Eser
In the Undughu civilisation, eser or Chotarianisation was the imposition of ṣer (from which the term is derived; a verb with an unspecified object prefix) as a distinctly Chotarian, foreign idea of order. A political, religious, and philosophical project engaged with in numerous forms, it was associated with the assertion of universal principles, hierarchies, and systems over the particularist factional habits of Undughu culture, and the creation of a unifying force or direction over Undughu society and life.
An emperor's empire
Eser was first systematically introduced with the Undughu Empire, originally an institution dedicated to realising an universal dominion of Opto along Chotarian and Ishtinist lines. In this period it was mainly concerned with establishing recognition of the supremacy of Opto across diverse Undughic cults, although theologically this was not successful and the independence of local cults was defended. From the 6th century eser, growing into a field of study in its own right and influenced by peribolasm, was centred on order through the Undughu Emperor in particular. Its arguments included in the religious sphere the Emperor's status as the chief priest of a supreme Opto, in the philosophical sphere that a new kind of all-explaining order would disclose the purpose of all factions, and in the political sphere the need for a powerful ruler to end the chaos of the Torrent of Adventure.
The attempts to substantially reform everyday life, local politics, and traditional religion under Emperor Hoshah initiated the so-called Culture War between eser and 'native Undughu' culture that insisted on defending polycentric tradition; it was exacerbated in the 7th century when guilds and top-down administrative units, to relate all matters of life to the idea of imperial disclosure, were imposed by Hosed I. An ideological cosmic order imposed through the Emperor was one of the main ways the Empire existed past the shorter-lived substantial states adopting its name and even the frequent powerlessness of the Emperors themselves. But even with this, eser was often denounced as an alien intellectual contagion, and the guilds existed more as facts unto themselves, often scorning the veneration of Opto or the Emperor they were supposedly chartered by.
Empire and harmony
In the 9th century the reception of eser changed remarkably as political changes after the Intercessory War (probably most importantly the reduction of Emperors to irrelevance) and new intellectual fashions saw guilds and local rulers identify themselves as acting autonomously to uphold a common idea of order and harmony. Even the shrines and orders of traditional Undughu religion now acknowledged Opto or the Emperor's theological supremacy. As removed from its Chotarian inspirations as it was, in this period the only formal and direct opposition to eser was reduced to almost purely cultural and philosophical protests in the Torrent of Vocation, and high society was occupied if not defined by their participation in eser.
However, this ambiguous and abstract conception of eser also meant that, in the crises of the 10th century, it became a common position that order as a metric by itself could be instituted without necessarily requiring an (at least particularly Undughu) Emperor. Thus, when the volatile imperial governments installed after the Nosophile Persecutions failed to restore order, the Undughu Emperor's title in particular lost credibility even in eserist society. The Isaghash League sought to impose order by directly bringing in the Fifth Chotarian Empire, which they considered the greatest concentration of substantial ṣer, through ezny ties, to rule over the Undughu as Undul (albeit still loosely).
Chotar in exile
Alongside these events, eser itself was displaced by the rise of antinomian and apophatic philosophy, which informed the autonomous, opportunistic Undughu champions that emerged as powerful lords in the chaotic period. Ideas and practices based in eser rapidly lost currency, and the last Undughu Emperors of the early 11th century were unable to receive even nominal recognition in their attempts to resurrect eserist pretenses. Rather, eser's main invocation in the tumult of the Secote conquest of Outer Joriscia, which did not have as tremendous of an effect on the Undughu, was in reaction to the phenomenal fall of Chotar. With the particularly Chotarian origins and character of eser itself being re-emphasised, these endeavours directly adopted the form of Chotar, and often were not as interested in general order or harmony as much as specifically 're-founding' Chotar as a substance and object. In the 11th century 'pretenders' of the Chotarian Emperor, most famously Pseudo-Uzor, Pseudo-Lel, and Pseudo-Hitvand, led major uprisings, while in the late 12th century the city of Kothyn imposed its own idiosyncratic ezny state known as the Jatarnatly on trading partners in the Gulf of Joriscia. However, by the time a weakened Kothyn abandoned these pretenses in 1271, this last wave of eser had subsided, and new intellectual developments of 13th-century Joriscia had supplied the former Undughu with new ideas of order.