Pathfinder Chronicles - Gazetteer - Asamnet

Lawful to a fault, the diabolists established themselves
as a new aristocracy, moving the nation’s capital to Egorian
on the shores of Lake Sorrow, taking on ostentatious titles
like paracount or paraduke, and forming an oppressive
ruling caste superior to the old order in pretension and
efficiency. Under the red-and-black standard of Asmodeus,
Cheliax once more claimed its former glory, if not the
righteousness of years past.
The new government immediately set to bending its outer
dependencies to the new order, forcing the nobles of distant
lands to profess adoration of blasphemous devils to avoid
the ministrations of the Hellknights of Cheliax, relentless
killers clothed from head to toe in imposing infernal armor.
Most important were the inner vassal states first brought
under Chelish control during the so-called Even-Tongued
Conquest of 4081, when the wily old King Aspex the Even-
Tongued broke with Taldor in a decade-long campaign of
war and diplomacy that brought the neighboring provinces
of Andoran, Galt, and Isger, as well as the secluded winged
folk of the Devil’s Peak, into the nascent Empire of Cheliax.
One by one, the rulers of these nations swore fealty
to the diabolical House of Thrune, often over the fierce
objections of their citizens. Rebellion and the ensuing
chaos in the northern holding of Molthune cut off the
Gazetteer: Nations
imperial heartland from its frontier colony in Varisia,
which subsequently became the reluctantly independent
city-state of Korvosa. The shadowy kingdom of Nidal,
however, long a thrall of Cheliax, enthusiastically
supported the empire’s evil turn, dispatching thousands
of shadowcasters and shadewrights to bolster Egorian’s
efforts to bring the other vassal states into line.
Brief ly, it appeared as though the new regime might
maintain the borders of old Cheliax and perhaps even
expand, but the cold precision of the Hellknights and
the outright blasphemy of Thrune’s diabolical allies
soon proved too much for the common people of Galt
and Andoran, who declared themselves independent of
the decadent empire and rejected the divine right of the
nobles who had betrayed them to devils. Riven by subtle
internal divisions and grudgingly following the advice
of tief ling ambassadors dispatched from the depths of
Hell, the leaders of Cheliax allowed their former vassals
their rebellion, focusing instead on the far more lucrative
colonies of Sargava in Garund and Anchor’s End in
distant Arcadia. The Hellknights and their infernal allies
continue to root out rebellion and dissent in the heartland,
where even speaking against the ruling order is a crime
punishable by torture and public execution.
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