Liha the Great

Liha the Great (Tyl. Kjarossa Liha Vilakauva "Empress Liha the Great") was the first Empress of the Lihann Empire. In her youth, she supported populist tribune Aukossar Kalgar, and attempted to retaliate against the government when one of the Telareth Republic's oligarchs led a mob to kill Kalgar. Liha was imprisoned, then conscripted as a penal soldier, then was hired as an public speaker for the dissident movement, which she championed the cause of as dictator pro tempore and later Empress. She used her newly-found power to punish the senatorial elite who once ruled over the Telarene people as petty tyrants, perform a significant rework of social and economic regulations, and restore the faith of her people in the Tylan pantheon. Upon her death, Liha ascended to become a deity on the pantheon herself; as a goddess, Liha Vilakauva represents vengeance, revolutionary rage, and the cyclical nature of history.

Early Life

In the year 1925 PC (715 AD), Kova Keisarelka Liha was born to her parents Tivar and Valkora, both also of the Liha branch of the Keisarelkas family. During her teen years, Kova learned about the government of the Telareth Republic, which has become corrupt and ruled by the interests of money. In 1908 PC (732 AD), she voted for populist Aukossar Kalgar of the Commonwealth Faction (Tyl. Somna Moashtasra) in the tribunary election; Kalgar won the election, but was opposed in his every decision by the plutocracy.

In 1906 PC (734 AD), the tribune was killed in a bout of mob violence, following a reform by Popular Faction (Tyl. Somna Katosra) consul Jeviar Sikasrar Venel to limit the veto powers of the three tribunary offices. This led to Venel's political ally Lagas Kornesar Lausul taking the pro tempore dictatorship for the next two years, in order to purge any of Kalgar's supporters, as well as supporters of populism in general. This angered Liha greatly, so she, along with her friends Kelka Tavola and Kolot Marsevar Bochra, programmed a computer virus to attack the Republic's computer networks. Within days of them releasing it, it had taken down much of the government's bureaucratic infrastructure, and had caused significant damage to the news media's technological systems.

Sentencing and Conscription

For the crime of creating and spreading this computer virus, which had caused an unprecedented destruction of financial assets, Liha and her two friends were each sentenced to thirty years in prison. They spent less than a year at the Ulkaret in Tirvenal Province, until they were transferred to a specialized facility built solely for political prisoners. This facility had no official name, nor did it have any official existence. At this facility, Liha and her friends were put through constant torment. Food was provided at irregular intervals, sometimes multiple days after the previous meal. Their cell block's lights switched on and off randomly through the night, preventing them from sleeping. They were kept isolated in soundproofed solitary cells when the guards weren't putting them through the most horrific tortures that Liha had never before thought possible.

In 1901 PC (739 AD), several years into their sentence, Liha, Kelka, and Bochra were released and conscripted into the Republic's army, since a diplomatic spat with the Kingdom of Eireshva had become a continent-spanning meat grinder, leading to the Telam military bureaucracy's newfound usage of penal batallions. During their initial medical examinations, the doctors were forbidden from asking any questions or offering any sympathy regarding their torture-induced health conditions. The three friends were shipped off to separate parts of the Kalarik Sea Front, once their training had completed.

Aketh Valley Massacre

The Aketh Valley Massacre was an incident where Republic soldiers were ordered to pacify a region of western Eireshva known as the Kentharos Prairie, centered around the Aketh Valley. Liha, now a penal squad leader, was ordered to take her soldiers into the settlement of Taelukon and set an example by wiping out its inhabitants. Liha had initially led the massacre with glee, enjoying every murder, until she realized that she was enjoying the slaughter of the tyrants' foes; many years later, Liha realized that she had heard a whisper from the gods telling her to remember who her true enemies were. She divined two other members of her squad whom she sensed would not remain loyal to the Republic's overlords, killed the remainder of her squad, gave their weapons to the surviving townsfolk, and commanded them to flee from Taelas Aukur to wage a war of resistance.

Liha and her two loyal soldiers, rifleman Aevisar Emessias and sorcerer Tekki Sorvalia Ekhrel, reported back to command that the towns' inhabitants were more heavily armed than they expected, and that they were the only survivors of the ensuing battle. Command gave Liha a formal reprimand, insisting that she should have called for backup, to which Liha responded that she had not expected anyone to answer the call of a disposable penal conscript.

End of the War

Liha was on patrol in the Teirvissal Desert during the Battle of Harthu that led to the surrender of Eireshva in 1894 PC (746 AD), and her tour of duty was only allowed to end with the signing of the Treaty of Mulkae that made the Telareth Republic the clear, if battered, victor. Several large parts of the Kingdom of Eireshva were ceded to the Republic, the Kingdom's trade and foreign policies were to be dictated from Telam, and Queen Kailunn was to abdicate the throne to her weak-willed brother Dagor.

The Aketh Valley, in particular, was set up for the exploitation of its mineral resources by the Republic: most remaining towns were seized, and their inhabitants used for forced labor in the newly-built tolissiam mines that would be owned by the Republic to help pay for its recovery. Despite this well-fought, hard-earned victory, the people of the Republic felt no better than before. Their lives, financial situations, and social environments were still as miserable as they were before the peace treaty. Even the tolissiam mines' profits merely went to enriching the financial elites, the only people in the Republic who benefited from the war.

Liha moved into the household of her paternal aunt Tolfa Keisarelka Varu, since her parents refused to let her live with them. There, she largely kept a low profile, going into work under the pseudonym Tshela Khalreina Vuthi as a local courier. Delivering messages and commodities over the months, Liha found that the less affluent would often praise her as the "first dissident" and a "hero of the people" in hushed tones, while the more affluent would label her a "spiteful serf" and an "enemy of democracy". At the time, Liha thought that their insults made no sense, since democracies aren't supposed to have serf classes; she later regretted that it took her so many years to realize the truth.

Rise to Power

Liha soon saw that she had an opportunity to heal the Republic's injuries, and restore democracy to what it should be: the rule of the people. She cast out social scrying psygrams, using an old trick she learned during the war in Eireshva, and sought out local leadership of the Commonwealth Faction that hadn't been compromised or intimidated into working against the dissident populist movement. Liha also dropped her pseudonym and starting using her real name again.

Popular Outreach

Liha found that the current Provost of Shemot Province, Vahot Kalessiar, was a formerly-outspoken member of the dissident movement who had become quieter about his allegiance since the election of hardline elitist Toral Koltanar Siras as Consul. Knowing that the Provost had little time to spare, Liha instead offered her services to the Shemot branch of the Commonwealth Faction, which was similarly aligned with the rising populists. She became employed as an outreach specialist, aided by her "cold firebrand" style of public speaking: her tone of voice became quieter, slower, and harsher when she became particularly incensed.

Liha toured from town to town, delivering speeches and hosting Q&A sessions in places known to be safe. While the shooting phase of the Republic's growing internal strife hadn't yet started, civil unrest meant that innocent people could be murdered walking through a city, and the murderer would then be allowed to go unpunished by a ruling elite hostile to its own subjects. For this reason, the dissident movement also kept Liha safe with its own grassroots militia.

Protest of 8 Mordireth

In 1889 PC (751 AD), on the eighth day of Mordireth in the Telarene calendar, the Republic's capitol plaza in Telam faced a mass protest in support of releasing Eluria Kalessia, sister of Vahot Kalessiar, from her life sentence in prison, after she had been framed for the arson of her own home that resulted in the deaths of her husband and children. Though the Republic's officials denied it, the framing was plainly obvious to many citizens, especially those who did not rely on the officially-sanctioned press.

The protest was intended to be a peaceful demonstration, but it devolved into a massacre as Telam law enforcement opened fire on the protesters. The media, however, reported it as a riot being put down by non-lethal force, and supporters of the Popular Party repeated that line verbatim. Liha herself watched in horror, however, as the leadership of the Commonwealth Party also denounced the "senseless violence of the fanatical rioters" and offered a bifactional reform to clamp down on dissident speech and thought. Among its many restrictions, the reform combined the dual consulship into a single office of Speaker (Tyl. riatar), required laws passed by the Speaker to be voted on and approved by the Senate, reduced the number of censors from six to two and made them selected by the Senate instead of the priesthood, and abolished the three tribunary offices.

While Liha initially wanted to defy the Republic's dictates, her manager convinced her not to throw her life away, and instead go directly into electoral politics. She agreed, but before she did so, Liha went on a pilgrimage to the mountain Velet Krissot, which the Tylans believed the gods themselves lived on top of. Once she reached the summit, Liha discovered a large Veil rift filled with a holy numen. Liha entered the rift alone, and spoke directly with the Pantheon. When she emerged, Liha was visibly different: she appeared older and more mature, yet her stress-induced wrinkles were gone, and her eyes glowed with a divine light.

Political Career

Liha knew that a traditional campaign for elected office would be far too dangerous; she wouldn't just be risking money or reputation, but also her freedom and even her life. Instead, she built an underground network of dissidents, using her psychic powers to avoid computer networks that were known to be compromised by the Republic's security apparatus. She sought to seize emergency power by force, undo the oppressive reforms of the Republic's tyrants, and hold a series of plebiscites to preserve democracy and prolong its lifespan against the corruption of oligarchs. To that end, Liha networked largely with dissident soldiers and veterans, along with well-armed militia members.

Coup of 18 Imbarvot

On the eighteenth day of Imbarvot, in 1882 PC (758 AD), Liha launched her coup on Telam. She had her forces occupy the capitol plaza and surround the Legislative Sanctum, marched into the Senate chamber, and gave the senators thirty minutes to appoint Liha as dictator pro tempore before she would have her soldiers march in and execute everyone. Though the Senate had quorum at the time of Liha's entrance, then-Speaker Valar Dhorheimiar Silos attempted to sneak enough senators out of the building to reduce the number present below quorum. He was caught by Liha's psychic wards placed around the Sanctum, and handcuffed to the Consuls' Desk in the chamber.

Ultimately, the Senate acquiesced, and Liha was given absolute power to fix the Republic as much as necessary to restore its democracy.

Restoring Freedom

Liha's plebiscites centered around breaking up press corporations, ensuring election integrity, and enshrining the freedoms of opinion and speech in the Republic's laws. Many of them were defeated, much to her confusion, until she realized what was happening. Liha saw that the oligarchs were using their well-tested techniques to interfere with the plebiscites: distorting electoral counts, using their journalists and media channels to decieve the masses, and intimidating voters by sending radical equalist rioters out to terrorize polling stations in majority pro-dissident regions. The emergency dictator realized that she couldn't depend on measuring public opinion while it was so distorted.

When Liha found out what happened to her two friends Kelka and Bochra, however, she went from a cold, calculating fury to a burning-hot rage: her friends were taken hostage by egalitarian terrorists, who made a series of demands of the emergency government, but neither these demands nor any news of the hostage situation ever reached Liha, due to elite meddling, so Kelka and Bochra were tortured and killed by the terrorists. She had Silos, as well as most of the Senate, executed by slow immolation for obstructing justice and allowing her friends to be murdered, and resolved to create a better regime than any old, corrupt Republic.

Founding the Lihann Empire

Liha declared the Lihann Empire (Tyl. Kjarshtam Lihannam) in 1880 PC (760 AD), named after herself, as the successor to the Telareth Republic. She was coronated Empress in the Republic's capital city of Telam, in the Hearing Chamber of the former Speaker's Palace.

A few days after the coronation, Telam was beset by a mob of rioters, composed of both liberals and equalists. Leading the mob was Liha's brother, Peshkar Keisarelkar Lihanar, who was resolved to end his sister's tyranny by any means necessary. Liha initially tried to negotiate, to convince her brother to stand down, but when he claimed that Kelka and Bochra deserved worse than they got, the new Empress realized that there was no saving her brother, and disintegrated him and the rest of the mob with her psychic powers on the spot. Afterwards, she spent time alone in her new imperial bedroom, weeping and praying for the gods to show mercy to her brother's soul.

Early Policies

Liha's early policies as Empress focused around dismantling and razing as many of Telam's "unjust power structures" as she possibly could, in pursuit of her goal to liberate her people from the old tyrannical oligarchy. She had expected the people of the Republic to rejoice and celebrate their restored freedom. Even her goal of restoring her people's faith was not pursued by means of state force, since Liha reasoned that the masses would return to being devout and pious on their own, in the absence of the oligarchs' control over political discourse.

To punish the senators and bureaucrats who had ruled over the Republic during its decline, Liha stripped them of their titles and offices, and sent them into exile in the frozen, mountainous wastes. Egregious offenders, such as members of Telam's oligarchic Senate, were executed in death flights: Liha uses her psychic powers to carry the offender in a flight over the mountains, where the Empress would let go, causing the proscribed to fall onto the ground from several kilometers above, leading to a swift death by blunt force.

Yet this forceful liberation never seemed to bring joy to the masses; though most remained content in their lives, and even approved of the Empress, a small portion of the population was disgusted and outraged by the horrific wrath of a vulgar plebeian. While this segment of malcontents and remnants was never more than 10% of the Empire's population, it was still enough to cause widespread destruction and violence. As riots broke out time and time again throughout the Empire, Liha started to realize that too many people missed their old overlords. Her initial attempts to create a genuine democracy had failed, not because public opinion was distorted by tyrannical elites, but because it was generated solely by tyrannical elites. The Republic had stripped its citizens of the ability to think independently, over the course of its entire existence, to the point that they could not function without being told what to do, what to say, and what to think by an oligarchy... or an Empress.

Later Policies

Liha's revelation caused a sudden, dramatic shift in imperial policy. Her first dictate was to organize the Legation Detachments (Tyl. Atreta Aerosra, sg. Atreth Aerosram), police squads composed of powerful combat-psykhers, for the purpose of enforcing law in the absence of the Republic's old legal system. While powerful at first, the Atreta became heavily limited over time, as Liha wanted to expand her options and avoid relying on a singular power-base.

Social policy was the most impacted. Liha had always felt disgusted by the rampant promiscuity and substance abuse that had plagued the late Republic, but she had initially believed that a "live-and-let-live" approach would fit best with her moral principles, where she would not punish deviant hedonists until they harmed anyone else. Yet at the same time that rebellions were spreading like wildfires, Liha also noticed how inherent preying upon the young, weak, and defenseless was to the degenerates' mode of existence. The Empress came to the conclusion that the risk of widespread abuse and predation was not worth the reward of upholding the principles that she realized were so useless.

Recreational drug use was banned entirely, with the exception of pashral, and medical practitioners were limited in the variety and quantity of drugs that they could prescribe. Pre-marital intercourse was also banned; many existing laws around sexuality were expanded in scope, and their punishments were made more severe, usually escalating from six-year prison sentences to death.

The Empress emphasized cultural gender roles, which are kept even in the present day: women are more fit for intellectual work, while men are more fit for physical labor; this never became a hard rule, however, since she knew that there were plenty of intellectual men and non-intellectual women. In addition, the common Tylan saying "Men are for breeding, women are for loving" originated with Liha.

The secularist reforms of the Republic were also rolled back. The Tylan clergy, who had long opposed the materialism and greed of Telam's oligarchs, were brought into the Empire's fold by Liha's empowerment of the priesthood as a state institution. The Empress was considered to be "touched by the gods" due to her revelation at Velet Krissot, ensuring the loyalty of the pious without any need for coercion or intimidation.

To a lesser extent, economic policy changed, with the imperial throne clamping down heavily on the once-free market in some industries, while many other industries had their regulations massively reworked or stripped away entirely, in order to dislodge the economic dominance of the wealthy oligarchs who used their democracy to enforce such regulations. Liha paid special attention to advertising, media, and information technology; her reforms were exemplified by massive crackdowns on digital advertising and tracking personal data of computer-network users. Where the Empress couldn't guarantee that violations of her laws could be proven, such as in places where cryptography or steganography are used to hide potentially-illegal data, she used fear of agonizing and humiliating executions, as well as generous financial rewards for whistleblowers, to keep companies in line.

As early as Liha's youth, Tylan global computer networks were nearly unusable for consumers without special client-side software to filter out advertising, which only became worse over time as media-providers made advertisements more frequent and intrusive, forcing more users to install filtering software. When Liha returned to the Telareth Republic from her tour of duty, one of the first changes that she discovered was that the Republic had outlawed anti-advertising software.

Tax policy received a significant rework. After the discovery that executing wealthy malcontents and confiscating their assets often results in significant gains for the treasury, Liha realized that she could reduce taxation; the typical rates of every citizen in the middle class or below went from 27% to around 3%. She had considered eliminating taxes entirely, but her old friend Ekhrel convinced her not to risk relying on executions for state revenue, since that would incentivize false-positives in the punitive process.

Final Decades

Empress Liha penned her autobiography Empire of the Heavens, Kingdom of the Lands (Tyl. Kjarshtam sen Vargekaevotan, Nochashtam sen Tuikaevotan) during the final few decades of her rule. Both a reflective memoir and a political elucidation, Empire of the Heavens explains the lessons that the Empress learned from her increasingly-desperate attempts at freeing the masses, the realizations that she slowly arrived at regarding her old beliefs, and the consequences of the other potential paths that she could have chosen. The writing style in Empire of the Heavens was criticized for resembling a "textbook trying too hard to be poetic" or a "stone flower" by the few pro-oligarch malcontents still alive at that time, even though they made no comments on the book's actual observations and explanations.

Imperial Succession

To avoid physical procreation, Liha used her psychic powers to become pregnant with a clone of herself. Upon birth, Liha's clone-child was named Tarkona, and made the Empress's heir. When Liha disappeared into the forest outside Telam's eastern city walls, Tarkona was crowned Empress. It was during Tarkona's rule over the Lihann Empire that the Tylans invented the Bulkspace drive, enabling them to colonize other planets; this earned Tarkona the title Helasra, Tylan for "of the stars".

Empress Tarkona's Rule and Reforms

The new Empress was crowned amidst an atmosphere of terror. The people had feared and loved Liha in equal amounts, but with the previous Empress out of the mortal plane, the old loyalists took their perceived opportunity and launched all-new rebellions, led by the children and grandchildren of the oligarchs and petty tyrants whose democracy had been demolished by Liha's revolution.

Tarkona decided to step outside her mother's shadow. After crushing the nearest uprising with a stunning brutality that would give even Liha pause, Tarkona dealt with the second uprising by sending not only soldiers, but also diplomats, to negotiate terms. While the instigators would settle for nothing less than the restoration of the Republic and the junta that ruled it, the diplomats addressed the masses directly. Eventually, the rebels were convinced that the Republic had been a failure long before its actual fall, and were allowed to return home unpunished. The leaders of the revolt, however, were executed.

In less than a week, every other rebellion in the Empire stood down. Tarkona had shown the merits of the carrot and the stick, exceeding Liha's efficacy with the stick and the other stick. With the presence of the Tylan pantheon, Tarkona felt her mother's pride smiling upon her.

Under Tarkona's rule, the Lihann Empire went from stagnating in technological development to having settlements and infrastructure spread across Tyla's corner of the galaxy.

Later Empresses

Empress Tarkona created her successor Kseleiva the same way Liha did: using her psychic powers to clone herself. Empress Kseleiva became known as the Unifier (Tyl. Eilegatta) for using the Lihann Empire's military might, control over trade, and advanced technology to unify the other nations of Tyla into a single hegemonic empire, known as the Tylan Federation. Though it was called a Federation, in reality it was a hegemony ruled by whoever the current Lihann Empress was.

Empress Thanagal launched an interstellar expedition to conquer the Languavards to the galactic south of Tyla, which earned her the epithet Lagover. Her sister and successor Kotolva was the last Empress of the Lihann Empire, before the Tylan homeworld and colonies were conquered by the Fulkreyksk Authoritariat under Forarr Toval Brekoryn. Empress Kotolva stood firm in the face of the enemy, and so she became known as Kotolva the Defiant (Tyl. Tmelasra).

Legend of Vensca

In the year 1814 PC (826 AD), Liha walked out to the edge of Telam with a crowd of followers. She pointed at the night sky, at the star Vensca, and said "When the clock strikes the final hour, you will find me here, fighting the eternal war." The Empress then walked into the nearby forest, never to be seen again in material form.

Currently, Vensca has a wormhole to the Ydroun system, which is controlled by the Mechyrdian military and surrounded by Diadochi space. It is most likely that Liha was referring to the ongoing spiritual conflict between Aedon, whom the Diadochi currently worship, and the rest of the galaxy, when she spoke of "the eternal war".

The planet Vensca itself is home to the Lihann Priesthood, an order of powerfully (much moreso than usual) psychic Tylans who use their spiritual abilities to combat the influence of Aedon's deities through the wormhole into Tylan space.

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