Hello, and welcome to the History of Asor Podcast. Last week we talked about the initial conquests of Asor, with the hard-fought battles to take over the Lower Kalada river. This era left Asor's army depleted, and would not be in fighting condition for nearly 60 years, definitely not conquering anything for twice as long. So now it's a good time to talk about the way that Asor governed.

For the most part, the Empire had a relatively hands-off policy towards it's vassals, only interfering to extract taxes, enforce laws, and to put down revolts. A misconception is that the Asoritans forced the worship of the Sun Queen on its subject peoples, but this is entirely false. Though this period has blended history and legend, it seems that the Asoritans only required subject kingdoms to pay lip service to the Sun Queen, and perhaps acknowledging her godhood. However, this was also in their best interest, as immediately after they conquered a people, the Sun Queen would 'adopt' the leader as a son or daughter. For the most part, the divine status was more a trick for the people - to avoid succession crises and to wrap all things in ceremony and circumstance.

The way that Asor itself was governed was far stranger. It was during this time frame that Asor grew, as it had just become the capital of an empire the size of which had never been seen before. It was said that Asor was a village of villages, and this was largely the case. The Alukitans built their villages around Node buildings, with the whole village being coordinated by a Node Mother, giving society a community slant while under the oversightless direction of the Node Mother, usually selected based on beauty. Because obviously someone beautiful could never be wrong.

As Asor developed out of ancient Alukitan Villages, this persisted but in a strange way. Now, trades were built around nodes, with nodes being dedicated towards prayer, cooking, metallurgy, pottery, record-keeping, magic, bathing, and many others in addition to the former familial nofes.. Each of these Professional Nodes were controlled by a Node Mother, who became the sort of boss - the coordinator of the activities of these nodes. These positions were sacred, and or ranging importance, with the entire network of nodes being overseen by the Asoritans Priestesshood. The Node Mothers enjoyed a quality of life above their underlings, and the most important would have comfortable lives better than Priestesses. It is from their ranks that the Sun Queen drew the Priestesses from to boot.

Most important of these Node Mothers was the Fireworks Mother. No, she did not make Fireworks, but she was in charge of the Asoritan Fireworks, the largest smithing and metal-processing node in the city. The Sun Queen had taken complete control of all the Tin Mines, but she had to share the power of creating bronze with the Fireworks Mother. As Bronze Knife money had recently become a popular trading medium in the city, and the Sun Queen, noting this, enforced the Bronze Knife as a valid currency for all merchants in the entire empire, presumably because she partially controlled the source of bronze knives.

In addition to this, the Asoritans also constructed their typical law-steles in all of the cities in the Empire. Why they did this is vague, and ranges from a kind of white man's burden to promoting their own power throughout the region. Regardless, this made it easier for merchants - as now very similar laws dictated the entire region. However, the law steles in these far-flung holdings were the abbreviated versions. The full code of Law was formerly located on right steles around the Sun Node in Asor. Their contents are lost to time, presumably destroyed in one of the sacks of the history or the various natural disasters that struck it over the millennia.

But back to the Army. Since the Asoritans had lost much of their forces in the wars that embroiled the first ten years of it's existence. As they tried to rebuild, several city-states saw their opportunity to rebel. So the Sun Queen was forced to constantly lose whatever progress she had made towards rebuilding her army in order to keep what holdings she and her predecessors had fought for.

As she tried to rebuild to 8,000 men (though the Asoritan Army had never been that large even at it's high point), after several years of battling their vassals and enforcing a Pax Asorita, the Shaman-of-Spears of the army continually posed a challenge. Tired of campaigning constantly, he began to drag his feet. Finally, he disobeyed orders and began a rebellion in hopes for higher pay. The Sun Queen acquiesced to this, as without that army the empire would fall into chaos.

What happened next is unclear, but at some point the Sun Queen split the role of the Shaman-of-Spears into four separate Shamanhoods - the Shaman-of-Spears, the Shaman-of-Shields, the Shaman-of-Arrows, and the Shaman-of-Axes. These shamans all commanded smaller armies of similar composition, experimenting with the possibility of playing the generals against eachother. After all, that was how the Sun Queen managed her empire.

This backfired hilariously, as now the Shamans were bloodying their armies against eachother rather than against rebellious vassals. Asor seemed to exist in a state of Chaos rather than one of Stability. Eventually, this came to a head with the Four Shamans Conflict, in which legend says that the Sun Queen forced all the shamans to kneel. Only the Shaman-of-Axes knelt, and so she struck down the other three.

This probably did not happen as the legend says, but in any case the Shaman-of-Axes became the only war shaman remaining. Many vassal kingdoms had been ransacked in this period, and rebellions were rife, so for the next thirty years Asor continued putting down various rebellions and rebuilding her army.

Tune in next week to see how the Asoritan Empire entered its second century of rule, and to truly see how it entered its golden age - what we now know as the monument-building, continent-conquering Pax Asorita.