I was ten when they took our freedom. Being a child of course, I barely noticed. All I knew was my mother cried and my father could do nothing to console her. Then the men came and told my father to ‘behave’ and my mother to ‘think of her country.’ At ten, it was difficult to understand why my parents were being told what to do, like children. It wasn’t until I was fourteen that I truly understood. My mother was sick. Many women in the town we lived in were sick, that much I knew, and once they got sick, they were kept in the palace and no female could visit them. Fresia, the girl next door had cried to me about it repeatedly. Her aunt and sister were both in there, and she could not visit. In fact, women were not allowed to go within half a mile of the palace, which was difficult, given that nearly all the town shops were nestled in its shadow. Men had to do the shopping, men had to do the trading, for women could not go near any outsiders, for fear of contamination. Whatever the disease was that ravaged a woman’s body, it was incurable and deadly, and as easy to pass on as a cold.
When they came for my mother, they beat my father. The tell tale blue welts had appeared on my mother’s body for ten days before the court Physician recognized it. So much for magic. They stripped me carefully, eyes shrouded with worry. No welts, no bruising, no weight loss. I was in perfect health. Still, they discussed bringing me in. Finally, the Chief Physician looked me in the eyes. “This one has too much potential, I’d rather not risk her. If she hasn’t caught it, maybe she’s resistant.” They decided to keep me locked at home for a fortnight, just to be sure. I had plenty to do anyway, caring for my father’s injuries. Bruises so like my mother’s I nearly wept. I knew I’d never see her again.
The entire continent of Andera had been swept by the Woman’s Illness. Only, in most areas, those under the Ruvien Empire anyway, suffered little. At least relative to our small kingdom. Tren was the last significant hold out from the Empire. Completely autonomous, and yet still completely under the Empire’s thumb. Economoically, there was little Tren could do. We had our assests, of course. That was why the Empire still attempts to buy us to this day, nearly two hundred years since the first Emperess, Ru, began her take over. The secret of course, was that she never really fought to take over any of her lands, she simply used her well developed financial mind to buy loyalty, and eventually crowns. The thousand tribes of Gwern, in the northern half of the land, those she had to skirmish with a bit, but only until their supply of southern wine dried up. Then it was simply a matter of black market dealings and underhanded scams that led to the down fall of the great civilization. Of course, there are still a thousand tribes, complete with chiefs and collectives. All of which fall under the empire, and the Empress.
But not Tren. In the midst of her landgrab, Empress Ru took special care with us. She married her son to our Royal line, let him father children, then attempted to take control. But her son, deeply in Love with his foriegn bride and adoptive country, put her off. She tried to force him back, with her typical underhanded manner of kidnapping. He easily avoided it. Then she attempted something even more under handed, she kidnapped his middle daughter, Flera, named after the Treninan Hero queen. Still, Rohan would not yield. He knew she would never harm the child. And while he grieved for his daughter, knowing he’d never see her again, he would not relinquish his hold.
And so Empress Ru stayed her hand. She raised Flera as her own, and in her own image, forgoing even her twin daughters for love the child. Though naturally she did not completely stop attempting to undermine Tren’s economy, for all appearances, she had made an uneasy peace with the fact there would always be one small- and very rich- land she could not have.
Until her deathbed, when she cursed the land, using her considerable store of magic, she cursed her son, his wife and all the people of Tren. No one knows what the curse was, but most believe it is that curse which holds us hostage today.
Since the curse, girl children have been scarce among our folk, scarce now to the point of great joy and celebration upon a live birth. It was a gradual thing, at first, not even noticable for the first few generations. Then it became more drastic. Woman began dying in childbirth much more often then before, and alwys when birthing girl children. Those children rarely survived. Twin pregnancies became more prevelant, however, and many thought that meant an abatement of the woe. Not so, for twin births are risky at best. With the new rise in childbed deaths, twins became even more so.
Then, the first women began to get sick. It began first in the Palm Islands. About forty woman died of a mysterous illness, and roughly a hundred others fell ill. Dark blue welts and bruises, as if they had been beaten, would appear. Followed shortly there after by extreme weightloss, hair loss and even limb loss. It was as if they were being tourtured. Still, many women survived, with nothing more than scars. Some lost limbs, but kept their lives.
Then the disease spread to the mainland, where it ravaged the country side, where trained healers are not nearly so prevelant. Many died, but the plauge was short, only three months long. Those who died were very young or very old.
Finally, the mountainous regions, isolated by the severe winter that year, were hit as soon as trading began in spring. Tren nearly became extinct.
All that remained after that hideous first summer of disease were girls barely budding into womanhood, seemingly immune to the condition. All women of firm child bearing age died, all older women who had birthed a girl died. Finally, the youngest children began to die, most not of the disease, but of neglect. Without mothers, wet nurses or Physicians, for at that time, only women were allowed to become Physicians, children died in droves, boys as well as girls, but almost always it was the girls first. That is what was the true wake up call for the population. Before the Disease, it was a well known fact that boychildren were somewhat weaker than their female counterparts. Particularly at birth and just after. It was not a truly significant amount, for girls never really out numbered the boys, given that so many women died in childbirth in the natural course of things.
When Empress Ru built her empire, she did so to prove that anyone with wit and intelligence can accomplish anything, that you need not be born into power to attatain it. According to the official history of the Ruvian Empire, Empress Ru was born an unwanted preistesses daughter, created in an act of sacralige, for she was also a Preists daughter. To compound the sin, she was tossed out into the cold at only a year old, her sinful mother unable to bear the sight of her. Thus exiled, the toddler made her way four miles to the nearest town, where she was picked up by a simple baker and raised, not with love, but with unkind words and blows, put to work from before she could remember. From here she grew, and in stolen moments, learned about her land and the people in it. With nary a penny to her name, she left the baker’s home in her eleventh year. Somehow she made it across the three great rivers and to Stonewall, the haven for wizards, scholars and entertainers. There she bullied, or persuaded the great School of Ren to accept her, despite her humble stature. This managed, she fought tooth and nail with classmates and instructors who stood in her way. These were the Thirty Great Stories, told to children of how the Great Ru managed to overcome such ordinary hardships as bullies and jealousy. Thus graduated, the newly named Ru’an’ Ren searched for a patron, and found one in the great Merchant Prince, Trego. Enamored of him and his son, whom she took to bed, she studied yet more at his knee, of politics, trade and the running of a country. Soon, Trego designated her his heir, above his son, who went mad and killed himself from shame. In three years, Trego was dead and Ru ran his trading company with a firm hand. Within five more years, she had achieved a place on the Trading Council and then, without a hint of her plans, she began to buy heads of state from around the continent as well as her fellows on the council. Now the unwed Mother of three children, normally such a shamed position in the conservative eastern states, Ru put her final plan into action. By the age of 33, she had declared her she Empress of the Eastern States, all of whom, through financial burdens or actual heartfelt love, followed her blindly. She began her non stop whirlwind of underhanded deals and purchases of great and small kingdoms.
When she married her fourteen year old son, Rohan to the fifteen year old Sherran, niece to the ruling, heir-less King of Tren, she cemented what she thought was the last of the major kingdoms into her power. However her son soon showed his own stubborness and will was a match for his fearless mother. Given traditional training in the art of the sword, pen and mine, he came to love this land as his own. In the Empire, children of a certain class are taught business skills, politics, money management, never anything so common as battle skills or the art of the written word. Here in Tren we admittedly neglect the teachings of the finer things, prefering that which is most useful to the average man, so that no one, high or low doesn’t understand where they came from. The sword for strength, for honor, for the blood of those who foght and still fight for the land we adore. The pen, for the history, poetry and heartsongs that remind us of those before, of the events and moments that shaped our land. Finally, the art of the mine. Rich ore viens flow through our land like rivers. Sapphire, ruby, opal; all dragged from the open sores on the land. Silver too, and of course, gold. We have farms of course, and a small inlet to the sea, with a fair bit of shipping and the national food, greenfish. But nothing makes us prouder, or more vunerable then those precious mines. Legends states that when he was eighteen, the future King Rohan began touring these mines with his father in law, a Grand Duke and chief trader for the largest mining guild in the land, he took one look at a rich vein of cherry opal (our national stone, as it can be found nowhere else) and said, “My mother can never have this, or the world will weep.”
Eight generations later, we sit, buried under a dead woman’s thumb. Through the force of those wicked, well worked plans, the Eastern Empire (a misnomer now, as it encompasses the former Western Kingdoms as of ten years ago) rules us as sure as if the Empress herself lived here. We don’t pay tribute of course, oh no. In fact, we do not even pay taxes for the Imperial roads, stocked with home grown Imperial gaurds. Instead we sell to the only buyer on the continent. At rates that would have boggled the mind a mere century ago. Tren, at its height, could never feed itself from the sparse arable land within its borders. Too many were needed in the mines for more than a tiny fraction to devote themselves to working the land. Instead we did as the rest of the world did, we traded. Golden wheat for glittering jewels. Stocks of beef, cheese and butter for the precious gold to make coin. Even the cloth our women had no time to make, were imported from faraway cities and kingdoms with which we had cordial, if not friendly relationships. Honest dealing Trenians was cliche. A little backwards maybe, with laughable arts and almost no science or scholarship; but honest still and wealthy. We traded our hardwrought resources and at one time, we traded women. It wasn’t slavery, as the Empire now claims in their skewed history. It was always the the free choice of the women involved, and indeed it was an honor many sought.