History as told by the Blood Empire of Tyveria

The history of Tyveria is inevitably linked to that of its namesake - Empress Tyveris, the first maghyr and the creator of blood sorcery.

Life of Tyveris
Tyveris was born a sailor to the raiding tribes of the Bloodsalt, beyond the Southern Coast of what would become her Empire. She grew to become a pirate captain, and legend holds that she discovered her blood sorcery powers during a naval battle. She also discovered that she could feed her power with the blood of others, and soon became the nightmare of friend and foe alike, finally banished from the island tribes for her witchcraft.

Wandering the wild lands north of her ocean home, Tyveris encountered the wild human tribes, ogerron raiders and isolated city-states that occupied the territory, and her power grew as she fed on those that tried to attack her.

In time, Tyveris reached Kara Gilpan, the ancient Altanesi city, and befriended a courtesan named Dasmeda, who, far from fearing Tyveris’ power, showed interest in learning it. Together, they plotted to marry Dasmeda into an influential merchant family of the city, which led to them controlling Kara Gilpan within a year.

Thus the story would have ended, with Dasmeda the Courtesan Queen of Kara Gilpan, and Tyveris as her secret witch advisor and lover, but fate intervened in the form of a raiding barbarian horde, led by warlord Radjek.

Rather than simply defeating the barbarians, which would have been easy, Tyveris seduced Radjek and turned him to her service, not only sparing Kara Gilpan but gaining an armed force that could conquer other cities in her name. To her closest allies, including Radjek and Dasmeda, Tyveris taught the art of blood sorcery, putting her disciples in command of every city and every army she conquered.

The Null War
Just as Tyveris began expanding her reign through the Easterlands, the Null war broke out, with dread nullborn invading the world and preying on the west elven kingdoms. The dragonbonded order sought help among all mortal kingdoms, and Tyveris’ expanding domain was no exception. Two dragonbonded heroes, the elven siblings Zai and Mannai, flew to Kara Gilpan and asked Tyveris to aid the war.

Tyveris not only agreed to help, but became smitten with the bold dragon rider Mannai, and lent her vast magic powers to the war against the nullborn. As the Null forces advanced into Tyveris’ domain, she led a terrible force of human warriors with blood-sorcerer generals, led by Radjek himself, against the enemy. They managed to force the null host to retreat into the Primalian Mountains, but were in turn driven back when the corrupted dragonbonded pushed against them.

Understanding only the Vaala of a dragon could fuel enough power to stop the nullborn, Mannai and Tyveris made a deal - he would offer his life to Tyveris, and she would use her power to drain his blood and defeat the Null forces. The plan worked, and Mannai’s sacrifice allowed for the utter defeat of the strongest Nullborn general. But after the ritual, something had changed. Tyveris was no longer a blood sorceress: she had become blood sorcery herself, and needed blood to sustain her life, as did all that had learned the art from her. They had become maghyri - near-immortals, but forced to consume blood to survive.

Meanwhile, mighty Zai went on to defeat another of the Nullborn lords in the Westerlands, and the Null War was over. The Three Great surviving Realms - Tyveris’ Empire, Zai’s Kingdom of Allaria, and the Coalition of Nahuac - swore a Pledge to come to each other’s aid if their rulers so requested, and it seemed there would be peace in the world.

But Tyveris had been left forever scarred by killing her lover and becoming a monster in the process. She didn’t want peace. She needed to be untouchable. And to be untouchable, she needed to be feared. She swore no other force would challenge her, no other enemy would daunt her, and no other mortal would go near her heart.

The Blood Empire
To keep both her own mortal emotions and Zai’s growing Dragon Kingdom at bay, Tyveris resolved to build an Empire that would allow her, and others like her, to live without fear of prosecution - where wizards and monsters would rule instead of being ruled over, where they would be the hunters instead of the prey.

First, Tyveris boosted her treasury by ordering her shiv subjects to develop and sell the Dreamless Treatment to the Dragon Kingdom, which would forever prevent elves from bringing the Null back to the world through their dreams. Then, she used the gold to attract hordes of warrior and mercenary tribes, with which she overtook the remaining peoples of the Easterlands. She went on to bring the ogerron clans to heel, identifying the warchief elites and using them as her personal guards and warriors.

As Tyveris consolidated her Empire, her shivs discovered tyvalite ore in the Primalian Mountains, and she quickly built a fortress to protect the mines. She gave the fortress to Radjek, who became the second maghyr ulan after Dasmeda of Kara Gilpan. Radjek built up the tyvalite trade to all corners of Tyveris’ blooming empire, and soon their army was as well-equipped as it was numerous, allowing them to plunder more and become stronger in turn.

Meanwhile, Tyveris researched her condition, and discovered the weaknesses of maghyri, including the existence of kadhah spirits. She first encountered her kadhah after conquering the ogerron steppes, and understood she was doomed, even with her seeming immortality. She established her own palace in the northern Glass Mountains, and built the glorious city of Auga Tyveria around it, declaring it the capital of her Endless Empire - a nation that would outlive her and outshine every other domain.

She put warchiefs loyal to her at the heads of ogerron tribes, through which she controlled the untamed steppes. She sent occupying armies and blood tax collectors to every city she had marched through. She made a pact with the Zumari dwarves of the Jeweled Desert, which became her loyal vassals, even moving their massive birthstone to Kara Gilpan. She had many children by many fathers, and those that survived their transformation into maghyri grew to establish their own houses. She tried to invade Ysval, and while she was thwarted, she forced the resisting nation into a Blood Geas, which demanded a tribute in children to serve as vassals of Tyveris’ own maghyr children.

Then, as she became supreme ruler of everything she surveyed, Tyveris knew her kadhah was coming, and she knew it was for the last time. She retreated alone into the frozen tundra, and waited. No historian recorded what happened there, but when Tyveris returned to her royal throne, she had been mortally wounded - and no human magic or medicine could prevent a maghyr’s death. She dismissed all physicians, calmly sat upon her throne, and let the blood drain from her body, warning that whoever was worthy of claiming that blood would be worthy of ruling her Empire.

The Age of Decadence
Tyveris’ children tried to claim the blood of their mother, starting with Tyverian, the firstborn, who was torn asunder and killed on the spot by his mother’s uncontainable power. Then Tyverila, the second child, tried and fell dead as well. Tyveres, the third son, chose not to try, and declared that Tyveris’ descendants would become regents of the Empire, until someone came that could claim the Blood of the Empress.

But Tyveris’ descendants couldn’t match her power or presence, and the Tyverianes ruling house remained headless. To prevent civil war, Tyveris’ grandchildren used political manipulation to put other great maghyr houses, including the Radjekul and Dasmedi, at each other’s throats, which kept all Tyverian nobles busy for the next few centuries. Meanwhile, Auga Tyveria remained supreme thanks to its control of all tyvalite refineries and ogerron armies.

For the following centuries, the ‘Empire’ was reduced to a nation-sized power struggle of warring city-states, with the Imperial House being so in name only, its rulers known simply as Prince-Regents, not daring to claim the Blood Empress’ sanguine legacy. The Empire lost many of its border territories, including the glorious City of Crimson Spires, which became independent after it was taken over by criminal families that house Radjekul simply could not control, giving birth to what would become the Crimson Crow Syndicate.

Only the seasonal Blood Court kept the greater maghyr houses from destroying each other, and only their respective power sustained the crumbling Empire.

The Fall of the Imperial House
Things came to a head when Prince-regent Xariel, Tyveris’ descendant nine times removed, rose to power of his house. By Xariel’s time, House Tyverianes had long renounced even attempting to claim the imperial blood, which still hovered as a cloud around Tyveris’ throne. Xariel was a sadistic debaucher, and liked killing and torturing humans, or even vampyri, for sport. His vizier, a mysterious elf of unknown origin, was a follower of the Null, and had drawn Xariel into the abyss of his dark worship. He became obsessed with immortality, and with surpassing Tyveris through null magic.

Conscious of his father’s corruption, Xariel’s firstborn Varael began plotting against the prince, intending to depose him and, for the first time in half a millennium, claim the blood of Tyveris. While Varael plotted thus, two other children by Xariel, the twins Adrael and Varanna, became maghyri and survived. This drew their father’s attention, and he took the twins’ mother, one of his concubines, and killed her to experiment on her lineage, seeking a way to absorb her blood and awaken his own null powers.

Adrael and Varanna swore vengeance against their father, but they were powerless to harm him. Their older brother Varael took them under his wing, teaching them blood sorcery, espionage and military strategy. The twins grew to become Varael’s agents and assassins, Adrael by force, Varanna by guile.

Then came the Red Moon, an event that happened only a few times every century, and allowed dragons to invade and raze the world. As the dragon invasion broke out over Valerna, Varael decided to play his hand, and spoke to the Blood Court, stating that he would claim Tyveris’ blood in the name of the Empire’s ancient glory. To his surprise, his father didn’t object - in fact, he goaded Varael to do it.

Tyveris’ blood killed Varael, as it had done to countless other aspirants throughout history.

The Second Null War
Adrael and Varanna tried to flee the Empire, as Varael’s protection was the only thing preventing their father from experimenting on them too; but the vizier caught them and brought them back in chains.

Then, something happened that would change the history of Tyveria - and the world. Nagasha Magnifex, one of the invading dragons, attacked and crushed Adrael’s captors - but when she tried to devour the young maghyr, they bonded instead. This was the first dragonbond that happened in millennia, and it saved Adrael from his father’s schemes, as Nagasha took him away from Tyveria and from Valerna, right to the dragons’ Red Moon, as dragonbonded used to do a thousand years earlier.

When Adrael returned from the Red Moon, he had become friends with the other dragonbonded of his generation, including the silver elf Elyse, who would become Allaria’s Dragon Queen. Adrael’s first priority was to rescue his sister - and he was right to worry, for Xariel had already begun a ritual using Varanna’s maghyr power to fuel his own immortality. Adrael rescued Varanna, but not before she was stripped of her blood sorcery by Xariel.

Together, Adrael and Varanna mounted a revolt against their father, joining forces with Varael partidaries in the Imperial Court, and adding in House Radjekul, the shiv halflings of Kara Gilpan and the local ogerron tribes. They also rallied the gladiator orders, thanks to Varanna’s favorite lover, the human warrior Baryen, who was granted maghyr powers by Adrael as a reward for his loyalty. Baryen also became ruler of the former Radjekul lands, starting his own maghyr house there, although it cost him a shared home with his true love, Varanna.

During the revolt, Adrael’s orc bodyguard Kiromonos died, sacrificing himself to give the maghyr his blood and joining Baryen and Adrael as one of the Three Faces of the Empire, whose statues adorn every city square in Tyveria, and which all Tyverians know to praise and idolize.

Xariel’s Null powers had become too great, and during their final battle, Adrael was forced to claim Tyveris’ Imperial blood in desperation. He not only survived, but became strong enough to kill Xariel. The mysterious vizier, the architect of Xariel’s corruption, was never again seen in the Empire.

It’s well known, and still taught in every Tyverian school and training camp, that in his death throes, Xariel dared his son to take his life force, so the Prince’s legacy would live on. But Adrael knew that his father’s tainted blood would weaken his power, not strengthen it, and he let Xariel’s blood drain away.

The remaining rebels and Adrael’s allies joined him in the Imperial Throne Room. For the first time in uncounted centuries, Tyveria had a Blood Emperor, and he was dragonbonded.

The Blood Emperor
When the dust of the Null War settled - after the New Dragonbonded Covenant defeated the mad vizier and his apprentice, the Nameless Sorceress -, Adrael turned to heal the scars left in his new empire. First, he led a Great Cleansing of Null energies from Imperial lands, which involved not only the literal dispelling of Null nodes through blood sorcery, but also a purge of all Xariel’s cohorts and any remaining null cultists, confirmed or suspected.

Then, he sought to unite the warring factions of Tyveria under his absolute rule. Some maghyr houses acquiesced immediately, and even the Crimson Crow Syndicate agreed to a limited form of collaboration with the Empire, thanks mostly to Varanna’s shrewd dealings as Tyveria’s new high chancellor.

Adrael’s third great reform was a suggestion of Baryen, who would thence be known as the Chainbreaker. He annulled all blood pacts requiring humans to serve maghyr houses because of their social condition, and declared all Tyverian citizens free to build their own homes and pursue their own interests. This led to a short-lived civil war, where the maghyri of the Empire, led by House Radjekul, tried to topple Adrael before his power grew any greater. But it was too late - the rebellion was quenched, the Radjekul leaders entombed alive beneath the crypts of Sehir Aldam.