When Humans left the Shadowlands and came into the Southlands, they did so with agriculture, masonry, road building, and a variety of other disciplines well in hand. The land near the beaches were the first to be settled, along the delta of the Placid River. Villages formed along roads built to connect farms, and as the villages grew some became towns. It is fortunate no Sacred Beasts were near during the early years, and most historians attribute this boon to the grace of Gunthar.
The first city formed north of the delta, north along the river and away from the rich farmlands of the delta proper. The city was ruled by the first noble families, although they were not called that. Instead, they were called the God Touched, the first naturally Awakened Humans who, while lacking the secrets of techniques, did possess strength and health beyond their peers. These God Touched were also the first of Human heroes, setting forth to defeat the few Sacred Beasts that would challenge the first city as it grew in size and power.
Ritualism was a skill passed down from Vraa, her gift to her son's created race, but it was primitive, and many secrets were still obscured from Human eyes. Thus was the first College formed, the College of Ritual Arts, to explore the deeper meaning of rituals and advance the rt. They were a secretive group of geniuses, and they made many advances that make up the foundations of both ritualism and techniques to this day. Their greatest feats were the intentional Awakening of common Humans, and the creation of the first techniques these Awakened used. This is when the term God Touched fell into disuse.
The College of Ritual Arts rose in power, for they would Awaken the children of nobles for a price, securing the power of the select few. These families colonized new lands, heading ever westward along the Placid River. New cities grew along the River Road, as the Placid River became known. Heroes would defend the newly tamed lands, and commoners would follow after to people their lands and worship them as Heroes. Among the Heroes, some were lesser and others were greater, and it became natural for the families of lesser Heroes to swear allegiance to the greater. After all, a weak house could become strong over time, and a future threat to the current leaders could lead to preemptive purges. Bonds of fealty was preferred over paranoid bloodshed.
Two problems arose at this time. Even with the Placid River and man made roads, which were difficult and time-consuming to build at this time, travel to Delta City was slow. That was where the College of Ritual Arts was, and it made it difficult for Heroes from western colonies to have their children Awakened in adulthood. This led to pressure for the College to send its members into the west as well. Another factor that lead to friction was the frustration of having the College of Ritual Arts able to hold the secret of Awakening over the nobles. The third was that as the College of Ritual Arts brought up new members into their ranks, a number of them subscribed to philosophies incompatible with the College's leadership.
The College fell into civil war, with a number of their members murdered in a single night by their elders. However, the eldest of the College, said to be over 600 years old, was slain, and the College was left in ruins as the survivors fled. The rest were arrested by nobles of Delta City. Pressure was applied to the arrested ritualists to come under the control of the noble family of the city.
New Colleges were formed from the displaced ritualists, each with different interests and beliefs from the original. A handful were Colleges of Ritualists, who learned and trained in rituals and formations and did not pursue the new arts of techniques. Many small Colleges worked with western nobles, becoming retainers who, while keeping the secrets of Awakening to themselves, nonetheless aided the Heroes with raising up new generations, creating new and more powerful techniques, and further increased their power base.
There were also Colleges, originally just one or two, who worked on improving on mundane, everyday problems. They started with improving the building of roads, and over time they became the Road Builder Guild, the first of the Guilds. The last of the splinters fled civilization altogether, and in the hidden places of the world built towers where they could study whatever took their fancy in peace.
The Colleges, wherever they formed, became sources of power. They took in new members, trained them, and create new chapters as Human colonization spread. There remained friction between the Colleges and the nobles, but in the end each understood the need of the other. Nobles were more interested in temporal power, and while the Colleges sometimes did, most were driven by esoteric concerns.
Soon the Southlands were covered in farms and cities, with noble families standing above the commoners across the vast lands. With the power of the first nations, it was time to begin their conquest in earnest. The conquest of the Minotaur and Trolls, to fulfill their creator's ambitions, was to begin. From among the Heroes a general was selected, Delta City hosting games to pick the mightiest, and a host was raised to march north. After false starts trying to invade the Trolls through the mountain passes, it began with the building of the North-South Road.
At this time, Humans did not know the length of the continent, the fearsomeness of the northern jungles, the savannas full of mighty beasts, Sacred Beasts, and Monsters. There was an assumption that the war would be swift, and the conquest completed in ten years. The North-South Road, even with the aid of a Guild specializing in the building of roads, would take hundreds years to reach the lands of the Minotaur. Goblins, old undead from the Blood War centuries past, Sacred Beasts, and eventually the People of Elfé would all arise as challenges in the coming era.
While the Host marched north, in the Southlands the old noble families, their lands filling as the population grew, began to struggle over resources. The factions made alliances, betrayed each other, squabbled, and in some cases extinguished old family lines. Younger sons, with few prospects in their families, would engage in coups to kill their siblings. Daughters were kidnapped and married to force powerful noble families to enter unfavorable alliances.
In the end, three powerful families ruled. Delta City had been thrice sacked, and their noble family had been purged. No longer would it be the center of culture and power for Humans. In the east, the ruler of marble quarries rose to prominence. In the west, a particularly powerful warrior family maintained the defense along the mountains against encroaching Goblins, and even slew a number of Goblin Kings. Between them the Stonemason family, originally an offshoot of the Mason Guild, discovered the secrets of making steel, and were able to keep this secret even ages later.
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The three families founded the Kingdoms, but the conflicts in the Southlands only escalated as they fought for dominion over the others. This slowed the forward march of the Hosts, which by this time had only reached present day Shadow Gate. The current General of the Host, growing ever more dissatisfied at the lack of support from home, turned about and brought the Host back to the Southlands. He subjugated all three families, and demanded Oaths to him and his successors to support the Host in their conquests. He took from them their titles of King and gave them the titles of Archduke. This took away their sovereignty, but left them with their status, dignity, and in most ways their autonomy.
In order to prevent such issues in the future, he declared all lands north of the Kingdoms to be Imperial lands, and he would be the Emperor who ruled them for the sake of the war. In practice, it was impossible for him to directly rule these lands, and so he would gift new colonies to retiring Heroes who would take their soldiers with them, many of whom came from farms themselves for the chance to earn their own lands to build a family.
Because the goal of the military was the conquest of the north, the Minotaurs, he first gave away the lands along the North-South road. He would section the road marked off, and to each he would gift one of the old fortresses erected for the defense of the road along with the land. In many ways, this worked well. With newly appointed nobles, whom he called the Lords of the Roads, the defenses of the North-South Road were no longer the concern of the Host. No longer would patrols have to keep the road safe for supplies, and the Host could direct their energies ever northward.
However, several problems quickly occurred. First, the building of new roads, even with the Road Builder Guild, was a difficult proposition, and only the Empire and the Kingdoms had the funds and material available to build new ones. Denying requests by the Kingdoms to extend their borders north, the Empire instead paid for new roads to be built into the western wilderness. This would provide more lands for retiring soldiers and to Lords of the Roads, who were becoming known as Marches as they would have their soldiers march the roads to protect them.
The second issue was that nobles made poor farmers, and their lack of understanding of how farming and land management worked resulted in famine, over taxing of both the purse of farmers and the land, and rebellion in some of the newly founded domains. Some of these issues were addressed by marriages from the south into the new noble families. However, the ambitious would join the military to earn a domain of their own, and daughters would be kept for more advantageous marriages in the south, leaving only third sons and daughter available for engagements, and many lacked the education of their elder siblings.
There was also a push to train retainers, educated men and women who did the actual management for Southern lords while they plotted and fought. The south fought against putting resources into training retainers for work abroad, and while they would accept what were coming to be known as Midland lords and ladies into their houses for training, it was frequently treated as an amusement rather than a duty. Many Midland children were mysteriously murdered, and their treatment left resentment between the Midlands and Southlands.
The final major issue was that the lands granted each Lord of the Road was the size of a county in the Southlands, or the land a Count would control. This was too much land for the early Lords of the Road to manage, as they lacked nobles to appoint as Viscounts, or Barons to manage parts of the land for them.
The first fix to correct these major issues, and others, was the creation of Lords of the Fortress. They would be charged with the construction of forts, fortresses, and castles for the defense of a March's domain. They would provide soldiers and Heroes for the March, along with taxes, and in return the March would defend them, grant them limited autonomy within his lands, and offer resources during famine. These nobles had a strict hierarchy, answering the Lord of the Road their fortress fell within. However, their duty was to the Empire, and their loyalty to their March was only so far as marriage, familial relations, and duty to the Empire demanded.
Next, the nobility was split. Heroes were split from their families, and the Orders of Knights were created. Each Order was granted their mandate by a noble family, making them subordinate to nobles who were encouraged to train as land managers first, and as Heroes second. Many Lords of the Fortress in less prosperous lands lost their Awakenings, and did not support Orders directly. Instead, they paid greater taxes, or provided more soldiers to the March.
Furthermore, every noble family in the Midlands was required to raise and appoint an heir. This was to prevent the Empire from wasting too many resources dealing with inheritance issues, especially in the case of childless nobles. While laws requiring blood descendants were drafted, they were never passed. Furthermore, the Empire crushed any attempt by March lords to default lands in their territories to their control. Instead, families with only daughters would adopt a male into their family.
While Imperial Law does not assume Marches, Defenders, or even Southland Counts and Barons, to be male, in practice when meeting a noble family, it was assumed the head of the family would be a man. This is not true in practice, although some families allow the consort to pretend to be the ruler in public, while others make a point of addressing the man married into the family as a consort to underscore that the woman was head of the family.
With the introduction of a new class of lords, the competent were now available for Marches to raise up, and they would grant some Lords of the Fortress, or Defenders, the rank of Crossroads. These nobles were not hereditary, but instead deputies of the March, who would normally serve until death or retirement, and be replaced by appointment of the March. In this way, these positions are not Imperial titles, but courtesy titles and acknowledgment of the authority a March granted them. Sometimes they were dissolved, but more often new ones would be appointed as new lands were developed, or as the population, and thus the workload, grew.
In addition to the new class of nobles, Imperial Princes were given the task of overseeing groups of counties. Their role was to arbitrate conflicts between Marches and verify taxes. As the Empire expanded, the Imperial Princes and their retainers were reorganized into the Ministry system. Imperial Princes would be made Ministers of the Provinces, aided by members of the Ministries. The Ministries opened schools to train new bureaucrats in their duties, both scribes and clerks. The heads of the Ministries, the Ministers, would advise the Emperor on policy and law. The Emperor himself eventually retired from being the general of the Host, and would instead appoint marshals to manage the war efforts in his stead.
The Southlands continued to hold the Midland nobles in contempt, as they lacked long family lines and traditions. Furthermore, while the Southlands did adopt the Midland Orders as a means to extend the power of the noble families and to offer non-family members as levies for the war, they remained Heroes in their own right all the way down to the poorest Baron.
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