The Immortal Empire had declared war on Palkh, and so the Urapi had immediately rallied for war. Their banners were raised, Rimanites and Urapi alike forming coherent bodies and Nizarite and Arab auxiliaries and mercenaries being prepared and hired.

The Urapi waited whilst the considerably larger might of Palkh was rallied in turn. When Palkh was ready, the waiting persisted. Were the Immortals not seeking to press a claim, here? As the waiting lingered on, commanders grew antsy. Were the Immortals planning something, a last minute attack to disrupt grain taxing perhaps? Were they hoping the Varic people would attack first, leaving their homelands vulnerable?

With growing concern came increasingly risky scouting action... and utterly inexplicable reports. No army was coming. No army was waiting, either. Instead the Immortal Empire was on fire, torn up by civil war and rebellion. Canaan had claimed independence, the Persians in Pontus had struck out on their own... and the Varic people of the Satrapy of Cilicia that had thrown off the mudborn yoke.

The Varic rebellion was not an absolute strike for independence, but rather a coopting of the legitimate state mechanisms of the Immortal regime. Seizing control of the Satrapy of Cilicia - parts of which they maintained an ethnic majority - they made their capital in the city of Antioch. An impossibly long time ago, the land upon which Antioch now sat had been occupied by an Urapi settlement named Teddemach. Though the settlement had faded in and out of prominence multiple times since then and at times could scarcely be called a village, the recent Immortal city that stood at the vanguard of the Empire was an impressive specimen of stout walls and newly built architecture, a good place for a capital.

The problem with Antioch and the other plains of ancient Urapivarta was that they weren't particularly populated by Varics. Stolen by the mudborn thousands of years before and more recently populated by the Lydians and Persians of the Immortal Empire, the brand new Varic administration was in an extremely tenuous position with enemies all around.

It was not to remain such. When the Urapi army arrived in the region they immediately liased with the newly minted Satrap of Cilicia, Lenok, who had a chevron Branded into his chest. Offering him unconditional support until such time that his control was cemented, the Urapi first marched north and parked themselves in the Uramarga, the"Cilician Gates", to dissuade a Persian force from the Kingdom of Pontus from marching south. When the Persians noted the pass was blocked and returned home, the Urapi returned to Antioch, where they aided in a purge of the city's malcontents and Lenok's political opponents who had attempted to seize the brief opportunity presented by the Urapi's absence.

Before the season's end, the Satrapy of Cilicia was firmly in Lenok's grasp and he no longer needed to pretend to be acting within the still crumbling Empire's framework. He thus took the opportunity to rename his domain the Varicarn of Urapivarta - The Rulership of Vari's Children [over] the lands of the Urapi.

Rump States of the Immortal Empire - This is from Dclauch 'imself:

• Green: Byzantium
• Light Blue: Aydin
• Middle Blue: Mentese
• Purple: Pontus
• Orange: Cilicia
• Blue: Canaan

Those not mentioned aren't named explicitly in the declaim post so IDK.

Where I'm actually expanding: Map