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Other name: The Old Empire
Full name: Unknown to modern historians. Both the expressions “Archontia” and “The Old Empire” are colloquialisms adopted much later by post-imperial Aporueans. They are not official names.
Type: Territorial state, empire. Probably had multiple forms of governance during its long history. Went defunct about two or two and a half millenia ago.
Demonym: A popular (but among scientists somewhat controversial) term for its peoples is “Precursors”.
Description: The Old Empire was an ancient,
long-lived and in many ways advanced realm. At the height of its power,
during its glory days, it had stretched throughout nearly all of
southern Aporue (including modern day Montoverde, Sillamia and parts of
Trinitia), and much of the temperate central latitudes of Aporue (as far
north and east as Karantia, parts of Lokytia and even the Aethelian
Isles). Its influence was felt even in the remote north and remote west
of the continent, such was its power and (depending on who you ask)
infamy. Knowledge on the history, culture and nature of everyday life in
the now long-lost empire remains somewhat muddled in the present, with
lots of proven facts and surviving authentic records being
counterbalanced with all kinds of legends, inaccurate hearsay or wild
speculation. Attempts at fairer and more professional research and
assessments of the empire are still only a very recent thing, and have
actually been instrumental in advancing burgeoning new sciences, such as
archaeology, linguistics, but also geology and many others. One of the
empire's other popular folk names - Archontia - comes from the
frequently repeated legend that one of the most interesting and
succesful eras of the realm was when it was ruled not by emperors, but
by a council of Elders, a.k.a. Archonts. The new and more comprehensive
research into Archontia, in tandem with folk wisdom based on
recollections of adventurers who had explored ruins and tombs of the Old
Empire, had already shed some more light into the disputed nature of
the empire's inhabitants. Even long after the empire's collapse and
dissolution, it was a well-known fact that Precursors were a
civilisation that adored dabbling in the magical arts, just as much as
they tinkered with concepts of practical but inventive new technology.
To the surprise of many contemporary Aporueans, though, it seems that
the current emergence of new technologies and fields of science had
something of a loose antecedent in the times of the Precursors. While it
was in many ways different in its conception, there are many parallels.
And so, though there is no confirmation about Precursors mastering
things like flight, there is mounting evidence that Precursors built
what might have been steam engines and advanced clockwork automation, in
addition to practicing highly advanced alchemy and elemental magic.
Some self-procclaimed researchers and scholars of Archontia have already
made claims about the correlation between the presence of Old Empire
ruins and occurences of bizarre supernatural threats and dangerous
technology of unknown purposes. According to these experts/“experts”,
the very existence of various monsters and unnatural-seeming creatures
in Aporue can be chalked up to the Precursors decadently engaging in
dark magical and technological arts during the height of their
civilisation. Some of the originators of these claims go even further,
and proclaim that the hypothesis can eventually prove that the beastpeoples
are just descendants of humans cursed into animalistic forms by
unscrupulous Precursor experiments. As expected, the beastpeoples of
Aporue - particularly their naturalists - consider this speculation a
serious affront to their dignity and identity and treat such ideas as
quackery fueled by wishful thinking and blind trust in the veracity of
the legends.
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