Emesa Hundred/1st Edition/2

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EMESA HUNDRED 2
 


migration north across the Denia. When Emperor Kobar (394-437) ordered a census of his western holdings in 405, the scrolls listed only a handful of citizens claiming Jenath descent. Their separate identity had been lost within a generation of contact with the Corani.

Rise of Empire[edit | edit source]

Just as the Merdi had insulated the Jenath from the Empire, so had the Jenath insulated the Kubora. To them, though, the Corani were just another weak southern tribe to be ignored as beneath their dignity.

Emperor Kobar was the first to speak of the ‘scarlet robe of Corani civilisation that might be caste about the shoulders of the barbarian Kubora’. His first step was the highway linking Coranan with Merethos (Golotha). Then the Hohnam Highway pushed west to Tormau where the building of a substantial fort began.

Even before its completion in 405 the legions were cutting tracks through the forest north of the Denia. The first mention of ‘Emesa’ in the imperial archives dates from 402 when a ‘small fort beside the river Emesa was attacked and the garrison withdrawn to Tormau’.

This seems to have been a rare example of resistance. The Kubora appear to have been more surprised than threatened. Their patience was mistaken as weakness by the Corani.

It was trappers and merchants who first settled beside the Emesa, making good use of the flow of the first stable currency in the West of Harn. They traded goods the Kubora wanted for the hard won fruits of the forest frontier. They were soon living off the backs of the first full cohort to march north from Tormau establishing a more substantial fort named for the river. Emesa was soon the base for forays launched to test the will of the Kubora. The quarrelling tribes response was piecemeal and the Empire concluded that the tribes would not stand against its legions.

That appeared to be the case when a Corani legion marched out of Emesa and into the forest in the Spring of 413. The village of Kus was placed under Imperial ‘protection’ within months. The prediction that the tribes would submit by the end of 414 was, though, optimistic. Instead, five decades of bloody revolt, focused on Caer Kustan, began.

Frontier Outpost[edit | edit source]

Whenever legionaries marched into the forests from Emesa or Kustan the Kubora would strike with bloody ferocity. They launched a dozen rebellions until, by 460, wits in the taverns of Coranan were caricaturing Kobar’s ‘red robe of civilisation’ as ‘not so much a robe, more a ribbon; a bloody scarlet ribbon!’. It was this sobriquet that came to represent hard duty on the Peran frontier as well as the route from Emesa to Kustan and from there east into the lands of the Urdu. Every campaign season an ambitious general arrived at Emesa intent on making his name by bringing the tribes to heel.

The last Emperor to lead troops in the field, Mejenes the Great (443-465), was such a general. He marched a legion across Peran before paying the ultimate price. His act of imperial hubris was met with ambush and slaughter by the Urdu before the remnants of his force staggered back to Kustan, harassed by the Kubora. A carved monument in the centre of Emesa’s marketplace records the date of the arrival and departure, a week later, of the bones carried from the imperial funeral pyre by the survivors.

Never had such a force been humbled by a tribal enemy and the Empire’s grip on Peran was never the same again. Small garrisons across Peran were withdrawn to Kustan and the tribes left to pillage what Corani civilisation had hacked out of the forest. Increasingly Corani writ ran only a bow shot from the walls of Caer Kustan, or the blockhouses constructed along the Scarlet Ribbon. Emesa was the base of more and more irregular supply columns to the outpost, requiring more and more protection.

Though Mejenes’ son, the Emperor Sylud (465-485), is usually blamed for the collapse of the Empire some scholars have ascribed the collapse on the ‘Peran Stalemate’ that bled the Empire white. One diarist records a frustrated Sylud shouting into the heavens; ‘Father, Father, give me back my Legions’.

When the garrison at Kustan was annihilated in 477 the Kubora surged south towards Emesa. The only obstacle in their way was a blockhouse on the Scarlet Ribbon. There some sick and injured members of the 2nd cohort of the 4th legion had camped on their way back to Emesa. The officers commanding were later commended by the Emperor for the successful defence they mounted with this very limited force. Treating the set-back as a sign that Kemlar was satisfied that sacred Kustan had been purified in blood, the Kubora came no further south.

Emesa was still considered indefensible; its garrison was withdrawn and it was left to its fate in 478.

Fall of Empire[edit | edit source]

Though the imperial border was re-drawn along the River Denia, Emesa was not abandoned. Most of the legionaries that had retired and settled in the village decided to stay and make a life for themselves and their families. They taught their sons the rudiments of the legions’ martial skills and spoke of being the final bulwark against the Kubora. In fact, increasing trade and intermarriage with the Kubora softened both memories of the Kustan massacre and imperial loyalties. The Emesans traded their craft skills and crops with their tribal neighbours in return for animal pelts and the fruits of the forest.

The imperial reigns of Saurach (485-491); Mindrithar (491-512); Korad (512-528); and Shorka (528-555) passed the Emesans by with little or no incident. They continued to send some tribute south in return for being left alone