Preface
Sigeswintha, the Great as she would become known, founds an empire in the ruins of an ancient civilization and unites petty tribes. While her empire is not a proper one, she sets the foundations that all future imperial monarchs would follow.
Sigeswintha the Great (757-803)
In the Year Of Our Homes 772, a 15 year-old girl named Sigeswintha succeeds her late mother as reik of the Drusdenn tribe. The Drusdenn are a small tribe constructed from a web of familial ties. No military, no sedentary farms nor homes; only pitiful semi-nomadic families ranging around a few insignificant pastures, pilgriming to central holy sites, giving and taking shoves with their neighbor tribes. All this, until Sigeswintha came.
She begins her rule of her minor tribe by winning favor from her betters— the Kusnaatti, Moregni, and Kaasni, her closest neighbors— through orthodox means like marriages and resource lending, and unorthodox means like disaster response and mediating inter-tribal diplomacy.
Through years of this political maneuvering, she builds enough favor to found a formal coalition between the four tribes, though she would not yet be at its head. Still, they together convene and agree on common laws, rights of passage for trading and pilgrimage, and premium deals on resources they wouldn't otherwise trade in. This new coalition becomes the major political power of the Ahulanja, the Haithilanja, and the Erthowaz (modern-day imperial heartlands).
By now, thanks to Sigeswintha, the Drusdenn becomes the de facto head of the coalition, though only through frail ties and promises. As a leader, Sigeswintha convinces the coalition to march to war. Not the petty skirmishes and quarrels they had experience in, but true, unbridled war. She pushes new laws that stabilize their tribal economies while a tenth of its population is away from home, allowing the largest warband, and the only standing army of the time, to march together to beat their lessers. Thus begins a 17-year conquest.
The Mosdal, Braesrigni, Brugni, Segnfanas, Degn-Azgnaz, and Kneoehtoi fell to the coalition, subjugated but still allowed freedoms so long as one tenth of their women and men march with the warband. Every summer they march. Every winter they rest. Spring and autumn can be marched or rested on.
The coalition has always been depending on thin ice. The reiks of the Moregni and Kusnaatti are uneasy. Their warriors— their men carrying spear and shield, their women carrying sling and stone— they praise Sigeswintha more than their own elders. But for now, the reiks bide their time.
Abruptly, Sigeswintha declares herself Oberereik, 'Highest Leader.' Even the Moregni and Kusnaatti reiks didn't expect this. But what does it mean. Does it mean Sigeswintha wishes to conquer the world? No fearing and no hoping, the Moregni and Kusnaatti reiks say it is the last straw. They dissolve their ties with the Drusdenn.
The Kaasni are wiser. They do not condemn Sigeswintha, though they do not celebrate her. Their warriors love her, they know this. The other reiks hate her, they know this also.
Sigeswintha, meanwhile, see opportunity. Opportunity to paint her sovereign territories. She sends her daughter, Emelgard, and the Braesrigni reik, Gailasande, to subjugate the Moregni and Kusnaati on her own behalf. The Braesrigni reik, a subjugated woman herself, was sent as a message to their other reiks: Fight for me, Sigeswintha the Great, and thou shall be same as my kin. The two young women, leading warriors from all the Oberereik's tribes, even Moregni and Kusnaati that love their Oberereik more than their own reiks, crushes the traitors, though said traitors only number a few, those few that stood with their reiks to the end.
While Emelgard and Gailasande fought, Sigeswintha marches on the Aldaregni, Zurgartii, and Stromlaz tribes. A minor footnote for now, during this march, Sigeswintha's curiosity of the ancient ruins all around where she went saw her delving into them. Strange things were found. Strange things that she keeps stashed for now, for a later time. Such a later time would never come.
Her first target was the Zurgartii, but while leading from the front to inspire confidence in her warriors, Sigeswintha was struck by a Zurgartii spear. She would live for a week after. In the Year Of Our Homes 803, Sigeswintha the Great, Founder of the Oberereik, dies at the age of 46.
The warband left the land of the Zurgartii, dispersing in factions following different upstart warlords. But then came Emelgard and Gailasande from their victories. Gailasande unites the warband together again, and follows Emelgard as the new Oberereik.
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