Head of State: Reya Jour an’Amellen
Founder: Reya Amellen an’Mallanë
Government: Absolute Monarchy
Population: 6,300,000
Religion: Aman Ecclesia, Saint Cults (Saint Callaron the Lion)
Description: Amellen is the last surviving bastion of the old house of Mallanë, ruled by the descendants of Amellen. The vast empire founded by this new clan’s namesake, Amellen the Old King, crumbled after his death. Crushed under the weight of the Laurë, the Mallanë clan dissolved, splintering into three monarchies. Amellen is the weakest of those three, sitting in the ancient clans old heartlands of fertile fields divided by copse and broken by woods and a network of rivers.
Only a strong, professional army keeps the children of the Old King from destruction. But the current Reya, Reya Jour is a weak, sniveling monarch without spine or cunning. Worse yet, Amellen is surrounded by enemies on side. The Rona in the north raid the borders and burn villages and fortresses. The Varagë sack the coastline, raping and pillaging the settlements of the lower castes. The army, unable to match the mobility of these raiders or provide local superiority is powerless to defend these small scale raids. Already, the clan’s neighbors circle it like vultures. Soon, the clan will fall unless a hero comes forward to rescue it.
History: The title of Reya Amellen is one with a recent history. Born after the conquest, the Mallanë were named for the ancient Reyan known as the Lions of the North. Not much is known of these ancient Mallanë, and until the reign of Amellen, little was notable about the Mallanë. In fact, the Mallanë nobility exercised exceptional control over the clan and foreign powers like the Laurë crushed all attempts at expansion. Amellen an’Mallanë changed all this. He was a unique Reya, raised in the court of Courë an’Arrazëan to be a puppet. Instead, he learned to rule like Courë and came to believe that he alone could be the successor of Valén.
Amellen marshalled his clan and created the first professional army, and when Courë, he claimed the title of Reya Laurë through his wife and his mother. He was denied and marched south. The following century was the most vicious and cruel in the history of Laurëa. Amellen conquered and claimed huge swathes of the land in the south, controlling the most amount of land of any Laurëan Reya. He claimed the name of Valén and attempted to claim the entire old empire. And in doing so, he united the Laurëan world against him.
Amellen, being a military genius, held off the alliance in his lifetime. But upon his death, his generals and nobles, united by Amellen’s charisma and fear mongering, divided and abandoned his son and heir to be crushed by the alliance. With that, the Mallanë was destroyed and the son of Amellen founded a smaller state based in the north of the Mallanë heartlands.