"Cassius Crestier could be argued as one of the foremost rulers of his age."
"A character had a profound effect on the game due to his effect on its history."
"He took a kingdom riddled with its own problems and, with the help of talented men, turned it into an empire that would dominate the politics of the southern continent for decades to come."
"But no ruler is perfect, and Cassius' mistake would come to haunt him and his successors for generations to come."
"Because in his valiant attempts to prevent his empire from descending into civil war, he chilled the hearts of loyalists with his ruthless actions and unfounded accusations."
"One of these accusations led to the exile of House Aurellion, though it was only through luck and the loyalty of its Pelican Guard that allowed the player house to endure and not become just another extinct house, a mere footnote in history like every other house that had disappeared from this world."
"And like the north, House Aurellion remembers."
Hugo Martínez, Creator and Leader of House Martinez, a Chavarian Empire-based faction in Dynasties Online.
….
June 12th 4009 ASA (After Species Awakening) Imperial Capital of Chavaria Cardonia, the Imperial Palace.
A stringy old man lay on a large, luxurious bed covered by the finest and softest silks, looking unrecognisable from the strong, muscled man who had forged an empire from the rotting carcasses of two destroyed kingdoms.
Each deep raspy breath he takes weakens him slightly, but still the man holds on desperately to life, knowing the chaos that would descend upon his fledgling nation when he passes and doing whatever he can to delay it for just one more day.
He had lived a long life, having spent 70 long years on this earth, leading his people into a golden age never before seen in their history, even if it was built on the corpses of millions.
He was Cassius Crestier, the glorious founder of the Chavarian Empire, respected and feared far and wide by friends and foes alike.
And he was dying, his age finally catching up to him, and for the past few months, his son, the crown prince Flavius Crestier, had been in control of the government.
The same crown prince who had killed his brother to attain his position.
A son whom Cassius felt both pride and hatred for.
Because while no one would agree with the methods Flavius used to get to where he was today, Cassius could not deny that he had lived up to his end of the bargain all those years ago when the Chavarian Emperor allowed him to ascend to the position of crown prince after purging the problematic elements of his faction.
Prince Flavius had changed.
And changed for the better.
He was no longer a man controlled by his selfish desires and his need for power, which had nearly sent the empire to an early grave at worst or a devastating civil war at best.
No longer the man who could kill his elder brother and frame the most loyal subject of the empire for treason.
Unlike others who let power corrupt them.
Flavius let it purge him.
It seemed contradictory; never before had Cassius seen or read of such a thing happening, and yet it had miraculously happened, as Flavius understood just how much damage he had caused the empire so that he could fulfil his selfish ambitions.
Flavius had let his selfishness turn from the need to acquire power and leave a name for himself in the world to benefiting the people and allowing them to prosper. However, Cassius expected that this was more driven by his selfish desire to maintain his and his descendants' position than anything else, but such a fact, for now, was irrelevant.
And what was even better?
He understood more than anyone what selfishness and a desire for power could do to someone.
The lengths people would go to attain it.
And how to curb people's worst impulses.
It would make him an excellent emperor, of that, Cassius had no doubt, but then again, the only person who ever could have matched his talent was the deceased Prince Victarion.
However, Cassius still wondered whether the cost was worthwhile.
Whether saving the empire from civil war was worth the loss of House Aurellion and chilling the loyalists' hearts.
Because he knew that the moment he died, many of the old guard, the old loyalists, would resign due to what happened nearly a decade ago, as even now its shadow lingers in the Chavarian imperial court, doing more damage than all three Plurian Rebellions did combined.
And worse.
He couldn't even find and kill that last damn Plurian prince, as while Bardornus was no match for Lucius Aurellion or his Minister of War, Amulius Lunaris, he was still a grandmaster strategist in his own right and a formidable opponent, having learnt and become stronger with each rebellion he helped orchestrate.
While that Plurian prince or his descendants still breathed, there would be no peace in the old Plurian lands, as any lord to whom he granted land who was not of Plurian descent would find themselves and their family suffering a fatal accident either on the way to their new fief or shortly after arriving.
This then led to the lands once again needing to be given to a lord or castellan, not that it mattered, as whether it was a lord who granted land or an Imperial-appointed castellan, they died all the same.
After all, the effects of that battle, even 25 years later, could still be felt.
The battle where he gave the order to execute hundreds of thousands of captured Plurian soldiers, no matter their rank, station or how much noble blood ran through their veins.
It had crippled the Kingdom of Plurus, allowing Chavaria to break the balance that Chavaria, Plurus, and Nadron had created and maintained for hundreds of years with one order.
An order that allowed him to destroy both Plurus and Nadron and build an empire that is now widely recognised as the leading superpower in the southern part of the world.
But it also led to hidden dangers.
Mainly, the absolute hatred of the old Plurian citizens towards the Chavarians and the imperial family as a whole persists to this day, to the point that no member of the imperial family enters the old Plurian lands without a grandmaster and a small army to keep them safe.
It made all the newly conquered lands unstable, as unlike the old Nadron nobility, they had a figure to rally behind.
All because one damn Plurian prince had managed to escape, thanks to the valour of their former crown prince and Plurius' great general, Bardornus.
While the crown prince died defending Plurus' old royal capital, Bardornus the old warrior is still alive and continues to fight on the battlefield, coming and going like a storm despite his bones weakening from the ravages of time, becoming a right royal pain in the backside and a thorn that he could never seem able to remove.
But even if his physical strength can never match that which he displayed on the Battle of Brunag and his earlier rebellions, the old general's mind had only sharpened dramatically, ironically, making him more problematic than before and even Archtorius can only bring him to a hard-won draw at best.
There were only three people that Cassius knew in his entire lifetime that he believed could beat Bardornus with his current abilities.
Two of them were dead while the other was hidden from most of the world, forgotten as their hidden trump card should the empire ever be in any real danger.
Drusus Dardanius, the great general who helped him conquer his empire, fought bloody battle after bloody battle to carve out the way for their golden age, which stretches on to this very day.
Lucius Aurellion, the man who helped to consolidate his empire and almost conquered the great Nartook fortress and is now tainted with a false reputation as a traitorous subject despite being one of the empire's most loyal men in history, never taking part in any of the factional disputes only ever listening to Cassius' own commands before his untimely death.
And finally, Amulius Lunaris, the Chavarian Minister of War, the man who helped him plan his great conquest of two kingdoms and someone who has contributed as much if not more than Cassius himself to the establishment of the Chavarian Empire, and likely the greatest strategist in the world today, despite his age and decades of time away from the military.
But at the moment of his death, he was thinking of the events that his son had set in motion the moment that he had assumed a regency in the emperor's name when Cassius' health first began to fail.
Flavius was going to try to break through Nartook Fortress.
An endeavour that Cassius had tried three times before and never succeeded at, though that was primarily due to internal problems, and the near-dead emperor had long ruthlessly purged those particular problems from the empire for the next few decades.
Coming out of his internal musings, the Chavarian Empire's founder gazed on the figures surrounding his bed.
A mixture of ministers and nobles, but he quickly dismissed most of them with a weak wave of his wrinkled hand, leaving only himself and his most trusted friend and comrade in arms at his side.
Amulius Lunaris, the Chavarian Minister of War.
"Do you think we will succeed this time, Amulius?"
The old emperor asked in a low voice, gazing into the cyan eyes of his friend who had suffered as much, if not more, than he had from the weight of his age, yet unlike him was still as strong as ever.
Well, on the surface anyway, as only Cassius and Amulius himself knew that both their days were numbered.
Over the last decade, the Chavarian Empire had spent its time dealing with internal problems and recovering from the loss of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of its elite soldiers who had either resigned or died due to the need to suppress rebellions throughout the empire.
As a result, since the death of Lucius Aurellion, his most trusted and capable general outside of Amulius, the old emperor had maintained a peaceful stance when it came to foreign affairs.
A stance that would end with the emperor fast approaching death, as the old man knew that he would not survive the night, not with his body in its current state.
Seconds passed in silence, but Cassius could see from Amulius' face, even behind all the wrinkles that had appeared over the years, that the man was deep in thought before speaking.
"I would say that we have a good 80% chance of succeeding this time, Your Majesty, but it will not be easy to break through the mountain pass."
Amulius said confidently.
"I see."
The emperor said weakly, not needing to hear more, as Cassius knew that there was only one reason that the odds were so high.
It was a secret known by only four people in the world.
"Are you sure you can handle it? It's been over 30 years since you commanded an army."
Amulius roared out with laughter when he heard the near whisper of his old friend as if he had heard the funniest joke in the world, before the legendary minister of war stopped, his eyes radiating a cold, ruthless glint.
"It seems you, like the rest of the world, have forgotten who I am."
Amulius said his voice was even.
"There are many grandmasters in this world, the grandmaster of loyalty, the grandmaster of life, but few seem to remember who I am."
"I am the grandmaster of war, and after 30 long years…"
"I am returning to my realm."
Hearing this, the emperor of Chavaria smiled, but his eyes dimmed, and his breathing stopped; the last of his life's force finally left his old body, which had weathered many storms until it finally collapsed.
"Your majesty?"
Amulius said softly.
It took a moment for Amulius to realise that his old friend and monarch had taken his last breath, and tears began to flow freely down his face.
"Your majesty!"
The Chavarian Minister for War cried out mournfully, not since the death of Railius Aurellion had the Amulius Lunaris shed so many tears. So the old minister just knelt at his emperor's bedside in silence, his sobs the only sound in the opulent bedroom.
Before the body of his fallen friend, Amulius made a promise.
His last act in this life would be to bring down Nartook Fortress and open up the road south for the empire.
On June 12th, 4009 ASA, the Emperor of Chavaria, Cassius Crestier, the man who had founded the Chavarian Empire, died at the age of 70.
A day later, from high ministers of the court to officers in the military, people began to resign, citing various excuses from poor health to claiming that there were people far more talented and suited to their position than themselves.
Although everyone knew the actual reason for this mass resignation, it had nothing to do with any of the stated reasons, as it was more closely tied to the actions Flavius Crestier took to become heir to the throne.
Despite this, just over a week later, on June 20, 4009, ASA, with the unanimous support of the remaining court ministers, Flavius Crestier, the Crown Prince of Chavaria, was crowned emperor, becoming the second emperor of Chavaria in history.