In this page, I'd like to gather and summarize some of the
information concerning the Qom Empire period of history and some
major figures I've probably mentioned before, the two Qom Emperors
and their chief advisor Silhen i-Tsyam.
The first of these is Silhen i-Tsyam. Although one of the major
figures of Tepatic history, Silhen was known quite little, and
almost entirely through a negative light. This has greatly
changed, not only through scholarly reappraisal of the Qom
Imperial period, but also by confimation of the discovery of his
fragmentary personal writings, including memoirs and personal
letters to friends, which have allowed the reconstruction of an
inner life of sorts - resulting recently in both a revisionist
history of the Qom court, and with more speculation, a historical
novel centered on him.
Tsyam was born into a minor official family in Luk, the
easternmost of the successor states of Tepat. His birthplace,
Ngiwthak, sat facing Notoq, the Tepatic mythic homeland, and was
near a sacred hill where Womuq had begun his conquest of the
lowlands hundreds of years earlier. His year of birth,
approximately Year -40, was in the late era of the Shattered Land,
when Tepat had long since disintegrated the remnants of the former
Nyow Kingdom competed in civil war. He was part of one of the many
families attempting to take an upwardly-mobile course amid the
disorder - in this case, the scholarly one. His father Seksil
succeeded briefly in becoming a court official in Luk, but seemed
to have ended up on the wrong end of a court intrigue and
resigned. His son, however, showed remarkable learning capacity,
and as a later teen, was sent away to the former capital to study
at the University of Munhew, with the purpose of studying
Elephantine philosophy and becoming an official. Here he became a
pupil of Noksat i-Sat, one the leading philosophers of the late
Shattered Land. Noksat was party to an academic rivalry with
another Elephant, Khalman. The more cynical Noksat held a number
of unconventional views, such as belief in the non-literalness of
traditional legendary history, instilling a critical eye in Tsyam.
Aside from this, the university was a rhetorical battleground
between different philosophical schools, particularly the
Elephants' main rivals, the Zebras. Tsyam had contact with people
of a wide variety of backgrounds, including non-Tepatic ones.
Studies were interrupted by the eruption of warfare in the city.
Tsyam and other students escaped, both the assault itself and
subsequent attempts to conscript them, but was pressed into a year
of forced construction work. Amidst the chaos, his father died as
well. Eventually the university regrouped, but Tsyam had lost
motivation and became disillusioned with traditional study,
debating his mentor's preference for tradition. He discovered the
book Snaggletooth by another scholar, Lwok, which
reimagined the evolution of human society from nature through
increasing complexity, and culminating in a highly centralized,
absolutist state. Tsyam traveled to Notoq to meet Lwok, but found
him already dead.
Having left the university, with no position and no family, he
commenced nearly five years wandering through the wartorn realm,
during which he repeatedly failed to secure a good position,
instead wandering in poverty, doing odd jobs while obsessively
writing his book by night. In the course of it, he was temporarily
apprenticed to the idiosyncratic scholar Xhalkil, "The Ghoul," who
occupied a small farm where he conducted psychological experiments
on animals. This influenced Tsyam to consider the application of
such training regimens society-wide. Xhalkil himself had
considered this, in a more Utopian setting, but Tsyam had
convinced himself it could only instituted through a tyrannical
king. According to Tsyam's memoirs, his sense of purpose returned
in an epiphany in the woods outside the farm, when he suddenly
perceived the entire world working mechanically according to a law
of stimulus response, and saw how it could be manipulated.
After having visited most of former Tepat, he was left deciding
between the two remaining kingdoms, Thûp and the westernmost
kingdom, Qom. According to legend, he decided to leave the
question to the birds, and when he awoke and a raven cawed on the
left side of the sunrise, he prepared to go to Qom. His plans were
altered by events: Thûp had recently defeated Qom in battle and
captured its prince. So Tsyam went to Thûp. He became a clerk in
the western state Thûp, but became frustrated with its corrupt and
undisciplined court. There he met a royal hostage, Qathûq, the
prince of Qom, who was under stricter guard failing an attempt at
escape.
This was one of the fortituitous meetings of history. Qathûq was
by any estimation a remarkable person. Among other legends
concerning him, while a young boy, he was told to stay in bed on
New Year's eve, lest the New Year's demons catch him - so he
slipped out to kill the demons himself, and nearly succeeded in
killing a man dressed as a demon to scare children. It was this
same boldness that led Qathûq to get himself personally involved
in battle, and led to his own capture. Tsyam saw Qathûq’s personal
qualities as ideal for implementing his political plan. Gaining
Qathûq’s trust by offering as a pledge the draft of the book he
was writing, he helped Qathûq escape, fleeing with him. In so
doing, he exploited weaknesses in Thûp’s court, and promised to
prevent such vulnerabilities in Qom. Qathûq's father the king made
Tsyam his advisor. Tsyam became familiar with Qom’s history and
met Qathûq’s two young sons - the older, Kulhûq, and the younger,
Kulnik, who is considered more capable than his older brother, to
Kulhûq’s anxiety.
Surviving an attempt to expel foreign advisors, Tsyam spearheaded
a reorganization of Qom society into a strictly disciplined war
machine. When Qathûq became king, he made Tsyam his chief advisor,
a position he held through the course of Qom’s war to retake the
land to the East.
Over about 12 years, Qom succeeded in controlling the entire area of Tepatic influence and beyond. Along the way, he not only crushed the aristocratic class of old Tepat, he engaged in atrocities, and shocked the world with his behavior. In one of the well-known incidents, Qom captured the Shrine of All Souls, which was the most sacred artifact of ancient Tepat, however, he treated it disrespectfully. While sleeping in the room with the shrine - a privilege reserved only to its high priest - he had a dream which foretold his failure, causing him to start awake, striking and damaging the shrine.
Qom embarked on massive construction and reform projects to
increase the country’s glory and his control. He standardized law,
centralized administration, destroyed the aristocracy, and
regimented society according to a system of rewards and
punishments meant to ingrain socially “useful” behavior. Upon
reunifying the land, he also reset the calendar, establishing the
year of unification as Year 0. Many of these reforms originated
from Tsyam’s ideas, and Tsyam becomes the most powerful
philosopher in the world for a moment, but began to see his
influence wane with the rise of newer bureaucrats. He eventually
entered effective retirement and was increasingly left out of
Qom’s new important plans. Instead, Tsyam turned toward gaining
influence over younger pupils, and returned to writing his system.
He was frustrated however, when Qathûq to Tsyam claiming himself
the architect of the Qomist system, and demanding that the system
be attributed collectively only to the state itself.
Qathûq reformed the entire land along Qomist lines, balancing men
and competing segments of society against each other in
competition for his service. This extended even to his sons. To
determine his heir, Qathûq pit his sons against each other in
different projects. He charged Kulnik to complete his military
campaigns, and Kulhûq to build a new imperial capital. Kulhûq
suffered numerous setbacks, causing the king to remove him from
the project so it could be completed for a ceremony confirming him
as Emperor. Angrily Kulhûq attempted to sabotage Kulnik. His
effort was discovered though, and he was stripped of his princely
privileges and sent to a distant province. He left behind a
servant girl in the palace, with whom he had begun an affair.
Kulhûq, a weak man, had also begun attempting to fortify himself
by engaging in sorcery that blocked his feelings of empathy.
The coronation did not go as planned. Qathûq declared himself
Emperor and made Kulnik his heir, while showing off his new city,
and a system of enchanted mirrors to monitor it. One of his
generals nursed outrage at Qathûq's blasphemous conduct. A devout
man, he had viewed Qathûq as the righteous reuniter of Tepat, and
possibly of mankind. This had changed with the Incident of the
Allsoul, and he had turned to viewing Qathûq as a demonic
influence that would corrupt and destroy Tepat. The coronation
would be accompanied by a performance. He arranged for swordsman
in traditional sword dance performance to approach the Emperor and
strike him; additionally, a musician with a poisoned dart hidden
in his instrument would strike. Both failed, with Qathûq
personally disarming and killing the musician, and the general
fled, but killed himself afterward. Qathûq responded by putting
the entire performance troupe to death, and displaying their
bodies on stakes in front of the city.
Qathûq survived, wounded, and recovered, but not completely, and not spiritually. It marked a turn away from Qathûq's public presence toward a secretive rule. Though all-powerful, Qom felt restricted by his power and role, and was powerless against death. Even before the coronation, he had secretly assembled magicians and alchemists to research immortality, but now he became paranoid and reclusive, pouring all his effort into achieving immortality. When he discovered an allegedly immortal witch, he disappeared in order to meet her, causing confusion in his court. The witch refused to impart her secrets to Qathûq, and she was killed in a confrontation with Qom’s guard. Qathûq lost his chance at immortality, and became increasingly unstable.
While appearing to work ingeniously, the Qomist system’s inherent flaws began to unravel it from below. Selfish and wrongly incentivized by the system’s rewards and punishments, people began to make decisions that damaged Qom rule. (Among other things, soldiers began framing commoners for fictional crimes and executing to meet quotas of captured criminals.) Unsatisfied with reconstituting the extent of Nyow lands, the Emperor planned an invasion of Notoq, which had been independent for hundreds of years. Hukkaw, Kulhûq's mistress, accused Kulnik of plotting against Qathûq. Kulnik was recalled to his father’s camp at the invasion of Notoq, and executed by guards before ever seeing his father. Kulnik’s advisor and general Heptal and other loyalists escaped the slaughter, fleeing to Notoq. This succeeded in having Kulhûq recalled and reinstalled as heir. With his health and mindset deteriorating, Qathûq plotted his own escape. Leaving the palace to go for a horse ride alone, he got lost and was injured in a freak accident when his horse spooked. He was rescued by a peasant, but imprisoned by a magistrate who mistook him for a fugitive criminal. Qathûq was tortured before his identity was discovered and he died after returning to the palace.
Following this, Kulhûq assumed the throne, and under Hukkaw’s
advice, attempted to restore order through even crueler methods.
An early victim was Tsyam. Tsyam thought little of Kulhûq's
ability and instead promoted his younger brother. Tsyam had
frequently complained about Kulhûq's trouble studying. This had
led a verbal altercation between them where Kulhûq shouted that he
would have Tsyam executed. This caused the Emperor to reprimand
the prince. So when he heard that Kulhûq was king, he knew he was
fucked cooked.Tsyam evaded punishment by
committing suicide and sending his protege to “inform” on him,
correctly guessing that if the student denounced him, she would be
protected from her association with him. Kulhûq asserted control
by forcing his court to publicly support increasingly absurd
assertions and actions from him, eliminating everyone who is not
fully supportive. After a major purge, a conspiracy to control the
apparently unhinged king began among his remaining advisors.
Meanwhile, things generally started to fall apart. Peasant revolts
happened. One of the Emperor's generals, who had recently lost a
battle, was sent to pursue a fleeing rebel and pacify Swiric
raiders, with an ultimatum that he will be executed if he loses
another battle. Failing his mission, he defected to the barbarians
instead, and assisted them in raiding Tepat. Notoq also struck
back, using the aid of Heptal. These problems collided with the
Qom state’s failures, and the Emperor ended up trapped in his
castle as it was invaded by several different armies. Hukkaw
revealed that she was an orphan of Qom’s cruel wars, and destroyed
Qom in revenge, and attempted to kill Kulhûq. She fails, and
Kulhûq killed her, then surrendered to the rebels.
The rebel general who captured the palace declined to seize
control, and submitted instead to the ministers. Kulhûq was
publicly tried and imprisoned, and died in captivity. He
experienced an intense, overwhelming experience of empathy, after
capture, which weakened him. After Qom’s failure, the ministers
organized a new government, which they design to give no one
person absolute power. Otherwise, it preserves Qom’s
administrative structure, despite rejecting its governing
philosophy. This was the Conciliarity. Using the remains of the
Shrine of All Souls, the new government performed a ritual to
banish the souls of Tsyam, Qathûq, and Kulhûq, as punishment for
their tyranny.