History of Lutoborsk
Prehistory
Antiquity
Joghic invasions
In the last centuries of the first millennium BCE the Joghunmal became the dominant culture within the Lutoborian steppe, displacing pre-existing nomadic cultures. In the first decades of the first century BCE, Joghic tribes started to move en masse southward into the tablelands and, from there, east and west into the river valleys descending to the coast. The reasons for this movement are not very well known, but demographic pressure was probably a significant factor. Joghic oral traditions preserve semi-historical accounts of the migration and invasion, including the struggle against the Paleo-Korinnian inhabitants of those regions. The chief Gegmal is a notable figure in those accounts. His existence is confirmed by written records from the Undughu First Despotism, which also mention a number of Joghic chiefs, their conquest of the Lower Nadrova, and pillaging expeditions into the territory of the Undughus around the Bay of Toskani. The Joghunmal migration continued until the early 100s CE. Rapidly, the nomadic polities assimilated into the settled Paleo-Korinnian communities and formed a series of syncretic cultures that were ancestral to those found in the Lutoborsk today. The resulting cultural group became known as the Dovhyi Joghs or Agnujoghs (also called on occasion Southern Joghs). The main areas of Joghic settlement were in the tablelands and the Lower Nadrova, where they completely supplanted the native elites; Jogh migrants would also cross into and settle the Undughu coast. This led into the Joghic Hegemony, a nine-century period in which the greater part of inland Lutoborsk was dominated by Joghic polities, either nomadic or settled.
The Undughu civilisation
Early Undughu
As the Joghunmal came to dominate the interior and the greater Nadrova basin, the south-eastern coast saw the rise of a new power, the Undughu civilisation. The region around the Bay of Toskani and the Undughu Coastal Plain had been civilised for a while with the Proto-Undughus, who emerged around the sixth century BCE. The Proto-Undughus were fairly sophisticated with advanced Bronze Age metallurgy, sailing knowledge, and complex agriculture, as well as a complex political-religious system based on factions. They developed trade links in the northern Gulf of Joriscia, including the Solniai Islands, and further south to the Chotarian heartland, taking a prominent position in controlling the flow of trade coming from the Joghic steppe. By the fourth century BCE their polities were firmly established and began to be mentioned in Chotarian documents; this is traditionally viewed as the final transition from the Proto-Undughu to the Undughu era. The early Undughus were divided into a number of small kingdoms and city-states that competed with each other militarily and commercially. The second century BCE was a pivotal period for their culture, as they transitioned into the Iron Age and became fully literate by adopting a writing system modelled on the Chotarian script.
First Despotism
Internal conflicts and pressure from the Agnujoghs and their nomadic relatives drove, from the late second century BCE, a process of gradual political unification in the Undughu realms. Military leagues became common in order for smaller polities and city-states to form defensive or offensive alliances by which to take down their rivals or fight Joghic attacks. The leader of those leagues were Generalissimos, military strongmen, who were acclaimed by their peers under a common Outer Joriscian practice of election. The powers vested in the generalissimo were wide, and intended as temporary but increasingly becoming permanent, with the strongmen entrenching their positions and starting to compete with each other. This eventually culminated in the rise of Baqbaq, a generalissimo of Agnujoghic extraction (Joghs were often employed as mercenaries by Undughus), who proclaim himself Despot in 22-23 BCE and succeeded in unifying the Undughus for the first time.
The era that followed Baqbaq's ascension is known as the First Despotism; this lasted to the end of the first century CE. Under the Despots the Undughus aggressively expanded toward Chotar, taking advantage of the chaos of the Third Chotarian Interdynastic period to lay waste to the Chotarians. Under the second Despot Radup, the Undughus marched south from 2 CE and conquered Lower Siauresa (Doyotia), Greater Rasintia, and Gergotea, pushing into the Joriscian Lowlands as far as Hetvend. Vast riches were pillaged and diverted to modern-day Uman, the Despotism capital city, which became covered in exquisite temples and palatial houses. Meanwhile, the reach of Undughu traders penetrated deep into southern Outer Joriscia, and Undughu raiding parties became a common sight on the coasts of the Joriscian Peninsula. Control over most of the northern half of the Chotarian civilisation also strengthened a process of cultural transfer to the Undughus, which would culminate some four centuries later. The third Despot, Qoka, led a campaign against the Agnujoghs of the Lower Nadrova, successfully bringing the region into the Undughu orbit. The modern port-city of Kothyn is built on an Undughu settlement founded during the First Despotism around 45 CE.
The Despotism began its decline when the Chotarians reasserted themselves with the establishment of the Fourth Empire by the Lacrean Uzor I in 58 CE. The reunified Chotarians reconquered lost territories from the Despotism with relative ease; a key factor in this process was the support of the local rural population, which was at odds with its urban-based Undughu overlords, and was also an essential element in the rise of Uzor. The Chotarians pushed back to modern Doyotia by the late 60s before they were contained. During the 70s the Despotism spiralled into a succession of coups and controversial elections, until a number of city-states reformed new leagues and elected a new wave of generalissimos. By the 80s the First Despotism had collapsed, bringing a temporary halt to Undughu's imperial ambitions.
Transitional period
The second and third centuries were as chaotic for the Undughus as the third interdynastic era had been for the Chotarians, although lasting considerably longer. On one hand, the Undughu civilisation was relatively prosperous, as its traders benefited from the new stability in Chotar; the Undughu domination of the seas east of Outer Joriscia never really ceased, as Chotar was always fundamentally a land-based power. A similar period of stability began in the Joghic interior, as Joghic migration had ceased at the end of the first century, and the Agnujoghic states of the Nadrova and Tablelands saw their economies develop. The flow of resources fueled major construction works in the coastal cities and supported fledgling states.
However, those resources were also used to fire the political and religious ambitions of different warlords and generalissimos, who battled for supremacy in the Undughu heartland. Chotarian Ishtinism and the cultural practices at the temple-court of Hognād (and later at those of regional governors) came to influence the political and religious practices of the Undughus as well, forming a movement toward gradual religious unification. Undughu religion had previously been strongly polytheistic, but by the third century it had evolved toward the cult of a dominant deity over other gods, with a strong regional preference for the chosen chief deity. Appropriately for a maritime people, most of the regional chief deities of the Undughu were various forms of pelagic deity. The warlords of this era competed as the champion of their own deity and attempted conquest not only on political grounds, but also religious grounds.
This process would culminate in the early fourth century as Chotar descended into the Equinox era. The War of the High Walls and the disastrous consequences of the Appeal to the Great Temple saw the Chotarian Empire collapse by 324. By that point, the Undughus were still divided into a small number of larger leagues in a watchful peace (the so-called Five Leagues, a system more-or-less in place since the 260s). Those leagues already more resembled centralised imperial structures than the city-states confederations of yore, but still harked to the rhetoric of the pre-First Despotism period. The disintegration of Chotar gave the impetus for a series of wars between the leagues and expeditions to Doyotia and Zemay. Refugees from Chotar moved to various Undughu courts and further spread Chotarian cultural influence there. In 331-34 Holayqan of Undugsk (a Secotic exonym; the city was known to the Undughus as Abani) successfully asserted his overlordship of the other leagues and made himself Emperor.
High Empire
The Undughu Empire of Holayqan I was far more Chotarian than any previous Undughu state. It modelled itself far more on the traditions of centralised Ishtinism than it did on the old model of a confederacy of city-states, and its emperors depicted themselves as the true ideal of Chotarian civilisation. Undughu religion paralleled Ishtinism, adopting monotheism (at least at the governmental level). Holayqan himself promoted a divine cult of the sea, incarnated in the god Opto, casting himself as the incarnation of the Divinity and 'Chosen-One of Our Sea-Father'; and over the course of the fifth and sixth centuries an elaborate structure of ritual developed surrounding the investiture of the Emperor with the godhead through symbolic immersion, which on occasions resulted in the drowning of candidates who were posthumously deemed unworthy. These innovations were fiercely opposed by native culture in the Culture War which regularly ridiculed claims to imperial power and developed complex criticisms surrounding concepts like disclosure.
The new Empire entered a golden age that lasted from the late fifth century CE to the middle ninth century CE, after approximately 150 years of consolidation and expansion. The fourth century saw many expeditions in Rasintia and Gergotea, as well as the reconquest of the Lower Nadrova from the Agnujoghs, and the conquest of the river Mezhadchenye and the Vadulid Plain. At its greatest extent, the empire controlled the entire Lutoborian coast from the Siauresa river estuary to the northern coast of the Homul Peninsula, even extending its influence into the Badgajoghic Peninsula (the Badgajoghs finally abandoned nomadism during this period and became a settled culture). Many Agnujoghic polities on the Tablelands were made into tributaries. Overseas, the Empire established colonies in distant Rania to the south, and, to further secure Kiy for its timber and mineral wealth, the Emperor Hosed II oversaw the establishment of the city of Sugooch to formally incorporate the island into his realm.
During the late Equinox era, and even more so after the rise of the Fifth Chotarian Empire the Undughu Empire was unable to challenge Chotar militarily on land, having to withdraw from early gains in the north of modern Zemay. However, the Undughus' extensive naval forces meant that, especially in periods of Chotarian weakness, they enjoyed a near-hegemony on oceanic trade in the Gulf; the cities of the Undughu Coastal Plain became the centre of an extensive trade network, eclipsing the Chotarian heartland regularly. Undughu artefacts were commonly found in Joriscia and eastern Messenia in this period, as northern branches of the Steppe Route became the most travelled. In turn, the Joghs and other Secote tribes raided the coasts and agitated the settled Joghs of the Dovhyi tablelands. The Empire made use of its extensive resources to construct a string of fortifications along its western border, the Fence of Chornohora, which succeeded (as long as it was well maintained) in keeping the constant Jogh raids on the western hinterland largely in check and protecting the empire from Chotarian expansionism.
Low Empire
The Undughu Empire was arguably the dominant polity in Outer Joriscia in the late ninth century when it was struck by the Yassan plague. The origin of the plague, a form of pneumonic plague, is uncertain; the Undughu territories were the first to experience it widely. The first records of the plague are attested in the 890s, but the main epidemic occurred in the 910-920s with considerably more vigour, perhaps after the bacterium had mutated to become deadlier. The early infections may also have been less fatal, and possibly less contagious, septicaemic or bubonic forms based on written accounts from the era. All in all, the Yassan malady had a devastating effect on the Undughus, slaughtering up to 80% of the empire's population; for reasons that remain controversial, the Yassan plague seems to have struck the Undughu heartland particularly hard (only Azophin and Dekoral seem to have witnessed casualty rates as high as what was seen in Lutoborsk). Many of the coastal cities were reduced to shadows of their former selves. Despite this terrible blow, the Empire's institutions continued to function, although they were faced with considerable unrest to which authorities responded with the Nosophile Persecutions.
With the plague receding in the 930s, the Empire entered a slow recovery. For about three decades, Joghic migration became a central matter again. Pressured by the Far Secotes and nomadic Joghs in the steppe, the Agnujoghs began to push towards the coast from bases in the Dovhyi Tableland. The Joghs had suffered rather less from Yassan than had the Undughu, and also had started to recover faster; population growth was markedly lower in the coastal area in the post-plague era as compared to the inland. Although several battles were fought against aggressive Agnujoghic warlords in the heartland (the weakened Fence of Chornohora could not contain them), for the most part the Undughu leadership welcomed the influx of new migrants. The Agnujoghs were offered free settlement in areas depopulated by the epidemic (particularly in the Lower Nadrova) in exchange for loyalty to the Emperor. The new migrants took the offer, and started to assimilate into Undughu culture, although they did bring some cultural influence themselves, particularly as the Agnujoghic nobility intermingled with that of the Undughu.
After 966 the empire's recovery was threatened by powerful forces from the Chotarian south. In 966 the empress Hitvānd finally defeated the Gergote Courts and began a program of comprehensive reforms that ended the endemic instability that had plagued Chotar for the last century. The resurgent Fifth Empire embarked on aggressive expansion and, by 981, would have reached the greatest territorial extent of any Chotarian polity to that point. Despite fresh manpower provided by the Agnujoghic settlers, the Undughu were largely, and surprisingly swiftly, conquered by the Chotarians. Chotar conquered the Tableland first in 975-76, then subjugated the Undughu Coastal Plain, taking and pillaging the imperial court at Undugsk in 978 (the ruins of the Citadel of Undugsk still stand today), and eventually pushed to the Mezhadchenye basin and the western half of the Vadulid Plain. By 981 the Undughu empire was reduced to a rump in the eastern Homul Peninsula and the Tchokbyl coast; the Undughu court had taken refuge in modern-day Hovory. The Undughu colonies in Kiy dissociated from the empire during this period, never to be recovered.
The assassination of Hitvānd in 981 provided a respite to the Undughu, who exploited it immediately. Holayqan XI rapidly recovered territories up to the Lower Nadrova in 982-84 in the Anabasis to Abani, capitalising on the hatred for Chotarian lordship in those regions. He also agitated the Agnujoghs on the Tableland that were still under Chotarian control, and used this distraction to reconquer the Undughu Coastal Plain, including the former imperial court in 989-93. The Emperor settled in his new capital at Kothyn, which would remain the centre of Undughu administration for the remainder of the Empire's existence. In the beginning of the eleventh century the Undughus, albeit reduced in territorial extent, were showing marked sign of recovery. This would come to an abrupt end in 1038.
Secote invasions and rule
The Secote conquest
The Secote invasion of the Undughu is a preliminary to the Secote invasion of Outer Joriscia. It took place in 1038-41 under the leadership of the Yarovids tribal group commanded by general Yar.
The Aborovid Confederacy
The north
Vaestic conversion and the Polcovodate of Lutoborsk
By the middle 1620s the Vesnite population had reached significant numbers in the Dovhyi Tableland and the Lower Nadrova, if not yet a majority in most places. The nobility had generally resisted Vaestic penetrations, despite the long-standing presence of Agamari advisers at the court of the High King. However, in 1625 the situation changed dramatically with the death of High King Bronimir I, styled “the Old”. A convert to Vaestism in the 1590s, Bronimir in his short reign had already had to content with restless and hostile Sirian subjects, and his grandson and heir-apparent, also Bronimir, had in 1623 been forced to swear a Sanguine Oath that he would not seek the throne. However, on the death of his grandfather the younger Bronimir broke the oath and claimed the throne, attempting to have himself crowned at Jaborsk. The successful blocking of this action by Sirian nobles in support of his cousin Volodimir began the Great War of Enlightenment.
Bronimir appeared to be content at first to pursue his claim to the throne in the time-tested Lutoborian fashion of main force, however, after a series of reverses during the summer of 1627 in which he was driven back into the southern and Vaestic-ruled province of Mejirsk, he evidently became convinced to elevate the dispute into a full-blown religious war. He was formally anointed as ruler by Yarodomir, the Standard-Bearer of the Wide North and the senior figure of Vaestism in Lutoborsk, early in 1628; soon after this he began to style himself vozhd, a title of merely a humble 'leader' with clear religious connotations to local Vesnites. Thus publicly identifying himself as the “Vaestic King” – and with the strong support of the Vesnite rulers of Mirokrai – Bronimir forced a reversal of fortunes; by the summer of 1632 he had driven off all opposition and returned to Jaborsk to finally receive the crown which he had claimed.
This would not bring peace to Bronimir or his kingdom. Attempts to mend fences with the Sirian nobility failed miserably, with them unsurprisingly refusing to accept a further Sanguine Oath to them; neither were his Vesnite subjects impressed by his unwillingness (or inability) to mount a coherent programme to oust Siriash in favour of Vaestism. Facing a Vesnite rebellion and now deprived of Mirokrainy support – with the southerners having gained a firm footing in Doyotia during the War of Enlightenment – Bronimir turned instead to Great Neritsia. Prolonged negotiations ultimately ended in his acceptance of the Banner of the Wide North and his investiture as a Neritsy polcovode in 1636. This immediately outraged his former patron Yarodomir, a Desuetudinalist who did not recognise the authority of the Neritsy Prophet-Emperors; and he made common cause with the returning Volodimir to foment further rebellion in the War of the Exiles, a conflict which almost forced Bronimir off the throne before, with Neritsovid and Mirokrainy force at his back, he obtained a settlement which allowed the Desuetudinalists room in which to practice. This gave him a tenuous peace, which held until the end of his troubled kingship in 1641.
The First Interregnum
Intercommunal squabbling and intrigue formed a continuing backdrop to Bronimir’s later reign; and his death allowed the Sirian faction at court to seize the initiative. With Bronimir’s son and heir Ostromir too young to properly defend his position, the Sirians pushed him aside to install one of their own on the throne in the form of Bronimir’s brother Kasimir Aborovid. The move met with less opposition than might have been expected; even many Vesnite nobles were willing to accept a restoration of the status quo ante bellum, as long as they and their community received appropriate assurances. Kasimir publicly proclaimed his reversion to Siriash and relinquished the title of vozhd in favour of that of High King; the title of polcovode went into abeyance, and a minor nobleman, Yarodar Vorodsky, was made Standard-Bearer as a minor appeasement to the Neritsy throne.
Perhaps all sides were too weary of fighting to do more than acquiesce in the first years of the “First Interregnum”, as it is known today; certainly, many Vesnites at that time doubted the sincerity of Kasimir’s reconversion. However, with the passage of time came repeated local insurgencies aimed at forcing Kasimir to climb down from the fence and turn out the corrupt Sirian faction at court. In this they were quietly encouraged from Mirokrai and Neritsia. The Sirians, for their part, urged Kasimir to throw in with other neighbouring Sirian powers and remove the Vaestic menace once and for all. While they had not forced him to act before his death in 1649, they were strong enough at this point to ensure that their own candidate succeeded him.
Ostrobor, the son of Bronimir II, remained very much the creature of the Sirian faction throughout his rule; and he did little to stop increasing, if often sporadic, persecution of Vesnites during the “Red Decade” of the 1650s. This grew steadily to the point that, in 1656, it crossed over into open civil war, today known as the War of the Shackles; and with the decision by the major Vesnite powers to the south to throw their weight into the fight, it rapidly went the way of the Lutoborian Vesnites. Ostrobor was driven from the throne in 1661, with his brother Ljubomir reclaiming the title of vozhd and being brought firmly back under the aegis of the Neritsy Prophet-Emperors as the Polcovodate was revived.
The second polcovodate
Ljubomir’s brief reign came to an end in 1669, bringing to the throne his brother Svorad, who would preside over the last chapter of the Vaestic establishment. In the late spring of 1672, a large host crossed the boundary of the Steppe onto the tableland. This host was led by the Lutoborian Exiles, giving their name to the War of the Exiles.
The Sirian host ravaged the tablelands and inflicted several defeats on the Lutoborians. They further humiliated them when they took Zhytomir and burned the Mokykla of the Magnification to the ground. Vozhd Svorad found himself locked into Hremel and sustained a siege during the 1673-74 winter, but was relieved by Knyaz Sobiebor of Plysoveska in the spring. Months later, an Agamari Pièche company arrived in the Lower Nadrova and join Lutoborian forces to decisively rout the Sirians at the Battle of Yarove. The Sirians were forced to retreat to the Steppe in a string of defeats, and the Lutoborians recaptured all the lost towns on the tableland. Following their defeat, the remaining Sirian houses never managed to gather enough strength to threaten the Vesnite establishment; they eventually assimilated with the rest of the Mandrivnik aristocracy.
In order to better defend the realm against further incursions from the Steppe, Svorad created the position of the Okrainy Voivode (literally "war-master of the frontier"), which was to be the most senior position in Lutoborsk under the Vozhd and the Knyazes, tasked with raising forces and building castles to protect the northern boundary of the tableland. Svorad also improved his defensive glacis in the south by conquering borderlands from Great Doyotia during the Tri-Insular War. Foreign adventurers or Captains, already recruited by the regiment by Ljubomir, were now incentivised with land and other benefits to strengthen Lutoborian defences.
Outside of the Lutoborian sphere, the period from 1630 to 1680 saw a number of developments. The Khuikh Compact was installed as the main religion practiced among the dispersed Khuikh polities, providing the basis for the Quests, already commanded by Sirian Aborovid scions eager to reclaim their birthright from the Vesnites, to consolidate into the 'Mustered States', locked by design into a struggle with central Lutoborsk known as the Tardy War. In the 1640s the slow decline of the Joghic Sichkhy Confederacy reached its final stage, allowing the Secotic Orlovid Confederacy to become the dominant player in the Lutoborian Steppe for the next 60 years. Between 1662 and 1667 the Vadulid Plain was the theatre of a long, complex succession war, the War for Ruda, that eventually concluded in the unification of the Vadulid principalities into the Komandje Kingdom (the unification was also perhaps incentivised by the threat of an Severnian invasion). In 1668 the Severnyy Moujiques repelled a Lutoborian looting expedition. Finally, in 1679–85, Great Doyotia was severely weakened by the Tri-Insular War, which opened up opportunities for a Lutoborian expansion to the south.
Rise of the Vladiborovids
As Lutoborsk was still recovering from the last bouts of violence surrounding the conversion, in 1684 Vozhd Bronimir III plunged the country into civil war as he tried to settle thousands of foreigner Captains on Lutoborian land, leading to the Antiprophetic Rebellion led by Desuetudinal nobles. This crisis was ended by Starosta Vladibor Čystota Abor Budimirovych, a distant relative of the ruling Bronimirovids. After having allegedly bribed the Vocation Scholar of the Mokykla of the Magnification as well as several important Scholars present at the court, he secured a claim that he was appointed Polcovode by Spytistan II and acted on it with a small group of retainers. The so-called Blue Room Coup inaugurated the Vladiborovid dynasty, which remains the Lutoborian Imperial Household today.
The new Vozhd strengthened his rule by a purge of opponents targeting supposed Recondites in 1689–90, then focusing the attention of the nobility on external conquest by organising the invasion of Cadasy in 1692, anticipating that a weakened Great Doyotia would fold and give up these territories quickly. The subsequent Alnybysh War, however, dragged on indecisively, and ended in 1697 with only minor Lutoborian gains around the Bay of Toskani. As Vladibor had placed restrictions on land-claiming by the Captains in the knyazy's power base in the Tableland, it intensified competition for estates in Unscany. In the meantime Vladibor tried unsuccessfully to break free of the Mirokrainy Plenipotentiary in the Lutoborsk.
Later in the mid-1710s grievances with the Unscan enclosure and increased taxation by peasants and less successful entrepreneurs led to the Chidi revolt. Although the rebels were mostly Vesnites, the they received support from Severnyye, a Sirian but Moujique state, which lent its hand to any movement that could weaken the Lutoborsk from the interior. The Severnians were defeated north of Kothyn, and the rebellion was eventually quashed in 1719. The Lutoborsk then took the war to Severnyye in 1721, but this attack was repulsed.
Meanwhile, in the Steppe the Orlovid Confederacy had declined to be replaced by an ascendant Gnagnagaly Confederacy, a Joghic tribal federation. Under charismatic leader Koledu, the Joghs invaded Okrainy in 1723 and managed to penetrate into the tableland the following year. The knyazy had to go through great efforts to stop their advance and repel them back to the Steppe; part of this was the sacrifice of Vozhd Radomir, who died from the injuries he sustained at the Battle of the Psel River. In 1724, trying to profit from the distraction of the Joghic attack, a second Severnian invasion, joined by a Kainish expedition force, assaulted the Lutoborsk from land and sea. This First Peridot War started with success for the coalition, but they were eventually handsomely defeated by Vladibor III, who managed to mount a counter-attack that took the war to Mezhadchenograd by 1730 and forced the Severnians to a truce.
Troubles
Despite his astounding victory against the Severnians, Vladibor III could not control the spillover of the Crown Wars north into the Lutoborsk as Great Neritsia disintegrated. When he died in 1734 factions supporting the Restorationists and Legitimists began fighting the War of the Banner for the throne. From 1734 to 1739, three Vozhds would take the throne in quick succession following the fortune of war in the Lower Nadrova and the Dovhyi Tableland, and palatial coups.
The civil war was resolved in 1739 by the 23-year-old Vladibor Miryi Abor Vladiborovych, the youngest son of Vladibor III, who managed to unify the Vladiborovids around him, including an ad-hoc debates composed exclusively of Scholars issued from the House. Mounting an offensive from the Okrainy with an army of his Horobetsovids allies, Kainish mercenaries, and Lacrean adventurers, he systematically defeated all opponents, demonstrating great military acumen. Legitimist candidate Radogost was routed at Rozdollya then executed following the siege of Hremel, allowing Vladibor to be invested by the Restorationist plenipotentiary Yarodar Rozoevsky and assume the throne for good as Vladibor V.
Lutoborian Zenith
Vladibor V, the Great
Vladibor V, who would become known as Vladibor the Great, would rule Lutoborsk for 41 years to 1780, developing the country and significantly enhancing its place and role in Outer Joriscian politics. With the reign of his son Vladibor the Conqueror, who ruled 55 years from 1780 to 1835, this period was somewhat of a golden age for Lutoborsk, described as the Lutoborian Zenith.
Following a well established post-internal troubles tradition, Vladibor V focused his subjects' energy outwardly in 1745-48 to conquer and sublimate Severnia in the Second Peridot War. Then, in 1753-56 he lead campaigns to conquer the (also Sirian) Komandje Kingdom in the Vadulid Plain, known as the Third Peridot War. Those conquests pushed the northern edge of Vaestism further than ever before and were commemorated by the foundation of numerous grandiose mokyklos in the newly conquered territories, such as the famous Alabaster Mokykla of Mezhadchenograd. Vladibor distributed those territories to Captains and other entrepreneurs for them to rule autonomously, forming several new noble houses that would be guaranteed to be loyal to him. To the south, the Last War of Great Doyotia in 1751–4 finally ended the moribund Doyotian empire and seemed to join Lutoborian territory with the rest of Vaestdom, but the Transmarine Marshalate established in Doyotia's place had only brought Lacrean influence to Vladibor's doorsteps instead, leading to the start of a rivalry with Lacre. At home this prestige led to calls by a Deuteroimperialist movement for the Lutoborsk to assume the Neritsovid imperial title, given Borovest II had died in 1750. Vladibor thus published that year such a claim titled In Nerits' Likeness.
Vladibor made no attempt to press on his claims, and at the 1754 Majestic Peace he dropped it, but was placated with effective control over the Transmarine Marshalate's interior. In this era he was focused on the War of the Dan as the knyazy felt challenged by a new landed gentry, the knyazchiks, and demanded they be allowed to collect tribute from the new conquests that were mostly awarded to the knyazchiks. But he was soon forced to turn his attention back south. In 1769, Lacre deposed and absorbed the Graviate of Laukuna. The move, which connected the Lacrean-dominated Doyotian coast to Lacre's home empire itself, was feared to herald further northwards expansion of Lacrean influence. After much deliberation, Vladibor ordered an invasion of Doyotia in 1771, joining Terophan's advance in the Imperial War that broke out that year. After initial success and conquest of the Transmarine Marshalate, as well as the repulsion of a Kainish-Kadalkhian invasion from the north, the Lutoborian advance into Zemay starting in Dominy 1772. The Lutoborians soon were besieging a number of Zemayan cities, but in early Conservene a major Lacrean force under the command of general Zāmbō Erēj arrived; the subsequent open battle with the Lutoborians in northern Zemay became known as the Battle of Laukuna, where Lacrean technological superiority was brilliantly demonstrated.
The Battle of Laukuna was a disaster of epic proportion for Vladibor the Great. Thousands of members of the High Nobility fell on the field that day, and the vozhd himself was captured. This created a sudden power vacuum all over Lutoborsk, with the future Vladibor VI taking power as regent. Laukuna also ended Lutoborian involvement into the Imperial War undoing practically all of its gains (though after the war Cadasy was carved out of the Transmarine Marshalate and given to Lutoborsk by Lacre, to forestall future enmities).
The destruction of the knyazy had lasting consequences. Though his imprisonment makes the story improbable, legend famously tells that Vladibor V declared to a Terophatic representative seeking further support in the war: "Alas, dearest Sire, for even Nerits needed his clan to make him the greatest of men. I have been left with none but myself." The knyazchiks became entirely dominant at court, and when a generation later the knyazy dynasties did return they assimilated to the former's ranks. The interests of the Tableland were left to be represented by Vladibor V's eldest son Voivode Svorad Grinyi, who was tasked by Regent Vladibor the Younger to modernise the army, touring Lacre and Agamar in 1775-77 which also prevented him from challenging his younger brother's position. These reforms introduced the first permanent infantry units to the Lutoborian army.
Vladibor VI, the Conqueror
Vladibor V was not restored to power after returning from imprisonment in 1775, during which the Lutoborsk also renounced its title of Polcovodate now that Lacre had struck the death-blow to Low Neritsia. His health declined fairly rapidely; in 1780 he turned 64 as he was being increasingly subject to osteoarthritis, unable to mount his horse anymore. His three remaining sons jockeyed for influence at the court, preparing for the succession. A conspiracy tried to bring Voivode Svorad to power, but this failed and Svorad was mysteriously killed, followed by another brother Bronimir. Regent Vladibor thus forced Vladibor V to abdicate in the Grey Utterance; the latter was spared and lived in captivity in the fortified Mokykla of Delzengrad until his death in 1787.
Like his father, the newly enthroned Vladibor VI would make a name for himself as a conqueror, reigning for 55 years, the longest of all Lutoborsk's rulers. His reign was characterised by expansionism, with the country almost reaching its modern borders by the end of his reign, and some degree of modernisation as the rest of the Vaestic world started to undergo changes associated with the Radiance.
Vladibor the Conqueror continued the efforts started by his father and brother Svorad to modernise the Lutoborian military. Notably, he introduced horse artillery in 1783 and formed additional infantry regiments in the 1790s. Later in his reign he reformed the Tovaryshi, reducing their armour and essentially transforming them into mounted infantry by having them carry full-length muskets and dismount to fight; the reiter-style light cavalry also underwent a similar transformation. He also made the Agar banner-guard larger, extending it to a complement of 2,500 men and using some of them has highly-trained officers for the rest of the army.
His reform effort supported outward expansionism; Vladibor's conquests can be divided in 3 periods. The first period was in the 1790s, where he focused on the Steppe, fighting the dominant Joghic tribes of the Gnagnagaly Confederacy. Although it took several years, the confederacy was destroyed and most of the largest tribes became tributaries to the Vozhd, extending Lutoborsk's nominal territory deep into the Sluch River watershed. The second period took place over the course of the 1810s; in that time, Vladibor first remained focused on the north, invading the northern half of the Homul Peninsula under the Kadalkhian Confederacy, conquering Sach, Tas-Hin, and Lulkukh. After this campaign, Vladibor organised an invasion of Kiy in 1812, although this was repulsed. Vladibor then joined Azophin in the Sisters' War (1811–1815), in which he victoriously won Sebagy for the Lutoborian empire, somewhat avenging the humiliation at Laukuna decades before.
The third expansionist period happened in Vladibor's last years in 1831-33, when he led a series of aggressive campaigns to subjugate and convert Kadalkhia, the March to Foshky. This last wave of expansion, led by an ageing Vozhd (82 years old in 1831), seems to have been motivated not just to end the Tardy War and establish formal Lutoborian dominance over the Khuikhland, but also placate an ambitious younger son Ljutobor Syla to secure the secession for heir-apparent Vladibor. Dengograd became customarily awarded to Vladiborovid princes as an appanage.
At this point the limitations of Vladibor VI's conquests began to show. Though militarily impressive, as with the Peridot Wars they were based on appointing knyazchiks to rule the Khuikh lands as allies in personal union with Hremel, a system known as the Plinth State. Radiance innovations and centralising reforms considered Vaestic fashion proved slow to be absorbed as these rulers were focused on imposing their own authority through the Garden Lectures, and defied central authority by securing favours through the Flank State. As the ones who installed the vozhd in power, the knyazchiks further took over imperial administration and made it a matter of their own consensus. To Vaestic political theory Vladibor VI was reduced to a ceremonial monarch, giving the name to the era of Presidency Lutoborsk.
Military challenges came first with revolts known as 'Incidents' protesting knyazchik authority in the north. The failed invasion of Kiy and the beginning of the Race to the Centre with Azophin revealed the limitations of the Lutoborian army. Then in the late 1820s, several tributary Joghic tribes rebelled by refusing to pay their tribute to the Vozhd. Vladibor tasked Voivode Vseslav Kasimirovych to rein in the rebels, but Vseslav was decisively defeated by the Joghs at the Battle of Myrne Camp when his camp was stormed during a dawn surprise attack. The Vozhd, who was focused on internal difficulties at the court, was forced to accept the independence of those tribes (about half of those he had subjugated thirty years prior).
Presidential era
Vladibor the Conqueror died in the early days of 1835 at age 86. For the first time in 110 years, since the death of Radomir in 1725, a peaceful succession took place in Lutoborsk with the accession of Vladibor's second son Vladibor VII. Within a few years into his reign, the Great Peninsular War broke out, and Vladibor VII decided to take the opportunity to quash Lacrean power in Doyotia and Zemay once and for all. In 1838, with Katapan of Lacre's army occupied resisting a Terophite offensive, Lutoborian forces swooped in and took the remainder of the Transmarine Marshalate. As Katapan fled to Zemay later that year, Lutoborian forces advanced into Rasintia and then Zemay itself in 1839. In the meantime, the Badgajoghic Peninsula was subjugated and converted to Vaestism by 1843. Although later in the 1840s, resistance by an Army of Zemay led by Siluve Gaubikas expelled the Lutoborians from Gergotea, Lutoborsk received Rasintia and Doyotia at the 1845 Treaty of Tharamann. The Treaty, however, failed to confirm Lutoborsk as an independent empire, which took another ten years until the Purity Council in 1855.
However, shortly after this the Lutoborsk suffered an unambiguous defeat in the Steppe, conceding much of Chuzastrana and the Shid basin to Azophine influence. A movement of imperialism used the humiliation to demand major reforms, but on Vladibor VII's death in 1849 they were pre-empted by the Solotvyn Coup, when a royal cousin Dobromir tried to seek a compromise between scholarly technocracy and aristocratic tradition. In 1850 he announced the Reconstitutive Action which gave nobles great freedoms in local governments or 'Concessions' to modernise the country competitively and autonomously. By promoting scholarly education among the aristocracy, Dobromir hoped to build a sort of respublicanism based around able great men that could communicate Knowledge by themselves known as Galactic Government, while avoiding the power struggles that would come with installing exclusively School-trained scholars. Dobromir's political reforms took only limited effect, however: the newly centralised army and bureaucracy was quickly carved up between patronage networks or rendered ineffective by favouritism. On the other hand, he was successful in promoting the beginnings of an industrial estatism among the aristocrats, and Lutoborsk began to be integrated more into an Outer Joriscian economy.
The next Vozhd, Nedimir II, acceded in 1873, and proved to be a weak ruler beholden to quarrelling aristocratic interests; lacking his father's charisma, he was unable to bring the nobles together for even one-off endeavours. The Strong Externalists his father had employed were now subjects of popular suspicion and criticism part of a movement known as the neo-dubitants. The 1879–82 Rasintian War saw Lutoborsk humiliatingly defeated by Zemay and Lacre. This triggered the Spring Insurrection in 1881 in which Vladibor VIII overthrew Nedimir. Vladibor headed an oligarchy of ever-more assertive nobles, which he could likewise barely steer at will, but more importantly the Treaty of Starigrad gave the effective independence of the Concessions a basis in foreign support, the price to pay for no further foreign encroachments on the empire. By his death in 1907 central authority in the Lutoborsk had all but disintegrated: the various Concessions acted independently, each enjoying varying successes at economic or political reform. Foreign interests penetrated deep across the country. Contrary to popular impressions of stagnation and backwardness, however, in all metrics the Lutoborsk was still catching up to the rest of Vaestdom, steadily if haltingly. The knyazchiks themselves adapted to the new era, transforming into industrial magnates, professional academics, or bureaucratic hlavy, while liberally intermarrying and promoting cronies, devaluing noble status but consolidating local power and making the institution overall impregnable. The southern coast, in particular, became well-integrated with trade with Zemay, Lacre, and Agamar, in the process playing host to increasing imperialist sentiments.
By the 1910s strengthening imperial authority was not just demanded by ideological imperialists, but also southern Machine Lords desiring to cut down internal trade barriers, and powers that wanted an immensely powerful ally in the form of a unified Lutoborsk. New reforms in this direction were presided over by Hataly Tsinajinie, but from the 1920s Strong Externalist Kiy's attempts to cultivate the northern concessions as industrialised clients led to the issue becoming contentious.
Imperialist era
Long War
In 1933 Vladibor X became Vozhd. Embarking on a programme of drastic centralisation, with support from southern nobles and scholars, he issued the Reconstitutive Edict in 1936 abolishing all noble privileges and taking full imperial control. The threat he posed to northern autonomy caused a revolt by the Alliance of Order sparking the Lutoborian Civil War. Vladibor was killed in 1937, but various factions such as the Zlatograd Petition tried to carry on his ideals, while nearby powers such as Kiy and Zemay began making high-profile interventions into the conflict. The ensuing fighting saw shifting and confusing allegiances of local armies and involved foreign powers alike, until forces backing the noble candidate Negomir were in a position secure enough for the Blue River Punctation to proclaim a peace in 1943.
The Punctation enshrined Negomir, originally the northerners' candidate, as the vozhd of an ironically imperialist court. His failure to control the imperialist warlords from interfering with newly established marshalates in Greater Doyotia caused the 1947–49 Doyotian War and he was deposed. A new regent Svorad of Nemasy established a more effective imperialist regime, consolidating reforms with the Three Power Bloc's support in exchange for serving as their ally. In 1958 after the Sea of Flames he defeated the Agamari-backed warlords ruling Undugska in the Expulsion War, but a failed invasion of Rasintia forced the Lutoborsk to abandon any designs on the Doyotian marshalates and cede Rasintia to Zemay.
Svorad's fragile reconstruction was blown apart by the years without summers and a large famine from 1958 to 1960 caused the deaths of at least 5% of the Lutoborian population, mainly in the north. Svorad imposed a totalitarian state to keep order, but there was mounting opposition to him even within the court, and in 1967 he was deposed by the general Dobromir Sillis in the 1967 Lutoborian Putsch. But despite this, Svorad's tenure had created a central state with much-expanded powers that future reforms could be pushed through with, while the hardships of the period had convinced most of the surviving nobility to think of themselves as interests within a united Lutoborian empire and not Concessions as independent, opportunistic states.
Dobromir regency
As regent, Dobromir promoted economic integration with the Hammer of Knowledge Programme, which involved the expropriation of Kainish estates and caused the Holay War. Determining to force Kiy to bend to a resurgent Lutoborsk he turned it into a dispute over compensation into a strategic confrontation and low-intensity war over the Tchokbyl Sea. An arms race resulted in the Lutoborsk acquiring nuclear weapons in 1977. At home the Standoff was used to consolidate authoritarian rule through institutions like the hated Inquisitional Marshalcy, which served to repress a deindustrialised and resentful north that violently protested the Hammer of Knowledge Programme in the Long Day Uprising. However these were met with opposition from diverse elite and popular forces: in 1978 Dobromir was forced to allow vozhd Vladibor XI to act as an outlet for moral pressure on his rule, and in the context of economic growth it was natural to concede more power to provincial governments as bodies representing local interests.
From 1979 an economic slowdown caused by the Terophatic Implosion was managed with inflationary policies, provoking further criticism and opposition. In 1983 Dobromir's attempt to unseat an upstart governor with discreet means caused an uprising in Kadalkhia known as the Dengish Banner, which was not suppressed until 1985. A paranoid Dobromir tried to over-allocate resources into the military and pervasively regulate society against 'Kainish subversion' to destroy opposition, but what was more concerning to the opposition was the rise of the State Apparatus Multidisciplinary Board and the Street Acolytes as political constituencies that could try to carry on these destructive measures beyond the lifespan of the ageing regent. Using the opportunity of Vladibor XI's death in 1988 the opposition launched a military coup which deposed the imperialist government.
Confectionary era
Vladibor XII promulgated a reform, the Confection of 1988, which dismantled the imperialists' vilified overreach, reduced the direct presence of imperial government, and federalised the country. The restoration of respublican power, combined with shock therapy reforms meant to introduce economic dynamism, caused upheaval in the 1990s, and in face of Dobromir's atrocities this uncertainty proved the only reason for imperialism to continue to exist as a major ideology. But by the turn of the millennium, the equal retreat of the imperial government from all favours or interventions at the local level allowed stable arrangements of power to naturally come into being. The fruits of imperialist reform were put to good use by Vladibor XII in spectacular shows of Lutoborian power, such as the Rastovid War, which proclaimed military parity with Savam, or in a recent intervention in the Ranian crisis. The Lutoborsk's perseverance and even resurgence thus continues to baffle Vaestic wisdom against disorder and factionalism.