TEXT: World of Exodus
  Ne o e xo du s  C hr o nic le s :
  LPJXX28
  
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  HISTORY OF EXODUS
  Exodus boasts a turbulent history—from the rise of 
  the Kaga to the defeat of the First Ones and the events 
  of the Twilight War; from the creation of the Imperial 
  Alliance to the present crisis that threatens to tear that 
  alliance apart. 
  Great heroes and terrible villains drove this march, 
  though even in hindsight the two are not always easily 
  separated. Theirs were the titanic passions, the burning 
  obsessions and base treacheries in which modern Exodus 
  was forged and tempered.
  THE REIGN OF THE FIRST ONES
  At the dawn of recorded history, the humanoid races 
  toiled under the yoke 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. Still the First Ones form the nightmares of 
  the people of Exodus. 
  Because the First Ones lived and ruled so many 
  centuries 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. 
  The ruins of the era show the First Ones were powerful 
  magic users and warriors.
  THE KAGA AND THE  
  ERA OF HUMANITY
  Two thousand years ago, the greatest sages, strategists, 
  scientists, and sorcerers who labored in the cruel service 
  of the First Ones concocted a plan to overthrow their 
  masters. They did not know they would change Exodus 
  forever. They created the Kaga, the collective sentience 
  of the most brilliant minds of the age. The Kaga became 
  a repository of all human knowledge—and the greatest 
  weapon against the First Ones.
  Soon after the Kaga’s creation, the enslaved masses of 
  humanity rose up against their overlords. With the Kaga 
  to lead them, the slave races overthrew the First Ones 
  in a series of apocalyptic battles. No record remains of 
  those primeval struggles, nor is there any clue as to the 
  eventual fate of the First Ones. Only the Kaga knows, 
  and it is not talking.
  Rather than rule as a god-king, the Kaga retreated into 
  solitude and contemplation, its wisdom removed from 
  humanity for centuries. Even now, with the Kaga once 
  more accessible, sages cannot understand why it shut 
  itself off. 
  THE EMISSARY
  THE KAGA
  
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  power. Rejecting the arcane sciences that had once 
  enslaved them, they instead honed the powers of their 
  mind. Through their study and sheer determination, they 
  became psychic warriors.
  The cavians and the Sorcerer-Kings soon came to blows, 
  blows that shook Exodus like nothing since the fall of 
  the First Ones. Magical and psychic energies reshaped 
  whole sections of the landscape.
  When the dust had settled, the Sorcerer-Kings were a 
  shadow of their former power. Of those that survived, 
  only a half-dozen retained arcane power beyond the 
  level of an apprentice. The cavians, once among the 
  most populous and powerful races, vanished from the 
  face of the planet.
  THE SEEDS OF NATIONHOOD
  The War of Mind and Magic—as the conflict between 
  the cavians and Sorcerer-Kings came to be known—
  shattered both belligerents’ 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 sword. At the same time, the long-
  silent Kaga, perhaps roused by the conflict, again lent its 
  wisdom to mankind.
  From the Kaga, barbarian chieftains learned the arts 
  of statecraft and barbarian shamans learned the arts of 
  magic. These young peoples washed across the face 
  After the Kaga’s withdrawal, the surviving humans set 
  about rebuilding in the ashes of the civilization that 
  had enslaved them. Lacking the science and magical 
  knowledge of the First Ones, these early people were 
  primitive and barbaric. They dwelt amidst ruined spires 
  and huddled beside latent sorceries, unaware of the 
  powers within their grasp. In time, the ruins crumbled 
  to dust, the magic faded from time-worn artifacts, 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 hundreds of the savage tribes to 
  their empowered wills. They repaired the cities of the 
  First Ones and raised new ones in their own names.
  Though not as monolithically wicked as their former 
  masters, the Sorcerer-Kings soon acquired a reputation 
  for heartless tyranny and cruel detachment. They sought 
  to bind the whole of Exodus under their power.
  Even as the Sorcerer-Kings rose in Abaddon, another 
  power grew in the frigid hills of Nas. The cavians, 
  a race of rat-like humanoids, took a distinct path to 
  THE PAINTED MAN
  THE LAWGIVER
  
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  of Exodus like a tidal wave. In short order, the servile 
  peoples who had labored for sorcerers and psions would 
  bend the knee to warlords who ruled by force and steel.
  Abaddon remained the seat of the surviving Sorcerer-
  Kings, who were threatened only by scattered uprisings 
  and raids from their estranged kin in Cordel. Though 
  their prestige was tarnished, the arcane scientists of 
  Abaddon remained the mightiest living creatures on 
  Exodus. For a time it seemed—even with the opposition 
  of the Kaga—that they would regain their power.
  In Cordel, the barbarian chieftains bred with the 
  descendants of the Sorcerer-Kings. Within a few 
  generations, both races had changed much. The tribes 
  remained nomadic herders and raiders, but their ruling 
  caste became one of natural magicians who blended 
  sword, spell, and stealth.
  In frigid Nas, the abandoned seat of cavian power, 
  humanity replaced the rat-folk. The hardy people of 
  Nas united under four clans: the Brauner, the von Breit, 
  the Hanstrom, and the Olsson. Already more civilized 
  than most of the suppressed humans of other lands, they 
  accepted the wisdom of the Kaga and enacted a feudal 
  system that endures today.
  In the Wyldlands of Bal—where neither of the great 
  powers of the last age had enjoyed success—humans 
  fought beastly enuka and brutish calibans, matching 
  savagery with savagery. Civilization rose in isolated 
  city-states enslaved to bloodthirsty gods.
  CREATION OF THE DOMINION
  Even with the infusion of sorcerers’ blood into their ruling 
  caste, the nomadic tribes of Cordel found themselves at 
  a disadvantage against the better-organized baronies of 
  Nas and the spells and armies of Abaddon. 
  For centuries, they had been mercenaries for greater 
  powers. Now, they found their own lands threatened. 
  Individual khans found their forces—while more than 
  adequate for striking at unsuspecting foes—too sparse 
  and disorganized to stand against a determined assault. 
  At best, they could fade into the desert and avoid battle. 
  At worst, they were caught and killed or enslaved.
  The nomads would have perished and disappeared from 
  history were it not for the efforts of the first khagan 
  of the Dominion, though the identity of this great 
  chieftain has been lost to the sands of time—if it was 
  ever known at all. The nomads of Cordel had no written 
  tradition until much later. The only knowledge of the 
  first khagan’s life comes from the many and varied oral 
  stories passed from generation to generation.
  The khagan’s customs did nothing to help confirm his 
  identity. In the years leading up to his reign, he traveled 
  amongst the tribes as a landless warrior. As unusual as 
  his solitary lifestyle were his battle tactics—lightning 
  strikes and short but intense magical assaults. While 
  many khans of the Cordel tribes knew powerful magic, 
  few had learned how to use it effectively. The first 
  khagan, though, blended matters magical and military to 
  set up invincible ambushes, even when he and his allies 
  were outnumbered ten-to-one. He would seem to appear 
  from the very sands, then vanish in the night. For this, 
  he was titled the Desert Shade.
  The Desert Shade broke with the tradition of Cordel’s 
  humanoid tribes by dealing extensively with the region’s 
  large sasori enclave. This may explain the Dominion 
  legends, which tell of him anticipating the plans of his 
  enemies by his rare genius or, in some tales, by the 
  gift of prophecy. Most modern scholars agree that his 
  extraordinary foresight owed much to his intelligence 
  network of sasori, who served him loyally in return 
  for the first peace they’d 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. He displayed uncanny 
  knowledge of their troop movements and most 
  embarrassing secrets. To combat the rumors he spread 
  to rally his people, they called him the King of Lies. 
  Playing on age-old racial hatreds, they also called him 
  “the human sasori.” He embraced the name, saying he 
  was a friend of the desert, not of any one of its peoples. 
  The barons and Sorcerer-Kings threatened to wipe out 
  any tribe that sheltered him, but the Desert Shade trained 
  the tribes to fight back—and win. 
  After over a decade, he called for a council of the khans in 
  Qijom, his secret city in the middle of the Cordel Desert. 
  Before all the khans, he proclaimed himself khagan—
  khan among khans. The khans roared in acclamation, 
  for he had led them to the only victories they had known 
  in a generation. He named this collection of desert tribes 
  and desert sorcerers, but not with the region’s traditional 
  name of Cordel. He named them the Dominion.
  Johan Darre, a Nasian bard, was permitted to witness 
  the council of khans and the khagan’s coronation. Years 
  later, he penned the only surviving record of the event. 
  His tale, converted to the Imperial dating structure, 
  places the event in 837 BU (Before Unification). 
  Concluding his dramatic chronicle, 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.” 
  In the next five decades of the khagan’s life, his people 
  defeated more than a half-dozen armies from Abaddon 
  and as many from Nas. Moreover, they pushed over the 
  borders of both neighboring countries and seized two 
  broad, fertile belts outside their desert homeland. 
  The khagan’s military genius was matched only by 
  his scholarship and statecraft. Taking the throne of a 
  barbaric land, he gave his people the written language, 
  a national identity, and a caste system that holds to this 
  day. He organized the raiders into the Dammar, the 
  shamans into the Khepri, and the casteless workers and 
  merchants into the Rafik. He created the Sihr, the caste 
  
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  of historians and scholars who implemented his written 
  language.
  THE COMING OF THE ARMANS
  The rise of the Dominion further weakened the Sorcerer-
  Kings of Abaddon. Vulnerable, these last remnants 
  of the ancient arcane empire were brought down by 
  entirely new horde of barbarians. These barbarians were 
  the Armans, seafaring raiders from the island of Ablis. 
  Though geographically remote from the fledgling barons 
  of Nas, the Armans came from similar stock—much 
  taller and bulkier than the other humans of Exodus; 
  often fair-haired, always savage. Both Armans and 
  Nasians, however, have denied this connection. 
  Living in isolated and forbidding climes, the Armans 
  never labored under the First Ones’ enslavement, and 
  believe that they were the only free people among all 
  humanoids. The Armans were uniquely ferocious—the 
  inhabitants of the mainland’s eastern coast spoke of 
  the Armans as demons in human form: ruthless, cruel, 
  fearless, and pitiless raiders. Even the Sorcerer-Kings 
  paid off the Armans. 
  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 showing his 
  people wiped from Ablis by “fires that walked like the 
  sea,” but so too showing their descendants reigning 
  gloriously on the mainland. The first prediction terrified 
  the thralls and womenfolk, who remained behind while 
  the raiding bands sought plunder in civilized lands. The 
  latter vision fired the imagination of the thanes.
  The clan’s high thane, Vladimir Kryszkas, believed the 
  shaman’s warning and his promise. He rallied his raiders 
  to invade and hold the mainland. By the first moon of 
  752 BU, he’d led his horde to Sametia and overcome the 
  enclaves of plains tribesmen and the border outposts of 
  the Sorcerer-Kings. Traveling swiftly, they sailed south 
  from this colony, sacking northeastern Sorcerer-King 
  cities and binding their arcane rulers with primitive, 
  primal shamanic magic. After four moons, however, the 
  Sorcerer-Kings rallied their legions and smashed the 
  Arman invaders. 
  Vladimir fell back to Sametia; his people’s prospects of 
  empire looked bleak, and of survival little better. Grigori 
  Vyskos, once hailed as a visionary, was labeled a fraud. 
  He was executed on a midwinter’s day of 752 BU, 
  proclaiming to the last the truth of his visions. 
  Events bore out the shaman’s prophecy. As the Kryszkas 
  were hanging him, the island of Ablis erupted, its long-
  dormant volcanoes belching lava onto the mountain 
  pastures of the Arman shepherds. Thousands died in 
  the initial eruption. The rest abandoned Ablis in a mass 
  migration.
  Between 752 and 744 BU, five other Arman clans joined 
  the migration: the Babinovichs, the Ivanovenas, the 
  Chapaevonas, the Dyakonoviks, and the Krestyanovskis. 
  Thus, the great Arman migration concluded. They soon 
  lost contact with those who stayed behind.
  In 743 BU, the Sorcerer-Kings—overrun by Arman 
  invaders and losing legions and lords in terrifying 
  numbers—abandoned their entire coastline. Retreat 
  proved a fatal mistake. The Armans smelled weakness 
  from the gilded halls to the south, and like the lions the 
  Sametians likened them to, the Armans pounced. Cities 
  fell to the invading barbarians, one after the other. 
  In 740 BU, the legion of the port city of Galeathan cast 
  their monarch from the walls and opened the gates. 
  Vladimir Kryszkas, wiser since his mistaken execution 
  of a prophet, took the city bloodlessly and kept his horde 
  from sacking it. He opened the city to Arman trade and 
  established himself as the new king. Seeing the Armans’ 
  generosity, other cities welcomed them as liberators 
  from the tyranny of the Sorcerer-Kings.
  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 Sorcerer-King of Abaddon, slew every 
  last person 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 immeasurable wisdom to the Arman shamans.
  In 736 BU, the Kaga’s secrets and the shamans’ vastly 
  superior numbers bought the Arman warriors enough 
  time to storm the walls, cut their way through an army of 
  undead and fouler deviltry, and break the Sorcerer-Kings’ 
  power forever. At last, Arman barbarians raised the head 
  of Xalthotan, the last Sorcerer-King, proclaiming their 
  mastery of all Abaddon.
  THE FOUNDING OF  
  THE CANEUS EMPIRE
  The people of Nas concerned themselves with advancing 
  their civilization. Nowhere else on the continent did the 
  influence of the Kaga spread further than in this purely 
  humanoid civilization, unburdened by the legacy of the 
  First Ones. 
  With the rise of civilization, however, came new 
  dangers. Men whose ancestors were chieftains now 
  dreamed themselves kings. Men whose ancestors 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 chessboard. 
  
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  Not all of the minor nobles and commoners shared this 
  sentiment, however.
  In 657 BU, during a particularly brutal border contest 
  between Houses Brauner and Olsson, one such minor 
  noble, Gregory Eland, found his patience taxed beyond 
  its limits. Gregory, Baron of Eland, came from a long 
  line of warriors; he traced his ancestry to the Cavian 
  Empire. In the previous century, his proud heritage 
  had been repeatedly disgraced. Because the barony of 
  Eland was on the border between Brauner and Olsson 
  territories, it became a battleground whenever the two 
  dukes went to war.
  In the time of Gregory Eland’s great grandfather, the 
  barony was captured by Duke Olsson’s men; the Baron 
  Eland accepted his new allegiance judiciously, keeping 
  a calm and rational mind, 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 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. 
  To make things worse, at Duke Brauner’s orders, 
  mercenary soldiers quartered in the castles of the local 
  lords. The mercenaries showed no gratitude toward their 
  unwilling hosts. They roistered, depleted winter stores, 
  chased serving wenches, and beat servants. General 
  Harskolff, 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. When 
  Baron Ravenspont refused, Harskolff killed him on the 
  spot and locked Liesel in his quarters, while Harskolff’s 
  men put to the sword the Ravenspont bannermen in 
  AKARMA
  AMNE ISA ZARA
  
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  attendance. Of the Ravenspont family, none survived; 
  Liesel took her own life rather than submitting to 
  Harskolff’s cruel affections. 
  Gregory’s younger brother, Chauncey, was a squire 
  at Ravenspont. He broke away in the confusion and 
  spurred his horse to his brother’s lands, not heeding 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. 
  Gregory called his knights and sent messengers to 
  the surrounding baronies. The army descended on 
  Ravenspont and assailed the walls. They found the 
  mercenaries drunk and slew them to a man. Gregory 
  Eland personally threw Harskolff from the castle walls. 
  Gregory Eland’s wrath did not die with this single 
  rapacious 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 to the local folk, from serf 
  to baron; it branded them traitors to Duke Brauner’s 
  service, and so bound them to Gregory.
  Recognizing the sudden and inescapable bond between 
  him and his host, Gregory marched them northeast. 
  With Brauner’s professional armies ringing the duchy’s 
  borders, Gregory’s host reached the gates of the duke’s 
  capital, Nyssa, nearly unopposed. In the waning moon 
  of 657 BU, Eland’s band of knights and men-at-arms 
  stormed the city walls, overwhelmed the duke’s retinue, 
  and seized Nyssa. Eland spared Reinhardt Brauner—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. Once Gregory Eland had a duke for a 
  vassal, he ceased to be a mere baron. 
  In 656 BU, Brauner offered to crown Gregory King of 
  Nas. To the shock of his enemies and retainers alike, 
  Gregory 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. Gregory crowned himself 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, though, 
  CHENOA GRYN
  ASHUR
  
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  DEMA-MA
  FREJA ILYANOVKA
  Gregory defeated the armies from Houses Olsson and 
  Hanstrom and imposed vassalage upon them.
  Again, he spared the dukes, taking from them their 
  autocratic power and an oath of fealty. Their knights 
  and barons were reluctant to fight a man they saw as a 
  liberator and eagerly pledged themselves to the renewed 
  feudal order and the young Caneus Empire.
  Duke Ludwig von Breit, the last of the independent 
  dukes, invaded the lands of the defeated houses and 
  incorporated their mercenary armies into his own. 
  In 653 BU, von Breit’s army, swollen with every 
  imaginable type of mercenary—from Sametian horse 
  archers to skirmishers from Bal—met the heavy cavalry 
  of Emperor Gregory to fight what historians would later 
  call the Battle of Caneus. 
  Three times, Gregory’s host charged the professional 
  soldiers of von Breit, and each time they were pushed 
  back. With his army nearly halved and night fast 
  approaching, the emperor took up his war banner and 
  led a last, suicidal charge against the center of von 
  Breit’s army. The knights finally broke through, splitting 
  the ducal forces. More importantly, 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.
  In late 653 BU, Gregory Eland was crowned emperor a 
  second time in Baron von Breit’s palace in Hadensburg. 
  The Dominion and the Arman clans recognized his 
  coronation.
  THE SANGUINE COVENANT
  The Sanguine Church existed in isolated communities 
  in Nas for centuries before it exploded onto the stage 
  during the rise of the Caneus Empire. What prompted 
  its rise was the emperor’s brother, Chauncey Eland, who 
  had been sick, unable to recover from his wounds from 
  the siege of Ravenspont. Motivated by a dream from the 
  Sanguine Lord, a country priest named Lucius Horst met 
  with the ill brother, and using blood magic he cleansed 
  and healed Chauncey Eland’s wounds.
  In 654 BU, Emperor Gregory summoned Lucius to 
  Nyssa. The emperor commanded Lucius to restore life 
  to his dead betrothed, Liesel Ravenspont. Lucius agreed, 
  and a short time later, Liesel returned from the beyond 
  and became the first empress. Rewarded for his services, 
  Lucius became Imperial Confessor and spent the next 
  few years scribing rites that changed the Sanguine 
  Church into the Sanguine Covenant.
  
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  KARISSA
  THE MAD EMPEROR
  In 564 BU, Vincent Eland was crowned. His forty-
  year reign was marked by brutal purges, repression, 
  and forced conversion of the populace to the Sanguine 
  Covenant. His brutal reign ended in open rebellion and 
  his death. 
  Archprelate Jung—realizing that without a trustworthy 
  Eland emperor, the empire would descend into anarchy 
  and feuding baronies once again—decided he would try 
  to replicate the feat of the priest Lucius.
  Jung realized he might fail. However, unlike Lucius, he 
  had the mortal remains of the emperor’s purged cousin, 
  Prince Albrecht Eland. Jung’s gambit paid off better 
  than he could have imagined. He restored Albrecht to 
  life, crowned him, and turned 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. So too the 
  Covenant kept armed against pagans and unbelievers, 
  and though it no longer persecuted them within the 
  Caneus Empire, it did not look kindly on them in other 
  lands.
  THE ARMAN PROTECTORATE
  By 500 BU, the Armans had completely settled 
  into civilized life, their clan leaders now sedentary, 
  autocratic princes. The strong mercenary culture that 
  sent thousands of Armans to fight wars for foreign lords 
  kept them busy and rich in their homeland princedoms.
  The Armans had kept their splendor for years by raiding 
  Abaddon; Abaddon had kept its splendor through 
  mercenary gold earned in foreign wars—both of which 
  were running thin. Any more, raids into Sametia and the 
  Dominion hardly paid for themselves.
  In 492 BU, the khagan invaded the lands of Prince 
  Babinovich, imposing a steep ransom. The Armans took 
  two years to retaliate. The khagan outmaneuvered them, 
  waited for the Armans to split before falling on the host. 
  Convinced by a hermit worshipping the Sanguine 
  Covenant, Prince Nicola Kryszkas and Princess Olga 
  Babinovich fought the khagan to an impasse at the 
  Battle of the Rain of Blood. After the battle, all three 
  rulers made peace and accepted the word of the hermit.
  GRAAL
  
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  Returning home, the two princes found that their former 
  ally, Prince Josef Chapaevonas, had taken over their 
  lands and granted them to his own retainers. In the civil 
  war that followed, Prince Nicola defeated his opponents 
  with the help of the khagan and the Sanguine Covenant. 
  Victorious, Nicola was crowned Tsar of the Arman 
  Protectorate.
  THE CONFEDERATION  
  OF THE WYLDLANDS
  The Brotherhood of Khayne was a savage sect for a 
  savage land. Atop step pyramids crimson with 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 
  favorable 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 Euhudi 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 
  unsuspecting 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 south of Baargon. Darai arrayed the core 
  of his in the clearing, keeping the rest of his army hidden 
  to disguise its size. Xoltec threw the brunt of his force 
  against this line, expecting it to fold as others had, but 
  the Baargon infantry and Arman mercenaries held the 
  line. At the same time, Darai sent enuka scouts to fall 
  upon the Xehitoch army’s flanks. The Brotherhood fell 
  back in disarray, thinking they were under attack by a 
  larger force. During the retreat, Prince Xoltec was slain 
  and Euhudi was captured.
  LONGSHADOW
  KATLAN BREDJ HUELTA
  
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  In accordance with Wyldlands custom, the captured 
  men of Xehitoch were brought to the victors’ cities as 
  sacrifices. As a priestess, Euhudi would be ransomed 
  back to Xehitoch, but she refused. Believing Xehitoch 
  had failed Khayne, she chose to stay behind and join 
  with the victorious Darai. 
  Euhudi became Darai’s mistress, then his queen, ruling 
  at his side in Naphil for the next decade. She integrated 
  elements of Khaynite worship into the 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. His lesser 
  wives bickered amongst themselves to crown their 
  own children, but Euhudi set herself up as regent and 
  arbiter for the warring heirs. She played Naphil’s society 
  against itself. 
  In 369 BU, only one candidate remained: Darai’s son 
  Ordoa. Euhudi embraced Ordoa as the rightful heir and 
  crowned him king of Naphil on a throne made from the 
  bones of his rivals—in the name of Khayne.
  Ordoa did not care what god ruled his soul as long as he 
  ruled the country. Euhudi had so successfully instilled 
  Brotherhood practices into the native cults of Naphil that 
  it hardly changed for the common citizens. Again high 
  priestess and lover of a king, Euhudi turned her gaze to 
  neighboring lands.
  In 366 BU, Naphil invaded its former ally Baargon. 
  For the second time, an army acting at Euhudi’s behest 
  approached Baargon. And for the second time it faced 
  the shield wall of its temple guards and southern 
  mercenaries. 
  As Euhudi built her powerbase in Naphil, an Arman 
  mercenary named Lavrenty Roskoff claimed the crown 
  of Baargon. Roskoff led the city’s defense against his 
  former allies. He was a canny and charismatic fighter, 
  but highly conventional. 
  Euhudi remembered Darai’s battle plan at the previous 
  Battle of Baargon. She advised Ordoa to place his slave-
  soldiers in his center and to sweep his elite warriors 
  around Roskoff’s left flank. Ordoa followed her advice 
  and executed the plan flawlessly. Only a handful of 
  mercenaries and Baargon warriors escaped to the jungle. 
  Its army destroyed, the city surrendered.
  Ordoa and Euhudi did not stop at Baargon. Two more 
  city-states, including the latter’s native Xehitoch, fell 
  to the pair’s rapidly swelling host before the end of 
  365 BU. The high priestess dedicated each victory to 
  Khayne with thousands of sacrifices. Most of the eastern 
  Wyldlands fell to the Brotherhood. The feuding cities of 
  the west looked askance at this growing empire. 
  MILKA BRONISLAW
  MARKUS SMITH
  
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  This block crashed against Ataulpa’s center while 
  cannibal savages harried his flanks. Had the Confederate 
  army been able to flee, it surely would have broken, but 
  trapped as they were, they had no choice but to fight and 
  die with their 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, covered with panther warriors. His two sons 
  were slain, one cut down by Ataulpa himself. With the 
  loss of their leader, the Brotherhood panicked. The 
  Naphil stood their ground, dying to the last man over 
  their ruler’s body, but the cannibals and slave-soldiers 
  broke for the river.
  Euhudi realized that Khayne’s temporal realm rested on 
  her. Calling on the blood sorcery of Khayne, she formed 
  crimson elementals that towered over the battlefield. 
  The elementals crashed like a wave over her allies and 
  surged toward the Reis army—and stopped. 
  Wise in the timeless secrets of the Kaga, Ataulpa’s 
  mystics battled the bloody priestess’s will. The blood 
  In 357 BU, in the city of Reis, the leaders of free Bal met 
  with ambassadors from the southern empires. The free 
  cities of Bal united under Prince Ataulpa Gazsi of Reis 
  and planned a common defense against the Brotherhood.
  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 cleared 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. A veteran, he knew the fearsome 
  reputation of the Brotherhood would send his men 
  running long before he wanted to quit the field. By 
  forcing the Brotherhood into the open to stand and fight, 
  he made it a contest of wills and fighting skill rather than 
  morale and stealth.
  The armies met 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 came 
  the shock troops of Euhudi’s cult, the half-giants of 
  Naphil, and the prince of Naphil’s own bodyguard. 
  NOSE-CUTTER
  
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  NATASHA ILYANOVIK
  elementals sank back into the river, dragging the 
  screaming Brotherhood army to hell with them.
  Ataulpa reconquered the east in a lightning campaign. 
  He was also named the first imperator of the Reis 
  Confederacy in 356 BU. Scholars 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 
  Unthara. 
  DAWN OF TOTAL WAR
  By 350 BU, four great empires reigned in the Wyldlands 
  of Bal, the ice fields of Nas, the desert of Cordel, and 
  the hills of Abaddon. These empires looked to Sametia, 
  home to scattered tribes of nomads and barbarians, as 
  the logical place to expand. Sametia was more fertile 
  than Cordel or Nas. The Arman Protectorate needed 
  more land. The Reis Confederacy sought to expand its 
  own empire. From 360 to 290 BU, skirmishes erupted 
  between the empires and natives on the plains of 
  Sametia every day. Each empire probed the will of its 
  neighbor to keep or expand its holding in Sametia.
  In 289 BU, the Dominion escalated the conflict by an 
  astounding feat of magic. Magical theory advanced 
  rapidly under the Dominion’s caste system with the 
  development of windsailing ships, elegant sloops 
  designed to cruise the skies like ordinary ships did the 
  seas. Combining the powers of more than a hundred 
  sorcerers and knowledge gleaned from study of the 
  Kaga, a local khan raised an entire city into the sky, 
  making it a floating, nigh-impregnable fortress and base 
  of power. This new city was named Anidem.
  Tsar Vasiliy Kryszkas demanded the Dominion surrender 
  the secrets of this invention to its rivals. When Khagan 
  Malik Ibn Hassan declined the request, Vasiliy declared 
  war. Although it began in Sametia, the conflict spilled 
  over to the entire Dominion–Protectorate border. Both 
  sides fielded multiple armies, playing a tactical game 
  on a grand scale. Old traditions of single combat, the 
  tactic of the massed charge, the very nature of military 
  force—all this changed rapidly.
  When a Protectorate army reached Anidem in 288 
  BU, it unveiled its own innovation. Gigantic, crude 
  ironforged war engines bombarded the floating city, 
  while lighter-than-air balloons lifted troops through 
  Dominion windsailing vessels. The attack was repulsed, 
  but several districts of Anidem crashed to the ground. 
  OLEG ILYANOVIK
  
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  The Dominion retaliated by cursing the Protectorate 
  countryside with endless night. Crops withered, animals 
  shied, and peasants cowered. Tsar Vasiliy, unable to 
  break the curse or draw the Caneus Empire into the 
  fight, agreed to an uneasy peace. Victorious, the khagan 
  lifted the curse. 
  From 287 to 263 BU, the empires restricted their 
  jockeying for position to Sametia. 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 that the 
  Confederacy’s first imperator had hoped for a century 
  earlier. 
  It quickly became apparent that the Caneans’ 
  advantages—manpower, armor, and heavy cavalry—
  were useless in the sweltering jungles of Bal. Thousands 
  of Canean knights died before engaging the armies of 
  the Confederacy. Worse, they brought jungle diseases 
  back with them, plunging the Sanguine Covenant’s 
  clergy into a constant battle against illness. Archprelate 
  Karl Edegard proclaimed that these diseases were divine 
  punishment for the empire’s overreach and cautioned 
  against further invasions. 
  Confederate armies retaliated in 251 BU and again in 
  235. These invasion forces proved as ill-equipped to 
  fight in frigid Nas as their foes were in the Wyldlands. 
  The two empires declared Koryth a neutral zone, where 
  neither would enforce their rule without the other’s 
  consent. 
  Though the wars of this century were relatively brief, 
  the empires realized just how devastating they could be. 
  More soldiers had died than had perished in any of the 
  empires’ wars of unification. 
  THE DOMINION - PROTECTORATE 
  WARS 
  In 203 BU, Dimitri Dyakonoviks, the ambitious 
  second son of the prince of the last independent 
  Arman princedom, seduced Ilyana Kryszkas, the eldest 
  daughter of the tsar. Rather than allowing her dishonor 
  to become public, Tsar Pieter Kryszkas consented to the 
  wedding. 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, raged 
  when he heard of his ungrateful child’s demands. 
  Rather than go to the tsar, who had no intention of 
  getting involved, Lavrenty appealed to the Dominion for 
  military protection.
  Khagan Malik Ibn Hassan spent his early reign easing 
  the tensions between the two countries; he had even 
  ORSIA WENTWORTH
  ONISHI YUMI
  
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  stayed at the tsar’s palace for an extended visit a few 
  years before Dimitri pressed his claim. Unfortunately, 
  Hassan was on his deathbed. His grandson and heir, 
  Ahmed, was educated at Anidem and hated the Armans 
  for damaging the floating city. A Dominion army under 
  the crown prince marched to the help of Prince Lavrenty.
  To Tsar Pieter, this was an invasion and a betrayal of 
  the peace treaty. The tsar’s army marched to the border. 
  A second army, jointly led by Dimitri Dyakonoviks 
  and Tsarevich Nicola, assembled on the border of the 
  Dyakonoviks princedom. 
  The conflict was later called the First, or Lesser, 
  Dominion–Protectorate War. The first volley was fired 
  in 202 BU, when a freak lightning storm paralyzed a 
  company of the Protectorate’s ironforged juggernauts at 
  the Dyakonoviks border. Dimitri Dyakonoviks blamed 
  the Dominion’s battle-mages, and ordered an 
  attack on their lines.
  For twenty-six years, Dominion and 
  Protectorate armies clashed, fighting 
  over the Dyakonoviks princedom. The 
  princedom was reduced nearly to slag 
  by the magical and mechanical forces 
  unleashed upon it. Tsar Pieter fell in 
  battle in 196 BU, his body turned to 
  stone. 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 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. The 
  Peacekeepers were an elite regiment formed from the 
  finest Arman youth, both men and women, and their 
  service was for life. Chosen as children, they were 
  trained in a secret facility in the heart of the Protectorate, 
  where grueling mental and physical tests honed them 
  into living weapons. This was a force recruited to win 
  all wars. 
  General Alexei Brushkov, the foremost warrior and field 
  commander of the Protectorate, opposed the founding 
  of the Peacekeepers. A highly successful and clever 
  RONAN
  RILEY MORGAN
  
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  general, Brushkov had defeated the Dominion time 
  and again. He became increasingly frustrated with the 
  war, lamenting the gloryless, impersonal slaughter over 
  which he presided so masterfully. Brushkov longed 
  for bygone days when, he felt, honor and courage won 
  battles, not numbers.
  In 184 BU, Brushkov resigned his commission. The 
  Protectorate was horrified to see the general leave, 
  taking with him his most accomplished lieutenants. 
  They vanished into the Sametian wilderness ahead of 
  the inevitable demands for their return, dead or alive. 
  The Protectorate sued for peace with the Dominion, 
  conceding large tracts of rich farmland, including most 
  of the contested territories on the west bank of the 
  Abaddon River.
  THE JANISSARIES
  After resigning his commission, Brushkov and his 
  retinue disappeared into the wilds of Koryth. There, in 
  182 BU, he 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 to attract the greatest military minds 
  of all four empires, bring an end to imperial wars, and 
  return Exodus to an age when knights and barons settled 
  their disputes with honor rather than slaving for a distant 
  master. He adapted much of the Janissary philosophy 
  from the writings of Gregory Eland, a man he greatly 
  respected. None of the empires recognized the new 
  order.
  They settled in the ruined fortress of Aremyhk. For 
  centuries, this ancient citadel had lain empty because 
  the locals thought it haunted by the spirits of its 
  former inhabitants. In the depths of Aremyhk, the 
  Janissaries found mental echoes from the Age of Mind 
  and Magic and, through sheer force of will, mastered 
  those energies. To their incredible martial disciplines the 
  Janissaries added mental powers not seen on Exodus for 
  a thousand years. 
  Psions 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 Janissaries might have 
  remained a footnote in Exodus history, a movement that 
  rose and fell with its first grandmaster. But they didn’t.
  THE TWILIGHT WAR
  Tsar Nicola IV died in 158 BU, passing imperial power 
  to his sister Ilyana and her husband, Dimitri, whose 
  SHANI BENNU
  SIUSAN KINNON
  
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  ambitions had sparked the war between the Dominion 
  and Protectorate. Immediately the war resumed.
  Ilyana reigned until her death in 145 BU, after which 
  her son took the throne as Tsar Georgy II. Georgy 
  II modernized the Protectorate and reorganized the 
  army. He laid the “gearlines”—vast arcane–mechanical 
  constructions 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 marvels of Exodus, 
  they showed the Dominion that the Protectorate was 
  recovering from the war, becoming dangerous once 
  again.
  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 acceptable solution. On the eve of the suspect’s 
  extradition, Imperatrix Chanui of the Reis Confederacy 
  gave the Dominion permission to extradite the man. 
  Dominion and Confederate troops stormed the Arman 
  embassy and dragged the suspected assassin from his 
  countrymen. 
  The Protectorate protested and threatened war. 
  Imperatrix Chanui complied, sending the captive back 
  in five separate caravans. With the fifth, she attached 
  a letter informing the tsar that he would make no 
  demands of her country, and that crimes committed there 
  would be dealt with by the Confederacy. Receiving the 
  Imperatrix’s message, the Arman Protectorate declared 
  war. Nineteen days after the declaration reached Reis, 
  the Dominion launched an attack on the weakened 
  Arman flank, preventing the Protectorate from marching 
  into Sametia.
  Because the Reis Confederacy was hundreds of 
  miles from the Protectorate, Tsar Georgy focused on 
  the Dominion. The Second, or Greater, Dominion–
  Protectorate War began. 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, the Reis Confederacy annexed the Sametian 
  colonies of the Protectorate and occupied the Dominion’s 
  colonies. Neither of the southern powers could afford 
  to send significant forces to protect their holdings in 
  TANE
  TWELFTH BLADE
  
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  the contested lands. The Caneus Empire engaged the 
  Confederate army in Sametia.
  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. It would be the longest 
  war since the War of Mind and Magic, and every day 
  introduced new and more horrible ways to fight and die. 
  At its peak around 50 BU, the Twilight War claimed 
  more than ten thousand lives daily. 
  The Confederacy introduced war beasts of fearsome and 
  unnatural aspect, twisted aberrations created by ritual 
  magic. The Caneans countered by sending super-heavy 
  knights that fought fearlessly. The Protectorate fielded 
  bigger ironforged juggernauts that crushed whole 
  divisions under their gear-like wheels. In response, the 
  Dominion superheated the juggernauts with fire magic, 
  cooking the crews and exploding them into fleshy 
  shrapnel. 
  From the fires of the Twilight War emerged many dangers 
  of modern Exodus, including magically engineered 
  monsters, spells, and weapons. These dangers roam the 
  wilderness to this day.
  PATH TO UNIFICATION
  In 15 BU, the Arman Protectorate and the Dominion 
  signed a peace treaty, and their armies stood down. 
  Tsar Dimitri II and Khagan Rashid Ibn Fasan met in the 
  oft-contested floating city of Anidem to sign the treaty. 
  Both countries remained on a war footing, though, 
  defending their northern borders against Canean and 
  Confederate aggression.
  The Caneus Empire and the Reis Confederacy came later 
  to the war. Boasting larger populations than their rivals, 
  they saw no reason to end the conflict. They pressed on 
  where the Dominion and the Protectorate faltered.
  In 5 BU, a massive Reis army crossed into the Koryth 
  neutral zone, made of a hundred thousand soldiers and 
  ten thousand monsters backed by ritual blood magic. 
  The Confederacy was certain their army would reach 
  Nyssa and force an end to the war. 
  The Caneus Empire’s main army was in Sametia 
  harrying the eastern front, so only forty thousand 
  warriors—mostly knights of the local baronies—met the 
  Confederate army. 
  The armies met in the shadow of the Aremyhk fortress. 
  From their looming citadel, the Janissaries emerged and 
  arrayed for battle. The Caneans first took these men for 
  reinforcements and welcomed them, but the Janissaries 
  had not emerged from their citadel to take sides. One 
  thousand Janissaries arrayed for battle 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—
  from the Covenant priests in the Caneus army, and from 
  the blood mages of the Reis army—fizzled, stopped by 
  the Janissaries’ unrivaled mental powers.
  Grandmaster Randal Yearby, Brushkov’s chosen 
  successor, delivered an ultimatum to both commanders: 
  “Stop the Twilight War or the Janissaries will stop it for 
  XILL
  YEPA AWENASA
  
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  lands, to discontinue the use of forbidden magic, and to 
  negotiate any serious grievances through the Imperial 
  Senate, moderating the possibility of sparking war anew.
  THE FIRST YEARS (1 - 40 AU)
  In 1 AU, the Imperial Senate held its first session, blessed 
  by the archprelate and prelates of Qijom and Mureath 
  and watched over by the rulers of four empires. Exodus 
  seemed poised to enter a period of unprecedented peace 
  and prosperity. But a threat waited.
  For centuries, the Brotherhood of Khayne had lurked 
  in the depths of the Wyldlands of Bal or Unthara. It 
  now whispered its dark doctrines amongst the decadent, 
  thrill-seeking children of the aristocracy. With the 
  Imperial Alliance’s formal imposition of the Sanguine 
  Covenant, 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 Covenant churches were struck by 
  a terrorist attack, the first of many to come. The 
  Nyssa Massacre leveled the west wing of the Sanguine 
  Cathedral in Nyssa, killing the archprelate and 
  hundreds of worshippers. The attack was perpetrated 
  with blood magic, so Covenant investigators traced 
  it to the Brotherhood of Khayne. Prior to the attack, 
  the Covenant had reluctantly tolerated the old pagan 
  religions. Afterwards, the Covenant became increasingly 
  militant, forming the Order of the Purifiers to hunt down 
  and destroy enemies of the faith.
  In 19 AU, an expedition sponsored by the Arman 
  Protectorate traveled to Ablis. What they discovered 
  is not known, but the Imperial Alliance blockaded the 
  island. That blockade is still in effect today.
  In 26 AU, the Caneus Empire and the Dominion came 
  close to a major dynastic marriage when Erwin Eland, 
  a senator and cousin of the emperor, married Nadja Ibn 
  Al’alim, daughter of the khagan. This, however, was 
  a match of two young nobles distant from the throne; 
  before they and their children would have stood to 
  inherit either throne, more than a dozen claimants would 
  need to perish. Their son, Njal Eland, would instead 
  become the chief legate of the Imperial Senate, leaving 
  the politics of both of his homelands.
  In 31 AU, another shock rocked Exodus. The cavians, 
  the rat-like humanoids thought annihilated in the War of 
  Mind and Magic, returned. Their return was subtle; for 
  nearly a decade, their presence remained a whispered 
  rumor, first in the Caneus Empire.
  In 36 AU, the nomad clans of Sametia sought 
  representation in the Imperial Alliance. This would be 
  the first major addition to the Alliance. The senators, 
  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. 
  you!” Having just watched the warrior-ascetics break 
  two armies, the commanders were quite receptive. The 
  armies withdrew from Koryth, taking a Janissary to 
  present the peace proposal. 
  In Nyssa, Empress Constance Eland, acting as regent for 
  her young son Desmond, 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. 
  Their army’s defeat had shaken the Confederacy; 
  many city-states were nearly depopulated, having lost 
  generations of their young men, and others were on the 
  verge of rebellion. 
  In 4 BU, the rulers of the major empires traveled to 
  Aremyhk. At the Janissaries’ invitation, the leaders of 
  dozens of independent principalities, tribes, duchies, 
  and city-states joined them. After intense negotiation, 
  all signed the Treaty of Aremyhk, ending the Twilight 
  War and returning the borders to those present at the 
  start of the war.
  Grandmaster Yearby faced a momentous decision. 
  The Janissaries had been founded to fight against 
  monolithic governments and work to return to simpler, 
  less centralized times. Yearby knew that the great lords 
  would never accept such a proposal; he also knew the 
  Janissaries could not dismantle the four empires by 
  force. But Yearby saw a way to put an end to the age of 
  total war: he would have to push for the opposite of his 
  mentor’s vision. He decided to try.
  Calling on the assembled dignitaries, Yearby proposed 
  they go beyond a single treaty and instead form an 
  alliance that could another Twilight War, reminding 
  them that their countries could not survive another such 
  conflict. And so for years, monarchs, statesmen, and 
  soldiers argued, debated, threatened, insulted, spied, 
  worried, and planned—from 4 BU to the inauguration of 
  the Imperial Alliance in 1 AU (After Unification). 
  Eventually, the Imperial Alliance took on its familiar, 
  modern form: an inner council consisting of the senior 
  legates from the four imperial families; the Imperial 
  Senate consisting of forty legates, one from each 
  of the major noble houses; and a series of imperial 
  assemblies that 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 the Senate’s 
  suggestions both force and respect. 
  At the insistence of the southern empires, the Sanguine 
  Covenant was recognized as the official religion of the 
  Imperial Alliance. All nations of the Alliance, from the 
  strongest 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 
  
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  NeoExodus Campaign Setting:
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  In response, the angry clans launched raids against their 
  neighbors. Janissaries were sent to pacify the situation. 
  The presence of the psychic agents cowed the clan 
  leadership, stopping their raids. 
  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 the reintegration of the cavian race 
  into Exodus, and by 50 AU cavians moved about openly 
  in major cities. 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 
  undergone their radical and disturbing transformation.
  THE ALLIANCE IS TESTED  
  (40 –  60 AU)
  In 44 AU, tensions again flared along the Dominion–
  Protectorate border. On the Arman side, several 
  prominent members of the Forgers’ Guild—the 
  engineers of the country’s mighty arcane-mechanical 
  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 border, close enough to eye each other across the 
  invisible line between nations. The Imperial Alliance 
  immediately sent Janissaries as mediators. 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 died when their windsailing 
  vessel crashed en route to Anidem. Further investigation 
  revealed sabotage.
  Tsar Ivan Kryszkas III immediately 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 Senate 
  had he not chosen to back them with immediate force. 
  The Arman Protectorate launched a punitive action 
  against its neighbor.
  The khagan, Yusef Ibn Al’alim, drew a large fleet of 
  Protectorate flyers into the desert beyond 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. As the Protectorate air 
  forces crumpled, their ground troops broke through 
  the Dominion line and surged into the Cordel Desert, 
  plundering the rich land on the west bank of the 
  Abaddon River.
  The war escalated too swiftly for the shocked Imperial 
  Senate to stop it. Partisans of the Dominion and 
  the Protectorate both insisted the Senate refrain from 
  FIRST ONES: ANEISHI
  FIRST ONES: EXODITE
  
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  NeoExodus Campaign Setting:
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  trusted advisor, the Bronze Sage, had predicted the 
  meteor’s fall—and that it would unleash a monstrous 
  plague upon Exodus.
  The Bronze Sage also prophesized that the newborn 
  princess Lolani would bring 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.
  In 62 AU, to soothe the Confederate leadership, the 
  Senate dispatched a Janissary to Unthara. They expected 
  to lay the imperatrix’s fears to rest but only confirmed 
  them. The Janissary discovered that the people of 
  Unthara were being infected by a quicksilver-like 
  ooze, an alien parasite that used their bodies and 
  controlled their minds. The infection proved incurable 
  and inevitably fatal, turning the victim into a breeding 
  ground for the organism. Worse, the entity or entities 
  acted at the direction of some malevolent will. 
  Fearing an outbreak of these “quickslavers,” the 
  Imperial Alliance quarantined Unthara, convinced 
  that any release would destroy all humanoid life on 
  mainland Exodus. The Senate worried that one or more 
  quickslavers had already slipped through their net, but 
  could find no proof.
  Another threat came from the tribes of Sametia, which 
  had grown since the end of the Twilight War, honing their 
  fighting skills as mercenaries and partisans. Rebuffed 
  from “civilized” Exodus, they embraced 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, glory, and plunder. 
  intervening. Rather than sending an army of Canean 
  and Confederate troops under Janissary command, the 
  Senate dispatched a single Janissary to investigate the 
  matter. Jakatka 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 
  secrets with his telepathic abilities. 
  In 47 AU, Jakatka returned to the Senate. After a 
  closed session of the Senate’s inner circle and a swift, 
  decisive message to the tsar and the khagan, the Third 
  Protectorate–Dominion War ended in another stalemate. 
  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 efficient. He trained 
  dozens of apprentice Janissaries in his methods. 
  In 59 AU, the Imperial Senate elevated Bisir to left 
  master of Janissaries, a post second only to grandmaster. 
  Immediately before his investiture, however, Bisir 
  disappeared from Aremyhk.
  THE WORLD CHANGES (60 – 80 AU)
  In 61 AU, a meteor crashed into the island of Unthara. 
  Most of the Imperial Alliance considered it an unimportant 
  astronomical event. In the Reis Confederacy, though, it 
  was met with horror. Imperatrix Sepatha Gazsi’s most 
  FIRST ONES: KHAYNITE
  FIRST ONES: KOBURA SOBEKA
  
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  NeoExodus Campaign Setting:
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  In 69 AU, Thais—who traced her ancestry to calibans, 
  giants, and stranger, stronger beasts—proved herself the 
  most brutal and powerful leader in all the Horde. She 
  defeated Jangai Zhar, the first war chief, and declared 
  herself warrior queen of all Sametia. Under her banner 
  and iron fist, the Janus Horde began coordinated raids on 
  its neighbors, growing in force with every victory.
  In 70 AU, Sametia saw the first appearance of the 
  enigmatic man called the Lawgiver. He appeared as 
  a simple beggar in the colonies of the great empires. 
  Wherever 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. When the Imperial Senate 
  sought to question him, he vanished to beyond even 
  Janissary investigators, only to reappear in the cities of 
  the great empires as inexplicably as he had disappeared.
  In 79 AU, a Janissary infiltrated Unthara, now the 
  domain of the quickslavers, and came face-to-face 
  with the alien plague’s master: Xon. His reemergence 
  decades after his demise, with a menace even greater 
  than his magical abilities at his command, worried the 
  Confederacy.
  PROSPERITY AND TENSIONS  
  (80 – 90 AU)
  Beginning in 80 AU, a royal match far closer to the apex 
  of power appeared possible. Bial, Mercy, Cassandra, and 
  Sienna—the four children of Desmond Eland, Emperor 
  of the Caneus Empire—were all educated at the famed 
  Sihr Academy in the Dominion capital, Qijom. During 
  their stay, the four became extremely close to the young 
  heir to the khaganate, Malik Ibn Al’alim. 
  Princes Bial and Malik, their ages and interests similar, 
  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. 
  In 82 AU, Princess Mercy Eland arrived in Qijom. 
  Ranked among Exodus’s greatest beauties, she quickly 
  won Prince Malik’s affections. The two were as 
  FIRST ONES: KROCA SOBEKA
  
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  NeoExodus Campaign Setting:
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  LOCARI
  inseparable as decorum allowed, spending almost all 
  their spare moments together. 
  In 84 AU, Princess Cassandra joined her sister in 
  Qijom, and the younger Eland princess also fell madly 
  in love with Malik. A bright girl groomed to become 
  the executor of the Caneus Empire’s imperial assembly, 
  Cassandra soon lost interest in her study of statecraft and 
  became obsessed with winning the future khagan away 
  from her sister. Her obsession was dismissed by all as a 
  girlish fancy, harmless and passing.
  The same year, Prince Bial returned to the Caneus 
  Empire to begin the centuries-old trials that would 
  prove him worthy of the throne of Gregory Eland. A 
  traditionalist, Bial insisted on fulfilling the trials’ in 
  their original form: tests of cunning and martial skill 
  that would prove his worth—or kill him. Bial decided 
  to take his trials in the Wyldlands of Bal, for which the 
  Reis Confederacy granted special permission. 
  In 85 AU, Prince Bial arrived in Reis to begin his 
  preparations. But he soon found himself distracted by 
  another heir, Princess Lolani. With a dire prophecy 
  hovering over her, Lolani was all but ignored by her 
  own family and subjects, so she was shocked when 
  the foreign prince addressed her. Bial became the first 
  and only friend Lolani ever had. Though a loner and 
  survivor by nature, she clung to the foreign prince like a 
  lifeline, delighted with the attention. Because Bial was 
  unfamiliar with the customs of the Confederacy, the 
  accursed albino princess showed him how to navigate 
  Confederate politics.
  With all these joinings, only the Arman Protectorate 
  would remain independent. The newly crowned Tsarina 
  Anayanka harbored feelings for Nasser Ibn Al’alim, the 
  khagan prince’s younger brother. A union between two 
  such cunning politicians could have ended the hostility 
  between Dominion and Protectorate. The Protectorate 
  faced its own difficulties with the increasingly powerful 
  Janus Horde, and the Imperial Senate proved slow to 
  render aid.
  In 86 AU, Bial began his trials. His parents hoped to 
  preside over two imperial weddings: 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 without shedding a single 
  drop of blood. But Bial was injured 
  during his trials, mauled by a great 
  beast 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 Brotherhood of Khayne.
  In 87 AU, Before the Caneus Empire 
  could obtain a cure or vengeance 
  for its heir, an assassin struck at 
  Emperor Desmond and Empress 
  Abigail. The attacker wielded a 
  strange dark power, and even the 
  Kaga could not explain what black 
  art took the lives of the Canean 
  ruler and his wife. With the emperor 
  dead and Bial feverish, the nobles of 
  the Caneus Empire declared Mercy 
  the new empress. Mercy and Malik 
  pushed back the announcement of 
  their betrothal. 
  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 might have risen in rebellion, 
  but Bial was content with his lot and 
  worked to ease the tensions between 
  the Caneus Empire and the Reis 
  Confederacy. Bial and Lolani were 
  unable to meet again.
  
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  NeoExodus Campaign Setting:
  history of Exodus
  EXODUS
  CENTER OF THE MULTIVERSE
  Diameter: ×1; Mass: ×1; Gravity: ×1
  Atmosphere: Standard; Orbit: 1 year
  Inhabitants: cavians, cyneans, dalreans, enuka, tieflings, 
  humans, kalisan, prymidians, p’tan, sasori
  Important Locations: Aremyhk, Cordel Desert, Nexus Point 
  Zero, Nyssa, Unthara
  Resources: Fertile lands and seas, widely varying life forms and 
  environments
  With its planetary and interdimensional conduit, the Nexus 
  Gateway, the world of Exodus is known to many as the Gateway 
  to the Multiverse. The long and conflicted history of Exodus 
  has only added to the world’s intrigue and importance. Many 
  humanoid lifeforms, from cavian to human to prymidian, call 
  this planet home, with its thousands of unique flora and fauna 
  adding to its diversity. Unlike many other worlds, Exodus has 
  become a great hub of commerce and trade as well as a center 
  of knowledge due to the Kaga and important knowledge axes 
  like the Infinite Library.
  In 89 AU, the official period of mourning had hardly 
  ended when Malik lost his father and was crowned 
  khagan; Lolani also ascended to the leadership of the 
  Reis Confederacy. All four empires passed to a new 
  generation.
  RECENT DAYS (90 – 91 AU)
  In 90 AU, Empress Mercy was found dead in her 
  chambers in the Gregorian Palace in Nyssa. The Canean 
  imperial assembly immediately suspected foul play. 
  Their investigation confirmed that she had died from 
  poison. Suspicion fell on her brother, Bial, who had left 
  Nyssa the night before Mercy was found dead. With Bial 
  suspected of Mercy’s murder and out of the capital, the 
  imperial assembly chose Princess Cassandra to succeed 
  her sister. 
  The new empress was crowned almost immediately, 
  and her youngest sister, Princess Sienna, became the 
  empire’s executor. Empress Cassandra vowed to make 
  her brother pay for his crime. However, a week later, 
  all signs of Bial had disappeared, forcing the empress 
  to call off the search. Even so, she ordered troops to the 
  border of the Confederacy. Empress Cassandra blamed 
  Bial for poisoning their sister and creating a diplomatic 
  conflict with the Confederacy. She accused Imperatrix 
  Lolani of sheltering her murderous brother and severing 
  ties for his sake. 
  When news of Mercy’s death reached Khagan Malik, 
  he fell into a suicidal depression. He cursed himself for 
  allowing statecraft to keep him from his beloved. Then 
  he cursed himself for thinking of abandoning his duty 
  and people. He could not help but wonder about Bial’s 
  guilt. He laid plans to travel to the Caneus Empire so 
  he could personally investigate the matter. Leaving the 
  Dominion in the hands of his brother, Nasser, Malik 
  boarded his windsailing ship and winged his way north. 
  In Nyssa, Malik was attacked by a band of assassins. 
  Badly injured, he immediately returned home.
  When Malik returned to the Dominion, he found his 
  brother aware of his misfortune, which roused his 
  suspicions. Malik put the cities and tribes on the Canean 
  border on high alert and began marshaling his troops. 
  At Nasser’s urging, additional forces massed at the edge 
  of Sametia, overlooking both the Janus Horde and the 
  Arman Protectorate.
  The Imperial Senate voted to impose martial law on all 
  four member states, ordered the kingdoms and empires 
  to withdraw to their borders, and sent Janissaries to 
  restore order. 
  To the Senate’s horror, all four empires refused to 
  submit. To the horror of the four great monarchs, the 
  Janissaries left Aremyhk and men-at-arms massed in 
  Koryth to enforce the Senate’s desperate bid to restore 
  order.
  It is now 91 AU. More than ever, the world of Exodus 
  needs heroes…
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Dungeons & Dragons [multi]/5th Edition (5e)/3rd Party/LPJ/LPJXX28 NeoExodus Chronicles, World of Exodus.pdf