Nerits

Nerits
Emperor of the Vesnites
Reign	1490–1499
Successor	Sobiebor I
Dynasty	Neritsovid

Nerits Burja Bytigilev Zeradov (High Secote: ⰐⰅⰓⰉⰜⰟ ⰁⰖⰓⰡ ⰁⰟⰉⰕⰉⰃⰉⰎⰅⰂ ⰈⰅⰓⰀⰄⰑⰂ, Nericǔ Burja Bytigilev Zeradov) was the first Emperor of the Vesnites and founder of Great Neritsia. Despite his own relatively short reign, his success in consolidating control over what would become the Neritsovid heartland in the Rashimic Littoral allowed his successors to expand its borders to encompass all of Vaestdom, to seize the Prophecy itself, and thus to lay the foundations for both modern Outer Joriscia and modern Vaestism more generally. In Vaestic tradition Nerits is a heroic figure.

Born in the Lacrean city of Rāṇ in the 1430s, Nerits was the son of the Pseudolacrean prince Alvorad Bytigilev. His father had converted to Vaestism some time in the 1430s and had participated in the short-lived Prophetic League of 1445-47, and he was thus raised Vesnite. Although his father had older sons, he was the oldest surviving by the time his uncle Ostrobor II Bytigilev died in 1464, and that year he became Commander of the Bytigilev holdings in Rāṇ. After an unremarkable few years bringing other border communes to heel in imitation of his uncle, in 1481 he defeated and killed his cousin, Andromir, allowing him to become Commander of Umarad. He was then able to use the religious associations of this success - Umarad is closely associated with the early years of the Prophet's ministry, and was already a developed cult centre - to offer the Lacrean League his services in suppressing the secessionist Sirian communes of Starigrad and Kish, which had withdrawn from the League during the tumultuous struggle to establish Vaestism two years earlier. With League permission and support, by 1486 he had taken both cities and had established a growing Vesnite principality stretching across the Argote frontier.

Nerits' conquests took place against the backdrop of a great schism in the Vesnite community caused by the so-called Dagomists, who held to a form of Neo-Ishtinist monotheism. Until now, however, he played no direct role in this conflict, perhaps holding out for a direct invitation from Siluve III. That invitation came in early 1487, when Siluve's position rapidly deteriorated as the Pseudo-Prophet Orkodiemis won a string of major victories against his forces. Six months later, Nerits broke the siege of the Prysostaia at the head of the Army of Salvation. In 1490, in reward for his destruction of the Dagomists, he was named Emperor of the Vesnites. The same year, he crossed the Varudines into the Northern Tirfatsevid Empire, whose emperor Yaroslav the Black had pursued a consistently anti-Prysostaic policy in his relations with his empire's many Vesnites and had thus attracted the ire of the Prophet. Whether he had planned to entirely overthrow the Tirfatsevid order remains a moot point, but soon enough it was clear that if he seized the moment, he would be able to make great gains; the Vesnite population of the Empire, organised under the Banner of the Greater West, rose up in huge numbers, and after being initially held at the Dvel he was able to take Inetsograd in 1492 and defeat Yaroslav decisively in 1493 at the Battle of Opovets. Two years later, when an unusually dry summer saw the level of the Tormaytah fall to fordable levels, he crossed the river into the Southern Empire, where none could stand before him; by the end of the year Axopol had been taken and Mstislav III killed. One of his first and acts as ruler there was to issue an imperial utterance in 1497 stripping the disloyal southern Tirfatsevid lords of their Ožidomy rights, setting off a long and violent conflict in the interior known as the Rice Field Wars.

Nerits was already showing signs of illness during the siege of Axopol, and three years later he was on his deathbed. By this point opposition to his rule had begun to take shape in the east, where the Lacrean League's jealousy of its former protégé and pious objections to the dilution of Prophetic supremacy produced the so-called New Orthodoxists. As early as 1494, in response to (incorrect) rumours of Nerits' death in the Tormaytah, these forces had issued a Bitter Protest condemning the imperial title. While a visitation by Nerits' brother Spytidar had on that occasion ensured that the New Orthodoxists ran to ground, in 1498 - when Siluve died a few weeks before Nerits - they were bold enough to murder Spytidar and force the election of their leader Mir Kairelis to the Prophecy. Nerits, however, was destined never to hear of his brother's death, because he died in his sleep in the early days of 1499. With Spytidar out of the picture, the obvious successor was his eldest son, Sobiebor I, who was confirmed in his title by the Imperialist Prophet Sillis at Umarad later in the year.