The Lumenorean Protectorate only emerged as an unified planetary government in the 22nd century. Before then, the Lumenoreans were divided into large kingdoms that warred amongst themselves for land and resources. This all changed in the late 21st century, when Ernst Gorm, a young and ambitious nobleman from the small island kingdom of Lumenea rose to power. Gorm, the son of a prestigious baron, and nephew of a marquis, yearned to rule over the kingdom. He rose through the ranks of the Lumenean military, quickly rising to the rank of general. He rose to fame after leading a crusade against the fractured Gallic states, which lay just across the Great River from the island of Lumene, the heart of Lumenea. Under General Gorm’s command, the Lumeneans smashed the Gallics, seizing a number of coastal provinces. While Gorm’s prestige grew at home, the Lumenean populace grew increasingly fed up with the Savoy dynasty, which was widely perceived as corrupt and weak. In 2087, the populace’s resentment exploded into anger following a major scandal. The Lord Exalted Advisor and heir to the Lumenean throne, John Savoy, was found to be in an intimate relationship with a young Slav diplomat. To make matters worse, it turned out that the Slavs had armed and funded three fleets of privateers that roamed the seas, destroying Lumenean trading vessels and raiding Lumenean coastal settlements. Rumors arose that Prince John had sold out the kingdom, and the people called for the nobleman to be prosecuted, or at the very least relieved of duty. The king, Feodor, was reluctant to take action against his son, further fueling popular resentment. By this point, Gorm, who was now in his late forties, had been given the title of Duke and ruled over the captured Gallic provinces. He watched the political unrest with a sharp eye. In 2091, he decided to stage a military coup, claiming that by defending his son, King Feodor had also betrayed the state and thus, was a traitor to Lumenea. The people flocked to his banner, and after a brief but fiery two year long civil war, Gorm triumphantly entered the capital city and seized the Lumenorean throne for himself. Feodor, John, and many of the remaining Savoys fled abroad, which Gorm claimed to be evidence of the dynasty’s treason. Gorm would spend the next five years consolidating his rule, before turning his attention southward.
While the Lumenoreans had evolved from mammals, they bore little resemblance to the furry mammalians known as Qu’Vaks that also lived on Lumenor Prime. The Qu’Vaks were a tribal people who lived in large villages. Each village was ruled by a village elder, usually the eldest member of the village, and most, if not all, Qu’Vaks who live in the same village are part of the same clan. Often, neighboring villages, which were often closely related also, would ally together to form a tribe. While the northern continents were dominated by the Lumenoreans, the Qu’Vaks controlled two major continents, Valk Mog (Dry Mass) to the south, and Tureng Mog (Forest Mass) to the west. By the late 1500s, the scattered Lumenorean kingdoms had begun establishing contact with the various Qu’Vak tribes. The explorers of Lumenia took the lead in exploring the Qu’Vak continents. They mapped the coastline, but didn’t bother to push into the interior. After all, the various wars in the northern continents were enough to keep the kingdoms busy - there was no need to conquer the Qu’Vak tribes, scattered as they may be. That, however, is not to say that there was no interaction between the Qu’Vaks and the Lumenoreans. The Lumenoreans, especially the Lumeneans, built trading posts along the coastline, and the occasional slave raider would attack coastal Qu’Vak settlements to seize slaves that would then be sold in slave markets on the northern continents.
By 2099, Gorm would be in full control of Lumenea. However, the pacification of the rebellious nobility had brought one major change - to win over a number of prestigious noble Houses, Gorm had decided to style himself Grand Duke rather than King. The move, though seemingly insignificant, meant that the sovereign was not an absolute ruler, but rather, simply a higher ranking peer. This move also meant that the Dukes, the patriarchs of the oldest and/or most influential Houses, were now given a larger say in the affairs of the kingdom. As the 22nd century began, Gorm decided to turn his military forces southward. This was for two major reasons. First, during his rebellion and subsequent campaigns, Gorm had raised a vast army, nearly 20 million men. The vast majority of these troops were inexperienced, and while Gorm wished to conquer the other Lumenorean kingdoms, he recognized that this would be suicide unless he found some way to harden his troops in battle first. Second, the Gallics had ceded all of their trading posts along the western coast of Valk Mog to the Lumeneans following the Gallic Crusade. Gorm recognized that this would be a perfect forward base. He signed a treaty with the ruler of Iberia in 2102, gaining the use of three naval ports along the Iber Peninsula in exchange for increasing trade shipments to Iberian ports. This treaty gave Gorm a second forward base to use, this time to force his way south. In 2103, he struck. A massive army group of five field armies, 500,000 men, sailed from two ports on the Iber Peninsula and attacked a coastal Qu’Vak village, utterly overwhelming it. The field armies then spread out and advanced southward, utterly overwhelming the outnumbered and outgunned Qu’Vaks. Within three months, the entire north had been conquered. At the same time, two field armies invaded the land of the Vi Mog tribe, the strongest tribe on Valk Mog. Marching from trade posts on the western coast, the Lumeneans quickly overwhelmed nearby Qu’Vak villages. Though strong, the Vi Mog tribesmen could not stand up to the Lumenean tanks and infantry. By mid 2103, the Vi Mog were no more. Gorm then ordered Army Group North to march eastward, while Army Group West headed south. By 2105, Lumenea had conquered all of Valk Mog. Gorm established dozens of new baronies on Valk Mog, handing out land to the most loyal nobles and most decorated military officers. He then established a series of marches and duchies to centralize rule over the continent. Gorm also revised the Lumenean slave policy. Slavery was not new to the Lumeneans - after all, Lumenoreans would often enslave civilians captured during military campaigns. However, following the conquest of Valk Mog, the Lumeneans had more slaves than they needed. As a result, Gorm decreed in 2106 that Lumenoreans could be enslaved only if they were criminals or rebels. This meant that the vast majority of Lumenorean slaves in Lumenea would be freed. For the next decade, Gorm spent his time governing his newly expanded empire. He spent his time organizing the government to make it more efficient and ensuring the nobility’s loyalty to him.
In 2118, he was ready to go to war yet again. He declared a Second Gallic Crusade and his armies swept through the Gallic states. By 2120, the Lumeneans were in full control of Gallica. A year later, the Gallics sued for peace, surrendering all their territory to the Lumeneans.
With the elimination of Gallica, the balance of power in the northern continents shifted. The other kingdoms recognized that the Lumeneans were by far the most powerful, and began forming coalitions to counter the Lumenean threat. The Slavs, who had long been rivals with the Lumeneans, allied with the various small states to their west, and began a campaign to conquer the territories to the south and west of them. Meanwhile, the Irnex, a small kingdom in the north, instead established a colony on Tureng Mog and signed non-aggression pacts with the Lumeneans. Gorm recognized that the Slavs were the major threat, and granted the Irnex a guarantee of independence to keep them from joining the growing Slav Mutual Defense Organization. By this time, Gorm was in his early eighties. Though he wished to conquer the few territories that had not joined coalitions, he recognized that he was nearing the end of his life, and succession during a war would be difficult at best, and disastrous at worst. Thus, he began handing the reins of power to his son, Marcus. In 2125, Grand Duke Ernst Gorm passed away in his sleep of natural causes, and Marcus Gorm was officially the new Grand Duke. Grand Duke Gorm spent a few years consolidating his rule and eliminating rebellious nobles before launching his first crusades. In a series of brief but fiery campaigns, Lumenean armies swept through the northern continents, conquering territory after territory. However, Grand Duke Gorm changed the way these new territories were administered. Under the elder Gorm, a territory would be carved into fiefs that would then be handed over to Lumenean nobility. Instead, Grand Duke Gorm gave baronies, the lowest possible fief, and the occasional march to local nobility, while reserving duchies and most marches for Lumenean nobles.
By 2130, Lumenor was split into three coalitions. The Grand Duchy of Lumenea covered a third of the northern continents and the entirety of Valk Mog. The Slavs had created a Slav Mutual Defense Organization that covered the rest of the northern continent. Meanwhile, the small Kingdom of Irnex, which owned only a small territory in the icy north, had established a sizable colony, double the size of the Kingdom, in northeastern Tureng Mog. For the next 45 years, the Lumeneans and Slavs remained in a state of cold war. Both powers built up their military strength and engaged in border skirmishes. However, both sides believed that the other side had an equivalent, if not stronger, military, and neither side was willing to risk attacking. In 2175, Grand Duke Gorm decided to start probing the Slav defenses more fiercely. He ordered his intelligence officials to fabricate a diplomatic incident and deployed troops to the border in response. The Slavs retaliated by increasing troop deployments and raising their overall military readiness. Both sides began cross-border raids, and skirmishes grew more frequent as the months passed. In 2177, Grand Duke Gorm’ chief general at the border ordered a series of lightning raids against Slavic border towns to measure the Slav defenses and seize valuable resources. The raids were extremely successful. The Slavs retaliated by launching a raid of their own against a cluster of poorly defended villages and towns. The Lumeneans tried to respond, but their forces were nowhere near the attack, and by the time they arrived, the Slavs would be long gone. However, a young man by the name of Shasta was able to organize the civilians in the villages and form a ragtag militia. Armed with hunting rifles and other small arms, the militia confronted the raiders a few kilometers away from the first village in a thick forest. Although the raiders were experienced in guerilla warfare, they were no match for the militia members, many of whom were hunters who knew the terrain like the back of their hand and were expert marksmen. They led the raiders into ambushes and shot at them from hidden pre-built positions. By the time the Lumenean border forces responded to the incursion, Shasta’s hastily recruited militia had already killed approximately half and captured a third of the raiders. The few that survived fled as soon as they encountered the Lumenean troops.
Shasta, the young man who had organized the militia, was an orphan. His mother had died in childbirth, while his father had been a sergeant in the Lumenean military who was killed two weeks after his son’s birth while fighting to repel a Slav raid across the border. Shasta was adopted by the village mayor and treated like a son. He soon found that he enjoyed hunting, and would often organize hunting parties with older villagers to hunt larger prey, such as the ubiquitous horned quadrupeds known as venise or even the occasional Lumenorean black wolf. These experiences would help Shasta when he organized his ragtag militia, as many of the hunters he recruited already knew and respected him. The commander of the Lumenean response force, an elderly captain named Viktor Dakr, recognized the young adolescent’s potential and recommended him for recruitment to the Lumenean army. Captain Dakr was also a member of House Dakr, a minor noble family that wished to raise its standing within the Grand Duchy. He believed that Shasta would bring glory and honor to the Dakr, so he petitioned for the House to allow him to adopt Shasta into the family as a son (1). Following much debate, Shasta was accepted into the family. Not long after, the Lumenean Army officially recruited Shasta, who was sent to the prestigious Lumenean Military Academy for his education. There, he spent four years before being commissioned as a lieutenant. His first assignment was as an aide to his adoptive father, Captain Viktor Dakr, who commanded a company of troops stationed along the border.
At this point, Slav-Lumenean tensions were at an alltime high. Both sides accused each other (rightfully so) of meddling in their internal affairs and attacking the other side’s territory. In 2183, Grand Duke Gorm declared the Great Crusade agains the Slave Mutual Defense Organization. By this time, Shasta had been given his own platoon within Captain Dakr’s company, which was held in reserve along the southern border. Gorm had given command of the army to three field marshals: Viktor Aren commanded Army Group North, while his brother Ambrose commanded Army Group South. Brett Scowley was given command of Army Group Central, known derisively as Army Group Rear, which served as a rear guard and mobile reserve. While Marshal V. Aren (2) and his army group drove eastward to seize the Slav capital, his brother was ordered to march south to seize the Slavs’ rich petroleum fields and cripple their industrial centers. The Slavs fought bitterly against the Lumenean invasion, but eventually fell before the invaders’ superior might. In one notable engagement, the Battle of Blovograd, Lieutenant Shasta Dakr proved himself to be the expert tactician that Viktor Dakr had recognized. Marshal A. Aren was a contemptuous man who often refused to listen to those he deemed inferior: commoners and minor nobility. As a result, he refused to listen when Shasta, who he deemed to fall in both categories, and Captain Dakr, who was minor nobility, pleaded for him to hold back instead of assaulting the city. Shasta had convinced his adoptive father that the Slavs, who had been in a constant state of retreat following previous engagements, were planning an ambush. Marshal A. Aren dismissed this and immediately launched his attack, relegating Captain Dakr’s forces to the rear guard. Thirty minutes into the battle, just as the first paratroopers were jumping into the city, the Slavs struck. Marshal A. Aren had planned a two front attack, sending his best armored legions to assault the city wall while paratroopers jumped into the city from dropships. He hoped to crush the city wall and allow his men on the outside of the city to jump into Blovograd just as the paratroopers began their assault. However, the Slavs had hidden regiments of tanks in the forest to the east of the city and additional troops on the city wall. They revealed themselves just as the paratroopers began their landing, catching the Lumenean armored legions in a crossfire. Two tank legions and a mechanized infantry legion were shredded by the Slavs’ concentrated fire, and battalions from other legions were teetering on the brink of destruction also. In the rear guard, Shasta and Captain Dakr heard the desperate pleas for aid and rushed to the front with the rest of the rear guard. Shasta quickly recognized that the Slavs were overextending their tank regiments, and ordered a pair of tank battalions from the rear guard to attack the three Slav tank regiments on the eastern flank. Then, he directed the rest of the rear guard to charge the main gate, forcing the Slavs to extend themselves even further to protect the city, and giving the Lumenean legions some room to plan a counterattack. After four hours of heavy fighting, the Slav tankers were forced to either pull back into the city, or flee the battle. Marshal A. Aren ordered his forces to pull back and regroup. He reprimanded Shasta and his father severely for insubordination and expressed his intent to have them both court-martialed. Both men were ready to face a court-martial board, but Shasta first pointed out that the paratroopers were still in need of assistance. He argued that if the Lumenean armored legions were to redeploy and the paratroopers were to attack the interior of the wall, then the Lumeneans could catch the Slavs in a crossfire. Marshal A. Aren was even less inclined to listen to the young man now, but he grudgingly admitted that the young upstart had been correct about the Slav ambush, and was likely to be correct again now. As a result, he sent orders to his best armored legions to attack the city at dawn, following a battle plan that he drew up. This time, the assault was successful, and the Lumeneans seized the city. The capture of Blovograd, and its neighboring city Bolyograd, gave the Lumeneans full control over a major trading crossroads, and fragmented the Slav forces in the south. Although Marshal A. Aren followed through on his threat of a court-martial, the inquiry was quietly dropped after a number of prominent noble Houses, most of whom had members who were in the ambushed legions and were only saved by Shasta’s quick thinking,
For the next decade, the Lumeneans and Slavs engaged in bitter fighting. Although the Lumeneans had a significant tactical advantage by the end of 2185, the Slavs refused to surrender, fighting on until the last Slav field army was smashed by Army Group North in late 2186 and the last Slav holdouts fell in early to mid 2187 . In late 2187, the Treaty of Slavgrad was signed. Lumenean popular opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of harshly punishing the Slavs. The Lumeneans were angered by the Slav resistance and the high casualties they had inflicted. While Grand Duke E. Gorm’s decree on the illegality of enslaving Lumenoreans remained in force, a number of prominent noble Houses, most of whom ran slave guilds, found a loophole in the decree. They declared that by fighting on after the fall of the Slav capital of Slavgrad, those who continued resistance after 2185, and by extension, those who lived in territories captured after the fall of Slavgrad, were technically rebels, and thus, the decree did not apply to them. This declaration proved to be extremely controversial, but would eventually be approved by Grand Duke Gorm and the Council of Nobles and added to the treaty (3). By this time, Viktor Dakr had retired, and Shasta had been promoted to colonel and given command of a tank legion.
A year later, while Shasta was pacifying rebellious elements in the former Slav territories, Grand Duke Marcus Gorm died of suspicious causes. He had no heir - his one son, Ryan, was killed in battle during the Great Crusade. As a result, a succession crisis occurred. There were three major contenders to the title of Grand Duke: Grand Duke M. Gorm’s uncle, Nigel, his brother, Cliff, and his cousin, Isobel. Few supported Nigel Gorm’s claim to the title - after all, he was older than Marcus, childless, unlikely to have a heir, and nearing the end of his life. By succession law, Cliff Gorm was first in line to the succession, but many disliked him, as he was an avid war hawk who controlled a major slaving guild and had called for the enslavement of all Slavs. On the other hand, Isobel leaned liberal and appealed to the populace. The Council of Nobles was split, with a minority of noble Houses, many of them prominent and influential, backing Cliff, while the majority of noble Houses supported Isobel, though many were minor nobility and had little influence in Lumenean politics. In early 2189, popular opinion exploded against Cliff Gorm following the public release of the investigatory report into the death of Grand Duke M. Gorm. Gorm had died of a heart attack, which investigators found was caused by a toxin in his Lumé wine. Investigators were evenly split as to who was the culprit, Cliff or Isobel, but the report leaked to the public only implicated Cliff. Lumeneans geared up for a civil war, as the opposing factions called up troops and denounced the other as traitorous. Shasta played his cards close to his vest. Though not a flag officer, he was still a well-known household name in the Grand Duchy, and each side longed for his support and tactical expertise. It took four months for Shasta to declare his allegiance. During this time, he concluded his campaigns and headed back to the capital, stopping along the way to raise a pair of new mechanized infantry legions, appointing a pair of loyal staff members as the legion’s colonels. He finally arrived in Lumenea City in mid 2189, scarcely a month after the release of the police report. He declared his allegiance to Isobel Gorm and echoed the people’s calls for Cliff’s arrest on murder and treason charges. Emboldened by Shasta’s endorsement, Isobel declared herself Grand Duchess and gave Shasta command over her personal forces, duties that would normally be carried out by a general in the Praetorian Guard. Noble Houses allied with Isobel sent troops from their personal militaries to Isobel’s stronghold in northern Lumene, while those allied to Cliff sent troops to Sext, a duchy on the coast of what was once Gallica. For the next one and a half years, the two factions, known contemporarily as the Hawks (Cliff) and the Liberals (Isobel), waged war for control of the Grand Duchy. In late 2191, Shasta led Liberal forces to lay siege to Sext while Cliff was busy invading northern Gallica. Cliff raced back to relieve Sext and was met thirty kilometers from his besieged fortress by Shasta’s forces, which included his three legions and Isobel’s personal guard, dubbed the Liberal Praetorian Guard. Halfway through the battle, a second Liberal force, consisting of noble private militaries and mercenaries from private military companies owned by Liberals smashed into the exposed Hawk right flank, causing the Hawk line to crumble. Most of the Hawk soldiers fled the field, with only Cliff’s Praetorian Guard detachment remaining to fight back. In the fierce fighting that followed, the Hawk Praetorian Guards were utterly destroyed. Cliff was killed during the fighting. Following Cliff’s death, the Hawk faction crumbled. Many noble Houses, such as House Aren, that had supported Cliff were deprived of rank and titles, while minor noble Houses that supported Isobel gained additional power. Shasta’s actions had earned him a promotion to lieutenant general and turned House Dakr into an influential powerhouse in Lumenean politics. His tank legion and one of his mechanized rifle legions formed the first division in the newly created Imperial Guard, a force created by the Grand Duchess to serve as a crack vanguard. Additionally, he had requested, and obtained, permission from the House Dakr leadership to create his own noble House, allied to the Dakr, which he named the Elekhri (4). Isobel Gorm, now officially the Grand Duchess, had desired to promote Shasta to Lord General Militant and make him her chief of the army, but he advised her to instead promote a general who had proven himself but had not taken part in the Great Lumenean Succession War, in order to increase unity in the Grand Duchy. Isobel took this advice, though she still considered Shasta to be one of her top advisors. Shasta advised the Grand Duchess to declare a new crusade, this time against the Inrex and their Qu’Vak allies. Grand Duchess Grom agreed, and even took it a step further, declaring a Western Crusade that called for the invasion and subjugation of the entire Tureng Mog continent. Shasta was given full control over the Crusade forces. He took personal control over Army Group North, which sailed from Lumene in early 2193 for the Irnex colony on the northeastern coast of Tureng Mog. Within seven months, he had subjugated the territory, sending hundreds of thousands of Qu’Vak slaves back to the Grand Duchy. At the same time, other army groups were slowly but steadily pushing their way into the continent interior, and the aptly named Army Group Arctic had subjugated the Irnex core territories, effectively ending the civilization. However, Shasta left command of Army Group North to a trusted subordinate and returned to Lumene in late 2993 for political reasons.
To prevent his opponents from labeling him as an ambitious man planning a coup, Shasta had refused Grand Duchess Gorm’s offer of naming him the Lord General Militant. However, like Ernst Gorm, he was a shrewd and ambitious man. Before refusing Grand Duchess Gorm’s offer of promotion, Shasta had ensured that he had an ace up his sleeve, one that he could use to blackmail the Grand Duchess - following the Great Lumenean Succession War, the Council of Nobles had abolished a number of “seditious” political organizations, including the Council for Closed Borders, the War Hawk Party, and, almost as an afterthought, the Political Reform Initiative. Few realized that the PRI, as the faction was known, had been abolished. In fact, the PRI still carried out public meetings, and a number of influential Lumeneans, including the Grand Duchess, were members of the party. However, Shasta knew that a number of noble Houses, many of them powerful families, still opposed him. As a result, during the Eastern Crusade, he wrote up battle plans that purposefully put the private militaries of these families in harm’s way, severely reducing his opposition’s military force. At the same time, he ensured that forces controlled by allied noble Houses got a disproportionately large share of the glory and prestige from the Crusade. This shifted the balance of power, ensuring that those who were allied with House Elekhri were far more powerful and influential than those who opposed it. Add to that the public’s overwhelming support of the general, who they saw as a commoner that had risen power through sheer talent and merit, and Shasta recognized that the time was ripe for a coup.
In early 2194, Shasta forced Grand Duchess Isobel Gorm to resign her titles and abdicate her position, threatening to have her arrested for sedition if she refused. The Grand Duchess had one heir, her twelve year old son, Harold. Unfortunately, as Harold was still a child, he was not prepared to lead the Grand Duchy. As a result, Shasta proposed to take the title of Lord Protector and act as a regent until Harold came of age. To further reinforce this proposal, Shasta renamed the Grand Duchy of Lumenea to the Lumenorean Protectorate. He also created a new legislature, turning the Council of Nobles into the House of Lords and establishing a Lumenorean Senate for commoners. Commoners backed this move, as it granted them more political power. Nobles were displeased, but soon realized that it was a necessary evil. In late 2195, the Eastern Crusade was all but over, with most of Tureng Mog conquered, and only a few Qu’Vak tribes standing defiant. Most of the troops on the continent were transferred back to the northern continents. And just in time for Shasta’s newest campaign.
By this point in time, Iberia was the sole unconquered civilization on Lumenor Prime. The Iberians had close relations with the former Grand Duchy of Lumenea, sending shipments of tribute to maintain their independence and allowing the Lumeneans to use Iberian coastal ports as naval bases in exchange for increased trade through their territory. However, by the late 22nd century, these relations had begun to break down. Trade had begun drying up, as the expansion of Lumenean territory meant that Lumenean merchants could make their fortune in Lumenea without having to seek trading partners abroad. Additionally, the Iberians were angered by the Lumenean conquest of their neighbors, and were especially displeased by the subjugation of the Qu’Vak tribes. As a result, in 2196, Shasta ordered a preemptive invasion of Iberia, swiftly seizing the peninsula and toppling the royal family. At this point, Shasta decided to “convince” (read: militarily threaten) the nominal Grand Duke, Harold Gorm, into handing over his title to Shasta. This resulted in the end of the Gorm dynasty and the disappearance of House Gorm from Lumenorean politics (5). Shasta then began preparing for the next grand expansion of Lumenorean territory - expanding into space.
He ordered the construction of an outpost in orbit of the sun in the Lumenor system to facilitate trade and serve as a shipyard. The first ships the shipyard would
construct were three Javelin-class corvettes to form a small navy that would secure Lumenorean space from hostile forces. Next, Shasta ordered the construction of a construction ship and a Pathfinder-class science ship. The construction ship would be completed first, in mid 2197, and was immediately tasked with building research and mining stations over other celestial bodies in the Lumenor system. To fund his initiative, Shasta ordered the razing of numerous districts that he deemed to be wasteful. Though this angered the nobility, Shasta took extreme care to only eliminate those districts that belonged to nobility that had lost their power following the Great Succession War, claiming that those nobles had forfeited their right to their holdings after their rebellion. He also appeased those few influential nobles whom also lost territory in the Great Razing, as the initiative was dubbed, by promising that they would be the first to be granted territory during the Great Expansion into space.
By 2200, Shasta had amassed enough resources to begin the Great Expansion.
FOOTNOTES:
(1) This was not unheard of - many noble families adopted people that were deemed “special” - intelligent scientists, war heroes, etc. However, most of these adoptees had to go through a lengthy process to become a member of the family, first being adopted as a merit adoptive, before taking the House’s trials to become a Trial-born, and then being promoted to ranking distant, and finally, cousin. To be immediately adopted as a family member was almost unheard of. Additionally, the highest rank that a commoner, like Shasta, could attain in a House was ranking distant. Viktor Dakr’s request ignited much debate among the highest echelons of House Dakr.
(2) Only a few individuals will be referred to by their first name. All others will be referred to by {title} {last name} or simply {last name}. If two individuals with the same surname happen to hold the same rank at the same period in time, they can be told apart by their first initial.
(3) Of course, enforcement of this was difficult at best, and impossible at worst. While the capture date of prisoners of war could easily be found, Lumenean officials had no reason to keep track of individual refugees. Millions of Slavs disappeared, finding new lives elsewhere. Only a dozen million or so Slavs would actually be enslaved - enough to appease the Lumenean populace and enrich the slaver guilds, without being a common occurrence. ((and since it’s less than a pop unit, it’s not represented in-game))
(4) He recognized that a vocal minority in House Dakr disliked how quickly he was rising through the ranks, so he decided to cut ties with the family, though he ensured that the Dakr and Elekhri would remain allies in the future. He adopted approximately a dozen close friends, most of them loyal staffers, into House Elekhri and created a House defense force using his second mechanized infantry legion.
(5) House Gorm was now considered minor nobility. Though they had numerous allies, and quite a bit of influence, the Great Lumenean Succession War had devastated the family, wiping out most of the bloodlines in the House. House Gorm would never recover from this - while they remained present in Lumenean politics, their influence slowly waned until they had all but vanished from Lumenorean politics.
