Serony

Serony was a civilization in eastern Ausarea from the 8th century BCE to the 6th century CE.

History
Serony arose from the migration of tribes from the Kataran onto the Kwangkrong river plain in a series of events mainly caused by the 9th-century BCE crisis. The migrants' language became the prestigious tongue of High Sernic, although Sernic high culture may have been more influenced by Magal, and the Mwi and Daggwi indigenes were equally important contributors. Centers of cultural and commercial exchange, djih, formed political blocs where common customs and general peace were observed, coalescing into city-polities with large spheres of influence. By the 6th century BCE, access to a region's high culture and particularly trade at a central city produced more sophisticated and coordinated polities, but which did not generally have a subjugative character until the 3rd century BCE.

Around this time polities were theorized as driven by the worship of particular ge deities, and a diversifying pantheon demanded the enforcement of orthodoxy; cities increased demands on their clients, established larger governments, and came to possess priestly elites. The elevation of the cities themselves caused controversy and strife, particularly with Kataranic nomads such as Chebegans and Sarapaeans who favored more heroic and prophetic creeds like Gradism, who set up their own djih blocs, becoming near-constant antagonists of the lowlanders in raids and warfare. Communities situated between djihs had substantial room to maneuver and leverage their favors, while loyalty was almost never exclusive; the religious diversity of the period, and a political interpretation that regional ges were contending opportunistically against central ones, meant they were always inclined to be flexible in their dealings.

By the 1st century CE larger and even more powerful djihs like Zlil (21–154) had become empires. The power and prestige of Zlil introduced its peculiar innovations across the Sernic world: most prominently it separated hereditary status and priestly official functions through the Sernic diarchy, even suppressing any idea the former had a privileged claim to the latter. Empires after the Zlil, such as the Khrag (122–250) or the Neng (191–331), expanded once again through djih cosmopolitanism, while using the same mechanisms Kataranic states such as the Byggal assumed prominent roles as overlords of Sernic lands.

By this time, the religious foundations of the djih shifted to one based on pantheons of ges each representing a caste or guild, a mregs, in a corporatist arrangement, which allowed confederacies to grow in both extensive and intensive power. But this understanding was fragile, and the mregs eventually competed for power in ways that led to political instability. After a period from the 4th century onwards when foreign rulers and conquerors regularly appeared to temporarily restore stability, the dispute was put to rest in a more permanent fashion. In the 5th to 6th centuries, Sarapean confederacies professing Arpalism &mdash; zealously antitheist and often omnicidal as a response to the religious quarrels of the period &mdash; brought a devastating end to Sernic civilization in the Cremation Wars, destroying Sernic cultural centers and establishing themselves as conquerors in darsku arrangements.