Third Chotarian Empire
The Third Chotarian Empire, also known as the Urumen Empire, existed in southeastern Outer Joriscia from its foundation in 220 BCE until its breakup in 54 BCE. The Empire was established following the conquest of Old Chotar, largely modern Lacre, by the Urumen, a semi-nomadic people of obscure provenance. The capital of the Third Empire was the city of Kemeren. Owing to its destruction in 57 CE in the course of the Lacrean Restoration, few remains of the capital survive.
| History of Chotar | |
|---|---|
 This article is part of a series | |
| First Empire (c. 1600–1030 BCE) | |
| Dark Age (c. 1030–760 BCE) | |
| First Interdynastic (c. 1030–930 BCE) | |
| Ukmai Empire (c. 930–850 BCE) | |
| Second Empire (c. 930/760–359 BCE) | |
| City and Kingdom era (359–220 BCE) | |
| Third (Urumen) Empire (220–54 BCE) | |
| Third Interdynastic (54 BCE – 58 CE) | |
| Fourth Empire (58–324 CE) | |
| Equinox era (324–586) | |
| Fifth Empire (586–1052) | |
The Urumen initially migrated into the western peripheries of the Chotarian sphere of influence in the late 6th and early 5th century BCE, during the later Second Empire period. They first established themselves in what is now eastern Anabbah and perhaps western Azophin, but appear to have extended their presence to the southeast during the final century of the Second Empire. Here they proved a continual source of trouble for the Chotarian cities of the region, and to restrain their depredations they were granted a measure of autonomy through the establishment of the province of Ormen. During the City and Kingdom era (359–220 BCE), the Urumen continued largely to restrict themselves to the area west of the Varudine mountains, where they were divided into a number of principalities. This situation changed rapidly from the 240s on, when Orsilan, a prince in the far west of the Urumen sphere, began a campaign to unify the disparate groups into which his people had divided. Having succeeded in this endeavour, Orsilan moved east and conquered the several Chotarian kingdoms that had installed themselves in the ruins of the Second Empire, assuming the Chotarian imperial throne in 220.
Though the Urumen Emperors were universally denigrated in later Chotarian historiography, in many ways they preserved the roles of their predecessors of the Second Empire. The court at Kemeren soon developed a civilian apparatus of the sophistication needed to rule the broad expanse over which the Empire held sway, initially relying primarily on Chotarian administrators brought in from the traditional Urumen region in the west. The vernacular of Old Lacrean, a linguistic development of Chotarian that owed much to Urumen influences, became increasingly commonplace in the imperial centre owing to the particular culture of the western administrator class. Urban culture flourished throughout the Empire under imperial patronage, and the imperial government established colonies of Chotarian soldiers in peripheral or restive regions of the Empire, bringing subject peoples such as the Argotes and the Axiovy under more direct control. The distinctiveness of Urumen culture in this context was subject to continual restriction and dilution. In 123 BCE, for instance, the region of unlimited Urumen settlement in the west was restricted by the reestablishment of the province of Askam out of the territory of Ormen, folding formerly Urumen lands under a Chotarianised administration based at Ūrsolāk, a military colony of recent foundation.
Nonetheless, despite this process of dilution and acculturation, the rulers and governors of the Empire remained almost exclusively of Urumen stock. Ishtinist cultic practice diverged and often atrophied as the temple-courts of the City and Kingdom era had only been partially integrated into the Empire, and often either competed for influence with princely Urumen governors or fell under pressure from Urumen-derived innovations. This development undermined the Emperors' legitimacy and led to the opening stages of a religious reaction against Urumen rule that would culminate in the century after the Empire's fall. Within the Urumen elite, the progressive expansion of the imperial family through its subsidiary branches in the Empire's regions and its complex network of intermarriages, which produced larger and larger generations of princes demanding land and honours, abetted by Uruman conceptions of royal dignity and spurred by recurrent economic crises, provoked turbulent relations among the dynasts of the imperial house and the narrow circle of other princely families.
The problems posed by this climate of elite competition began to manifest with particular seriousness in the final few decades of the Empire. By the turn of the 1st century BCE, the death of each Emperor was almost routinely followed by struggles and skirmishes between competing factions of the ruling family: on several occasions outright civil war was averted only with difficulty. Finally, in 54 BCE, the Empire was shattered completely by the assassination of the last effectual Urumen Emperor, Torzon. Upon Torzon's death, the competing imperial claims of his relatives split the Empire in three, and the unity of the Urumen elite was never reestablished.
| Preceded by City and Kingdom era 359–220 BCE |
Chotarian history Third Empire 220–54 BCE |
Succeeded by Third Interdynastic 54 BCE – 58 CE |