order, 
  his men smeared the mud on their shields and tabards in 
  a crude pastiche of the Sanguine Covenant’s blood drop 
  symbol - and charged.
  Al Kasim was stunned by the reversal of the Armans’ 
  fortunes and the failure of his magic, but he was still 
  a cannier commander than his opponent.  His men 
  dispersed as best they could in the mud, drawing the 
  Armans in so their flanks could close on either side and 
  surround them entirely.  Whatever tactical advantage 
  the infantry-trained Armans had was lost as the battle 
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
  Page 12
  became a chaotic melee, speed, spell and wits against 
  strength and newfound resolve.
  When night fell, it found over a thousand Armans dead 
  amidst four times their number of Dominion corpses, 
  while Prince and Khagan, exhausted by a personal 
  duel that had lasted for over an hour - such was the 
  skill of both leaders - watched the sun set over drawn 
  blades.  The battle might have continued into the night 
  or dragged on to the next day, inevitably ending with the 
  Armans and many thousands more of their enemies dead, 
  but the force left in the cave, accompanied by Princess 
  Olga and the hermit himself, emerged.  Heedless of 
  the scattered melees still going on around them, they 
  marched to the two leaders.  At the hermit’s urging, the 
  Princess approached her husband and her enemy.  She 
  knelt in the mud at the feet of the shocked Khagan 
  and offered her forgiveness for the disgrace done her 
  family, asking that both armies go their separate ways in 
  exchange.
  Al Kasim, who had no desire to continue the costly 
  battle, agreed, asking only that they explain - Nicola how 
  he had provisioned his army, Olga her change of heart.  
  They introduced him to the hermit, who answered for 
  them both.
  The Arman army retreated from the Dominion, guided 
  by the very nomads they had come to fight.  Al Kasim 
  returned to Qijom, taking the anonymous hermit with 
  him to teach him the ways of the Sanguine Covenant.
  In the Arman princedoms, Josef Chapaevonas had told 
  of his allies’ mad quest for vengeance and how it had 
  surely led them to their deaths in the desert.  Because 
  Nicola and Olga left no heirs and few troops, Prince 
  Chapaevonas was able to occupy much of both their 
  lands and quietly sell off those regions too remote for 
  his men to govern.  His motives may have been benign 
  - surviving documents indicate the regents left behind 
  by his fellow rulers were plotting to usurp the vacant 
  thrones - but in practice he effectively tripled his own 
  holdings.  When, against all odds, the surviving troops 
  of Nicola and Olga emerged from the Dominion with a 
  tale of miracles and a foreign god, Prince Chapaevonas 
  declined to relinquish his pole position among the Arman 
  princes.
  Much of 493 BU was consumed by the civil war 
  between the two displaced Arman rulers and their former 
  ally.  Their tired and reduced army began partisan 
  actions against the occupying Chapaevonas troops.  
  Their uprising seemed hopeless, since most of their 
  former subjects clung to their shamanic tradition and 
  rejected the missionary faith of their converted former 
  rulers.
  In 492 BU, however, the Sanguine Covenant became the 
  most powerful ally the Babinovich-Kryszkas uprising 
  could have asked for.  The Archprelate of Nyssa declared 
  the uprising a holy war of believers against pagans, 
  and though the Caneus Empire itself did not become 
  involved, several dukes and hundreds of lesser nobles 
  took up the banner.  To the astonishment of Archprelate 
  and Arman prince alike, several khans of the Dominion 
  also rallied to their cause, their beliefs fired by the 
  miracles at the Battle of the Rain of Blood two years 
  before.  As the hermit had predicted, the believers of the 
  Sanguine Covenant unlocked the Arman throne for the 
  dual line of Babinovich-Kryszkas.  491 BU had barely 
  dawned when Prince Chapaevonas surrendered to Nicola 
  Kryszkas coalition forces.
  The Canean-trained clergy who were Nicola’s closest 
  advisors recommended he follow Gregory Eland’s 
  example and spare his enemy’s life.  Nicola agreed, with 
  the condition that Josef Chapaevonas’s children be raised 
  in the Sanguine Covenant and his eldest daughter inherit 
  his lands and wed Nicola and Olga’s newborn son, 
  Konstantin Kryszkas.
  Compared to the marches and miracles marking his 
  parents’ rise to power, Konstantin’s was compara-
  tively tame.  A scholarly man heavily influenced by 
  his mother, he was only a passable prince but became 
  one of the leading layman in the Sanguine Covenant; 
  much of the theology taken for granted by the modern 
  church, and almost all of the Arman Rite’s unique rituals 
  and customs, came from his pen.  He married Katya 
  Arman Protectorate
  Alignment  Lawful Neutral
  Capital  Mureath
  Largest cities  Mavra, Olesia, Telek, Tusya
  Official language(s)  Common
  Regional languages  Mavran, Tusyian
  Government  Theocracy Aristocracy
  1st in Charge  Empress Anayanka Kryszka 
  2nd in Charge  Executor Raina Blanca Kryszka
  3rd in Charge  Grand Vizier Viktor Dyakonovsky 
  Legislature  Oktober House
  Upper House  Imperial Council
  Lower House  Imperial Committee
  Religon  Sanguine Lord
  Population  40 million+ (estimated)
  Currency   Standard Currency, Imperial Raven (2 GP), 
  Imperial Royal (25 gp), Imperial Crown 
  (10 gp), Imperial Eagle (2 GP), Imperial 
  Crescent (2 sp)
  Elite Military / Soldiers  Protectorate Peacekeepers
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
  Page 13
  Chapaevonas, a young woman seven years his elder, and 
  by all accounts had a conventional if somewhat distant 
  family life.
  His eldest son, Prince Alexei Kryszkas, was a more 
  significant secular figure.  His father’s princedom was 
  three times the size of its rivals’ and by far the domi-
  nant Arman power in culture and economics.  Without 
  ever taking to the battlefield, Alexei maneuvered the 
  Kryszkas dynasty to even greater heights, culminating 
  in 457 BU, when he married Anastasia Ivanovenas, the 
  daughter of the second-most powerful Arman prince.  
  With four-fifths of the Abaddon region directly or indi-
  rectly under his rule, he proclaimed himself the Tsar 
  of the Arman Protectorate, a union of all the Arman 
  princedoms.  Because of his overwhelming power, the 
  remaining princes could not openly oppose his claim, 
  and the Protectorate was born in very nearly its modern 
  form, tied together not by fealty, necessity or force, but 
  by the web of marriages between its royal families.
  the Unification of the Reis 
  Confederacy
  While the Sanguine Covenant spread unity through 
  southern Exodus, another faith, equally sanguine, 
  gripped the hearts of the Wyldlands of Bal’s inhabitants 
  - literally.
  The Brotherhood of Khayne was a savage sect for a 
  savage land.  Atop step pyramids dyed red by the blood 
  of human sacrifices, its adherents offered up gruesome 
  offerings to their god.  For centuries, the worship of 
  Khayne was limited to the cannibal tribes of the deep 
  jungle and the city-state of Xehitoch in northeastern Bal; 
  other sects, only slightly less bloodthirsty but far less 
  ambitious, ruled other walled cities hidden in the jungle.
  In 382 BU, Euhudi, high priestess of Khayne, saw favor-
  able omens in the intestines of a sacrificial victim.  She 
  believed, perhaps rightly, that Khayne had chosen to 
  spread his cult across all of Bal, and that the city of 
  Xehitoch was destined to lead the way.  As Eukudi was 
  both the spiritual leader of Xehitoch and the concubine 
  of its war leader, Prince Xoltec, her words fired the city’s 
  imagination.  Xoltec gathered an army of warriors and 
  blood mages, made pacts with the Khayne-worshipping 
  cannibal tribes, and set off to win prisoners and glory.
  Xoltec and Euhudi’s army swept over several unsus-
  pecting neighbors before anyone realized the danger.  
  Finally, in 380 BU, the cities of Naphil and Baargon, 
  alerted by their allies among the Enuka beastmen, joined 
  forces to bring the Brotherhood army to battle.  Darai, 
  war leader of Naphil, commanded the coalition host.
  The armies met in a small clearing south of Baargon.  
  Darai arrayed the core of his force - his personal retinue 
  of Naphil half-giants, the temple guards of the priest-
  king Baargon, and two companies of Arman mercenaries 
  - in the clearing, keeping the rest of his army hidden to 
  disguise its smaller size.  Xoltec, whose forces had yet 
  to know defeat, threw the brunt of his force against this 
  line, expecting it to fold as others had.  The Baargon 
  and Arman troops, formed into a shield wall, held the 
  line; the Naphil warriors struck over it with their mighty 
  warclubs.  At the same time, Darai sent an Enuka 
  scout to the rest of his force, which slipped through the 
  jungle and fell upon the Xehitoch army’s flanks.  The 
  Brotherhood fell back in disarray, thinking they were 
  under attack by a larger force when in fact they had the 
  advantage of numbers.  Prince Xoltec was slain and the 
  priestess Euhudi captured.
  In accordance with Wyldlands custom, the captured men 
  of Xehitoch were brought to the victors’ cities as sacri-
  fices.  Euhudi, as a priestess, was safe from this fate and 
  would normally have been ransomed back to Xehitoch.  
  Rather than return to a city she believed had failed her 
  god, however, she insinuated herself with the victorious 
  Darai.  When his troops returned to Naphil, they took the 
  high priestess of Khayne with them.
  Euhudi became Darai’s mistress, then his queen, ruling 
  at his side in Naphil for the next decade.  She gradu-
  ally introduced elements of Brotherhood worship into 
  the already bloody practices of the Naphil priesthood, 
  manipulating their rituals to reflect the cult of her native 
  city.
  In 371 BU, Darai died without a clear heir; Euhudi, 
  his queen, had never given him any children, and his 
  offspring by various lesser wives bickered amongst 
  themselves.  Euhudi, still as beautiful and charismatic 
  as the day she entered Naphil, set herself up as regent 
  and arbiter between the warring heirs.  She played them 
  against each other and against the other priests and war 
  leaders of Naphil who hoped to displace them, until at 
  last, in 369 BU, only one remained: Ordoa, Darai’s son 
  by one of his lesser wives.  Euhudi embraced Ordoa as 
  the rightful heir and anointed him king of Naphil on a 
  thrown made from the bones of his rivals - king in the 
  name of Khayne, god of blood.
  The gambit paid off; Ordoa did not care what god 
  ruled his soul if he ruled the country, and Euhudi had 
  so successfully insinuated Brotherhood practice into 
  the native cult of Naphil that it hardly changed for the 
  common citizens.  Again high priestess and lover of a 
  powerful war leader, Euhudi returned her gaze to neigh-
  boring lands.
  The city-states of Bal regularly sallied out to attack 
  each other; feuds older than the empires of the south, 
  some older than human civilization, locked them into 
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
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  an eternal cycle of bloodshed.  When Naphil, ally to 
  Baargon a few years before, launched a massive attack 
  on its neighbor in 366 BU, it caught few observers by 
  surprise.  For the second time, an army acting at high 
  priestess Euhudi’s behest approached Baargon, and 
  for the second time faced the shield wall of its temple 
  guards and southern mercenaries.  During those years, 
  one of the mercenaries, Lavrenty Roskoff, had claimed 
  the crown of Baargon.  It was Roskoff who led the city’s 
  defense against his former allies.
  Roskoff was a canny and charismatic fighter, but a 
  straightforward one compared to Darai of Naphil.  He 
  followed Darai’s plan of battle almost to the latter, 
  trusting his men’s plate armor and metal weapons to 
  win through even without the Naphil half-giants at their 
  backs.
  His trust was misplaced.  Euhudi also remembered 
  Darai’s battle plan; she advised Ordoa to send a force 
  of slave-soldiers at the center of the Baargon line and to 
  sweep his elite warriors around Roskoff’s left flank.  The 
  Naphil war leader followed her advice and executed the 
  plan flawlessly; his men folded up the troops waiting in 
  ambush and crashed into the Baargon left.  Much more 
  massive than the humans of Xehitoch, Naphil’s warriors 
  smashed through armor and shield wall alike.  Only a 
  handful of mercenaries and Baargon warriors escaped to 
  the jungle, and the city itself fell almost without resis-
  tance.
  Ordoa and Euhudi did not stop at Baargon.  Two more 
  city-states, including the latter’s native Xehitoch, fell to 
  their rapidly swelling host before the end of 365 BU; the 
  high priestess dedicated each to Khayne with thousands 
  of sacrifices.
  While the people of Bal were a fatalistic lot, accepting 
  of their bloodthirsty gods and the savage jungle 
  surrounding their cities, the sanguine excess of Euhudi’s 
  cult shocked even them.  Most of the eastern Wyldlands 
  had fallen under Brotherhood rule, and the feuding cities 
  of the west looked askance at this growing empire.  In 
  357 BU, in the city of Reis, the leaders of free Bal met, 
  along with ambassadors from the increasingly concerned 
  southern empires.  At the urging of the Canean ambas-
  sador, they sent word of the wicked Brotherhood cult 
  to Nyssa and beseeched the archprelate to declare a 
  crusade.  Meanwhile, the free cities of Bal united under 
  Prince Ataulpa Gazsi of Reis, a legendary panther 
  warrior, and prepared to hold off the horde from the east.
  Learning of the free cities’ plea to the powerful Caneus 
  Empire, Euhudi urged her followers to strike immedi-
  ately at this newfound ‘Reis Confederacy.’  Brotherhood 
  warriors under Ordoa marched west in the thousands, 
  their numbers bolstered by the cannibal tribes who 
  shared their bloody god.
  Late in 357 BU, the armies met for the first time.  
  Recognizing that his men did not have scouts as capable 
  as their foes, Ataulpa Gazsi raised a swathe of jungle 
  a mile across and three miles wide.  Rivers flanked his 
  position and cliffs backed it.  The outnumbered Reis 
  army could not escape from this position - exactly as 
  Ataulpa wanted it.  A finish fighter, he knew the fear-
  some reputation of the Brotherhood would send his men 
  packing long before he wanted to quit the field.  By 
  forcing the eastern host into the open and his own to 
  stand and fight, he made it a contest of wills and fighting 
  skill rather than morale and stealth.
  The armies met exactly as Ataulpa intended.  
  Brotherhood slave-soldiers charged across the river 
  first, suffering ruinous casualties from the short bows 
  and javelins of the Reis army.  By the time they reached 
  Ataulpa’s lines, they were almost completely wiped 
  out; behind them, however, came the shock troops of 
  Euhudi’s cult, the half-giants of Naphil and the high 
  priestess’s towering consort.  This block crashed against 
  Ataulpa’s center while cannibal savages harried his 
  flanks.  Had the Reis army been able to flee, they surely 
  would have broken then, but, trapped as they were, they 
  had no choice but to fight and die with their fearless 
  prince.  Ataulpa’s panther warriors did not fight like the 
  Arman-taught heavy infantry of Baargon; they danced 
  about the slower Naphil elites, leaping on their backs 
  and slashing their tendons with sharp-edged war clubs.  
  Ordoa fell, nearly covered with panther warriors; his 
  two sons, who would have inherited his power, were 
  slain almost at the same time, one cut down by Ataulpa’s 
  legendary dancing blade.  With the loss of their leader, 
  the Brotherhood horde panicked; the Naphil stood their 
  Reis Confederacy
  Alignment  Neutral Good
  Capital  Awenasa
  Largest cities  Amitola, Izusa, Nashota, Shima
  Official language(s)  Common
  Regional languages  Izusian, Shiman
  Government  Federated Republic
  1st in Charge  Imperatrix Lolani Gazsi
  2nd in Charge  Executor Rex Octavio Sabinus
  3rd in Charge  Grand Vizier Bronze Sage Arianna
  Legislature  Confederacy Congress
  Religon   Dhazvok, Koliav, Laita, Makash, Perun, Rylos, 
  Sanguine Lord
  Population  20 million+ (estimated)
  Currency  Standard Currency, Bartering
  Elite Military / Soldiers Confederate Sentinels
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
  Page 15
  ground, dying to the last man over their ruler’s body, but 
  the cannibals and slave soldiers broke for the river.
  Euhudi realized Khayne’s temporal realm rested on the 
  outcome of the battle before her.  Since the river was 
  already red with blood, her sanguine sorcery was easily 
  able to control it, forming immense crimson elementals 
  that loomed over the battlefield.  They crashed like a 
  wave over her own allies and surged toward the Reis 
  army - and stopped.  Ataulpa’s mystics had yet to play 
  their hand.  Wise in the timeless secrets of the Kaga, 
  these arcanists battled the bloody priestess’s will.  The 
  blood elementals sank back into the river, dragging the 
  screaming Brotherhood army back to hell with them.
  Ataulpa’s army quickly conquered the cities of the 
  east, who welcomed the vanquisher of their cruel high 
  priestess.  With his reputation secure, the whole of the 
  east as well as mighty Reis at his command, and the 
  evident favor of the immortal Kaga, Ataulpa became the 
  first Imperator of the Reis Confederacy in 356 BU.
  Scholars could only speculate on Euhudi’s fate, for 
  the high priestess of Khayne vanished after the Battle 
  of the River of the Dead.  Her cult went underground, 
  spread by madmen and cannibals throughout the Reis 
  Confederacy and eventually to more distant lands.  
  Ironically, the crusade she feared never materialized; by 
  the mid-300s, the Caneus Empire had no time for reli-
  gious warfare.  Its attentions were fixed elsewhere…
  the Dawn of Total War
  For centuries, each region of Exodus had played host 
  to civil wars and factional strife.  By 350 BU, however, 
  four great empires reigned in the Wyldlands of Bal, 
  the ice fields of Nas, the desert of Cordel and the hills 
  of Abaddon.  Even before Bal was unified into the 
  Reis Confederacy, the southern powers, united by the 
  Sanguine Covenant but sharing little else, armed them-
  selves for the first clash of empires since the War of 
  Mind and Magic more than a thousand years before.
  Because the empires occupied the entirety of their native 
  regions, they naturally looked to Sametia, home to scat-
  tered tribes of nomads and barbarians, as the logical 
  place to expand.  Sametia provided more fertile country 
  than Cordel or Nas, whose growing populations tested 
  the limits of their agriculture; the Arman Protectorate 
  did not need more farmland, but it did need more land, 
  for the remaining Arman seafarers had begun to abandon 
  their increasingly volcanic home island and were eager 
  to carve out new territories.  After the Reis Confederacy 
  achieved union, it, too, joined in jockeying over Sametia.  
  From 360 to 290 BU, dozens, if not hundreds, of skir-
  mishes between the empires and natives erupted on the 
  plains of Sametia; these were not wars of conquest, 
  merely probes by each empire to determine the will of its 
  neighbors.
  In 289 BU, the Dominion escalated the conflict, not 
  by an act of war but by an astounding feat of magic.  
  Magical theory advanced rapidly under the Dominion’s 
  caste system.  It had seemed to culminate in 322 BU 
  with the development of windsailing ships, elegant 
  sloops designed to cruise the skies like ordinary ships 
  did the seas, but Khan Ahmed Ibn Bury of the city of 
  Anidem exceeded all his rivals.  Combining the powers 
  of more than a hundred sorcerers and knowledge gleaned 
  from study of the Kaga, he raised his entire city into the 
  sky, making it a floating, nigh-impregnable fortress and 
  base of power.
  The Arman Protectorate took note.  Tsar Vasiliy 
  Kryszkas demanded the Dominion surrender the secrets 
  of this incalculably valuable invention to its rivals; 
  hoping to draw support from the Caneus Empire, he 
  included them in his plea.  When Khagan Malik Ibn 
  Hassan declined the request, Vasiliy declared war.
  Imperial war proved very different from factional strife.  
  Although it began in Sametia, the conflict soon spilled 
  over to the entire Dominion-Protectorate border.  Rather 
  than single armies assembled to fight either a one-day 
  melee or a siege, both sides fielded multiple armies that 
  stretched across many miles.  Old traditions of single 
  combat, the tactic of the massed charge, the very nature 
  of military force - all changed rapidly 
  When a Protectorate army reached Anidem in 288, it 
  unveiled its own innovations - extraordinary leaps in 
  technology.  Crude clockwork war engines bombarded 
  the floating city while balloons filled with lighter-than-
  air gas lifted invading troops through a magical and 
  mundane barrage from Dominion windsailing vessels.  
  The attack was repulsed, but several districts of Anidem 
  collapsed back to the ground, taking with them untold 
  numbers of civilians.  The Dominion retaliated with 
  ritual magic, cursing the Protectorate countryside to 
  endless night.  Crops withered, animals shied and peas-
  ants cowered.  Tsar Vasiliy, unable to break the curse 
  or draw the Caneus Empire into the fight, agreed to 
  an uneasy peace.  The Khagan, satisfied that he had 
  humbled the invaders, lifted the curse.
  From 287 to 263, the empires restricted their jockeying 
  for position to Sametia, but the Reis Confederacy and 
  the Caneus Empire came to blows after a group of 
  Covenant missionaries were sacrificed in a Confederate 
  city.  The Canean knights launched the crusade Reis’s 
  first imperator had hoped for a century earlier, but 
  it quickly became apparent that their advantages - 
  manpower, armor and heavy cavalry - were useless in 
  the sweltering jungles of Bal.  Thousands of Canean 
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
  Page 16
  knights died of jungle diseases before ever engaging the 
  armies of Reis.  Worse, they brought the plague back 
  with them, plunging the Sanguine Covenant’s clergy 
  into a constant battle against the disease.  Archprelate 
  Karl Edegard proclaimed the disease divine punishment 
  for the empire’s overreach and cautioned against further 
  invasions.  Regardless of the spiritual weight of his proc-
  lamation, its strategic worth soon became apparent: Reis 
  armies retaliated in 251 and again in 235, but proved 
  every bit as ill-equipped to fight in Nas as their foes 
  were in the Wyldlands.  Eventually, the two empires 
  declared the contested province of Koryth a neutral 
  zone, in which neither would enforce their rule 
  without the other’s consent.
  Despite the relatively brief wars of the 
  century, all the empires realized just 
  how devastating they could be; tens 
  of thousands of soldiers and almost 
  as many civilians perished in the 
  two wars - more than had perished 
  in any of the empires’ wars of unifi-
  cation.
  The battle to come, however, would 
  make those wars mere footnotes.
  the Dominion-
  Protectorate 
  Wars and the 
  Founding of the 
  Janissaries
  Dimitri Dyakonoviks, the 
  dashing, ambitious second 
  son of the prince of the last 
  independent Arman princedom, 
  seduced Ilyana Kryszkas, the 
  eldest daughter of the Tsar of 
  the Protectorate, in 203 BU.  
  Rather than allow the disgrace 
  to become public, Tsar Pieter 
  Kryszkas gave his consent 
  to the match and the pair 
  were swiftly wed.  Almost 
  immediately, Dimitri 
  pressed his claim on his 
  ancestral lands, urging 
  the Tsar to place him on 
  the Dyakonoviks throne 
  in place of his father 
  and brother.
  Prince Lavrenty 
  Dyakonoviks, 
  Dimitri’s father, 
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
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  panicked when he heard of his ungrateful child’s 
  demands.  Rather than go to the Tsar, who had no inten-
  tion of provoking his ally, Lavrenty appealed to his 
  western neighbors, the Dominion, for military protection.
  Khagan Malik Ibn Hassan had done much to ease 
  the tensions between the two countries, and had 
  even guested at the Tsar’s palace a few years before.  
  Unfortunately, he was nearly a hundred years old and 
  on his deathbed, and his grandson and heir, Ahmed, 
  had been educated at Anidem and hated the Armans for 
  damaging the floating city.  A Dominion army under the 
  aspiring Khagan agreed to the Dyakonoviks proposal and 
  moved to defend the princedom’s borders.
  To Tsar Pieter, this move seemed like an invasion of 
  Arman territory and a betrayal of the treaty he had 
  contracted with the Dominion.  An Arman army with the 
  Tsar at its head immediately marched to the Dominion-
  Protectorate border, while a second, jointly led by 
  Dimitri Dyakonoviks and the Tsarevich Nicola, assem-
  bled at the edge of the Dyakonoviks princedom.
  The resulting conflict, someday called the Lesser 
  Dominion-Protectorate War, seemed anything but lesser 
  at the time.
  The first volley was fired in 202 BU, when a freak light-
  ning storm swamped a company of the Protectorate’s 
  new clockwork juggernauts at the Dyakonoviks border.  
  Dimitri Dyakonoviks blamed the Dominion’s wyrd-
  casters, or battle-mages, and ordered an attack on their 
  lines.
  For the next twenty-six years, Dominion and 
  Protectorate smashed against each other, fighting over 
  the Dyakonoviks princedom, which was reduced nearly 
  to slag by the magical and mechanical forces unleashed 
  upon it, over the dangerous power of the city of Anidem, 
  over the sacking of Anidem a century before - ultimately, 
  over the fact that not fighting became inconceivable.
  Tsar Pieter fell in battle in 196 BU, his body turned to 
  stone by a wyrdcaster.  Ahmed Ibn Malik, now Khagan, 
  had the statue of the old warrior placed in his palace as a 
  trophy.
  Tsar Nicola IV, hard-pressed by the more magically 
  adept Dominion and enraged by their treatment of his 
  father, instituted one of the most controversial military 
  programs in all Exodus by founding the Protectorate 
  Peacekeepers.  An elite regiment formed from the 
  finest Arman youth, the Peacekeepers were unlike any 
  soldiers seen before; they were identified as children 
  and recruited into a secret training facility in the heart 
  of the Protectorate, where grueling mental and physical 
  tests honed them into living weapons.  More shockingly, 
  their numbers included both men and women, and their 
  service was for life - this was a force not recruited to win 
  one war, but bred to win all wars.  Many of the Arman 
  nobles were horrified, and the Sanguine Covenant, more 
  powerful in the Protectorate than anywhere else on 
  Exodus, condemned the project, saying it was inhuman, 
  worthy of the diabolical First Ones.  Many of the critics, 
  both secular and religious, disappeared without a trace.
  One, however, the Tsar dared not remove from service: 
  General Alexei Brushkov, the foremost warrior and field 
  commander of the Protectorate.  Where all other Arman 
  commanders failed, Brushkov won battle after battle.  
  However, he became increasingly frustrated with the 
  war, lamenting the gloriless, impersonal slaughter over 
  which he presided so masterfully.  Brushkov longed 
  for bygone days when, at least in his view, honor and 
  courage won battles, not numbers.
  In 184 BU, Brushkov, disgusted by the ugly rumors 
  about the Peacekeeper project and its vanishing critics, 
  tendered his resignation.  The entire Protectorate was 
  horrified to see the general depart, taking with him 
  two dozen of his most accomplished lieutenants.  They 
  vanished into the Sametian wilderness ahead of the 
  inevitable demands for their return - or their heads.  
  The shaken Protectorate was forced to sue for peace 
  with the Dominion, conceding large tracts of rich farm-
  land, including most of the contested Ivanovenas and 
  Dyakonoviks territories.
  The departed officers knew nothing of this, however.  
  They disappeared into the sparsely populated wilder-
  ness of Koryth, in the contested lands between the 
  Caneus Empire and the Reis Confederacy.  In 182 BU, 
  Brushkov, always an introspective man, founded the 
  Janissaries - an order of warrior-ascetics dedicated to 
  no king or country, serving only their code of honor and 
  their consciences.
  Brushkov hoped, by attracting the greatest military 
  minds of all four empires, to bring an end to the excess 
  of imperial wars and return Exodus to an age when 
  knights and barons settled their disputes with honor 
  rather than slaving for a distant master.  Brushkov 
  adapted much of the Janissary philosophy from that 
  of Caneus’s Emperor Gregory Eland, a man he greatly 
  respected, but the modern Caneus Empire looked on the 
  Janissaries with no more favor than the other imperial 
  powers.
  The Janissaries might have remained an unusual footnote 
  in Exodus history, a curious movement that rose and fell 
  with the charisma and drive of their first grandmaster, 
  had they not chosen to settle in Koryth, and more specif-
  ically in the ruined fortress of Aremyhk.  For centuries, 
  the ancient citadel, dating back at least to the Cavian 
  Empire, had lain empty, because the locals considered 
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
  Page 18
  it haunted by the spirits of its former inhabitants.  On 
  some level, they may have been correct; in the depths 
  of Aremyhk, the Janissaries discovered mental remnants 
  from the Age of Mind and Magic - and, either by their 
  own mental devotions or by some imponderable alien 
  whim, learned to master those remnants.  To their incred-
  ible martial disciplines, the Janissaries added mental 
  powers not seen on Exodus for a thousand years.
  Psionics or no, the wider world was not ready for the 
  Janissaries’ ideas, and their order remained obscure - a 
  whispered threat to the great empires, a secret hope to 
  many of their subjects.
  the twilight War
  While Alexei Brushkov was founding his mystical 
  order, other Armans commanders, and their foes in 
  the Dominion, were pushing their respective rulers to 
  resume hostilities.
  Tsar Nikola IV died in 158 BU, passing imperial power 
  to the line of his sister Ilyana and her husband, Dimitri, 
  whose ambitions had sparked the first war major war 
  between the Protectorate and the Dominion.  Ilyana 
  reigned until her death in 145 BU, after which her son 
  took the throne as Tsar Georgy II.  Georgy II was the 
  first Arman Tsar to launch an extensive program of civil 
  modernization to match the country’s military expan-
  sion.  He laid a network of ‘gearlines,’ vast clockworks 
  that propelled trams of men and material across the 
  Protectorate, and sponsored the construction of a massive 
  imperial university in Mureath.  While these civil works 
  projects became the marvels of Exodus, they brought 
  home to the Dominion how dangerous the Protectorate 
  was becoming, and how completely it had recovered 
  from the previous war.
  In 119 BU, the Dominion ambassador to the Reis 
  Confederacy was murdered.  Blame fell on a member 
  of the Protectorate Ambassador’s staff; the Protectorate 
  refused to surrender an Arman citizen to the notably 
  harsh justice of the Confederacy, promising instead to 
  try the suspected assassin in an Arman court.  Neither 
  Dominion nor Confederacy considered this an accept-
  able solution; on the eve of the suspect’s extradition, 
  Imperatrix Chanui of the Reis Confederacy gave the 
  Dominion permission to perform an extradition of its 
  own.  Dominion and Confederate troops took the Arman 
  embassy by storm and dragged the suspected assassin 
  from his countrymen.
  The Protectorate immediately launched a protest, 
  warning that if their man was not released immediately, 
  they would consider it an act of war by both countries.  
  Imperatrix Chanui complied - sending every part of the 
  Arman captive to the Tsar, in five separate caravans.  
  With the fifth, she attached a letter, informing the Tsar 
  that he could make no demands of her country, and 
  that crimes committed there would be dealt with in the 
  Confederacy’s way.
  In 118 BU, the Arman Protectorate declared war on the 
  Reis Confederacy.  Nineteen days after the declaration 
  reached Reis, the Dominion launched an attack on the 
  now weakened Arman flank, catching the Protectorate 
  as it was moving troops toward Sametia and the 
  Confederate border.
  Because the Reis Confederacy was hundreds of miles 
  of Sametian wilderness from the Protectorate, Tsar 
  Georgy focused on the more immediate foe.  The first 
  two decades of what became the longest war in Exodus’s 
  human era were thus considered the Second, or Greater, 
  Dominion-Protectorate War.  As with its predecessor, 
  this conflict proved indecisive, a seemingly endless 
  grapple of Arman warcraft and artifice against Dominion 
  mobility and magic.
  In 83 BU, however, the Reis Confederacy joined the fray 
  in earnest, formally annexing the Sametian colonies of 
  the Protectorate - and stationing “peacekeeping forces” 
  in the Dominion’s colonies.  Neither of the southern 
  powers could afford to send significant forces to protect 
  their holdings in the contested lands, but in 82 BU, the 
  Caneus Empire, concerned that the Confederacy was 
  becoming too powerful to contain in the Wyldlands 
  and would spill into the Koryth neutral zone, engaged 
  the Reis army in Sametia.  The Confederacy responded 
  by declaring war on the Caneans; in 80 BU, pressured 
  by the need for aid against the Protectorate and their 
  inability to hold their Sametian colonies, the Dominion 
  also declared against the Caneans.
  This marked the beginning of the conflict Exodus would 
  know as the Twilight War.  None of the four great 
  empires would emerge unscathed, and none would truly 
  emerge victorious.
  At its peak around 50 BU, the Twilight War claimed 
  more than ten thousand soldiers’ lives each day.  It 
  seemed as if each day introduced new and more horrible 
  ways to die.  The Confederacy introduced war beasts 
  of fearsome and unnatural aspect, twisted aberrations 
  created by ritual magic; the Caneans countered by liter-
  ally burying the monsters in their dead troops until 
  knights could reach the pinned creatures and put them 
  down.  The Protectorate fielded clockwork jugger-
  nauts that crushed whole divisions under their gear-like 
  wheels; the Dominion superheated the juggernauts 
  with fire magic, cooking their hundred-man crews 
  and exploding them into the surrounding units.  Many 
  dangers of modern Exodus emerged from the fires of the 
  Twilight War, including magically engineered monsters, 
  spells and weapons.
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
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  As the Janissaries’ founder, Alexei Brushkov, had 
  feared, total war had robbed the battlefield of all its 
  redeeming qualities, leaving only a slaughterhouse, and 
  the slaughter went on longer than even he had imagined 
  possible.
  Unification
  After a century of intermittent warfare and another in 
  which it was almost constant, the nations of Exodus 
  were much fallen from their heights.
  In 15 BU, the Arman Protectorate and the Dominion, 
  the original belligerents, signed a peace treaty and stood 
  down their armies.  Tsar Dimitri Kryszkas II and Khagan 
  Rashid Ibn Fasan met on the oft-contested floating city 
  of Anidem to sign the treaty that would remove their 
  exhausted nations from the Twilight War.  Nonetheless, 
  both countries remained on a war footing, defending 
  their northern borders against Canean and Reis aggres-
  sion; nor were these precautions wasted.
  The Caneus Empire and the Reis Confederacy came 
  later to the war and boasted larger populations than their 
  rivals; they pressed on where the Dominion and the 
  Protectorate faltered.
  In 5 BU, a massive Reis army of men and warbeasts 
  crossed into the Koryth neutral zone: a hundred thousand 
  soldiers armed with Arman steel from an earlier alliance 
  and ten thousand monsters of various stripes, backed by 
  the ritual blood magic so feared in other realms.  The 
  Caneus Empire’s main army was in Sametia harrying 
  the eastern front, so only forty thousand warriors, 
  almost half knights of the local baronies, could meet the 
  Confederate Army.  Both sides were well past calling for 
  surrenders; they would fight to the finish, the Caneans 
  to slow down the invasion, the Confederates to press it 
  quickly into the heartland of Nas.
  At least, that was their intention.
  The armies met in the shadow of the fortress Aremyhk - 
  and from that looming, pre-human citadel, the Janissaries 
  emerged.
  The Caneans at first took these men for reinforcements 
  and welcomed them - but the Janissaries, though far 
  more hailed from Nas than the Wyldlands of Bal, had not 
  emerged from their citadel to take sides.  They arrayed 
  for battle outside their citadel, perhaps a thousand men 
  against forty times their number on one side and a 
  hundred times on the other.
  When the dust cleared, hardly a Janissary had fallen, and 
  both defender and invader were in full retreat.  Magic, 
  both from the Covenant priests in the Caneus army and 
  the blood mages of the Reis army, fizzled, stopped by 
  the Janissaries’ unrivalled mental powers.  Grandmaster 
  Randal Yearby, Brushkov’s chosen successor, delivered 
  an ultimatum to the commanders of the forces his had 
  vanquished: instruct their rulers to stop the Twilight War, 
  or the Janissaries would stop it for them.  Having just 
  watched the psionic warrior-ascetics break two armies, 
  the commanders were quite receptive.
  The armies withdrew from the Koryth neutral zone, each 
  taking a single Janissary to present the peace proposal.  
  In Nyssa, Empress Constance Eland, acting as regent for 
  her young son Desmond because the emperor had fallen 
  in battle with the Dominion two years earlier, wanted 
  nothing of the enforced peace; the dukes, wiser in the 
  ways of war and realizing how close they had come to 
  disaster, advised her to play along with the Janissaries at 
  least as long as it served the empire’s purpose.  In Reis, 
  Imperator Chaqua Gazsi proved more receptive, for, 
  while he did not know the state of his enemies, he knew 
  many of the city-states of the Confederacy had been 
  nearly depopulated by losing generations of their young 
  men.  Showing such weakness to the Wyldlands invited 
  savages and worse to wipe out the northern civilization 
  entirely.
  The four rulers of the major empires traveled to Koryth, 
  accompanied by small retinues for their security; at the 
  Janissaries’ invitation, the leaders of dozens of indepen-
  dent principalities, tribes, duchies and city-states joined 
  the mighty rulers.  In 4 BU, all signed the Treaty of 
  Aremyhk, formally ending the Twilight War.
  This accomplished the Janissaries goal, but with such 
  a collection of notables all frightened and sick of the 
  seemingly endless war, a greater achievement appeared 
  possible.
  Grandmaster Yearby faced a momentous decision.  The 
  Janissaries had been founded to fight against the rise 
  of monolithic governments, to agitate for a return to 
  simpler, less centralized times.  Yearby knew, however, 
  that the great lords would never accept such a proposal, 
  and that, for all the power the Janissaries had shown at 
  the Battle of Aremyhk, they could not forcibly dismantle 
  the four empires.  Yearby saw a way to put an end to the 
  age of total war between nations - but to do so, he would 
  have to push for the opposite of his mentor’s vision.
  Yearby decided to try.
  He called on the assembled dignitaries to go beyond a 
  single treaty.  He asked them to forge an alliance capable 
  of preventing another war as devastating as the Twilight 
  War, reminding them that their countries could not 
  survive another such conflict.
  Thus began the negotiations to found the Imperial 
  Alliance of Exodus.  From 4 BU to the Alliance’s 
  inauguration in 1 AU (After Unification), monarchs, 
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
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  statesmen and soldiers debated, worried and planned.  
  Each empire tried to get the most favorable arrangement 
  from the structure of the Imperial Alliance.  The Caneus 
  Empire sought the rule of a majority, trusting its larger 
  population, its rivals pushed for a system in which each 
  great power had a single representative, and the minor 
  powers agitated for their own seats on the proposed 
  Imperial Senate.
  At last, the Imperial Alliance took on its familiar, 
  modern form: an inner council consisting of the senior 
  legates from the four imperial families, the greater 
  Imperial Senate consisting of forty legates - one from 
  each of the major noble houses -, and a series of Imperial 
  Assemblies to put the senate’s recommendations into law 
  within each region, subject to the approval of the local 
  monarch.  The Grandmaster of the Janissaries reported 
  directly to the inner council and put his order at the 
  Imperial Senate’s disposal, granting its suggestions force 
  as well as respect.  At the insistence of the southern 
  empires, the Sanguine Covenant was recognized as the 
  official religion of the Imperial Alliance.  All nations 
  within the alliance, from the most powerful to the 
  weakest, agreed to treat an attack on one of their number 
  as an attack on all.  All agreed to permit the Janissaries 
  unrestricted passage through their lands, to discontinue 
  the use of forbidden magic, to negotiate through the 
  Imperial Senate grievances that would have led to war 
  without its moderating influence.
  In 1 AU, the Imperial Senate held its first session, 
  blessed by the archprelates of Nyssa, Qijom and Mureath 
  and watched over by the rulers of four empires.
  Exodus seemed poised to enter a period of unprec-
  edented peace and prosperity.
  the Modern Era
  For fifty years, the peaceful era promised by the Imperial 
  Alliance seemed at hand.  The Alliance enfolded nearly 
  the entire continent, excepting only the deepest wilder-
  ness, and within its rapidly growing power structure, 
  empires and minor nations negotiated their dealings in 
  fairness and prosperity.
  The early years After Unification were not without diffi-
  culties - the Imperial Alliance simply faced those diffi-
  culties and overcame them.
  For centuries, the Brotherhood of Khayne had lurked 
  in the depths of the Wyldlands of Bal and whispered 
  its dark doctrines amongst the decadent, thrill-seeking 
  children of the aristocracy.  With the Imperial Alliance’s 
  formal imposition of the Sanguine Covenant, however, 
  the Brotherhood found many more adherents: enemies 
  of the organized faith of Exodus who would turn to 
  any cult, however bizarre or depraved, that would fight 
  back against the Covenant.  In 12 AU, the first of what 
  would become an ongoing series of terrorist attacks 
  against Covenant churches leveled the west wing of 
  the Sanguine Cathedral in Nyssa, killing the city’s 
  archprelate and hundreds of worshippers.  Because of 
  the peculiar form of ritual magic used to effect this 
  tragedy, Covenant investigators were able to trace it 
  to the Brotherhood of Khayne.  Prior to the attack, the 
  Covenant had reluctantly tolerated the existence of the 
  old pagan religions; afterwards, it became increasingly 
  militant, forming new orders such as the Purifiers, holy 
  assassins, to hunt down and destroy enemies of the faith.
  Chief among the dangers facing the united Exodus were 
  the Locari.  In 19 AU, the Arman Protectorate launched 
  an expedition to its ancestral homeland of Ablis.  There 
  they found, not the remnants of their ancient seafaring 
  civilization, but a strange and alien environment.  
  When the expedition landed its flying ship, they were 
  attacked by frighteningly intelligent, man-sized insects: 
  the Locari.  Only four men of the fifty-man expedi-
  tion survived to bring news of the strange menace back 
  to Exodus.  Worse, three of those men died upon their 
  return when Locari eggs hatched within them, releasing 
  ravenous larva.  The Imperial Alliance declared Ablis a 
  forbidden zone; the Confederate and Protectorate navies 
  blockaded the island under Janissary command, and, 
  at least for the moment, constrained the Locari.  An 
  actual expedition to root the menace out was ruled too 
  dangerous, however.
  Imperial Alliance
  Alignment  Lawful Good
  Capital  Aremyhk
  Largest cities  Various
  Official language(s)  Common
  Regional languages  Various
  Government  Multinational Organization
  1st in Charge  Secretary-General Njal Eland
  2nd in Charge   General Assembly President Milena 
  Kryszka
  3rd in Charge   Vice Assembly President Zayna Binte 
  Tahir
  Legislature  House of Representatives
  Upper House  Imperial Senate
  Lower House  Imperial House of Assembly
  Religon  Sanguine Lord
  Population  80 million+ (estimated)
  Currency   Standard Currency, Imperial Raven (2 GP), 
  Imperial Royal (25 gp), Imperial Crown 
  (10 gp), Imperial Eagle (2 GP), Imperial 
  Crescent (2 sp)
  Elite Military / Soldiers  Imperial Janissaries
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
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  In 31 AU, another shock rocked Exodus - not a new 
  menace, but the return of an old one.  The Cavians, 
  long thought annihilated in the War of Mind and Magic, 
  returned to Exodus.  The ratlike humanoids returned 
  subtly; for nearly a decade, their presence remained 
  a whispered rumor.  In 38 AU, the Janissary Kasim 
  Dammar made contact with what he described as a 
  “severed Cavian”, an outcast from the race’s psionic hive 
  mind.  Kasim’s discovery paved the way for Exodus’s 
  re-integration of the Cavian race.  By 50 AU, Cavians 
  moved about openly in the major cities of Exodus, 
  particularly in Koryth and Nas were they had once ruled.  
  However, neither the severed Cavians nor the members 
  of their racial mind shed any light on where they had 
  spent the last millennium, or how their race had under-
  gone such a radical and, to most other races, disturbing 
  transformation.
  In 36 AU, the nomad clans of Sametia sought repre-
  sentation in the Imperial Alliance.  This would 
  have represented the first major addition to the 
  Alliance since its inception - had their applica-
  tion been accepted.  When the vote was put 
  before the Imperial Senate, it fell far short 
  of the required two-thirds majority.  The 
  senators, many of whose countries had a 
  vested interest in keeping Sametia open 
  for colonization, rejected the proposal out 
  of hand, declaring the clan leadership 
  insufficiently organized to maintain an 
  Imperial Assembly.  The angry clans began 
  launching raids against their neighbors 
  and even imperiling the Locari blockade.  
  Janissaries were sent to pacify the situation; 
  the presence of the psychic agents cowed the clan lead-
  ership, and they stopped raiding.  In return for peace, 
  the Senate successfully lobbied the offended countries 
  to free any captured nomads.  This compromise would 
  come back to haunt the Imperial Alliance in future years.
  For the fledgling Imperial Alliance, these difficulties 
  seemed like opportunities, and the Alliance seemed to 
  meet each one in turn.  Unfortunately, the peace it main-
  tained would soon prove more fragile than the Imperial 
  Senate wanted to believe.
  the Alliance’s First true test
  The peace established by the Imperial Alliance could 
  not last forever.  In 44 AU, tensions again flared along 
  the Dominion-Protectorate border.  On the Arman side, 
  several prominent members of the watchmaker’s guild - 
  the engineers of the country’s mighty clockwork devices 
  - were assassinated; the same fate befell a group of 
  magical scholars in the Dominion.
  For the first time in half a century, troops massed at the 
  contested border, close enough to eye each other across 
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
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  the invisible line between nations - and for a single 
  mistake to reignite the flames of war.
  The Imperial Alliance immediately sent Janissaries to 
  investigate and mediate the matter; they were to meet 
  with representatives of the Dominion and Protectorate 
  governments in the floating city of Anidem, hoping to 
  call to mind the last treaty signed there.  Unfortunately, 
  the pair of Janissaries dispatched to the task died when 
  their windsailing vessel crashed en route to Anidem; 
  further investigation reveal signs of sabotage.
  Tsar Ivan Kryszkas III immediately, and perhaps 
  sensibly, blamed the Dominion: the Janissaries died on 
  a Dominion ship, traveling to a Dominion city, within 
  Dominion borders.  The Tsar’s words might have swayed 
  the Imperial Alliance’s opinion, had he not chosen to 
  back them with immediate force.  Without waiting for 
  the Imperial Senate, the Arman Protectorate launched 
  what it called a punitive action against its neighbor.
  The Khagan, Yusef Ibn Al’alim, had planned on 
  repulsing an Arman attack since the first tensions a year 
  earlier.  Drawing a large fleet of Protectorate flyers in as 
  far as Anidem, he let the city’s massive magical cannon 
  pound them while his swifter windsailing ships cut off 
  their retreat.  The Fourth Battle of Anidem ended with a 
  total Dominion victory, but the war continued; even as 
  the Protectorate air forces crumpled, their ground troops 
  broke through the Dominion line and surged into the 
  Cordel desert.
  For nearly a year, the war escalated too swiftly for 
  the shocked Imperial Senate to stop it.  Partisans of 
  the Dominion and the Protectorate insisted the Senate 
  refrain from intervening for one belligerent or the other; 
  with no clear indication of who was in the wrong, they 
  were able to paralyze the Alliance’s actions.  Rather 
  than a taskforce of Canean and Reis troops under 
  Janissary command, the Senate at last dispatched another 
  Janissary, Jakatka Bisir, to investigate his brothers’ 
  deaths.
  Bisir was a new breed of Janissary, as much detective 
  as warrior or peacekeeper.  Rather than announcing his 
  presence in the region, he moved in disguise through 
  battlefields and ballrooms, unearthing buried secrets with 
  his telepathic abilities.  In 47 AU, his subtle methods 
  paid off and he returned to the Senate.  Following a 
  closed session of the Senate’s inner circle and a swift, 
  apparently decisive message to the Tsar and the Khagan, 
  the Third Protectorate-Dominion War ended as quickly 
  as it began.  Bisir was lauded for his craft and heroism 
  - but neither he nor the Senate nor the belligerents 
  revealed so much as a hint of the contents of his report.
  In light of his success, Jakatka Bisir became the template 
  for the modern Janissary: secretive, observant and effi-
  cient.  He trained dozens, if not hundreds, of Tyros, or 
  apprentice Janissaries, in his methods.  In 59 AU, the 
  Imperial Senate voted to elevate him to Left Master of 
  Janissaries, second only to the Grandmaster.  However, 
  he disappeared from Aremyhk immediately before his 
  investiture, apparently leaving the order for reasons 
  unknown.
  As disappointed as the Senate must have been, graver 
  matters soon occupied their attention.
  the Quickslavers, the Prophet, the 
  Lawgiver and the Horde
  In 61 AU, a meteor crashed into the island of Unthara.  
  Most of the Imperial Alliance considered it a destructive 
  but ultimately unimportant astronomical event, but in the 
  Reis Confederacy, it was met with horror.  Imperatrix 
  Sepatha Gazsi’s most trusted advisor, Arianna, who 
  men called the Bronze Sage, had predicted the meteor’s 
  fall - and that it would unleash a monstrous plague upon 
  Exodus.
  More to appease the Confederate leadership than out 
  of any real concern, the Imperial Alliance dispatched a 
  Janissary to Unthara.  The Senate expected to lay the 
  Imperatrix’s fears to rest; they ended up confirming 
  them.  The Janissary discovered that the people of 
  Unthara had become infected by an ooze-like, quick-
  silver substance, a sort of alien parasite that used their 
  bodies as hosts and controlled their minds.  Infection 
  by the parasite proved incurable and inevitably fatal, 
  and turned the victim into a breeding ground for even 
  more of the organism.  Worse, the entity or entities - the 
  Janissary could not determine whether they were frag-
  ments of one being or separate individuals - seemed to 
  act at the direction of some malevolent will.
  The Imperial Alliance set up a quarantine fleet similar to 
  that around Ablis, fearing an outbreak of these “quick-
  slavers” could destroy all humanoid life on mainland 
  Exodus; Unthara’s were fishing communities, though, 
  and some in the Senate feared one or more quickslavers 
  had already slipped through their net.
  The Reis Confederacy’s troubles did not end with the 
  arrival of the quickslavers; the Bronze Sage, her powers 
  newly proven, also prophesied that the Imperatrix’s 
  newborn daughter, Lolani, would bring about the end of 
  the Confederacy.  With customary fatalism, the people of 
  Reis accepted the albino child as their future ruler, even 
  as they hated and feared her for what they saw as their 
  inevitable destruction.
  While the Reis Confederacy prepared for its end, another 
  nation was being born.  The tribes of Sametia, infuriated 
  by the blind eye the Imperial Alliance turned to their 
  plight, had grown in numbers and power all during the 
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
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  Twilight War, honing their fighting skills as mercenaries 
  and partisans.  Rebuffed from ‘civilized’ Exodus, they 
  embraced their barbarism and united under a code of 
  untrammeled might and savagery.  Calling themselves 
  the Janus Horde, they fought amongst themselves for 
  position - but fought all others for vengeance.  Thais, 
  a warrior-queen of the steppe who traced her ancestry 
  to Orcs, giants and stranger, stronger beasts, proved 
  herself the most brutal and powerful of all.  In 69 AU, 
  she defeated Jangai Zhar, the first warchief to attempt 
  to unite the Horde, and declared herself master of all 
  Sametia.  Under her banner and iron fist, the Janus 
  Horde began coordinated raids on its neighbors, growing 
  in force with every victory.
  Sametia also played host to the first appearance of the 
  enigmatic man called Lawgiver.  Starting in 70 AU, he 
  appeared as a simple beggar in the colonies of the great 
  empires, but where he passed, the sick were cured, the 
  lame healed, and the weak given strange and terrible 
  powers.  The Lawgiver bore the Lazarus Brand, a power 
  hitherto unknown on Exodus - a power even the wisdom 
  of the Kaga could not explain.  Simply by his presence, 
  he spread his strange gift.  When the Imperial Senate 
  sought to question him, he vanished beyond even the 
  Janissaries’ investigative abilities, only to appear in the 
  cities of the great empires as inexplicably as he disap-
  peared.
  The Janissaries did lay one mystery bare, however.  In 
  79 AU, one of their number infiltrated Unthara, now 
  completely the domain of the quickslavers, and came 
  face to face with the alien plague’s master: Xon, a necro-
  mancer of surpassing power.  Xon first appeared in the 
  Reis Confederacy during the Twilight War.  For a time, 
  he had served the Imperators, but even those wielders 
  of ritual blood magic blanched at his dark arcana and 
  put him to death - or so they thought.  His reemergence 
  centuries after his apparent demise, with a menace even 
  greater than his magical abilities at his command, should 
  have united the great empires like nothing in a century.
  The empires, however, were preoccupied with a different 
  sort of union.
  the Great Houses United
  Even after a century of relative peace under the Imperial 
  Alliance, the great powers of Exodus had shied away 
  from the one move that would completely shift their 
  balance of power: a marriage between the direct lines of 
  two imperial houses.
  The Caneus Empire and the Dominion had come closest 
  in 26 AU, when Erwin Eland, a senator and cousin of 
  the emperor, married Nadja Ibn Al’alim, daughter of the 
  khagan.  This was a match of two young nobles distant 
  from the throne, however; more than a dozen claimants 
  would have had to perish before they and their children 
  would have stood to inherit either throne.  Instead, their 
  son, Njal Eland, became the chief legate of the Imperial 
  Senate and left the politics of both his homelands.
  Beginning in 80 AU, a match far closer to the heights of 
  power appeared possible.  Bial, Mercy, Cassandra and 
  Sienna, the four children of Canean Emperor Desmond 
  Eland, were all educated at the famed Sihr Academy 
  in the Dominion capital, Qijom.  During their stay, all 
  four became extremely close to the young heir to the 
  Khaganate, Malik Ibn Al’alim.
  Prince Bial and Prince Malik, of an age and with similar 
  interests, hunted, wrestled and sparred like brothers, 
  becoming far closer than Malik was with his own 
  brother, the cunning, scholarly Nasser.
  The Canean Princesses Mercy and Cassandra took an 
  even greater interest in the Dominion’s heir.  Mercy, 
  closer to Malik’s own age and ranked among Exodus’s 
  greatest beauties, quickly won his affections when she 
  arrived in Qijom in 82 AU.  The two were as inseparable 
  as decorum allowed, spending almost all their spare 
  moments together.  Unfortunately, when Mercy’s sister 
  Cassandra joined her two years later, the younger Eland 
  princess also fell madly in love with Malik.  A bright girl 
  groomed to become the executor of the Caneus Empire’s 
  branch of the Imperial Assembly, Cassandra soon lost 
  interest in her study of statecraft, becoming more and 
  more obsessed with winning the future Khagan away 
  from her sister.  Malik and Mercy dismissed Cassandra’s 
  obsession as a girlish fancy, harmless and passing.
  Whether they realized it or not, they would one day have 
  cause to regret this assessment.
  In 84 AU, Prince Bial returned to the Caneus Empire 
  to begin the trials that would prove him worthy of the 
  throne of Gregory Eland.  The trials had been ceremo-
  nial for centuries, but Bial insisted on fulfilling their 
  Janus Horde
  Alignment  Chaotic Good
  Capital  Sanat
  Largest cities  Eimhin, Jarlath, Morolt, 
  Official language(s)  Common
  Regional languages  Various
  Government  Tribal Chiefdom
  1st in Charge  Tribal Warchief Thais
  2nd in Charge  Tribal Witch Doctor Cestrix
  Religon  Various
  Population  5 million+ (estimated)
  Currency  Standard Currency, Bartering
  Elite Military / Soldiers Horde Berserkers
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
  Page 24
  original intent: a test of cunning and martial skill that 
  would prove a candidate’s worth… or kill him.  Since 
  most of Nas had been explored in the hundreds of years 
  of Canean civilization, Bial decided to take his trial in 
  the Wyldlands of Bal, instead.  The Reis Confederacy 
  granted special permission to its neighbor’s heir.  In 85 
  AU, after only a few months at the palace he intended to 
  one day rule, the Canean heir arrived in the city of Reis 
  to begin his preparations.
  He soon found himself distracted by another heir.  
  Unfamiliar with the customs of the Confederacy, Bial 
  presented himself not just to Imperatrix Sepatha Gazsi 
  but to her daughter, the accursed, albino Lolani.  Because 
  of the dire prophecy hovering over her, Lolani was all 
  but ignored by her own family and subjects; a foreign 
  prince addressing her directly shocked her.  Bial became 
  the first, and perhaps only, friend Lolani had ever had.  A 
  loner and a survivor by nature, she nonetheless clung to 
  the foreign prince like a lifeline, delighted with the atten-
  tion.
  By 86 AU, when Bial began his trials, his parents fully 
  expected to preside over two imperial weddings in the 
  near future - Bial’s to Lolani and Mercy’s to Malik.  
  Had both gone forward, the Caneus Empire’s imperial 
  family would have ruled three fifths of Exodus.  Already 
  the staunchest supporter of the Imperial Alliance, the 
  empire might have easily and bloodlessly achieved rule 
  over the entire continent.  Only the Arman Protectorate, 
  increasingly isolated from and hostile toward the rest of 
  Exodus, would remain independent, and even the stub-
  born Armans could not resist forever.  Already, the newly 
  crowned Tsarina Anayanka was said to harbor feelings 
  for Nasser Ibn Al’alim; though a union between two 
  such cunning politicians would have threatened many 
  powers, many others hoped it would end the hostility 
  between Dominion and Protectorate.  Besides, the 
  Protectorate faced its own difficulties in the form of the 
  increasingly powerful Janus Horde.  The other members 
  of the Imperial Alliance, recalling the Armans’ belliger-
  ency and obstinacy; and, perhaps, dreaming of a union 
  that would leave the Armans on the outside looking in; 
  proved slow to render aid.
  Dreams of greatness and contentment proved premature.  
  Bial Eland was terribly injured during his trials, mauled 
  almost to death by one of the beasts of the Wyldlands.  
  Worse, he fell into a feverish state from which the 
  clerics of the Sanguine Covenant could not rouse 
  him.  Suspicion fell on the Reis Confederacy, which 
  the Covenant believed harbored many Brotherhood of 
  Khayne cultists.
  Before the Caneus Empire could even begin to seek 
  a cure or vengeance for its heir, an assassin struck at 
  Emperor Desmond and Empress Abigail Eland.  The 
  attacker wielded a strange dark power, entirely unknown 
  in modern Exodus.  Even the Kaga could not or would 
  not explain what black art stole the lives of the Canean 
  ruler and his wife.  With the emperor dead and Bial 
  indefinitely invalided, the Imperial Assembly for the 
  Caneus Empire declared Mercy the new Empress in 87 
  AU.
  Almost immediately after Mercy was crowned, Bial’s 
  fever subsided; he awoke to find his parents dead, 
  his throne occupied and his beloved Lolani’s country 
  suspected of the deviltry that had struck him down.  
  Some men might have risen in rebellion, but Bial 
  appeared content with his lot, concerned only with 
  easing the tensions between the Caneus Empire and the 
  Reis Confederacy.
  Nonetheless, the murder of the Canean rulers ended, at 
  least for a time, any possibility of imperial marriages.  
  Though separation pained them more than either cared to 
  admit, Mercy and Malik pushed back the announcement 
  of their betrothal, and Bial and Lolani were unable to 
  even meet.  The official period of mourning had hardly 
  ended when Malik, too, lost his father and gained an 
  unwanted throne.  In 89 AU, Lolani also ascended to the 
  leadership of the Reis Confederacy; the four empires had 
  completely passed to a new generation.
  As the Bronze Sage of the Confederacy had predicted, 
  their reign would not be peaceful.
  Collapse of Union
  In 90 AU, Canean Empress Mercy was found dead in 
  her chambers in the Gregorian Palace in Nyssa.  Since 
  the empress was only twenty-seven years old, Caneus’s 
  Imperial Assembly immediately suspected foul play.  
  Their investigation confirmed what they had initially 
  feared: Mercy died from poison.
  Suspicion fell on her brother, Bial, who had left Nyssa 
  the night before Mercy was found dead, his motives 
  unknown.  With Bial suspected of Mercy’s murder and 
  out of the capital, the Imperial Assembly swiftly moved 
  to place Princess Cassandra on the throne.  The new 
  empress was crowned almost immediately, a necessary 
  precaution against possible partisans of her traitorous 
  brother, and her youngest sister, Princess Sienna, took 
  her place as the empire’s executor.  Empress Cassandra 
  vowed to make her brother’s punishment her first 
  priority, but after only a week, Bial had vanished.
  When news of Mercy’s death reached the Dominion, 
  Khagan Malik fell into a nearly suicidal depression, at 
  turns cursing himself for allowing statecraft to keep him 
  from his beloved, then cursing himself again for thinking 
  of abandoning duty even for her sake.  Only focusing on 
  his rage at her killer kept him remotely sane, kept him 
  alive.  He could not help but wonder at the apparent guilt 
  
  Neoexodus Chronciles: World of Exodus
  Page 25
  of Bial, a man he had respected and called brother, and 
  laid plans to travel to the Caneus Empire to investigate 
  for himself.  Leaving the Dominion in the hands of his 
  brother, Nasser, Malik boarded his windsailing ship and 
  winged his way north.
  The Khagan’s retinue arrived in Nyssa in time for a new 
  crisis: without warning, the Reis Confederacy had with-
  drawn its ambassadors to the Caneus Empire.  Empress 
  Cassandra blamed this hostile act on Bial, as well, 
  accusing Imperatrix Lolani of sheltering her brother and 
  severing ties for his sake.  Before Malik could investi-
  gate these or the earlier claims, his retinue was pounced 
  upon by a party of assassins on the very streets of Nyssa; 
  Malik was badly injured and a dozen of his men slain.
  In the Dominion, meanwhile, Nasser possessed far 
  more information than his brother - and moved to act 
  on it.  He understood that Cassandra had framed Bial 
  for Mercy’s murder, and that nothing short of bloodshed 
  could resolve the schism in the Caneus Empire’s royal 
  house.  Bloodshed, he suspected, would come from the 
  Reis/Canean border, long a source of conflict, now exac-
  erbated by Bial’s appealing to Lolani for aid.  Contacting 
  his rival and lover the Tsarina Anayanka of the Arman 
  Protectorate, Nasser put forth a proposal for a new power 
  group, a new Imperial Alliance.  This one, they agreed, 
  would not be bound by ideology or sentiment; it would 
  operate with the ruthless efficiency they both prized.  
  They formed a new power block, the Exemplars.
  Malik returned to the Dominion from his disastrous 
  visit to the Caneus Empire; he found his brother aware 
  of his misfortune - which roused his suspicions, for he 
  had just seen ample evidence of the heights of dynastic 
  rivalry - but willing to turn the Dominion’s rule back 
  to its Khagan.  Malik immediately put the cities and 
  tribes on the Canean border on high alert and began 
  marshalling his troops, for he feared the chaos of his 
  northern neighbor would spill over into his homeland.  
  At Nasser’s urging, additional forces massed at the edge 
  of Sametia, overlooking both the Janus Horde and the 
  Arman Protectorate.
  Unbeknownst to the Imperial Alliance, a terrible 
  epidemic had struck the Janus Horde: somehow, perhaps 
  aided by the dark powers of their master, Xon, the 
  quickslavers had crossed ocean, blockade and conti-
  nent to infect the one region outside the alliance’s 
  control.  Warlord Thais, fearing her entire homeland 
  would succumb to the quickslavers and unable to fight 
  the subtle foe in the midst of her people, redoubled her 
  attacks on the Arman Protectorate, driving a wedge deep 
  into the Protectorate’s center.  Only the Dominion troops 
  menacing the Horde’s flank prevented it from further 
  breakouts.
  Rumors of a man capable of exorcising the quickslavers 
  rekindled the Horde’s hopes.  The man called Lawgiver 
  had returned to Sametia after a long sojourn through 
  other lands, bringing with him Lazarus Brands - and, 
  apparently, the ability to cure the quickslaver infec-
  tion.  Thais ordered the Lawgiver brought before her, 
  but her greatest trackers proved insufficient for the task; 
  as always, the Lawgiver came and went as he pleased, 
  leaving behind him Hordefolk free of the quickslavers… 
  and, as always, the powerful, enigmatic Lazarus Brands.
  The Imperial Alliance, seeing the tensions between its 
  member states rising and its outside foes growing in 
  power, reached an unprecedented conclusion.  A two-
  thirds majority of the Imperial Senate voted to impose 
  martial law, encouraging the kingdoms and empires to 
  withdraw to their borders and sending Janissaries and 
  Imperial Men-at-Arms to restore order.  To the Senate’s 
  horror, this suggestion was refused by all four empires, 
  each believing the Senate a tool of their enemies.  To the 
  horror of the four great monarchs, the Senate was not 
  dissuaded; Janissaries departed from Aremyhk despite 
  the closed borders refusal, and Men-at-Arms massed in 
  Koryth to enforce the Senate’s desperate bid for restored 
  order.
  Exodus today
  It is now 91 AU.
  Modern Exodus is as uncertain and troubled a land as 
  it has ever been.  The great empires have all withdrawn 
  from the Imperial Alliance and many appear on the brink 
  of war.  The Alliance itself seems poised to become a 
  conquering power, forcing its member nations back into 
  the fold by any means necessary.  Several of the great 
  houses, particular the Caneus Empire’s House Eland, are 
  in total disarray; even as national wars brew, civil ones 
  threaten to cut the belligerents to pieces.
  External threats, including the quickslavers, the Janus 
  Horde and the Locari could wipe out humanoid life 
  entirely, provided internal corruption does not do for 
  it first.  Enigmatic Cyneans, Prymidians and Cavians 
  seem to inhabit every city and province, their motives 
  and resources unknown.  Worst of all, the shadow of 
  a greater evil than any of these, an ancient power long 
  thought banished, spreads across the land like a cancer.
  More than ever, the world of Exodus needs heroes…
  Written By Joshua Cole, Richard Farrese, Lee Hammock 
  with Louis Porter, Jr.
  
  Capital
  Major City
  City
  Ruins
  NatioN Name
  Map Legend
  Scale in Miles
  50
  100
  200
  0 25
  
  For Unlawful  
  Flight to Avoid 
  Prosecution
  CAUTION
  Makesh is wanted for the crimes of 
  Aggravated Assault, Arson, Assault,  
  Conspiracy to commit Blackmail, 
  Blackmail, Breaking and Entering, 
  Burglary, Creation of Weapons of 
  Mass Destruction, Conspiracy to 
  commit Extortion, Extortion, Genocide, 
  Conspiracy to commit Kidnapping,  
  Kidnapping, Looting, Conspiracy to 
  commit Murder, Murder, Racketeering, 
  Robbery, Smuggling, Theft, Torture, 
  Conspiracy to commit Treason, Treason, 
  and Trespassing.
  considered armed 
  and extremely  
  dangerous.
  If you have any information concerning 
  this person, please contact your local 
  Janissary Brotherhood office or the 
  nearest Imperial Alliance embassy or 
  consulate. 
  REWARD
  The Imperial Senate of Exodus and 
  the Janissary Brotherhood is offering 
  a reward of up to 500 Imperial Royals 
  (12,500 gold pieces) for information 
  leading directly to the arrest of any 
  member of Makesh.
  Coming Soon
   www.LPJDesign.com
  WANTED:
  Makesh
  
  For Unlawful  
  Flight to Avoid 
  Prosecution
  CAUTION
  Nysska is wanted for the crimes of 
  Aggravated Assault, Assault, Conspiracy 
  to commit Blackmail, Blackmail, 
  Breaking and Entering, Burglary, 
  Conspiracy to commit Extortion, 
  Extortion, Forgery, Conspiracy to commit 
  Kidnapping,  Kidnapping, Conspiracy 
  to commit Murder, Murder, Robbery, 
  Smuggling, Theft, Conspiracy to commit 
  Treason, Treason and Trespassing.
  considered armed 
  and extremely  
  dangerous.
  If you have any information concerning 
  this person, please contact your local 
  Janissary Brotherhood office or the 
  nearest Imperial Alliance embassy or 
  consulate. 
  REWARD
  The Imperial Senate of Exodus and 
  the Janissary Brotherhood is offering 
  a reward of up to 200 Imperial Royals 
  (5,000 gold pieces) for information 
  leading directly to the arrest of any 
  member of the Folding Circle.
  Coming Soon
    
  www.LPJDesign.com
  WANTED:
  Nysska
  
  For Unlawful  
  Flight to Avoid 
  Prosecution
  CAUTION
  The Destroyer is wanted for the crimes 
  of Arson, Assault, Conspiracy to commit 
  Blackmail, Blackmail, Conspiracy 
  to commit Extortion, Extortion, 
  Conspiracy to commit Kidnapping,  
  Kidnapping, Looting, Conspiracy to 
  commit Murder, Murder, Racketeering, 
  Robbery, Smuggling, Theft, Conspiracy 
  to commit Treason, Treason, and 
  Trespassing.
  considered armed 
  and extremely  
  dangerous.
  If you have any information concerning 
  this person, please contact your local 
  Janissary Brotherhood office or the 
  nearest Imperial Alliance embassy or 
  consulate. 
  REWARD
  The Imperial Senate of Exodus and 
  the Janissary Brotherhood is offering 
  a reward of up to 200 Imperial Royals 
  (5,000 gold pieces) for information 
  leading directly to the arrest of any 
  member of the Folding Circle.
  Coming Soon
    
  www.LPJDesign.com
  WANTED:
  The Destroyer
  
  For Unlawful  
  Flight to Avoid 
  Prosecution
  CAUTION
  Emok Zenyaka is wanted for the 
  crimes of Assault, Conspiracy to 
  commit Blackmail, Blackmail, 
  Creation of Weapons of Mass 
  Destruction, Genocide, Conspiracy 
  to commit Kidnapping,  Kidnapping,  
  Conspiracy to commit Murder, Murder, 
  Racketeering, Smuggling, Theft, 
  Torture, Conspiracy to commit Treason, 
  Treason, and Trespassing.
  considered armed 
  and extremely  
  dangerous.
  If you have any information concerning 
  this person, please contact your local 
  Janissary Brotherhood office or the 
  nearest Imperial Alliance embassy or 
  consulate. 
  REWARD
  The Imperial Senate of Exodus and 
  the Janissary Brotherhood is offering 
  a reward of up to 200 Imperial Royals 
  (5,000 gold pieces) for information 
  leading directly to the arrest of any 
  member of the Folding Circle.
  Coming Soon
    
  www.LPJDesign.com
  WANTED:
  Emok Zenyaka
  
  For Unlawful  
  Flight to Avoid 
  Prosecution
  CAUTION
  Haru Anon is wanted for the crimes 
  of Arson, Assassination, Assault, 
  Conspiracy to commit Genocide, 
  Genocide, Manslaughter, Mayhem, 
  Conspiracy to commit Murder, Murder, 
  Negligent Homicide, Racketeering, 
  Regicide, Rioting, Robbery, Serial 
  Killing, Smuggling, Theft, Torture, 
  Trespassing and Weapon of Mass 
  Destruction
  considered armed 
  and extremely  
  dangerous.
  If you have any information concerning 
  this person, please contact your local 
  Janissary Brotherhood office or the 
  nearest Imperial Alliance embassy or 
  consulate. 
  REWARD
  The Imperial Senate of Exodus and 
  the Janissary Brotherhood is offering 
  a reward of up to 200 Imperial Royals 
  (5,000 gold pieces) for information 
  leading directly to the arrest of any 
  member of the Folding Circle.
  Coming Soon
    
  www.LPJDesign.com
  WANTED:
  Haru Anon
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Pathfinder/1st Edition/3rd Party/Louis Porter Jr. Design/LPJXX22 - World of NeoExodus v1.pdf