The History of Seahaven
The history of the great power of the Isles begins far back in the mists of time, in the Age of Myth when gods walked the earth. The Church of the Tranquil Tide teaches that Ylessa found the island of Heas, surrounded as it is on all sides by seas of every climate, to be the most pleasing landmass in all the world.
In northernmost Heas she built her temple, half above water and half beneath, and from there she ruled over an ancient human people whose culture and achievements have largely been forgot. This temple was called the Sea-Haven, and its priestesses welcomed spirits and men of all race and creed.
Other monuments and ruins erected by a race long passed still linger on Heas, testaments to what history remembers as a more idyllic time. Some say they lived two thousand years ago, others half as much or less, but their buildings have largely crumbled into dust. The prevailing wisdom among the pious is that the Heas aboriginals did not survive the dark Ages that followed the Apocalypse of the Eye. Other theories exist among scholars and the secular, but no sure facts.
The Aartiran Dominion first sent humans to Heas in the year 709 D.R. (Dominion Reckoning). The Dominion was then at the apex of its power, taming new lands with steel and compass, and ships that plied the seas more surely than any that preceded them. It explored the world far and wide, and the first expedition survey of Heas, led by one Captain Stravorius, revealed a land rich in resources.
Five years later Stravorius was to return to the island, and in the year 714 he established himself as Governor-General of the Principality of Heas, a burgeoning colony that quickly swelled in size.
For the next few decades, expansion of the new colony continued, and an extensive merchant fleet began to transport rare metals and minerals, in which Heas was particularly rich, back to the capital of the Dominion. Settlers, supplies, and luxury items flowed back to Heas, and this mutual trade economy proved profitable for all.
Change began in 785, when Elleswyn, the homekeeping wife of an unnamed settler, arrived in Heas. Part of the northwards push of settlement past the Aruta Highlands, Elleswyn is said to have come upon the site of Ylessa’s ancient temple. Modern doctrine from the Tide teaches that she was possessed by Ylessa herself, becoming an avataristic being, holding both her human self and a much greater cosmic awareness.
Abandoned by her husband, she returned to the southern city of Port Venture, where she began to preach the gospel of the sea-mother, her unusually resonant voice and strange convulsions drawing the attention of large crowds. Opinions were widely divided on whether she was a madwoman or a person touched by the divine; some others still claimed that the latter caused the former. Subsequent attempts to relocate the palatial ruin she claimed to have found came up short. History has forgotten the fate of Elleswyn’s husband, but it remembers her great success in creating the first cultural movement unique to Heas.
Elleswyn enshrined the virtues of motherhood, love, and altruism, while simultaneously showing fits of capricious wrath and jealousy that she claimed were only a pale reflection of the passions of Ylessa herself. Her skills as orator and showman quickly gathered to her a devoted following, and with the sponsorship of a few particularly rich converts, financed the construction of a temple in the upper quarter of Port Venture, one that has only grown with time.
Her temple, housing the young Chuch of the Tranquil Tide, quickly became part of the emerging culture of Heas, marked by Ylessa-worship and mercantile preoccupation. It was in 805 when the third successor to Stravorius, Governor-General Rossiam, latched onto the Tide and the memory of the recently-perished Elleswyn as a political tool.
Under the direction of the aimless, foppish and weak Imperator Erhus, the Aartiran Dominion had begun its long and slow decline. Its institutions were still strong, but malaise and hedonism had begun to take hold of the culture, and Rossiam was young and ambitious and saw for himself the chance to achieve greatness heading the younger, more willful people of Heas. After all, he reasoned publically, the average man of Heas was better than the average man of the mother country.
He or his immediate forbears had chosen to risk adversity in a foreign land with no comfort or amenities, in order to forge civilization out of wilderness. Strongly nationalistic even before Heas was an independent nation, Governor-General Rossiam took great steps to foster an independent identity, sponsoring local art, music, drama, and religion out of his own extensive pockets, nearly exhausting his widow-inherited fortune from the mainland.
Erhus sensed trouble brewing in the province, and in an ill-advised move, declared massive export tariffs on Port Venture. The public outrage was immediate, and Rossiam saw his chance. After a lengthy meeting, Valeria, the successor to Elleswyn, declared Rossiam no longer to be Governor-General of Port Venture, but rather King Stalwart the First of Seahaven.
Public reaction was immediate and near unanimously supportive, and Erhus’ promise of military retribution never materialized. Rossiam knew firsthand of the rebellion brewing in southern Aartiru, and the threat of dissidents at home was far more pressing than dissidents overseas. In truth, the relationship between the newly-born Seahaven and Aartiru was little changed: Goods continued to flow between them. The only difference was that now the leader of Heas did not take orders directly.
In return for her coronation blessing, Valeria had secured a number of concessions. The Tranquil Tide of Seahaven was to be forever the official state religion, its priestesses to be treated with special deference, and a portion of the royal funding to be set aside every year for financing Temple projects.
The most powerful concession, however, was the heretofore unthinkable standing of women as the equal of men in all spheres, not to be barred from any employment or study on account of their sex. This concept run utterly contrary to the patriarchal Aartiran tradition, and it still has not completely taken hold in the minds of all subjects centuries later, even if it has at last become the truth of government and private practice that women are free to seek employment in accordance with their ability. This is due in part to the shrewd hand the Tranquil Tide has used over the years to mold society to their vision, an ongoing effort even today.
As the decades went by, Seahaven expanded into an august and prosperous capital city, if not perhaps worthy of its mythological name, and the Tide took hold all across Heas. The merchant-fleets of Seahaven were known worldwide as the very best of traders and the most talented sailors, trained in erratic weather and strangely-behaving waters.
In 940 King Wisdom II announced that Seahaven’s royal light extended all across the neighboring archipelago, beginning an ill-fated attempt at an imperial power based in Heas. Balinand Isle, its dark-skinned people largely regarded as primitive and weak, was to be the first gem of the Seahaven Dominion. For the first twenty years, the northern colony of Ellesham prospered on Balinand Isle, trading with the natives and growing quickly. This was not to last. Based out of the southern village of Ipto Kal, a young Balorite tribe-king named Altair began a campaign of conquest and unification, his secret ultimate aim to drive out the ‘northern barbarians.’
With nearly two-thirds the of the island under his control, Altair declared Ellesham and its allied tribes to be a nest of evil, full of dryth and other abominations in human form. His forces cut quickly through opposition, slaughtering the town and enslaving its few surviving women and children before reinforcements could arrive, with these too soundly defeated due to the seizure of the city’s sea-fort cannons. Typically, the Seahaveners had given more credence to threats abroad than those at home.
A great deal of mithril-dust was expended in the use of so much gunpowder, and the ships of Heas were smashed. Seahaven has remained a single-island state ever since, but still retains a claim to the northern provinces of Balinand Isle.
The next hundred years were marked by a series of inventions, particularly the printing press, which has done an enormous amount to raise the literacy of the average Seahavener, and indeed, of all the non-tribal peoples of the world.
Books were widely disseminated in a way never before seen, and the number of texts of history, war, and philosophy skyrocketed as never before seen — secular culture began to be just as important as religious and noble. The world was on the brink of something like modernization, when disaster struck in 1073. In the space of less than a month, the destruction of Yarsin in the east created a chain reaction that swallowed up most of the known world with a toxic miasma known as the Darkness.
Seahaven, part of Tarkas, and all the islands of the neighboring archipelago were spared this fate, along with a handful of holdouts around the world whose fates are unknown, none of them reachable by Darkened seas. The next several years were a battle for survival, as demons, rare creatures more legend than fact, reappeared in the world in numbers never before imagined. Most of the world’s mages were killed, and entire schools of magic dependent on the balance of the elements and nature were no longer usable.
The nation wants for strong leadership, with a prepubescent king and an ineffectual regent in charge. A creature called the Kraken, a demon that is something between shark, octopus, squid, and boat, destroyed most of the navy.
In 1074, foreign ships bearing the Sayaki, a nation of oriental humans, arrived in Seahaven. These folk lost their homeland to the Cataclysm and Darkness, and the ships bore only a relative handful of their people, the staunchest and most pious traditionalists. They had followed their mystics and clergy to the island of Heas, where delicate negotiations with the King’s Regent earned the Sayaki refugees their own protectorate in the Bregh Plains.
Here they built Kizuni Odawi, the Stalwart Fortress, in their own tongue. It is a place full of heavily engrained decorum and tradition, where piety and loyalty are valued over all else. Society is centered around a handful of august warrior lineages, and the heads of these clans confer with one another to decide on affairs of state. Men and women are generally encouraged to pursue military and artisan paths, respectively.
The city’s main exports are artistic, supported by a generous Seahaven stipend, in return for their military protection of Heas. And indeed, the warrior clans of the Sayaki are an invaluable resource, as by 1080 their presence brings a semblance of order to the demon-ravaged countryside for the first time since the Darkness fell.
As the eleventh century of the Dominion Reckoning nears its close, it is a strange time to be alive. A young generation that does not remember the world before the Darkness has begun to come of age, and while their forbears lament a wider world lost, these younger folk show strongly the pioneering blood of their ancestors, and a will to tame the world and take back from chaos and demonkind all of it that can be won.
The Seahaven of today is a raucous and dangerous place, full of refugees from all corners of the globe, and a populace on the knife’s edge of fear and anger.
Written by Demosthenes.
