Ostrobor III, Neritsy Emperor

꧁ⰑⰔⰕⰓⰑⰁⰑⰓⰟ ⰕⰂⰑⰓⰅⰐⰉⰅ꧂ Ostrobor III, Tvorenie
Universal Prophet and Emperor of the Vesnites
Reign	1637–1648
Period	Neritsovid Empire
Election	15 Empery 1637
Born	9 Metrial 1588(1588-03-09)
Died	6 Nollonger 1648
Predecessor	Ratibor I
Successor	Ratibor II
Dynasty	Neritsovid (Ratiborovid)

Ostrobor III Tvorenie (High Secote: ꧁ⰑⰔⰕⰓⰑⰁⰑⰓⰟ ⰕⰂⰑⰓⰅⰐⰉⰅ꧂, Ostroborŭ Tvorenie; ⰑⰔⰕⰓⰑⰁⰑⰓⰟ Ⰲ, Ostroborŭ III) was Prophet-Emperor of Great Neritsia from 1637-1648. The eldest son of the long-lived Ratibor I, his twelve-year reign saw the beginning of the Cinnabar Wars, a series of protracted and bitter conflicts in the west that were to steadily sap the Empire's vibrancy over the course of the 17th century. From a relatively strong financial footing at his accession, his wars more or less emptied the imperial treasury, producing a prolonged fiscal crisis that would drive much of the social conflict of the later 17th century. As such, in contemporary Vaestdom he is remembered largely as the beginning of the end for a united Vaestdom, although it would take more than half a century for the actual collapse of the Neritsovid order to take place.

Named after Ostrobor the Pious, Ostrobor was born at the Prysostaia, where his father was pursuing a traditional Scholarly education in relative obscurity. Within a few years of his birth, however, the vagaries of the Errancy Era saw his uncle Neritsobor made Prophet-Emperor after the Reconstitutive War, and he was raised for a while at the Siniscadom in Great Pestul as a result. After Neritsobor's death, he was kept as a hostage by his cousin Borovest Neritsoborov during Lyudodar's War, which prevented his father from taking any direct role in Lyudodar's bid for the throne. After Lyudodar's victory, however, father and son were reunited in Pestul, where he largely remained at first Lyudodar's and then Ratibor's court until his election in 1637 at the age of 49.

A less decisive man than his father and uncles, Ostrobor's domestic policy was directed primarily by a small clique of court Scholars centred on Ljudomir Inevsky and Pelmin Bes Hodsa, a clique which dragged the imperial office into a series of disputes within the Scholarchate. Under the influence of the Elevators, he made a series of cack-handed attempts to extend Scholarly discipline to Mirokrai and to ban the teaching of 'Chotarianising' material at the Kethpor Lexicographical School via the imposition of Plenipotentiary Inspectors, both disputes that would rumble on throughout the 17th century. Although he succeeded, crucially, in imposing an Inspector on the newly converted Polcovodate of the Lutoborsk, thereby undermining Mirokrainy dominance there, in 1643 the first of the Scholastic Emeutes forced the Court of the Cloisters to accept the continuing role of the Chotarianisers; Inevsky fell from favour as a result.

The most significant event of Ostrobor's reign, however, was to be in the west, where by the late 1630s the Zchetkarovid Kingdom was pushing inexorably southwards into the vast frontier region of northern Anabbah and the Kingdom of Thawar had recovered from the period of internal turmoil following the abortive Purgation of Inabo during the War of the Pact of Osan. Although during the 1620s and 1630s the relatively limited incursions from the north had been tolerated and checked by the Pièche forces of the Procuratorate of Anabbah (the War of the Forts), in 1641 the Zchetkarovids formed the Holy Alliance with Thawar and the Holy Empire and launched a major double assault through the Cinnabar Gates and the west simultaneously. The forces of the Procuratorate were simply not capable of withstanding such numbers, and the threat of Tarshic piracy at sea likewise demanded a central government response. Military expenses skyrocketed, especially after the humiliating defeat of the Neritsovid forces at the Battle of Bes Yaroun – unprecedented in a war against heathens – lost the Empire thousands of men and horses and dozens of cannon. By 1646 the Tarshi threat had been checked around Darunnebi, but the Zchetkarovids had occupied tens of thousands of square miles of Anabbine territory. By the time that Ostrobor died in 1648 at the age of sixty, the war had given way to a bitter stalemate and much of the expansive treasury he had inherited from Ratibor had been squandered with very little to show for it.

He was succeeded by his son, Ratibor II.