Eternal_Freedom wrote:EDIT: Maddoctor, what's this about Hyenorks coming to Orion? We'll have to collaborate on them arriving at the border forts
I would speculate that continuous lines of fortification on the northern parts of Orion's border would be... prohibitively expensive compared to the value of the territory they protect.
However, I would expect the terrain to have substantial frontier forts at fairly regular intervals with healthy cavalry patrols between them.
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Imperial528 wrote:Well, then due to a combination of laziness and that the search tools suck, Simon, how old is your nation? And how old is Orion, E_F?
Ohioan
culture has existed in recognizable form for roughly 800-1000 years, and is the result of nomads coming off the Great Plains (probably retreating from some other, nastier group) and conquering the then-dominant Iron Age mound-builder cultures of OTL Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan, along with portions of other neighboring OTL states.
The result was a hybrid culture that spoke a language group foreign to the area and to the origins of many of the local place-names, which adopted the local star-worshiping religion while also preserving elements of their own ancestor-worshiping religion. This culture evolved along lines broadly similar to Western European feudalism.
The Ohioan Empire is a successor state to the League of the Ohio, an alliance of warrior-kingdoms which emerged along the Ohio River proper between 400 and 600 years ago, stretching most of the way from the site of OTL Cincinnati down toward the river mouth. The League became progressively more influential and powerful, with the first kingdom among equals being Ougapah,* the one centered around the Kentucky bluegrass country and the city of Kingsport (OTL Louisville, Kentucky), a critical position along the river because of the Falls of the Ohio being located there.
*Another name used by one of the old mound-builder cultures, or a debased form of same.
Around 300 years ago the League came into increasing conflict with a collection of magocratic city-states in the Tennessee river valley, most of them dominated by necromancers who ruled over the living populations of their city-states through fear and the use of the enslaved walking dead as laborers and enforcers of their regime. This resulted in a series of crusading wars during the course of which the League of the Ohio's conjoined forces developed the early forms of the characteristic
tercio formation, were among the pioneers of gunpowder in warfare, and developed the practice of extensive tactical battlefield prayer which continues to this day.
The Ougapah monarchs grew more and more powerful over time, cementing their position with royal marriages and taking useful advantage of the territory cleared in the ongoing crusades to scour the Tennessee. Just about exactly 225 years ago, with the crusades (collectively known as the War of Souls) over and most of the remaining League member kingdoms either reduced to second-rate powers or vassals of Ougapah, King Louis V of Ougapah declared himself Emperor Louis I of the Ohio.
Louis the Fifth and First (now just called "the First" as the old kingship of Ougapah is a relatively minor thing these days) was styled the Fierce, with reason. He proceeded to suppress any organized opposition to his dominance of the lower Ohio valley, distribute the remaining lands along the Tennessee to whoever he felt like, and conquered his way
north (at the expense of other polities of the Ohioan culture) to the shores of Lake Erie.
His son, Louis the Sixth and Second, styled the Builder, took a deep breath at the end of his father's fifty year reign and proceeded to spend the next few decades building infrastructure, encouraging economic development, and in general trying to keep the Ohioan Empire from becoming a flash in the pan. He seems to have succeeded; the century or so after that was a period of expansion, followed by another century so of relative stasis and consolidation aside from attempts to secure frontiers that would be resistant to intrusion by outsiders (i.e. controlling the sites of OTL Pittsburgh and Chicago).
So as of 300 years ago the Ohioan Empire was a collection of semi-mercantile city-states with a feudal government along the western half or so of the Ohio River.
250 years ago it was a crusading military alliance at war with the evil and horrible overlords of the Tennessee in the name of righteousness, faith, chivalry, and not becoming a zombie.
200 years ago it was a violently expansionist monarchy that had conquered the admittedly evil and horrible overlords of the Tennessee Valley (roughly doubling their overall territory in the process) and was in the midst of conquering the areas to the north (in total, roughly tripling their overall territory compared to what it had been the century before).
150 years ago it hadn't grown much since our last snapshot, but had a respectable civil service system, a solid network of canals and roads linking up its conquests and a well-ordered, reliably funded military, at least.
100 years ago it had expanded quite noticeably, especially from the point of view of people in OTL Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, reaching more or less its current borders. The Empire was frantically catching its breath.
50 years ago, having expanded only slightly in the past two generations, the Empire was having increasing problems securing the current frontiers, being rather overextended and having trouble finally suppressing outbreaks of piracy on Lake Erie.
Today, having gotten Lake Erie under control, the Empire appears to be starting to think with its muscles again, the main question being whether it will try to expand northeast (into Illinois and Wisconsin), north (into Michigan), or northwest (along Lake Erie and into your living room).
. Just tell me where' you'd like them to drag the sleds too.
