Serovite Empire
The Serovite Empire was a polity that existed from 477 to 52 BCE. At its height, it extended from the Mangere River in the west, to the south of Pemasura in the north, to what is now Nation 127 in the east, though it remained centred on Serovia in the southeast of Adorac.
Serovite Empire | |||||||||
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| 477 BCE–52 BCE | |||||||||
 400 BCE 200 BCE | |||||||||
| Capital | Kacchavapra | ||||||||
| Common languages | Serovitic | ||||||||
| Religion | Bhramavada (Prama) | ||||||||
| Government | Respublican monarchy | ||||||||
| Historical era | Era of Revelation | ||||||||
• Established | 477 BCE | ||||||||
• Oligarchs' revolt | 390 BCE | ||||||||
• Accession of Nilakurma | 251 BCE | ||||||||
• Disestablished | 52 BCE | ||||||||
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The empire was established by the unification of Serovite-ruled states along the Taambara river by the kingdom of Mahahira through alliances, conquest, and ritual prestige. Mahahira's ruling Pattern Cleric earned the homage of regional oneiromancer-kings and claimed to be the ultimate authority on the pattern inhabited by the Serovites. This initial incarnation of the empire, the 'Tyranny', was a centralised and bureaucratic state based on the submission of Istian subjects to a Serovite religious and military elite, and the administrative infrastructure developed in the previous centuries' Era of Revelation towards that end. It expanded to rule over most of modern Serovia by 390 BCE when the princes of the incorporated kingdoms overthrew the king of Mahahira, and installed a figurehead emperor they jointly controlled to claim for their lands equal status in a federal framework.
The succeeding 'Oligarchy' was in effect an alliance or confederacy of regional Pattern Clerics who independently expanded their realms and thus the empire in the name of the supreme Cleric, who resided at the purpose-built capital of Kacchavapra where these princes also periodically renewed their homage in grand rituals. The empire's borders extended east into Serrinea and north into Virgatha. The incorporation of the Serrinean Astani came at roughly the same time as the rise of the philosophy of Prama, which described empirical reality as inferior to the transcendent great truth or mahanasatya, which must be sought out and known so as to escape illusory basality. These ideas were expressed with the first written literature of the Serovitic language, providing Bhramavada with its classical scriptures.
By 251 BCE a period of princely competition had been ended by the rise of the cleric Nilakurma, who founded the 'Hierarchy'. After placing himself in Kacchavapra as the emperor, he reunified the empire by turning all regional Pattern Clerics into imperial appointees, and reorganised the wider nobility into a civil service of ascetics and monks. Prama was also taught in routine, systematic ways to the laity. After a century-long apogee, the empire ran into a crisis in the late 2nd century BCE as doctrinal disputes and newfound prosperity led to revolts by the priestly governors, and provinces beyond Serovia soon seceded. The rump state in Serovia collapsed in 52 BCE when a civil war broke up the region between three kingdoms, fully ushering in the era of the Post-Serovite states.