Eastern Invasions

The Eastern Invasions were the conquest of much of southern Vasarea in the 14th century by Pastist Sydic polities in southeastern Vasarea and their allies, mainly Princedom Savaria. Auran and Ezkur were the main states initiating the invasions.

Syds had begun moving northwards some time in the 1st millennium, pushing ancestors of modern Savarians north and settling the grasslands north of the Kunda Mountains by the turn of the millennium. They had also established themselves as ruling elites over some states south of the Kunda through conquest or marriage. The northwards push of Arkavakopid Tarsian frontiers in the Bewardrafsh Wars in the 11th to 13th centuries led to the consolidation of Sydic states influenced by Perozgarist ideology. The rulers of Auran, in modern-day Kalovia, were first to espouse that the northern Syds ought to contribute to the revival of Pastism through reining in their western neighbors, whose Anamnism was interpreted as perverted and heretical due to its veneration and exaltation of Cosmocles. Economically, these rulers probably sought the riches of the western states, who had experienced at least a century of prosperity since the Arassian Restoration.

The first of the invasions began in 1310 with a major raid on the Vadic kingdom of Trepolia. These early incursions did not intend to conquer and only sought the vassalage of Vadic states, though they were often destructive. It was under the proactive rulers Aysila and her son Jangear did Auran and Ezkur shift the goals to empire-building conquest, starting with the annexation of the Veitian coast in 1323. A combination of Carsan military and social technologies and strategic genius allowed the eastern alliance to steadily defeat its foes and in 1344 Auranians entered Arassos in a major triumph after defeating the Gaberene Empire, though the absorption of territory was far slower and often short-lived. After Jangear's death an internal crisis caused Ezkur to take the lead in the imperial project, though this too would fail with the conquests disintegrating by the late 1360s, a major Tarsian northern expedition hastening the process. The last of the major Pastist Sydic conqueror-states in the west was destroyed in 1385, putting the traditional end to the period.

The hostile attitude taken by the Sydic invaders to local institutions hindered their attempts at establishing stable control and forced them to use destructive tactics to quell local interests on top of the devastation they already wrought. Besides rendering their empire short-lived, it also destroyed the existing social infrastructure of the region, rendering the creation of new centralized empires infeasible in the west and breaking the region into smaller parochial states. Vadia, however, consolidated into the haven empires after the invasions, and came to act as the main power of southern Vasarea for the next few centuries.