Page 1 (1/1)

PROLOGUE

Being a Brief History of the Eastern Empire--from Emperors of Melcena and Mallorea

University of Melcene Press

The origins of the Melcene Eends maintain that the precursors of the Melcenes ca east of the Melcene Islands; others contend that the ancestral Melcene was an offshoot of that curious culture existing in Dalasia Whatever the source, however, Melcena stands as the oldest civilization on the earth

Melcena has always been closely allied with the sea, and her original home lay in the islands off the east coast of the Mallorean continent The capital at Melcena was a city of light and culture when Tol Honeth was a rude village and Mal Zeth was only a shabby cluster of tents Only Kell stood in contemplation of the heavens to rival the ancestral home of the Melcenes

It was the advent of a catastrophe which caused Melcena to abandon its splendid isolation At a tio, a disaster occurred far to the west The Angaraks and Alorns blaical dispute between the Gods Such explanation is not to be taken seriously, but it does give sos of primitive minds to explain the forces of nature Whatever the source, the cataclysendered colossal tidal waves The seas first fell, then rose, and ultimately came to rest at more or less the present shoreline

For Melcena, this was disastrous Fully half the land area of ancient Melcena was lost to the sea Although the loss of property was enormous, the bulk of the people were saved This left a pitifully overcrowded population clinging to the remnants of their former islands The capital at Melcena had been a fair city in the ed without the debilitating effects of the cli the catastrophe, Melcena was a shattered city, destroyed by earthquake and flood, lying no ue fro, it becaer support the population Thus the Melcenes turned to the ion populated by peoples of their own racial stock with a coion the Melcenes turned their attention There were five pridoel These were quickly overrun by the technologically superior Melcenes and were absorbed into their growing e force in the Melcene Empire was the bureaucracy While there were drawbacks to a bureaucratic fores of continuity and a clear-eyed praget the job done than hiocentricity, which so frequently overnment Melcene bureaucracy was practical almost to a fault The concept of "an aristocracy of talent" donored a talented individual, another was almost certain to snap him up

The various departovernment rushed into the newly conquered h the population in search of genius The conquered peoples were thus absorbed directly into the matic, the Melcenes left the royal houses of the five h established lines of authority rather than set up new ones

For the next fourteen hundred years, the Melcene Eical and political squabbles of the western continent Melcene culture was secular, civilized, and highly educated Slavery was unknown, and trade with the Angaraks and their subject peoples in Karanda and Dalasia was extremely profitable

The old capital at Melcena beca Unfortunately, so of evil spirits went far beyond the an to delve into darker and ress in witchcraft and necromancy But the major interest lay in the field of alche this period Although victorious in that first araks would overwhelaraks bent most of their efforts to the establishment of the Dalasian Protectorates, there was a wary, tentative peace The trade contacts between the two nations yielded a soh the Melcenes were aion of even the hteen hundred years relations between the two nations deteriorated into little wars, seldo more than a year or two Both sides scrupulously avoided co all-out confrontation

To gain more information about each other, the two nations developed a tradition of exchanging the children of various leaders for certain periods of ti Melcene bureaucrats were sent to Mal Zeth to live with the faenerals' sons were sent to the i men with cos class of the Mallorean Ee toward the end of the fourth millennium ultimately resulted in the unification of the two peoples At about the age of twelve, a youth naeneral, was sent to Melcena to spend his formative years in the household of the In Affairs The minister had frequent official and social contacts with the iuest at the imperial palace

E child, a daughter naer than Kallath Matters between the two youngsters progressed in a not uncohteen to Mal Zeth to begin his h the ranks to the position of Governor-General of the District of Rakuth by the tiest man ever elevated to the General Staff A year later he journeyed to Melcene, where he and Princess Danera were married

In the years that followed, Kallath divided his ti a power base in each, and when Emperor Molvan died in 3829, he was ready There had been others in line for the throne, but most of these had died--frequently under mysterious circumstances It was, nonetheless, over the violent objections of many noble families of Melcena that Kallath was declared Emperor of Melcena in 3830; these objections were quieted with brutal efficiency by Kallath's cohorts Danera had produced seven healthy children to insure that Kallath’s line would continue