Neo-Messenian Empire

Empire of the Messenians Aυτοκρατορία τον Μεσσενων
1153–1474
Neo-Messenian empire in 1171, at the end of Arsenios I's reign     greatest expansion - 1270s
Capital	Epis
Common languages	Elmiesian, various Secotic dialects
Religion	Sirian Elmiesian Rite
Government	Monarchy
Autokrator
• (1147)-1153-1171	Arsenios I
• 1219-1247	Arsenios IV
• 1470-1474	Kalliphoros II
History
• Formation by Arsenios I	1153
• Restoration by Agathomachos I	1335
• End of the Acaraga War	1424
• Deposition of Kalliphoros II	1474
Preceded by Secote Empire

The Neo-Messenian Empire was an Elmiesian empire that existed in eastern-central Messenia and Translacunia during the 12th and 13th centuries, in the aftermath of the disappearance of the Secote Empire. It slowly declined in the 14th to 15th centuries, eventually dissolving into competing successor states. Its legacy includes the spread of Elmiesian populations to New Elmiesia in the north-western Steppe and the foundation of the Elmiesian Rite of Siriash, a major organised form of Cairo-Sirian syncretism.

Expansion

The empire arose when the Elmiesians who had settled in the Valderfall mountains came to take control of the whole Valderfall-Leucasians and aggressively expanded around the Great Lakes and into western Translacunia, conquering local Sabamic and Secotic polities. Neo-Messenian conquests were facilitated by the post-Secote fragmentation, as well as the conflicts associated with the Nihilist Wars (from the 1140s to the 1190s) that spilled into Cislacunia.

The empire itself was formed by Arsenios I in 1153, claiming direct descent from the revered Messenian civilisation. At that point in time the Elmiesians already controlled most of the valleys and plateaus of the Valderfall-Leucasians, the core of modern-day Elmiesia. Elmiesian polities had been among the first to become independent of the Secote, even before the reign of Volomir the Magnificent (1108-1120). The protected mountain valleys were undergoing a cycle of rapid agricultural and economic expansion, which supported rapid population growth and encouraged local elites to seek external conquests. Arsenios I also added the valley of the Alphios river and the northern coast of the Bay of Meklet (mostly in modern Haugen) to the Elmiesians’ territory, marking their first major conquest outside of their native mountains (and recovering the heart of the ancient Messenian civilisation). In the early 1160s the Vechrian Steppe was also taken from the Suliradovid Commandery, which moved to Maskovia.

In the late twelfth and early 13th centuries the Neo-Messenians gradually conquered much of the Great Lakes region following the devastation wrought there by Nihilist warlords, especially Kazivit the Arch-Heretic, preventing Sabamic expansion there. As the empire continued to expand into the forested border regions of the Steppe in Translacunia (roughly up to the Betoz ridge), subjugating or displacing western Secotic semi-nomads there, it also sponsored colonisation of the Great Lakes, founding many cities along their western coasts. Local populations were converted to the Elmiesian Rite, a consolidated form of Cairo-Sirian syncretisms that had already existed around Messenia for at least a millennium prior.

A composite map of Eastern Messenia in the 1250-1270 period when the Montalbian and Neo-Messenian Empires were both reaching their apogee; shown is their maximum territorial extent, including in dark yellow and brown territories conquered by the Neo-Messenians in the 1270s. The hatched areas indicate regions frequently raided by or paying tribute to both powers, and the cities depicted were important cities at the time (modern names shown)

The Neo-Messenians became a prime antagonist of the Montalbian Empire after the 1230s. As they pushed towards the Sabamic Gate at the boundary between Vallinia and Dordanie, they attracted the attention of the newly established strongman of the Savamese realms Alban "Augustus" de Montalban. Alban and the Neo-Messenian ruler Arsenios IV warred from 1232 to 1247 in northern Cislacunia. Eventually, the Savamese noble, who made himself Imperator in 1244, was able to secure the control of the Sabamic Gate, Novigrad and the shores of Lake Gorya, but had to leave the rest of the Great Lakes to the Neo-Messenians. Conflict with the Montalbans continued in subsequent decades, with the Neo-Messenians using the two Montalbian civil wars of the 1250s and 1270s to take control of Novigrad again and raid Outre Garde.

The Neo-Messenians also took advantage of a confused situation in present-day Zeppengeran. The Lestekevid Commandery had managed to repel Neo-Messenian advances in the twelfth century, but it collapsed in 1187 into the chaos of the Fourteen Years’ Anarchy. While the Neo-Messenians did not attempt to conquer the lesser polities of the region, they regularly raided them and attempted to bring some of them into the Elmiesian rite. Expansion towards the south-east after the conquest of Vechria was prevented by a consolidated Suliradovid state in Maskovia, as well as Gaugura along the Meklet coast.

Decline

Unlike its north-western neighbour, when the Great Plague struck in the 1310s the Neo-Messenian Empire was at the height of its power. The devastation of the epidemic, however, opened it to invasion by the Tirfatsevid Empire starting in 1313. Ruler Kassandros II and most of his family and government were killed in 1313, and the subsequent lack of strong leadership, the emergence of quarrelling catepans, as well as popular unrest such as the Soterian heresy caused the collapse of the empire before Tirfatsevid armies. By 1322 the Tirfatsevid general and viceroy Dikats had received the submission of various catepans and established his own retinue of Secote lords in the depopulated Alphios valley. In 1324 the lamneant Elmuaqab assumed leadership of the conquest after establishing the Pact of Elmuaqab, an Empire-Pact that both Elmiesian and Secote generals could participate in as musanids. Upon his death in 1329, however, the Pact collapsed, and broke up into warring princedoms. By 1335 the catepan of Epis had reunified the empire as Agathomachos I.

The rest of the 14th century saw Epis gradually lose power to catepanates, but these governors did not yet practice effective independence, nor was the empire immediately in the process of dissolution. Still, the Neo-Messenians now confronted on the steppes the Vechrian Poznomirovid Commandery, which cut off the Steppe Route through Pesessy and attempted to gain control of the cities of Pesrard; in Cislacunia the Marcher Lords spearheading a larger process of Verborian-speaking migration from the Sabamic Plain, who displaced Elmiesian presence on the Lacunic frontier; and to the west a much less pliant Palthic Empire. Following warfare, slave raids, and more plagues, many of the cities founded by the Neo-Messenians in Cislacunia were deserted, and more Secotes or Sabamians started to move in. As early as 1380, Epis was recognising semi-nomadic Marcher Lords in newly-founded Tania as catepans over the frontier in hopes of controlling their incursions. Other areas, such as the Catepanate of Novigrad, became cut off and thus effectively independent.

As late as the 1400s the Neo-Messenians were managing to reverse their fortunes again when Agathomachos IV defeated the Poznomirovids and allied with the Holy Empire to check Gaugura and Qammam in Petty-Lestria, although they also lost even ceremonial control of Cislacunia to the Marcher Lords, and as Sabamic settlement came to inexorably dominate the Great Lakes the Elmiesians there retreated south into the Orrimons or east to the region now known as New Elmiesia. The Catepanate of Pesrard rebelled in the Acaragan War of 1419–1424, and following this the catepans still forming the empire were able to assert themselves as independent governors; control for the emperor himself was contested by the catepans of Kostopol and Epis in the Procephalic War of 1455–65. The indecisive outcome of this conflict dealt the final blow to imperial prestige: no longer useful even as a figurehead, the last emperor Kalliphoros II was deposed unceremoniously by the catepan of Epis in 1474.