Legate

A legate was a nominal representative of the Tarsian emperor and the Vispasar Court during the era of Tarsian leadership of the White Order in the 1st to 5th centuries CE.

Origins
The original Tarsian title of the legates was first given out for the Voyage of Camathines to establish clients to Tarsia in Hypocos and Ausarea, though no lasting or significant office was founded by this. Its vague meaning but grandiose associations meant the title was later taken up by ambitious varshtanitans in their claims to fight and conquer in the name of the Pastic world, especially against states that had broken off relations with Tarsia.

The Catian Union of 195, in which the Pracian kingdom of Calcaria entered a closer federation with Tarsia as part of the Red Sail Wars against Mecessia, saw the Calcarian king recognized as legate of Tarsia, and from here a convention soon arose that varshtanitan-established states in lands like Pytarus would similarly be entitled as such.

Emergence of legations
The Tarsian Tissarathean reform starting in the 210s established the legate system as part of a proper bureaucracy to govern and expand its hegemony in a more rational manner, both regulating adventurers and formally tasking them with instituting orthodox Pastism to expand the White Order's remit. Initially, though, this did not extend into administrative changes, and only served to clarify and renew the language of the White Order. Cooperation with or adoption of the Tarsian program was mostly part of the wider voluntary identification with its prestige and primacy; governance on the ground was internally dictated, typically taking the form of military oligarchies as would be produced from the ranks of the varshtanitans.

From the 260s, however, the instability of these governments became problematic enough for the Tarsian court to take more heavy-handed interventions. Pracian calcatores, employed as an elite military corps for Tarsia through the Catian Union and praised for their devotion to Pastism, were dispatched to take control. The 'legation' as a distinct political structure thus emerged from the installation of Vasarean generals and fanatics. As they now wielded both the official-secular and legal-religious responsibilities of Pastism, the legates reformed societies to displace the dam power and thus the very fundament of the White Order, while serving their own absolute authority. In Pytarus or among newly conquered Lygenes this task further clashed with the weak presence of orthodox Pastism in the domain itself, and presuming the natural righteousness of their work, legates often abetted the rise of Artic religions and ideas challenging Pastism, such as Aravatta or Anamnestism.

Legations were also established in more distant regions such as Sostria, but these never developed beyond a ceremonial proclamation of affinity for Pastism and vassalage to Tarsia. Numerous allies and other distant states began referring themselves as legates in their dispatches to Tarsia in the 4th century.

Intrigues
Since Pastism and the White Order had hitherto mainly established its presence by the voluntary works of adherents, and Arta was always presumed to be self-evident and immanent, there was initially little concern about the power being concentrated with the legates, and in Pastic terms this could only be regarded as natural. However, the legate corps played an ignominious role in the Dagger Pilgrimages, a period of court intrigue and instability in Tarsia proper, with the result being that the new Dalmanids set out to circumscribe the office.

The effort to remake legates into rotated and accountable governors, in order to both strengthen Tarsian bureaucratic capacity and reduce the threat their own ambitions posed, was ultimately seen as transgressive, triggering Legate wars in Vasarea and Varasan in the 5th century. Varshtanitans who suppressed the old legates and were appointed as the new ones eventually went down the same path in face of the overbearing court. In regions like Pytarus, the foreign legates were already overthrown by native nobles, who reduced the title back to a token of mere acknowledgement of Tarsian primacy. The independence of the legate realms by the 6th century, an injury added with the insult of religious defections in Vasarea and Pytarus, deprived the title of relevance to a Tarsian empire that had also practically collapsed.

Legacy
The legate model was not by itself constructive of specific new social orders, but rather encouraged particular local instances thereof by dismantling the White Order (or, perhaps, carry its premise of natural universal compliance with Arta to its logical conclusion). Once they broke free from imperial Tarsian politics (or the concerns with departing from it), legates became or gave way to diverse forms and examples of post-Trial Age rulers, such as the chariarchs in Vasarea or the akhtakh of Kaskia.

Legations
The legations were not clear jurisdictions &mdash; there was never a single 'Legate of Tuntal', for example. A legate's actual domain was left to practical fortunes and abilities; higher authorities could rule on disputes but no legate was ever entitled to provinces or other top-down administrative divisions. Rather, if the legations existed in official terms, they were units for a single order by the Tarsian court that several legates would be named to take control of (or left open for the taking by any varshtanitan), and on the ground polities conventionally distinguished as Legations were collections of legates with similar interests, origins, methods, and/or involvements.

Some notable examples include:
 * Pharnadatean Legation
 * Sarian Legation
 * Sostrian Legation
 * Vasarean Legations