Principality of Sictellas

Sictellas is descended from the Kingdom of Ambolaine, its longtime rival and former overlord. Like Ambolaine, Sictellas' population traces their roots to the Kingdom of Espatrasia, a 9th century rival to Fraspika, but unlike Ambolaine, the region was never under the control of Fraspika. It would, however, fall under the control of Ambolaine in the early 1200s, after the state gained its independence, but the region remain unruly. Primarily flashpoints included the Ambolic favoring of tribes from their core region to manage those which sat outside of it, as well as claiming the mantle of Espatrasia, which the Sictellan tribes resented. This disagreement arose from the end of Espatrasia, when the two regions were under control of separate claimants. Although the Sictellan line had long since collapsed, being ruled by a family descended from an old rival sat poorly with the Sictellan tribes.

Eventually, in 1292, this would boil over, with the tribes rising behind a new banner: the Sictellas tribe. Prominent landholders in the region, the Sictellas tribe had long been the main opposition to Ambolic governors, and roused the other tribes to their banner by promising them spoils of war and tribal autonomy. This strategy worked well at first, but the disunity of the tribes soon called for strengthening the authority of the Sictellas. To this end, the family reached out to the Republic of Bloeirra for assistance in 1296. In exchange for allowing Bloeirran merchants unprecedented access to the resources of their future state, Bloeirra, a state which was also in rebellion against Ambolaine, would help them consolidate power.

This move brought further chaos to the war, and probably prolonged it by at least a few years thanks to the loss in strength the Sictellas tribe suffered while enforcing their authority over their subjects, but the war would probably have lasted for years anyways. Still, whether or not the power grab by the Sictellas was a major factor, the war really did drag out until 1219, which counted nearly thirty years of on-and-off warfare between Sictellas and Ambolaine. Ambolaine's leaders finally capitulated in that year, allowing Sictellas independence, but they continued to claim their other lands such as Bloeirra and the borders between Ambolaine and Sictellas were still dangerous.

Nonetheless, this treaty and the similar treaty in 1332 that confirmed the borders and independence of Bloeirra and Sictellas would lead to a prolonged peace as most of the tribes in the region has lost their appetite for conflict, at least for a few years. Although Sictellas did not suffer as badly as Ambolaine, which lost many of its most important troops and saw peasant conscripts take large losses at Sictellan hands, their population had been skewed significantly by the years of war. This meant that in Sictellas, as in Ambolaine, the institution of polygamy was reinforced and would continue for years, even as almost all of Telgren rejected such things.

As Sictellas and Ambolaine recovered from their war, and eventually entered the 1400s, they would soon set their sights on one another again. The two nations fought in 14 separate wars over the next six centuries as they fought for borderlands and threw young men at one another. Though Sictellas, much smaller, could never muster the armies of Ambolaine, they managed to turn the tables several times and do more than just defend, though this was ultimately for naught as Ambolaine would always push them back with sheer numbers. While these policies continued, the two fell further and further behind their neighbors, using increasingly antiquated tactics and methods. Sictellas would also go through a number of different coups and countercoups through the centuries, resulting in a confusing web of tribal relations running beneath the political scene of the nation. In the end, this interconnection of various royal and formerly royal lines made tribal affiliations become obsolete.

Sictellas would later intervene in the Ambolainer civil war of 1813-1839 on the side of reactionaries, opposing the reformist faction of the ruling monarch Armand IV. They leveragede their support to seize key border areas, encuring that the wars with Ambolaine would continue, as both sides now had even more overlaps in their claims on each other. Having reformed the army in the 1930s, Armand then used it to invade Sictellas in 1844. The war, despite Ambolaine's reformed army, was hard-fought, primarily thanks to Sictellas' seizure of key border regions in the 1810s. Since Ambolaine lacked cannons, they took large casualties sieging back their own forts. Nonetheless, the war was nearly won before Armand took an arrow through his eye in 1849, killing him and throwing Ambolaine into a panic. This war has become a point of pride in Sictellas over the years, representing their tenacity in the face of difficult odds.

While Ambolaine was engaged in more civil strife as a result of this killing, known as the Years of Ash, Sictellas reformed its army in turn. This reform would lead to expansion north, with Sictellas snuffing out several small halfling communes in the borderlands between them and the hills to their north. These gains placed Sictellas on a more even footing with Ambolaine, as it provided a good farming base to support their soldiers, although the halflings have not been the most loyal subjects. In order to compensate for having less men on the battlefield than Ambolaine, Sictellas made a push to imporve their magical education during the early 20th century, bringing in foreign instructors and generally developing a robust system. All of these improvements in both Sictellas and Ambolaine meant that when the 15th and final war between the two ended in 1990, things were once more in a stalemate. However, in the ensuing years the Sictellan throne has passed to Gaston de Rileau, who staged a coup in the wake of postwar dissent. Rileau is from a long line of mages and nobles, but is not descended from a previous royal house. However, leveraging the support of the magical academies, he was able to gain total power over the nation. Rileau is a man in his mid-forties, who has a penchant for necromantic magic. In most other countries, this is taboo, but Sictellas has long ignored petty things like morals in order to gain an advantage, so his patronage of the art has gained major headway in the nation, as well as attracting foreign necromancers to work with him.