The year the alien war was fought in the skies of Sainan is remembered by everyone. Such were the fundamental changes of the event that there is no corner, whether physically, socially, or spiritually, left untainted. This year of upheaval became known to all as the Clade.

Regardless of what names denizens had formerly given to the land, over the next century the name Sainan, Elven for catastrophe or disaster, became the universal word for their world. New technologies and new understanding of the laws of physics allowed vast regions to make contact, and the name spread, along with the start date of a new universal calendar. A common language and writing spread, allowing for more uniformity in thought and communication.

By the new calendar, it is now the year 690 ST (Sainan Toshi or “Year of the Calamity”), and has been close to seven centuries since the events of the great war. There are still a few persons alive who personally experienced the Clade and tell stories of the world before, but for most, the new world is all they’ve known. New magics, interaction with divine beings, travel to alternate planes of existence, alien technologies, and alien species have become a woven part of life on Sainan.

In the early years after the Clade, at an event known as the Holy Conclave, the various leaderships of one particular region surrounding three crash-sites met and decided to ally themselves, both for protection and to take advantage of the new resources now available. The rulers of this time agreed to share certain powers across all their lands, coordinated their forces to one purpose, and over the course of four tumultuous years, took all parts of their land under one shared government, forming the Aspiring Federation. All kingdoms, fiefdoms, and clans within the new borders were approached, and either surrendered to be part of this new rulership, or were overrun in short order.

For over two centuries, the Aspiring Federation was ruled by a council, called Governors. In 233 ST, Vess Khorric, known to history as “the Betrayer” emerged. An Ennedi noble and the son of the Governor of Tennhel, he strove for more influence, and manipulated the political system to seize military power. Through the threat of war, and many real battles, Vess took power, disbanded the Council, and declared himself Emperor.

He ruled for fifteen years, before he died and his son, Chronn, took up the mantle in 248 ST. Chronn renamed the region the Khorric Federation, and spent the next forty years fighting off rebellions. He managed to die a feared and respected ruler.
His daughter, Ellana Khorric, only fourteen at the time of her father’s death, took control of the Federation in 289 ST. Many members of the Federation believed it would be a natural time to take control. Regents and leaders positioned themselves behind the scenes to grab for power or begin a revolution. In her first two years on the throne, no less than a dozen regents died or resigned, including Elanna’s mother, who retired away from court.

On her seventeenth birthday, Elanna had herself crowned as Empress. Historians have pieced together that Elanna had spent those first two years creating a network of spies, agents, and enforcers to do her bidding and secure her rule. Soon after her coronation, a sort of secret police were formed, an organization called Briarwood, which infiltrated and quelled rebellions, silenced political dissidents, and ruthlessly forestalled any trouble to the Federation.

For those in the nobility, it was an age of strife and paranoia, but for the majority of the citizenry, it began an age of prosperity and enlightenment. Religion flourished, trade abounded, and both craftsmen and the arts received vast patronage from the elite and the government. Empress Elanna Khorric’s rule proved to be the saving point of her grandfather’s upheaval. And it continued. And continued.

While Ennedi are known to have a natural lifespan of seventy to eighty years, and elite members of society have access to magics and technology that can extend that life an additional thirty years, nothing explained Elanna Khorric’s unnatural reign. Elanna Khorric remained Empress for just over two centuries, finally passing in the year 492 ST. Over the course of her rule, she married and lost three husbands, and had another four consorts. She raised and outlived sixteen children, and had two living elderly children at the time of her death.

It is said that at the time of her death the Empress still retained her appearance of being in her mid thirties. The details and method of her death are unknown, but it was not of old age, nor did she meet a violent death. It is recorded that she was merely found one morning to have died seemingly peacefully in her sleep. The reaction of Briarwood over the next year, simultaneously investigating her death and fighting to seize control, nearly destroyed the Federation.

In 494 ST, the nobility managed to regain control of the Federation, convened a new Holy Conclave, and reinstated a new Council. After two and a half centuries under a single rule, however, many of the old kingdom borders from the old Federation had merged, and rather than trying to redefine those old borders, the Federation was divided into eight governing Provinces, with each Province holding a hereditary Governor, and an appointed Council Lord. Briarwood was disbanded and run underground by the noble families. There were several attempts to declare Briarwood illegal, but they held too much positive folklore with the commoners. So too failed any attempts to change the name of the Khorric Federation. The memory of Empress Elanna Khorric’s rule proved to be too beloved. Over the last two hundred years, the Council has maintained control of the Khorric Federation. Although there have been several attempts to wrest control from within and to change the nature of the government, the Federation is considered too big and powerful to be attacked from without. It helps that two of the eight Council Lords are old enough to have been involved in reforming the government after the death of the Empress, one a Taniwha and the other an Alva. Only the name Briarwood still publicly exists, with its current incarnation that of a Hunters Guild.

In the year 607 ST, the Khorric Federation was rocked by a surprise invasion of an unknown species of people, the Investurants. The blueskinned Humanoids were armed with an intimate grasp of shadowy Arcane abilities, magic that attacks the soul directly. The Arcanists of the Federation’s Elysium had no counter to this foreign attack, and took horrific losses. As the Investurants never attacked in great numbers, the Khorric Federation suffered four decades of a hit-and-run gorilla war they never developed a strategy to combat. In the end, the Khorric Federation swallowed their pride and revulsion, and accepted the help of their dreaded neighbors to the north. The Undead Legions of the Necromancers of Vargarden had no souls to be lost to the magic of the Investurants, and within two years, the long war was, at last, ended in 649 ST.