Marcon Alliance

The Marcon Alliance or the Marcon Empire, was the largest multi-world power during the Dynastic Period of the Mage Wars.

The Benka, symbol of the Marcon Alliance.

Alliance or Empire?

The Marcons were clearly an empire, they were always led by an emperor, practiced imperialism, and were generally not nice people. However, as history is written by the victors, they were very adamant that everyone call them an 'Alliance', and so all surviving records created by the Marcons use that word.

However, everyone else regarded them as an evil empire, so records written by anyone who wasn't being held at sword-point refer to them as the Marcon Empire.

In modern publications, both terms are considered accurate.

History

The Marcon Alliance began probably during the Intermediate Priod between the First Chaotic Period and the Dynastic Period of the Mage Wars. By the middle of the Dynastic Period they were a major power, and by the end they were by far the strongest.

Had events not transpired as they did, the Marcons would no doubt have counquered the entire verse within another millenium.

However, in B.G.A. 301, an entire army of battleing sorcerers seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Using a well-planned series of pinpoint attacks, they shattered the Marcon Alliance, broke the backbone of it's powerbase, and left them vulnerable to be defeated by hordes of enemies.

They breaking of the Marcon Alliance is considered the turning point in the Mage Wars, and the transition between the Dynastic Period and the Second Chaotic Period.

The Marcon Alliance took over 2,200 years to form, and was destroyed inside of just one.

Fall of the Marcons

The most complete source of information on life inside the empire, as well as it's fall, comes from the diary of a slave-girl named Lyria.

The tale follows Lyria and the landowner's son through the Gudersnipe Army invasion, and the complete destruction of the Marcon Alliance. The story provides a unique look at the fall of the Marcon Alliance from the perspective of the Marcons, Lyria writes repeatedly about the anger and frustration of the people around her.

Lyria and the son eventually escape. The son, despite being a full-blooded Marconian citizen, escapes death because he is mistaken for an escaped slave. he and Lyria leave the Marcon Alliance for one of the newly-freed slave worlds. Though now free to leave him, Lyria stays with the son who has showed her so much kindness through the years. He asks her to marry him, and she concents, this is the end of the diary.

Poltical Structure:

The Marcon Alliance was an imperial military dictatorship, meaning they were led by a military dictator who called himself the emperor.

Durring it's existence, the empire was rulled by dozens of families. Power often changed hands through assassination, though passage from father to son was not uncommon.

The proverbial brass ring was always the emperorship, leaving the bulk of the Alliance relatively stable. A strong central leader was not always neccessary as the different regions were largely autonomous. Expansion was the most important thing, so all that mattered on a local level was making more land part of the empire.

At it's zenith, the Alliance controlled more than 50% of the Known Worlds, making them the largest political entity since the Empire of Roads and the probably the clear winners of the Mage Wars had the Gudersnipe Foundation not intervened and made them all dead.

Court

The Imperial Court, often simply reffered to as 'the court'(with great reverence) were the 1,001 most powerful mages in the entire Marcon Alliance(with the Emperor, of course, being the 1. The court had two towers that it could operate out of; one at the capitol on Lake Bentika, and the other at Centered. Each tower was made entirely out of White Ivory and Adamantium. Both were destroyed by the Gudersnipe Army.

Religon

The Marconian religon centered around a practice of ancestor worship and worshiping the emperor. The Marconian creation myth, as well as the customs, rules, and beliefs of the culture, are contained in a multi-volume religous text called the Bravkar. Though Marconian emporers were routinely proven to be mortal, they were still considered dieties by almost all Marcon citizens. The emperor was usually honored with tributes, though blood sacrifices were commonplace.

According to Marconian religous beliefs, the known worlds were created 22,000 years before the founding of the Marcon Alliance, or in about 23506 B.G.A.. The Great Sun Gods, the first iteration of the Marcon Alliance, fell to earth in around 17194 B.G.A., which gave birth to the Age of Darkness and the Dragon Clan. A series of warrior-kings would rule in the name of the Great Sun Gods through the Age of Darkness and up until the founding of the Marcon Alliance in 1506 B.G.A, at which point authority was given directly to the first Marconian Emperor, believed to be a reincarnated Great Sun God.

The first Emperor supposedly fathered all true Marcons, so the ancestor worship centers around tracing one's family line back to the original Emperor. Because every Marcon believes he can trace his bloodline back to the first Emperor, every Marcon has a legitimate claim to the thrown.

Authenticity

The Marcon account of ancient history is considered a complete fabrication, including the very existence of the Dragon Clan(supposedly invented by the Marcons to justify their rightful claim over the verse). The Marcon's Bravkar, which tell the story of the Great Sun Gods and the warrior kings of old use a poetic verse form and were probably handed down orally through the Age of Darkness, where stories were embelished and figures mishandled. Certain elements of the Marcon's version may be true, when filtered through a lens of the commonly accepted version of events.

Herbet Patric Galactis, author of the Accepted Histories posited that the "Great Sun Gods" of Marconian legend were infact the Ancients, the progenitor civilization of Antiquity, and that the "fall" mentioned in the Marconian texts is in fact the Fall of Roads. No concrete details in the Marconian religous book offer a chronology for the events of the Age of Darkness, and may be an exageration. Much like the invention of the Dragon Clan, the story about the first emperor being a reincarnation was likely created to help justify his claim to the thrown.

Customs and practices

Though many details about the Marcons were lost during the Second Chaotic Period, a few fragments have survived, both in the form of written records and oral histories.

Whenever a new land was conquered, settlers from the previously held regions were brought in to convert the new region. The Marcons worshiped their emperor, and forced whoever they conquered to join the imperial cult. All who resisted were slaughtered.

The Marcons hated technology, and tended to destroy anything more advanced than iron smithing. Electricity especially was targeted, and whenever a new land was conquered they would often destroy the cities and relocate the entire population to help quickly subjigate them.

Slavery was commonplace. Entire races were often enslaved, expecially when the Marcons encountered a group who's physical distinctions could easily seperate them from the rest of the Marcon citizens. Skin collor was a favorite indicator, though the alliance was so vast that there really was no specific standard.

Above all else, the Marcons are rembered for their profound misogyny, so much so that it is often wondered how they managed to reporduce. While slavery was common, all women were automatically slaves. The concept of an equal partnership did not exist, so no Marconian citizen had a 'wife'. Female slaves were regarded as lower than even male slaves.

Women in the Marcon Alliance were considered good for only two things: sex and producing sons, in that order. Though some lower-class slave owners would use their women for labor, thus keeping them alive to work, very few women in the heart of the empire lived past the age of 20. Most died in childbirth long before this.

The Marcons hatred for women was so strong that many thousands of years later, calling someone a 'Marcon' is considered the worst insult within the Gudersnipe Foundation.

Legal System

The Marconian legal system is based around the principle that it is wrong to punish and innocent man. Therefor, any case that goes to trial, is bound to result in a guilty verdict. Trials are purely for show and based entirely around ritual and ceremony. The jury consists of animals, usually heard animals with sheep being the favorite because they are small and relatively well-behaved.

The animals are placed in a pen while the trial proceeds. At the end, the pen is opened, and the animals are allowed to decide guilt or innocence by moving into one of two appropriately-marked pens. The guilty pen is filled with food, ensuring the animals make the proper decision. Juries always consist of 13.