Amnar

In 4600, Amin Duum lay under the leadership of Ashad Amin, the Capillite Guardian Defender. He acted as a steward over the Executive Committee, which had for thousands of years maintained a high-level leadership of the city. Much of Duum ran itself through lower level committees and meetings that involved all members of the community in decision-making. The Executive Committee was responsible mostly for ensuring that all of this continued to run smoothly. It was made up of the most senior members of the councils of the three cities (High City, lower city and south city), the First High Watcher, Warrior, and Dragonmaster, a representative of the Ai Ta’Sifra Duma, the Ta’Sifra Duma, the Ai Ta’Zurasim and the Zurasim Taijil Uskele.

Up until Amin’s death in 4636, Duum’s political system was based around his position as the single ruler, managing an Executive Committee made up of representatives from various groups and orders living within the city and its extended territories. Given the position of the Taija as a vocal and separatist group within the city, opposing factions and political fights between groups were fairly common but restrained. Amin effectively acted as mediator and managed to maintain order simply because everybody saw him as the voice of reason and the lynchpin of Duum’s society. Towards his death, the Scorian Group, the main opponents of the Taija who were now advocating the complete exclusion of Taija from Amnari society and perhaps even a total overhaul of the Amnari system, were getting much stronger. The traditional order (I’ll call them the Adnashi), largely represented by the Ta Dasi officials and those who worked with the Uskele in the city itself, felt that Amin backed them and were reliant on his strength to prevent the Scorians taking over.

Once Amin died, the Adnashi turned to Lilatysia for representation, as she was the most powerful of their kind still alive in the city. By the time she died, Arandes had become enough of a force outside the Ishcai-Nashim to offer some kind of support to the Adnashi who wanted to preserve an order based on service which would allow them to continue providing effective support to the Uskele. They were happy for the Uskele to have democracy and decide who ruled them, and opposed the idea that in some way they were destructive to the rights of Uskele to rule themselves. Adnashi have always maintained that leadership and service should be treated separately and that Capillites were there to serve, not rule.

With Amin and Lilatysia gone, there was essentially a power vacuum. Amin’s inheritor, Ialla, was a weak ruler with a peculiar fascination for the Taija and their beliefs. It was this that led to his eventual undoing and the collapse of support for the traditional Amnari system in the city. Although he still presided over the Executive Committee, he rarely attended and took little interest in the affairs of the city state itself, which generated a lot of anger from committee members and their groups, especially the Scorians. The Scorians themselves now wanted to eradicate the traditional Amnari system altogether for something much flatter without the Ta Dasi, who they regarded as elitist and selective.

By 4729, when Tiom first proposed himself as a political leader in the south city, the committee was in disarray and split my massive rows between Adnashi and Scorians, the Taija continually making more and more demands to both groups and Ialla, who always gave them his support. The decision was made that power would gradually by ceded from Ialla as a Capillite to a Cabinet, which would be elected by the Uskele for the Uskele and manage political and social concerns in the city. Tiom’s politics revolved around the Taija being a negative influence that was destroying everything Amnari held dear. He claimed that the Capillites were secretly supporting them, casting the old system as an enemy of the people (broadly Scorian in belief).

In 4732, Tiom was elected onto the Executive Committee as a representative for the South City, which was most affected by changes to the agricultural system as it housed most food gatherers and paddy workers. The Cabinet was set up shortly afterwards, and control ceded in 4733. By the end of the year, the outspoken and charismatic Tiom had been elected as the Cabinet’s leader, and he was free to begin making radical changes to the Dumite systems without having anybody to get in his way. No Ta Dasi were elected into the Cabinet as they were considered unsuitable to represent the people (their own self-definition prevented them acting politically as well as in duty to the city).

By 4739, the Plains to the west and east of the city had been carved up into fields and put to seed with grains. The south and lower cities were largely employed in the maintenance of these fields, and many people who had previously done more skilled craft work were shifted to fieldworking. Tiom announced plans to shift craft production to make it more efficient and less skilled, so that anybody could do it. Those who remained out of the fields were pressed into large rooms to work together on more standardised production.

Throughout all of this, the Taija refused to work, claiming it was against their religion to do anything but study the Taijis Nil. Proclaiming themselves to be the ‘guides’ for the rest of the Amnari people, they turned to Ialla and won his support. This aroused a great deal of hatred amongst the South City workers and in 4744, after a series of droughts almost wiped out the fields and Amnar was dependent on food supplies from outside the city, they rioted to such an extent that the Ishcai-Nashim and Warriors were forced to step into the fray. The south city food supplies were rationed first, while the rich High City dwellers were given everything they could find. Ialla ensured that the Taija were given food, which led to a great deal of anti-Capillite feeling in the city.

In 4745 Ialla died and Tiom saw his chance. Watchers were banished, as were warriors to the Holy Complex in the High City, and on 6th Trisa, the slaughter of the Gadasim began. Most of the Ta Dasi fled the city by the end of the year, and the last holding out illegally in the city left in 4750 when the sifradan in the Holy Complex were evacuated. The infirmaries were shut down and ‘travelling doctors’ were supposed to provide care. Without the skills of the Watchers, their ability to deal with the spreading of disease and injury in the fields were limited, but still the people of Duum now broadly associated the old system with the tyranny of the Capillites and the mistakes Ialla had made in supporting the Taija against his own people. The Taija themselves were persecuted and starved, trapped in their Holy Quarter until in the late 4750s, work on a lower city settlement for them was finished and they were gradually resettled. The last resettlement, when the Holy Quarter was completely emptied, happened in 4765.

In 4765 Arist briefly became the next Capillite Guardian Defender, although she was killed twenty days later. Tiom now declared that Duum was a separate state and no longer part of the Empire. The Holy Complex was evacuated and the city left to cope on its own, struggling to feed itself and gradually imploding.