Thirtieth Day, Second Month, 871 AD.

Lykourgos Sperakos, Prince.

Kingdom of Teleytaios.

Aenirhen.

The River Keep.

My Dearest Lyk,

It worries me so to read of your own observations. I will confess that having been away from my homeland for so long I have been left with little news of affairs within the Heptarchy, and so your letters are vital to ensure my peace of mind not only because I know that you continue to stand taller and taller in the face of adversity, but also because your observations of happenings both in Teleytaios and abroad have always been excellent, if somewhat cynical. Still, by the time this letter reaches you I will likely have returned home. If what you say is true then I will need to be home see Polaeros through to safety.

Some of the things I have seen down here have beggared belief, Lyk. I have seen things I did not believe man to be capable of in this city, both in terms of majesty and cruelty. By the Angels, what cruelty! Half a million men kept as chattel on an island smaller than that of the Anatolikoi, some of whom are nothing more than living trophies kept as reminders of the conquests of the lost empire which once dominated the southern continent alongside the Kingdom of the Kikhepis. The level of cruelty required to ensure that the blood of long forgotten peoples survive in chattel for more than a hundred generations for no other reason than to gloat at them was something that, open minded as I may have needed to be on my travels, I was unable to stomach. This is not 'merely' slavery, as deplorable as that may be by itself. This is sin of the highest order. No deity would condone this.

I was able to find passage to Gorratar in the end, but I was unable to see my journey through. That is a place I shall never go, not after feeling such dread merely from looking upon its walls from a distance. I have seen many, many things in my travels, and have been to places of great danger. Long have I shunned the ideals of curses and the like, but that is one place no sane man should ever go. Let the jungle take it as it creeps north, let the savage tribes within tear it apart. That place should never have been.

I am not ashamed to admit that even looking upon its walls gave me nightmares of what might lie within, but then the city is certainly strange; were they truly nightmares, or something more sinister? Premonitions, perhaps? I have spent several nights pondering this question, and am no closer to an answer. Either way it matters not, for I will never enter that accursed city.

It is unlikely that we will meet again for quite some time, even longer than the normal interludes between our liaisons, but so long as we draw breath we shall never be apart. I will speak to you further below.

The Sotenari Empire was once the foremost power of the world, with all the splendour that such a title brings. Before the Age of Silence, before the collapse of civilisation on the southern continent, Sothena was regarded as the centre of the world with the northern continent of Kliskorios being seen as little more than a backwater filled with squabbling barbarians and backwards city-states. It was the Sotenari that pushed the boundaries of what it meant to be an empire, of what it meant to rule, of what it meant to be human. Theirs was a nation built on the blood of slaves and the broken, on the iron fist of their legions and the gaping maws of the flesh-crafted abominations they kept by their side.

It was a nation of war, plain and simple. Not war in the way that we understand it now, not wars fought with pitched battles and skirmishes. No. To the Sotenari a foe who fled and lived remained a foe, a foe who fought and died may become a martyr to their people, but a foe in chains?

That was delightful.

To them treaties, reparations, ransoms, and battles in their favour were not the marks of victory. The complete destruction of the foe, the eradication of their realms, the death of their religion and culture, the enslavement of every man, woman, and child? That was victory.

Such a... unique way of looking at the world has, if nothing else, persisted into the present day amongst the remaining Sotenari. They have not waged war since their empire fell to ruin and the southern continent to anarchy some eight centuries ago, and yet they still maintain this belligerent attitude of superiority. I have heard whispers amongst the well-to-do in Sothettar, however. The wealthy in the last remaining city of the Sotenari people are tight lipped on the subject, but I am no fool. They are waiting for something, quietly preparing whilst the gaze of the world lies elsewhere. I know not what it is they plan, but I have noted that the Sotenari are more unified than most reports would have the world believe. Perhaps it is merely fancy on my part, but then strange things have happened of late.

With a culture built around slavery is it any wonder that one of the most important institutions of their empire was the Slaver's Guild, and that it indeed retains its position of prominence within the island-city of Sothettar?

The Slaver's Guild of Sothena is and was exactly what it proclaims to be; a guild of rich, influential men who dictate the terms of the slave trade in the Sotenari Empire, or what little remains of it anyway. At the height of its power it was so influential it actually controlled several large tracts of land across the empire, including the city of Gorratar, which acted as its de-facto capital.

From within Gorratar sins somehow even darker than that of slavery were practiced; slaves, animals, umbra, and even dragons were forced into vile experiments at the behest of a small group formed by the Slaver's Guild, whose true name has been lost to history. Now they are simply known as alchemists and sorcerers or, most commonly and damning, Fleshsmiths.

Some of the creations of the Fleshsmiths were extremely successful, and aided the empire greatly in battle, such as the Wyverns or Ogyrs. Others broke free, slaughtered their creators and captors, then fled into the jungles that still makes up the central band of the southern continent. Many believe this to be the origins of the strange, grey-skinned men seen in the Apolean Jungle, but unless someone can enter the ruins of that accursed city and retrieve historical records or other texts, we may never know.

The experiments of this group, as well as the vast wealth brought about from trading slaves across half a continent and abroad, meant that the Slaver's Guild became the equal of the eight great families of the Octarchs, and the priesthood of the empire as well. The influence they held cannot be overstated, for every facet of public life ran on the work of the enslaved classes.

Perhaps I am jumping ahead of myself by speaking of what is, and not what was. The story of the Sotenari people begins nearly four millennia ago, when the city-state of Zamettar opened its gates to the world and seemingly unending legions of iron-willed soldiers marched forth. The next three to four centuries would see this empire expand its borders and influence far and wide, crushing rival city-states and nascent empires underfoot and scattering their memories into the abyss. These centuries, known by their own people as the 'Centuries of Forging', are long gone now. Most Sotenari scholars agree that the founding of Gorratar marks the end of the Centuries of Forging, the death-knell of that martial era ringing out even as the first of mankind's attempts to play at being gods were brought kicking and screaming into the world.

The most famous Sotenari conquest is likely that of the small Kingdom of Ereverry, immortalised in the Kliskorian church marching song 'Erevan Has Fallen'. The reason the destruction of this relatively minor kingdom is still known about today is due to the fact that this small kingdom worshipped a primitive form of what is now known as the First Saint, despite the fact that the man would not be born for nearly another two-thousand years.

Of course, the golden age of man came to an end with the coming of the Age of Silence. The Sotenari may have had the single greatest military in the known world, backed up by perhaps the most expansive military-industrial complex, but they were far from unscathed. It is even known amongst their kind as the 'Age of Ending'. As with all other nations in the world, the Age of Silence brought about some of the greatest feats of ingenuity and endurance humanity has ever been capable of, and when combined with the vast resources at their disposal the Sotenari Empire did not disappoint.

It was the Sotenari who dealt the Silence its first defeat on Sothena, shattering a host of moonborn and fallen on the fields of Demarar. It was the Sotenari who held back the tide for decades before faltering, and even as they did they lashed out in a most spectacular manner at the foe; the once-great cities of Byzgar, Methattar, Horattar and Horgar were all reduced to little more than rubble in this period, but still the Sotenari fought on. The east of their empire collapsed, and so what did they do? Well, the only thing they could do of course! They withdrew the remnants of their legions west, dammed the mouth of a dried-up riverbed, filled it with Sotenari Fire until the banks were fit to burst, then set it ablaze! The fires burned half a mile thick and more than two-hundred long for nearly a full decade, giving the remaining portion of their empire ample time to retrain their armies, educate their commanders, prepare their fortresses, and bolster their walls.

The city of Gorratar itself became the sight of one of the greatest, and certainly longest, sieges in the world; for more than two decades the city of the Fleshsmiths was completely surrounded and a hundred miles deep in Silence-controlled territory, and yet it held out. Twenty years of gruelling siege warfare, of repurposing the dead to make their own monsters to fight the abominations at their walls. An entire generation was born, lived, and died under siege. Never once did they look over the walls of their cursed city and see gentle hills flowering in the spring, nor did the light of solaria shine upon their faces. Instead a sea of the daemonic and the damned greeted them wherever they looked, and yet still they held out. The tales of the Sotenari in this age stand apart even from the great moments of victory in Kliskorios, save perhaps the Battle of Breakspear, so awe-inspiring are their scope.

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After somewhere between one and two centuries the floodwaters did start to recede. The Silence was bested or otherwise retreated from the world of its own accord, and so mankind was left to rebuild. For the Sotenari this process was more difficult than most, for they were an ancient and proud people in a time where newer, more dynamic cultures and nations were better suited to rise. As the Klironomoi charged west from the Dathanian hills to reclaim their homes and found new cities, the Sotenari remained content to merely repair those major cities that still remained in the west. As the Terraneans parcelled out lands to those who had fought the silence and expanded their borders the Sotenari allowed their rich and greedy to seize the vast tracts of land that had once been privately owned but were now empty and fallow. The northern continent moved forwards, but the Sotenari stagnated, content to rot in their ziggurats and palaces.

Eventually though, something had to give. The Sotenari Empire may have been a crumbling, rotting thing, but they were still a formidable power in their own right. The triumph of the Klironomean Barracks-Kings over the Terraneans and the intent of that dynasty to dominate the entire northern continent was something not even they could ignore, and so as the armies of a young King Harald II moved to finish off the Terranean rump-state his forbearers had made a legacy from trouncing, the southern empire struck. Ferrying several legions across the Ambyr sea they linked up with the Terranean armies and decimated the Klironomean forces, killing the young king in the process. When this was completed they turned on their erstwhile allies, slaughtering the surviving Terraneans and sacking the city of Tilda itself. At the end of their campaign they went home, content in the knowledge that no power would rise from the north to challenge them for many, many years.

The absence of so many soldiers led to chaos at home, however. No-one is quite sure what started the anarchy, but soon enough the eight Octarchs were at war with each other, their religion had splintered into dozens of cults worshipping only one specific god from their pantheon each, and slave revolts wracked the empire from within. With all these factions facing off against each other and eventually fracturing themselves, it took less than two decades for the once-mightiest empire in the world to collapse into nothing. How could such a war be so devastating as to leave their entire continental empire silent? The answer is simple, and has been stated already:

To win in battle is not victory to the Sotenari. Only by razing all that the foe once ruled over, by enslaving all who survive, is victory achieved in their eyes. When applied to their chaotic civil war, it does not take a genius to work out why their cities lie silent. Only Sothettar remained untouched, the Sotenari naval forces guarding the island and keeping it open to refugees, who just happened to be those wealthy enough to own their own merchant ships and ventures. Sothettar has grown larger than ever by feeding on the corpse of the empire that spawned it, but it now stands alone in the south. Their continental empire is gone, and they have had little interest in heading south to reclaim it these last few centuries. They would rather languish in their palaces above markets filled to bursting with human chattel than look south, for looking south would mean looking their failures in the eye. That is not the Sotenari way. Instead they have become the foremost naval traders of the northern world. There is little a man cannot find in Sothettar, and even less that he cannot lose.

Standing proudly in the centre of the last city of the Sotenari are the eight pyramids. They are not the smooth-sided structures of the Nekhtoudum to the south, but rather resemble gigantic sets of steps. The insides of these pyramids are not tombs, but great and lavish palaces filled to the brim with golden fittings and vast works of art. They are beautiful and imposing, though one is unable to look upon it and ignore the uncomfortable feeling that all of this was built on the back of tens of thousands of slaves. In that way I suppose that makes them a microcosm of the city as a whole.

Apart from the stepped pyramids the greatest structure in the city is the Palace of the Gods, a great and mighty ziggurat that stands apart from the rest of the city with its own religious settlement and walls surrounding it. It is the seat of the priesthood of the Sotenari, who worship their strange gods known as the 'Golden Court', or the Dewan Talaei in their own tongue. According to their theology there are a hundred gold-masked deities within their pantheon, but of the hundred only the messenger-god receives worship anymore. This state of affairs appeared strange to me, and as such I researched this matter further. Apparently each of the cities that made up the ancient Sotenari Empire tended to only worship one particular deity from the ranks of their pantheon, taking them on as their patron. When the anarchy befell the southern continent only the patron god of Sothettar remained unscathed, and as such the remaining Sotenari upon their island home direct all their prayers to him in the hopes that he may see their prayers delivered to his kin.

Fortunately for the Sotenari, the remaining god in question is the winged Messenger-God, and I can think of few other potential deities with the skills required to carry out such a task. I'm certain one better versed in the theologies of the world could see a message in that fact somewhere; something about their practices leading them to ruin, their arrogance leading even their gods to be ripped from them, but conclusions such as that are best left to those of a theological bent. I am content simply to see the situation as it is: the Dewan Talaei once contained a hundred golden deities, but of them all only the Winged Messenger remains, and now all prayers go to him so that he may deliver them to the correct deity. Given that each city tended only to worship one of the deities, the fact that only Sothettar remains means that only the patron god of Sothettar remains. That is the only conclusion I am interested in drawing from the facts at this point in time.

The Sotenari military still relies upon its ancient and once battle-tested legions of freeborn soldiers backed up by masses of slaves, but no longer are their navies of warships outfitted with Sotenari Fire nor their armies with fleshcrafted abominations. This is because, and I am ashamed to say that the scientific part of my mind is disappointed by this fact, the secrets to such arts disappeared with the cities that housed them in the southern anarchy. Once great behemoths and monstrosities barely of mortal ken could strike down scores of enemies in mere moments, but now if the Sotenari wished to wage war they would need to fight it on a level playing field with the rest of the world. Mayhaps that is why they have not attempted an aggressive strike in so many centuries?

One of the ancient and most storied traditions of the Sotenari people are that of their gladiatorial fighting pits. Whilst not as extensive as the old Terranean blood sports, the duels that take place between the fighters in this pit are legendary. The inaugural match between the first fighters, the very men who's blood christened the colosseum, has raised the combatants to veritable demigods; the first fighters were a warhammer wielding Skraeling champion and a Terranean sword-dancer, two of the finest combatants to ever have lived. Their real names are unknown, but they are known now only by their fighting names; Stoneheart and Alpha. The Sotenari gladiatorial matches had their greatest colosseum in Sothettar, and so thankfully the history of this sport remains mostly intact. To honour their founders all gladiators forsake their name and take on a stage-name instead; I myself was able to watch a match between Blackrose, who fought like a Sotenari whipmaster, and Forder, who fought in the style of an ancient Nekhtoudum champion.

Recently it seems that a new combatant is taking the ring by storm however; the Gilded Knight fights, as one might expect, in a way that suggest Klironomean heritage. If I return to this city one day, then I would be most pleased to meet with him.

As a whole the Sotenari are a strange and at times contradictory people, and attempting to condense such a storied history within one passage was, in hindsight, an exercise in futility. Such an ancient people, much like the Nekhtoudum, cannot be reduced to a scant few pages on my own whims. Contained within this book will be the rest of my findings and writings on their lives, livelihoods, goals, and aspirations.

And there we are, Lyk! The two largest civilisations of the southern continent squared away without so much as a year and a bit lost as a result! As alluded to at the end of the segment detailing my travels I intend to expand the written section out far further to look at more aspects of Sotenari life, both in the present and the past within their ancient empire. No look at them can be complete without mentioning another half-dozen factors after all, and as such the finished product will likely look far different to what has currently been put to paper.

Thank you for your writings on Licotemos and Kortheros as well. They may be far closer to my own kingdom of birth, but you've always had your finger on the pulse of Klironomean politics more than I ever have.

Your own work seems to be going well, or so I glean. As I predicted when we were younger, you continue to jump over administrative hurdles as though they were mere marks on the ground and maintain your grace and composure as easily as the hawk stays aflight in the sky. Though it will be some time before we next meet, likely several years, know that I will wake up everyday a little happier for I know I will be one day closer to our next meeting.

I am admittedly a little saddened by your current duties taking you away from your occult studies, for the runes and glyphs you have provided me with are extremely fascinating indeed! I have been able to transliterate the last passage you sent me, though to you or I it will likely make little sense. It reads as follows:

'This ground-memorial skywards the first son. Shadow-edge we were called, sibling of shadow-body, yet forever closed-eyes under tear-eyed progenitor.'

As I said, this passage makes little sense, but that is to be expected. With how ancient these glyphs appear to be there is no doubt in my mind that, as you posit, the meanings of some of these terms have either shifted greatly over time or else been lost entirely. If I could find places similar to the tombs of the Nekhtoudum kings of old then it would surely be a great boon, but no matter the depths of my research into this matter I have been unable to find another location with these glyphs and another language side by side. Perhaps the ancient ruins of the long-gone northern kingdoms could hold the answer, but those lands are not safe for our kind, not so long as the horse-lords reign over that region. Maybe the Greystones on Brythonia have something similar, but short of a full scale invasion and occupation of the Brythonic Isles there's no way someone not of the druidic orders of that land would be allowed access.

As it stands we both have more important things to worry about, though I am loathe to admit it. More important than our fancies and researching, even more important than what we mean to each other. It pains me to write that, but we are both men of duty, and I know you are not blind to that same truth. I do not fear us growing apart, nor do I believe you will fear the same, for there is only you and only me when it comes to matters of the heart, but it will be quite some time before we meet again. I hope what you see will not come to pass, but I understand your vision of what is to come. If war engulphs the Heptarchy once more then it will be you who sees the west to safety and prosperity once more, of this I have no doubt.

I have been well these last few weeks, thank you for your concern in regards to my birth father's illness. He is recovering fast, thank Polaris, though there are still fears that another bout of illness may claim him in the future. My cousin continues to ask me of you, but Ser Kyria is nothing if not inobservant. I do not believe he suspects anything of us, but I will be cautious in what I tell him. I do not believe he intends any ill towards you and is simply curious, but I understand how detrimental the sharing of private information can be amongst royalty.

Remain ever in my thoughts,

Prince Alekos Virgilos.