Imperial Cambrecia

This is an article on the History of Feyworld
Years: 751 NC to 1473 NC
Age: The Third Age of Man
Continent: Duria
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The History of Cambrecia
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Foundation of Cambrecia	The Cambrecian Civil Wars

When word reached Septarium that the Senate had dissolved itself and that Octavius of House Zetar had been proclaimed Emperor in 1 IC, the court of King Tarnos II met the news with open dismay. Cambrecia's client status had been built on a personal bond of patronage: first to Consul Rufus Voltina, then, through Septimius Varros, to House Varro itself. An Emperor drawn from House Zetar, a family with no history of patronage in Cambrecia, offered the Dravosid crown no such assurance. Tarnos II delayed sending envoys to Zeth for the better part of two years and when he finally did swear allegiance, Cambrecia was the last of the outer territories of the old Republic to do so. Some court chroniclers of the following century would frame this hesitation as principled loyalty to the memory of House Varro and, perhaps, a growing sentiment towards the worship of Zelos Goldenhand, god of the state; others, less charitably, suggested that Tarnos II and his ministers, chief among them his uncle Vardanos (a local title roughly translated as 'guardian of the hearth') Aroneth, feared that direct Imperial oversight would strip away the informal privileges the Kamaran nobility had enjoyed as a favored client kingdom rather than a subject province.

The Emperor was not inclined to let the delay pass unanswered. In 6 IC, Octavius dispatched Legate Titus Nepos of House Gabinius, a family already notorious for its uncompromising governorships in Aescalapea, to formalize Cambrecia's place within the Empire. Titus Nepos garrisoned a cohort of the Third Legion within Septarium itself, the first standing Imperial troops the capital had ever hosted. T. Nepos also established a permanent legate's residence beside the royal palace, a deliberate arrangement meant to remind the Dravosid court exactly whose authority now took precedence in matters of war, law, and foreign relations. Alongside him came Procurator Gnaeus Falco, charged with conducting Cambrecia's first Imperial census and establishing the tribute rolls by which the province would be taxed. Falco's assessors moved through the fields and foothills of Cambrecia methodically, and by 11 IC the old exemptions once granted to Septimius Varros's veteran-settlers, whose descendants had, for two generations, paid only nominal dues to the Dravosid crown, were formally abolished. It is said that many of these descendants were worshipers of Zelos Goldenhand, god of the state, and among them there were murmured accusations of tyranny under the new Zetian Emperor.

It was both this loss of exemption and moral outrage that finally broke the Cambrecian people into open unrest. In 13 IC, a coalition of wealthy landowners descended from Septimius's retired legionaries, led by the orator Gaius Fufidius Cato, gathered in the forum of Septarium and petitioned Legate Titus Nepos for the right to elect a body of their own, a Concilium Septariae, to oversee taxation and local law, citing the example of neighboring Neptaris, which within living memory had cast off its own monarchy for an elected Council. What became known as the Sedition of Septarium gathered enough support among the capital's merchant class to shut down the grain markets for the better part of a month, but it found no allies among the Kamaran nobility or the crown, both of whom recognized a Senate of Fufidius Cato's design as no less a threat to Dravosid rule than to Imperial rule. King Tarnos II lent his own household guard to the Legate to help clear the forum, and the Legate had Fufidius Cato and eleven of his fellow petitioners exiled to Ylargebad Island rather than executed, a mercy some historians attribute to T. Nepos's wish not to make martyrs of them so early in his governorship. The Sedition failed, but the grievance did not: the dream of an elected Cambrecian Senate would resurface, in one form or another, for the better part of two centuries to come.

In the decades following the failed Sedition, Cambrecia settled into an uneasy accommodation with Imperial rule. The Kamaran and Dravosid nobility increasingly adopted Zetian dress, law, and even Latin naming conventions to curry favor with the Legate's court, and King Tarnos II's own household grew steadily more dependent on Imperial recognition to shore up his legitimacy against rival branches of the Dravosid line. Resistance did not disappear so much as go quiet. Rural landowners, particularly those descended from Septimius Varros's veteran-settlers, routinely under-reported their harvests to Procurator Falco's successors, and banditry along the upland roads toward the Cambrecian Mountains, often blamed on displaced tribesmen but just as often the work of disaffected settler youth, grew persistent enough that Legate Titus Nepos was forced to keep a standing garrison there for the remainder of his tenure.

Legate Titus Nepos commanded the Legion III Cambrecia for nearly three decades, ruling with the same uncompromising hand that had crushed Cato's rebellion at the Sedition of Septarium, but the Proconsul's refusal to ease taxation even as low-level unrest simmered on eventually drew quiet complaints to Zeth from the Cambrecian nobility itself, carried through channels the aging Legate never suspected existed. He died at his post in 44 IC, worn down less by any single crisis than by the accumulated weight of patrolling a province that had never forgiven him for the Sedition's suppression. His successor, chosen deliberately by the Imperial court to repair the relationship, was Cyricus Isidorus of House Livius, whose appointment in 47 IC was met in Septarium with genuine, if cautious, hope. House Livius had, after all, been Cambrecia's first Imperial patron, sponsor of Septimius Varros's own conquest generations before, and many among the Dravosid court believed a Livius Legate would restore some measure of the old client kingdom's dignity. It was a hope that would make what followed all the more bitter.

Under Legate Isidorus, the Legion moved into what had become known as the Cambrecian Mountains chasing rumors of wealthy dwarven miners high in the peaks. In a mistake that would resonate for decades to come and permanently alter the political landscape of southern Duria, the Legion slaughtered an ostensibly peaceful dwarven ambassadorial party from the Kingdom of Derlos, which initiated what would become known as the Derlic War in the Empire with the express intention of conquering the subterranean Kingdom. The Legion spent the first few months of the "War" failing to even locate the entrance to the underground mountain kingdom. The dwarves were shocked by the behavior of humans they thought were friendly and prepared themselves for battle, but cooler heads prevailed and an envoy was sent to Neptaris, who had allied with the dwarves of Derlos some six centuries prior during the War of the Dark Rider. After brief deliberations, the Triumvirate of Neptaris secretly decided to maintain their alliance with Derlos and prepare for war against this new Empire. In 55 IC, Neptaris formally declared war on Zeth and immediately took one of their key military outposts in the foothills of the Cambrecian Mountains, Fort Pagulium.

Over the next two centuries, Cambrecia saw many rebellions as its citizens tried to found a new Senate in the capital city of Septarium. The Imperial response was heavy-handed at first, but in 149 IC, the Emperor Metius the Elder decided on a more surreptitious approach to quelling the Cambrecians. In his role as Pontifex Maximus of the Imperial pantheon, he sent the Pontifex of Zelos, god of the State, to Septarium to build a great cathedral and begin the conversion of the populous to Zelos. The Pontifex of the time, Ionnanes II, was a persuasive man, and was able to quickly convert most of the local leadership to his banner. Over the next few centuries, as the power of the Empire waned in its northern territories, the Pontifex of Zelos was able to secure greater and greater power within Cambrecia, often without the Emperor's knowledge or consent. By 534 IC, Cambrecia had become a monarchy, independent in most of its internal affairs.