Editing Nobledark Imperium Drafts (section)

=== A Brief History of the Early Days ===

Maps of Old Earth, circa M30

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Image:Old_Earth_before_the_Unification.png|Pre-Unification
Image:Old_Earth_after_Unification.jpg|Post-Unification
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==== Ursh ====

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> '''''The Nightmare of Old Earth:'''''

Of all the national entities that existed when the Warlord emerged on Old Earth, none is perhaps as infamous as the Empire of Ursh. The Tyrant of Gredbriton consorted with the Ruinous Powers and used horrific chemical weaponry, but few others in Gredbriton actually worshipped Chaos and thus his ability to do widespread damage was limited. The Pan-Pacific Empire was an absolute nightmare to its own people, but seemed largely unconcerned with the world outside its borders. The Yndonesian Bloc was a brutalistic theocracy, but also tended to be rather isolationist. The Merican junta was an expansionistic, nationalistic military state, but at the very least it did not treat its citizens as disposable, if only to protect the investment, and the people there had at least some standard of living. Ursh, by contrast, shared all of these negative features with its contemporary empires and suffered none of the limitations. The Empire of Ursh was a major influence in the histories of numerous other Unification-era countries, including Terrawatt-Uralia, Duscht Jemanic, Bania, the former components of the Everlasting Tharkian Empire (including Macedonia and Achaemenidia), the Nord Afrik conclaves, the Afrique League, Merika, Ind, Sibar, Sino-Japan, and the Khanate. In many ways, the Unification of Earth can be directly tied to the rise and fall of the Empire of Ursh.
 
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The Empire of Ursh was originally founded in northeastern Azia, on the banks of the Amyur River. Despite containing fertile riverlands, this area was never an important center of industry and agriculture during the Dark Age of Technology, and so was spared from some of the worst of the horrors of the Old Night. The ancestors of the people who would come to form the Empire of Ursh came from such ancient, long-forgotten countries as Russia or China, but they nation they ended up founding would become a completely different entity altogether. The first ruler of Ursh was a rather eccentric man named Kalagann the Great, who in spite (or more likely because) of his eccentricity, was able to unite the various pocket kingdoms, city states, and villages around the Amyur River into an actual nation-state. Early historians often described Kalagann as nothing more than a prelude to the infamous cruelty of the Despots, but later historians have found that there was nothing to suggest that Kalagann was as evil as his successors. Indeed, Kalagann seemed to be genuinely concerned for the welfare of his people, and there is no evidence that Ursh had yet been corrupted by the Ruinous Powers. Ursh was one of the first nation-states to rebuild from the metaphorical and literal fallout of the rebellion of the Men of Iron and the beginning of the Age of Strife, and for a while it seemed like Ursh was going to be the pinnacle of civilization on Earth, an illustration that society could rebuild from the Age of Strife. However, a few years after Kalagann’s death, it all started to go wrong.

 
As they expanded from their initial cradle of neo-civilization, the Urshii found themselves surrounded on three sides by tribal hunter-gatherers (Sibar), steppe nomads (the steppe nomads of the future Khanate), and subsistence farmers that seemed to have no aspirations of greater empire (Sino-Japan). Over time, the Urshii began to see themselves as the sole remaining carriers of the torch of civilization that stretched all the way back to ancient Sumeria, and as “enlightened” people it was their job to shepherd the rest of the uncivilized masses back into the light. Urshii art and architecture was heavily influenced by this concept, being consciously modeled after imperial China or ancient Mesopotamia, two of the great cradles of civilization, despite Ursh itself have very little direct connection with either. These included a lot of ziggurats, which were seen as stairways to the heavens and often the site of important, and often unsavory, political or religious functions. The rulers of Ursh, the infamous Despots, believed that they had been given the divine mandate to bring civilization back to the people of Earth, granted to them by the four great heavenly powers, which were represented by the four directional winds. These four gods were, of course, the Ruinous Powers, who just loved to subvert and co-opt local cultural and religious beliefs for their own purposes. The Despots were educated from birth that they were god-kings, and that they and they alone knew what was best for Ursh and humanity. This, along with the systematic dehumanization of the serfs and non-Urshii, was one of the reasons for the infamous brutality of the Despots of Ursh. In their view, questioning the Despots or making a request was tantamount to saying the "god-kings" didn't know what they were doing.

 
Despite seeing the usefulness of advanced weapons of war, the Empire of Ursh was downright backwards technologically when compared to the other major empires of that time such as Merika, Hy Braseal, and the Pan-Pacific Empire. Indeed, one of the major reasons the Empire of Ursh invaded the Afrique League and the Nord Afrik conclaves in M28, one of the largest military engagements on Earth prior to the Unification Wars themselves, was primarily for technology to use against their larger neighbors. Instead, the Urshii preferred to look inwards, focusing more on religion and the occult rather than technological advancement. To the Urshii, technology was only useful if it could further aid them in their goal of conquest.

 
The Empire of Ursh had the largest fleet of any pre-Unification power with over twelve ships, but these ships were so derelict as to be borderline space hulks and could not even leave low Earth orbit. Indeed, because these ships were so decrepit and spread over such a wide area of territory they were used more for denying the orbital high ground than to actually fight. Records indicate that when a ship was too damaged to fly or an enemy ship was actually shot down the Urshii would swarm over the wreckage like scavengers on a Void Whale carcass, salvaging the ship's weapons to attach to ground vehicles to turn them into overbuilt weapons platforms. This was about the limits of Urshii technological aptitude.

 
Ursh was perhaps best known for its army, which despite its limited technology was the terror of Old Earth for many years. At the center of the army were the Nobleborn, elite warriors who were born of the upper class and given the best weapons and training the Urshii could afford. However, there were never enough Nobleborn to make a full-scale army large enough to take on Ursh's neighbors, even with Ursh's massive population. Additionally, although the Nobleborn made good shock troops, they had little tactical flexibility and could not perform specialist roles. Therefore, the Urshii often supplemented the Nobleborn core of their army with various auxiliaries, drawn from the numerous enslaved people and vassal states around the empire. Ursh primarily controlled its auxiliaries through mutual fear. The Red Engines feared the steppe nomads, who feared the Tupelov Lancers, who in turn feared the Roma, and so on and so forth. All feared the wrath of the Despot of Ursh.

 
Urshii society could be divided into three major groups. On the one hand, there were the various vassals and conquered peoples, who were seen as less than human and treated poorly. On the other, there were the serfs, who despite being Ursh-born were not “chosen”, and therefore also considered to be subhuman and treated poorly. And finally, there was an upper class, composed of a combination of the military, scientific, religious, mystic, and cultural elite. One of the only good things one could say about the Empire of Ursh is that they valued personal ability when they saw it, though admission into the nobility was only available to those who were both skilled and truly indoctrinated in the Urshii philosophy and religion. Urshii high courts were often a web of treachery and deceit, with nobles plotting against each other for power. The Despots encouraged this behavior, particularly among the Urshii lords of far-off conquered territories, as it kept them fighting among themselves for the Despot’s favor rather than deciding to secede and form their own petty empires.

 
After the fall of Ursh, this class system was thoroughly dismantled, though few of the nobility actually survived. Most of the nobility had been so indoctrinated in the superiority of Ursh and their gods that they would rather charge unarmed at a group of soldiers outnumbering them a hundred to one than accept defeat at the hands of “lesser peoples”. It was this attitude that led to the Urshii insurgency in Sibar, which was a thorn in the side of the Imperium for nearly twenty years after the fall of Ursh itself. The various freed vassals and serfs, on the other hand, were in some ways brought together by the shared experiences of the horrors of the tyrants, leading to the use of the term “Children of Ursh” to refer to those who had suffered at the hands of the Despots.

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==== The Khanate ====

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Pastoral_Worlds|The Pastoral Worlds]]