Corragene, the City of Silver Towers, was founded, according to legend, by the king Ambuletza (Walking Glass), who broke away from the Riverine tribe of his birth for religious reasons.
Ambuletza lead his followers to an unoccupied patch of land - rocky and relatively infertile - away from the delta, on the slopes of Mount Copressa, between the river and the sea. This position was, despite its infertility, relatively defensible, and allowed the first inhabitants of Corragene to hold out against the attacks of hostile Oleandrine tribes who sought to exploit their weakness.
Ambuletza established many of the rites of the pagan Corragenni religion, building the first of the city's now-numerous temples and establishing what would become the famous Garden (a semi-religious site which served ritual purposes and provided some surplus food).
After demonstrating his ability to fend off attacks from hostile Oleandrines, Ambuletza also formed close alliances with the tribes of the delta, forming the altessered, which would slowly bring these tribes under the patrimony of Corragene and later function as a sort of Senate.
During this period and the reigns of subsequent kings, the area experienced a period of extreme cold. Paradoxically, this caused a population explosion, because it killed the malaria-carrying mosquitoes that had one inhabited the delta.
A second boon came during the reign of Ambuletza's son, Cognagent (Silver-Named) - namely, the discovery of silver deposits in Mount Copressa. This increased the city's wealth massively, allowing more trade, more and better houses, more beneficence to the members of the altessered (by this time a network of client tribes).
It also brought trouble. The Oleandrine tribes broke their treaty and attacked, hoping to seize the silver for themselves. They were bloodily defeated by Ambuletza's grand-nephew, Itullius Samavedis, in the War of Severed Arms. So total was the Oleandrine rout that that Samavedis was able to bring them into the altessered by force, and settle the fertile Oleandrine Ridge with Corragennis. From this point onwards, Corragenni greatness was assured - exponentially richer than any of the surrounding tribes, and now with a population in the tens of thousands, it was the most powerful city for thousands of miles around.
"Corragene sprang up," one later writer would claim, "like a flower in winter, blooming in purple glory from out the silver snow."
The next few centuries were marked by steady and incredibly rapid growth, the population reaching 650,000 by around 400 years after the foundation of the city.
King became Emperors, shrines became temples, the altars of the gods became pyramids for ritual sacrifice, and the Garden of Corragene became the envy of the world, a metaphor for earthly paradise from the Half-Lit Lands of the North to the courts of the Ibriph across the Internal Sea. Tribes and states, the fortresses of the south and the craggy trading-posts of the islands, were gathered under the great silver cloak of the Emperor as his soldiers and priests and spies shattered states, religions, whole cultures that opposed the might of the Silver-Hearted City.
At the zenith of its power, a mere six centuries after its foundation, its population reached a million, requiring grain to be shipped from massive colonial farms across the seas. It ruled the largest empire the world had ever seen. It seemed invincible.
The Emperor, Erewet III, knew better. News of defeats by the Yew Confederacy in the far north and by the newly-formed Qullukuri Empire across the Internal Sea was prevented from reaching the ears of the populace, but anyone could see the filth in the streets, the return of the scourge of malaria, the constant harassment of pirates feeding off the rich trade routes.
Erewet needed change on a massive scale. Walking in the Garden, he experienced a vision of perfect, sublime order, a garden for the whole world, the enemies of God and the Empire plucked from history like weeds. He converted to a new faith, Mayaan, brought by the braided disciples of a poet who wrote in the sands of a far-off desert. At a stroke, the massive pagan church system became a vehicle for a focused, monotheistic religion. For most people, little changed, but the ruling classes were seized with fervor and ecstatic visions of magic and holy wars.
Erewet knew just where to direct this fervor. Reigning in their crusading visions, he directed them to financing swamp drainage and bed netting for the masses. Malaria disappeared again within a generation. The streets were paved again, and wide boulevards replaced narrow, unplanned alleyways. Corragene gained a new harbor, a new university, a new navy, all due to the suddenly increased willingness of the nobility to pay taxes to this new God. He would, after all condemn them to eternal sickness and frailty in their next lives if they did not do all they could to help His manifestation on Earth.
Erewet declared that it was the destiny of Corragene to remake the world into the dreamlike paradise of the God of Mayaan. "Our city is the set-square of heaven," he said. "When the whole world wears our image, our work will be done."
The next two hundred years were a golden (or a silver) age of stability. Living standards reached new highs even as population soared - unprecedented security, unprecedented wealth, even organized social services and public education, prevailed over the inhabitants of the Alabaster City and its outlying provinces. Art, music, and theology had never reached such heights as they did in the beginning of the third century after the Conversion of Erewet the Dreamer, and never would again. Even its enemies recognized its greatness: one fundamentalist cleric described it as "the river of shit that flows out to fertilize the whole world."
For, as gold and silver flowed into the treasury, the Emperors learned to tolerate corruption. "The river will always reach the sea. Why should the birds not drink from it?" as one provincial aristocrat put it 117 years after the Conversion of Erewet. Slowly, nobles amassed more power. A bubble of complacency surrounded the palace, and careful censorship prevented news of defeats, rebellions, famines, and plagues from reaching the inhabitants of the city of Corragene. Even rich Corragennis began to ignore the massive levels of poverty that still existed in their city. Perhaps most ludicrously, examination of textbooks in geography, history, and geometry between 0 and 200 years AEC (After Erewet's Conversion) shows a roughly 50% reduction in the reported circumference of the world - rather than expanding the Empire to fulfill the mission of their faith, the elite of Corragene preferred to reduce the size of their goal.
It all burst in 298 AEC, with the Ivory Bow revolt (so called because of the ivory currency, carrying pictures of bows, minted by the rebels). The revolt started over a legal dispute between the Emperor and a Southern nobleman over the right of the Emperor to hunt elephants on the nobleman's land. Soon, the fortresses of the Southern plains were flying the elephant banner of the Free South, and the revolt was put down only with five years of bloody conflict and thousands of executions. Much of the South was put under the direct rule of the Emperor; thus, the rebellion ensured the stability of the South in the coming years of turmoil.
While the rebellion was going on, numerous other nobles on the periphery of the Empire, either revolted or asserted autonomy. Tribes, such as the Golden Masks from Setteland, made incursions. The grain shipments from the colonies stopped, as the Exarchs revolted and ports were captured. This lead to a mass exodus from the city, the population falling to 400,000 by 310 AEC.
In 303, barbarian mercenaries, unpaid, revolted, executed the Emperor Tellaquis and installed their commander, crowning him Emperor Azantis "the Bearded". Azantis reasserted control over the city and the surrounding countryside, but never managed to rein in the outer provinces and exarchies. In 312, he died, and new revolts threatened the fragile stability he had won. His only children were infants, and calling for an Emperor to be elected by the nobility proved impractical.
At this point, the Mayaanist Church, led by Selueh Rem took control of the city, proclaiming a theocracy (the Eclanzilim). The First Empire had ended. The Eclanzilim lasted for four years before being ended by the Grand Conclave and the election of a new Emperor. To this day, some in the Church regret that their forebears gave up power.
Lacan, the governor of one of the city's largest districts, was elected, and chose no regnal name, becoming Lacan II. He presided over only the city itself, but managed to reassert control over the hinterland and many of the surrounding provinces and campaigning to restore at least nominal rule over the former Empire. He proclaimed a Second Empire in 320.
The Empire stabilized, coalescing into a mostly-nominal collection of feudal states and a large area around Corragene ruled by the Emperor himself. Corragene's population hovered around 350,000 for most of the next 500 years.
It is now 968 AEC. A capable Emperor, Claender Roc, has undertaken extensive building projects in the City, reorganizing districts and rebuilding temples. He has restored the flow of grain from the colonies, policing the seaways and the roads. He has even made initial efforts to eliminate once more the specter of malaria. The sun has never stopped glimmering on the towers of the Silver-Hearted City, and perhaps it will one day shine on the lands of the Empire as well.