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India
Gandhara – centered around Purusapura, the wealthy “city of men”, Gandhara is a country of stunning mountains and valleys. While nominally a republic (or more accurately an equal-kingdom) after repulsing a full-scale Kipchak invasion in 911, the Bitihrota family has maintained off and on dominance over the state – turning the position of “Prime Minister” into an almost hereditary office. Gandharan politicians have a reputation throughout India and Iran for being clannish and nepotistic, one which has led to the common innuendo “In the Gandharan manner” being used to describe any sort of corrupt family politics.
Gandhara’s less than enviable position at the very gates of the subcontinent has forced them to maintain one of the finest armies in the region. The Gandharan councils can raise hundreds of war elephants and tens of thousands of guild-warriors augmented by Afghan and Turkic tribal auxiliaries. Over time, these Turko-Afghan warriors, called Sahputi, have gained increasing authority at the expense of the guilds. Their knowledge of the hilly country of Afghanistan has proved invaluable in countering ambitious Khardi Satraps, and although they cannot hold political office, the Sahputi have become a military caste in their own right, settled across the the frontier.
At the dawn of the 12th century, Gandhara is a wealthy and proudly independent country. After centuries of Aghatsaghid rule, they have finally become prosperous in their own right, building enormous hydraulic works to maintain alpine rice fields and enormous, decadent temples and stupa across the mountainsides of their equal-kingdom.
Sindh – With the collapse of the Dauwa regime in 1057, Sindh was left in a short-lived state of anarchy. Gandhara proved too weak and disinterested to fix the power vacuum their wars had created. After crushing the last Dauwa monarch in pitched battle, they simply abandoned the country to its own devices. What emerged in the aftermath was a curious hybrid state based on Multan. Alternately called Sindh or Trigarta, this new kingdom was founded by a local warlord named Sansar Chand and by 1082 had reunited Sindh under his authority.
Sansar Chand tore down the Dauwa state bureaucracy and expelled the foreign mercenaries entirely. A pious and devout man, he gave most of the conquered estates to local community temples, founding sangha wherever he went. The new Sindh is accordingly a sort of theocratic merchant republic, albeit one with a powerful dynasty at its head.
Chandratreya Empire – In 1100, the Chandratreya Empire is quite possibly the richest and most powerful empire in the world. While it has had a series of royal capitals, such as rock-cut Elapura and Manyakheta, it is the coastal cities of this vast decentralized Empire where true power lies. Ruled by a Great King of Kings, the Chandratreya have never embraced the concept or structure of the equal-kingdoms which are so commonplace in post-Revolution India. While guilds and republican city-states abound along the coastal regions, their heartland in the Deccan is an agglomeration of directly administered royal territory and companies, and the periphery of their state is guarded by numerous vassal kings.
The royal councilors and adminstrators are often drawn from guild ranks, but the Chandratreya keep their own army, drawn from their vassals and their own professional forces. They distrust armed guilds and prefer to force the merchant guilds to use their soldiers and navy rather than allowing them to keep private forces. This in particular has kept the Chandratreya state from becoming subsumed to the interests of powerful financial factions. Ruling a vast portion of the subcontinent, the collapse of the Pancharajya has left Maharaja Sharva Chandratreya the most powerful man in India, a power broker in the conflicts between the Gangetic kingdoms. However, some whisper that his Jain minister Kannara holds real power, or that he is nothing more than a hedonistic lout madly obsessed with his wife Vijarma.
Chandratreya society, unlike large parts of medieval India, has unprecedented social mobility. The “Sixteen Castes” are all capable of owning land and property, and while certain rules and customs dictate their place in religious observances, in day to day commerce or the civil service people can rise from exceptionally lowly origins to positions of high rank. The language of the court and learned men is increasingly the vernacular Kannada language, and in this sense the Chandratreya have encouraged regionalism of a sort.
Chola – the Chola are first among equals in the great patchwork of south Indian dynasties, ruling over the Pallava, Hoysala and others. Innovators in the field of finance and commerce, their nagaram corporations have influence far and wide. In 1100, they are ruled by Virarajendra Chola, an ambitious ruler who has done much to expand Chola influence over Andhra at the expense of the mighty northern Chandratreya.
The Chola regime has never faced the sorts of difficulties experienced by their northern counterparts. In the south, Equal-Kingdoms are a strange and unwelcome notion. The guilds have prospered in no small part because they lack direct political ambitions, and accordingly spend their energy outwards rather than on self-defeating quests at internal authority. The Chola do not have an Ayat of their own, although traditionally the large corporations have always had the ear of the monarch.
Utkaladesha – after the rebellion of 947, Utkaladesha began to slip into the Chola orbit. Her guilds were prosperous but not so rich that they could avoid being bought out or subverted by powerful Tamil and Vangali organizations. Accordingly, although Utkaladesha remains an equal-kingdom of no little importance, the goshthi faction which dominates in the Ayat is in many senses a puppet to powerful foreign influences. This has not prevented Utkaladesha from expanding into the tribal areas to the north, land seizures which have granted the bureaucratic scholar-gentry more power.
Andhra – Another vassal of the Chola, the Andhran city of Narayanaksherta is now the capital of Andhra, having eclipsed the ancient site of Vinukonda. Narayanaksherta is now the seat of Ayat and answers directly to the Chola monarch. A puppet King has been placed on the throne of Andhra, belonging to the inconsequential Arinjaya Kalapalar, a rubber-stamp for the actions of the Ayat and the Chola guilds.
However, Andhra has become a country divided. Vengipura, the proud ancient capital remains in the hands of the landholding guilds and is an equal-kingdom of its own under the rule of a “viceroy” named Siyata Khottiga. Khottiga’s Vengipuran holdings have become an armed camp of sorts. Since 1080, he has embarked on a substantial program of fortification, shoring up the walls of Vengipura and establishing the Ayat at a new fortified palace-hall cut into a nearby hill. This fortified palace is said to have sufficient granaries and cisterns to survive for five years if besieged, and to be connected by underground tunnels to the city itself.
While open war has been rare lately, Narayanaksherta has been buying up immense quantities of firepowder and Arabian horses, and according to rumor they hope to destroy Vengipura. However, they dare not move without the backing of the Chola, because Vengipura has a powerful patron in the form of the local Chandratreya Uparika.
Magadha – The famous birthplace of empires survived Anapota’s reign relatively intact. A seat of culture, philosophy, and technological innovation since the Gupta era, Magadha is now once more an independent kingdom under Kaivarta Soumitri, the son of a former general of Achyuta who rose to power after the death of the latter man in 1062. Pataliputra remains one of the largest cities on the subcontinent, comparable in population to most of its great rivals and yet far more prestigious. A “city clotted with palaces” in the words of the Chinese adventurer Zhao Li, Pataliputra is also home to some of the greatest Buddhist monasteries in the world.
Day to day management of Magadha is the province of local Ayat councils – Magadha remains an equal-kingdom in that sense. However executive authority is wholly concentrated in the various adopted princes of the Soumitri dynasty, who have broad purview to act extrajudicially. The general populace has no recourse other than appealing directly to the monarch, a complicated process which can only be done through the Ayat. Magadha has fought three wars with the city of Tamralipta, the last of which conquered the city and brought much of Vanga under Magadhan control. Notably, Kaivarta Soumitri is an atheist, a member of a latter Carvaka sect which holds that nothing exists which cannot be observed. This has won him little love from the great universities and monasteries of his kingdom.
Kosala – The Kirata dynasty rules Kosala as an effectively feudal state, having conquered an outsized realm far beyond the traditional boundaries of Kosala. Ayodhya, an ancient and powerful city, serves as their capital, and their kingdom is one of the strongest and wealthiest of the Pancharajya successor states. The Kirata, being a Nepalese warrior clan from the mountains, have brought a certain martial spirit to their kingdom that their rivals typically lack. They are fortress-builders and have used these fortresses to turn themselves into a landed aristocracy not so different from the feudal retainers of Europe or Japan.
Hiring mercenaries from as far afield as the Sahputs of Afghanistan, they have won battle after battle against the guild armies of Magadha and Panchala. Their military tactics, however, are beginning to look outdated in a world where any peasant can be trained to hold a fire-spear or a hand-cannon. Furthermore, their rival guilds have begun adapting tactically, as well as hiring more freely and expanding their numbers immensely. The battle of Kampilya in 1099 is a perfect example of the decline of the Kosala – the Panchala guilds took cover behind quickly erected wooden ramparts and decimated a Kirata charge with firespears and their famed longbows.
Panchala – Republican tradition is preserved among Panchala, a league of cities sometimes called the Three Kingdoms. Here, as in Surasena, the Ayats have remained dominant, and they elect viceroys and ministers rather than kings. Panchala has been on the rise for the past several generations, as their guild armies have adapted, hiring thousands of fresh soldiers and importing large numbers of horses from Iran. Lately they have been winning battle after battle, reducing the Kirata and the republic of Surasena in the process.
Surasena – Centered on the holy Yamuna river, Surasena is a deeply religious country, one with a reputation for mysticism. Having lost many wars against Panchala, it is also an unstable one, ruled by a succession of petty despots. Mathura, its capital, is a place under effective mob rule, and many educated people have called for a union with Panchala, and a restoration of the Pancharajya, under which the people prospered.
Pajcanada – The Country of the Five Rivers, which the Iranians called Panjab, is assuredly one of the most long-suffering of the Indian states. It has long been a land of petty kingdoms, foreign conquerors, and most recently Gandharan dominion. However, in 1046,the city of Lohawar broke free of the Gandharan yoke and has pressed Gandhara back towards the mountains, gaining control of the Sutlej and Ravi rivers. Pajcanada, ruled by the native Panwarawat dynasty, does not have the prestige of many of its rivals. They are seen as upstarts and rebels, tillers of the soil whose country sits wedged between far greater powers.
Lohawar itself has grown substantially in the past thirty years, expanding to cope with the exigencies of the large kingdom it now finds itself ruling. In contrast to the Gandharans, whose regime is increasingly preoccupied with threats from the West, it exists in relative safety – most of Pajcanada’s neighbors are distracted and weak.
Vrji – a long suffering buffer state between the Kirata of Kosala and the Soumitri of Magadha, Vrji has had her borders systematically disrespected over the last seventy years to the point that her Ayat barely controls any territory outside of the city of Vaisali. Currently, the Vrji Ayat pays heavy tribute to the Kirata, and her walls are manned by Kirata soldiers.
Gandhara – centered around Purusapura, the wealthy “city of men”, Gandhara is a country of stunning mountains and valleys. While nominally a republic (or more accurately an equal-kingdom) after repulsing a full-scale Kipchak invasion in 911, the Bitihrota family has maintained off and on dominance over the state – turning the position of “Prime Minister” into an almost hereditary office. Gandharan politicians have a reputation throughout India and Iran for being clannish and nepotistic, one which has led to the common innuendo “In the Gandharan manner” being used to describe any sort of corrupt family politics.
Gandhara’s less than enviable position at the very gates of the subcontinent has forced them to maintain one of the finest armies in the region. The Gandharan councils can raise hundreds of war elephants and tens of thousands of guild-warriors augmented by Afghan and Turkic tribal auxiliaries. Over time, these Turko-Afghan warriors, called Sahputi, have gained increasing authority at the expense of the guilds. Their knowledge of the hilly country of Afghanistan has proved invaluable in countering ambitious Khardi Satraps, and although they cannot hold political office, the Sahputi have become a military caste in their own right, settled across the the frontier.
At the dawn of the 12th century, Gandhara is a wealthy and proudly independent country. After centuries of Aghatsaghid rule, they have finally become prosperous in their own right, building enormous hydraulic works to maintain alpine rice fields and enormous, decadent temples and stupa across the mountainsides of their equal-kingdom.
Sindh – With the collapse of the Dauwa regime in 1057, Sindh was left in a short-lived state of anarchy. Gandhara proved too weak and disinterested to fix the power vacuum their wars had created. After crushing the last Dauwa monarch in pitched battle, they simply abandoned the country to its own devices. What emerged in the aftermath was a curious hybrid state based on Multan. Alternately called Sindh or Trigarta, this new kingdom was founded by a local warlord named Sansar Chand and by 1082 had reunited Sindh under his authority.
Sansar Chand tore down the Dauwa state bureaucracy and expelled the foreign mercenaries entirely. A pious and devout man, he gave most of the conquered estates to local community temples, founding sangha wherever he went. The new Sindh is accordingly a sort of theocratic merchant republic, albeit one with a powerful dynasty at its head.
Chandratreya Empire – In 1100, the Chandratreya Empire is quite possibly the richest and most powerful empire in the world. While it has had a series of royal capitals, such as rock-cut Elapura and Manyakheta, it is the coastal cities of this vast decentralized Empire where true power lies. Ruled by a Great King of Kings, the Chandratreya have never embraced the concept or structure of the equal-kingdoms which are so commonplace in post-Revolution India. While guilds and republican city-states abound along the coastal regions, their heartland in the Deccan is an agglomeration of directly administered royal territory and companies, and the periphery of their state is guarded by numerous vassal kings.
The royal councilors and adminstrators are often drawn from guild ranks, but the Chandratreya keep their own army, drawn from their vassals and their own professional forces. They distrust armed guilds and prefer to force the merchant guilds to use their soldiers and navy rather than allowing them to keep private forces. This in particular has kept the Chandratreya state from becoming subsumed to the interests of powerful financial factions. Ruling a vast portion of the subcontinent, the collapse of the Pancharajya has left Maharaja Sharva Chandratreya the most powerful man in India, a power broker in the conflicts between the Gangetic kingdoms. However, some whisper that his Jain minister Kannara holds real power, or that he is nothing more than a hedonistic lout madly obsessed with his wife Vijarma.
Chandratreya society, unlike large parts of medieval India, has unprecedented social mobility. The “Sixteen Castes” are all capable of owning land and property, and while certain rules and customs dictate their place in religious observances, in day to day commerce or the civil service people can rise from exceptionally lowly origins to positions of high rank. The language of the court and learned men is increasingly the vernacular Kannada language, and in this sense the Chandratreya have encouraged regionalism of a sort.
Chola – the Chola are first among equals in the great patchwork of south Indian dynasties, ruling over the Pallava, Hoysala and others. Innovators in the field of finance and commerce, their nagaram corporations have influence far and wide. In 1100, they are ruled by Virarajendra Chola, an ambitious ruler who has done much to expand Chola influence over Andhra at the expense of the mighty northern Chandratreya.
The Chola regime has never faced the sorts of difficulties experienced by their northern counterparts. In the south, Equal-Kingdoms are a strange and unwelcome notion. The guilds have prospered in no small part because they lack direct political ambitions, and accordingly spend their energy outwards rather than on self-defeating quests at internal authority. The Chola do not have an Ayat of their own, although traditionally the large corporations have always had the ear of the monarch.
Utkaladesha – after the rebellion of 947, Utkaladesha began to slip into the Chola orbit. Her guilds were prosperous but not so rich that they could avoid being bought out or subverted by powerful Tamil and Vangali organizations. Accordingly, although Utkaladesha remains an equal-kingdom of no little importance, the goshthi faction which dominates in the Ayat is in many senses a puppet to powerful foreign influences. This has not prevented Utkaladesha from expanding into the tribal areas to the north, land seizures which have granted the bureaucratic scholar-gentry more power.
Andhra – Another vassal of the Chola, the Andhran city of Narayanaksherta is now the capital of Andhra, having eclipsed the ancient site of Vinukonda. Narayanaksherta is now the seat of Ayat and answers directly to the Chola monarch. A puppet King has been placed on the throne of Andhra, belonging to the inconsequential Arinjaya Kalapalar, a rubber-stamp for the actions of the Ayat and the Chola guilds.
However, Andhra has become a country divided. Vengipura, the proud ancient capital remains in the hands of the landholding guilds and is an equal-kingdom of its own under the rule of a “viceroy” named Siyata Khottiga. Khottiga’s Vengipuran holdings have become an armed camp of sorts. Since 1080, he has embarked on a substantial program of fortification, shoring up the walls of Vengipura and establishing the Ayat at a new fortified palace-hall cut into a nearby hill. This fortified palace is said to have sufficient granaries and cisterns to survive for five years if besieged, and to be connected by underground tunnels to the city itself.
While open war has been rare lately, Narayanaksherta has been buying up immense quantities of firepowder and Arabian horses, and according to rumor they hope to destroy Vengipura. However, they dare not move without the backing of the Chola, because Vengipura has a powerful patron in the form of the local Chandratreya Uparika.
Magadha – The famous birthplace of empires survived Anapota’s reign relatively intact. A seat of culture, philosophy, and technological innovation since the Gupta era, Magadha is now once more an independent kingdom under Kaivarta Soumitri, the son of a former general of Achyuta who rose to power after the death of the latter man in 1062. Pataliputra remains one of the largest cities on the subcontinent, comparable in population to most of its great rivals and yet far more prestigious. A “city clotted with palaces” in the words of the Chinese adventurer Zhao Li, Pataliputra is also home to some of the greatest Buddhist monasteries in the world.
Day to day management of Magadha is the province of local Ayat councils – Magadha remains an equal-kingdom in that sense. However executive authority is wholly concentrated in the various adopted princes of the Soumitri dynasty, who have broad purview to act extrajudicially. The general populace has no recourse other than appealing directly to the monarch, a complicated process which can only be done through the Ayat. Magadha has fought three wars with the city of Tamralipta, the last of which conquered the city and brought much of Vanga under Magadhan control. Notably, Kaivarta Soumitri is an atheist, a member of a latter Carvaka sect which holds that nothing exists which cannot be observed. This has won him little love from the great universities and monasteries of his kingdom.
Kosala – The Kirata dynasty rules Kosala as an effectively feudal state, having conquered an outsized realm far beyond the traditional boundaries of Kosala. Ayodhya, an ancient and powerful city, serves as their capital, and their kingdom is one of the strongest and wealthiest of the Pancharajya successor states. The Kirata, being a Nepalese warrior clan from the mountains, have brought a certain martial spirit to their kingdom that their rivals typically lack. They are fortress-builders and have used these fortresses to turn themselves into a landed aristocracy not so different from the feudal retainers of Europe or Japan.
Hiring mercenaries from as far afield as the Sahputs of Afghanistan, they have won battle after battle against the guild armies of Magadha and Panchala. Their military tactics, however, are beginning to look outdated in a world where any peasant can be trained to hold a fire-spear or a hand-cannon. Furthermore, their rival guilds have begun adapting tactically, as well as hiring more freely and expanding their numbers immensely. The battle of Kampilya in 1099 is a perfect example of the decline of the Kosala – the Panchala guilds took cover behind quickly erected wooden ramparts and decimated a Kirata charge with firespears and their famed longbows.
Panchala – Republican tradition is preserved among Panchala, a league of cities sometimes called the Three Kingdoms. Here, as in Surasena, the Ayats have remained dominant, and they elect viceroys and ministers rather than kings. Panchala has been on the rise for the past several generations, as their guild armies have adapted, hiring thousands of fresh soldiers and importing large numbers of horses from Iran. Lately they have been winning battle after battle, reducing the Kirata and the republic of Surasena in the process.
Surasena – Centered on the holy Yamuna river, Surasena is a deeply religious country, one with a reputation for mysticism. Having lost many wars against Panchala, it is also an unstable one, ruled by a succession of petty despots. Mathura, its capital, is a place under effective mob rule, and many educated people have called for a union with Panchala, and a restoration of the Pancharajya, under which the people prospered.
Pajcanada – The Country of the Five Rivers, which the Iranians called Panjab, is assuredly one of the most long-suffering of the Indian states. It has long been a land of petty kingdoms, foreign conquerors, and most recently Gandharan dominion. However, in 1046,the city of Lohawar broke free of the Gandharan yoke and has pressed Gandhara back towards the mountains, gaining control of the Sutlej and Ravi rivers. Pajcanada, ruled by the native Panwarawat dynasty, does not have the prestige of many of its rivals. They are seen as upstarts and rebels, tillers of the soil whose country sits wedged between far greater powers.
Lohawar itself has grown substantially in the past thirty years, expanding to cope with the exigencies of the large kingdom it now finds itself ruling. In contrast to the Gandharans, whose regime is increasingly preoccupied with threats from the West, it exists in relative safety – most of Pajcanada’s neighbors are distracted and weak.
Vrji – a long suffering buffer state between the Kirata of Kosala and the Soumitri of Magadha, Vrji has had her borders systematically disrespected over the last seventy years to the point that her Ayat barely controls any territory outside of the city of Vaisali. Currently, the Vrji Ayat pays heavy tribute to the Kirata, and her walls are manned by Kirata soldiers.
