Beygir Empire

The Beygir Empire (Ih Xaanchal Salkhiin, Great Nation of the Beygul People), also known as Salkhiin, is the principle and coordinating member of the Grand Imperial Coalition governing Daolin, Mernove, Damri, and Khagira.

The national capital is Morokhot with various subnational capitals assigned to the sixteen federal ceremonial Beygul nations, most notably Batil which is listed as the second city of the empire. Beygir is something between a one-party dictatorship and a pluralist democracy, ruled by the Morkral who has absolute control over the Beygul military but not its legislature. The office of Morkral is elective and rules until death or abdication, and has the power to rule by decree under special circumstances. The incumbent is Yerga Dzarguul. Typically the Morkral of the Beygir Empire is also appointed Paramount of the Grand Imperial Coalition by the union's Great Dagnair.

Normal government comes through a bicameral legislature, divided into the National Dagnair (lower house) and National Council (upper house). The Dagnair is the more powerful of the two and is directly elected by popular suffrage. All legislature must be promulgated by the Morkral after drafting by the National Dagnair and approval by the National Council. Appointment to the National Council is in some cases hereditary, some directly appointed by the Morkral, some by bureaucratic examination, and others appointed ex officio by virtue of holding other offices (eg. religious offices, state ikhralhood, etc.). At the death or abdication of the incumbent Morkral, the combined houses of legislature are summoned to a National Diet where they jointly elect the successor.

Great House
The Morkral delegates her powers to a number of deputies that form her Great House, the composition of which is at her complete discretion. The Great House is responsible for the administration of the Beygul military in the Morkral's name, in addition to managing the security service, the Office of National Security. The Morkral and her Great House are responsible for ensuring the security and territorial integrity of the empire, and for maintaining order and national unity.

Cabinet
The cabinet of the Beygir Empire is composed of 6-14 Chief Secretaries elected by members of the National Dagnair and controls the day-to-day running of the empire. The cabinet lacks the power to declare war without the Morkral's approval, or sign treaties without the National Dagnair's approval, or violate the Bekheg without a referendum, but otherwise has near-absolute power over the National Secretariats.

These national ministries include the Secretariat of Order (controls policing and imprisonment and proposes policy on criminal and civil law reform), Secretariat of the Clans (represents traditional clan leaders and budgets for cultural and religious projects), Secretariat of Statecraft (issues passports to Beygul citizens, oversees immigration policy, coordinates state visits to Beygir and by the Morkral abroad, coordinates state's approach to international affairs), Secretariat of Great Works (budgets for infrastructural projects), Secretariat of Commerce (identifies development policies, guides taxation policy and general budgeting), and Household Secretariat (guides civil service appointment, implements education policy, runs the National Beygul University)

Civil Service
Positions within the civil service, that is to say employment as part of the National Ministries or other National Offices (that is to say police, ombudsmen, immigration officials, etc.) are appointed based on merit as measured in bureaucratic examinations, a practice imported from Daolin. The leaders of the civil service within these ministries are generally based in the Central Secretariat of Morokhot.

Federalism
The Beygir Empire is nominally a federation of sixteen traditional states each ruled by an autonomous Dagnair and an ikhral. This autonomous Dagnair controls local bye-laws but lacks the power of a true federal state. Traditionally an ikhral was the monarchical military ruler of a powerful ikhraldom, but with the unification of the Beygul tribes and the creation of the office of the Morkral to rule over the empire as a whole, they lost a great deal of their power. Gradual reforms further cut back at their power, so today their position is almost exclusively ceremonial. All ikhrals are ex officio members of the National Council.

The sixteen traditional states are organised into larger regional groupings, with one ikhral elected by their peers to represent the grouping as a Great Ikhral who maintains the second highest ceremonial rank in the empire after Morkral but has little practical power other than commanding a ceremonial military garrison. These groupings are Imperial Beygir, Beygir South, Beygir West, and Beygir Central.

Salkhiin
Salkhiin was one of the early states of western Araz, a loose confederation of Beygul tribes by the northern border of the Daolese kingdoms, and which was founded following a treaty with the Kingdom of Caozhu. Caozhu had been plagued by raids from the clans, and in desperation the king offered his three daughters’ hands in marriage as well as regular tribute to the clan leaders in order to pacify them. There was, however, hundreds of clans, and to offer each tribute individually would have been impossible. Instead, the Morkral Ozen Eroi of the powerful Khaijig clan took the opportunity to proclaim himself ruler of all the Beygul people. He secured the obedience of the major lords by offering promising shares of the king’s generous tribute, and then with their joint might he crushed any insurrection by lesser lords.

Salkhiin was, however, not a centralised state and the Morkral rarely exerted authority outside of their clan group. However it was the conception of the idea of a national identity for the Beygul people.

Yesu Dharga
Salkhiin continued to exist as the medium for communication between Caozhu and the Beygul clans for many hundreds of years, however individual clans often disregarded the Morkral's commands and raided despite any treaties that had been signed. The Morkrallate steadily garnered a reputation for greedily taking the offers of Caozhu and ignoring the desires of the clans it supposedly ruled. When the clans began to reject the Morkral's authority, the Khaijig clan which had ruled for centuries, came to a crisis point. Eventually the incumbent Morkral, Dhalain Eroi, was killed on a hunting expedition after an ambush by a dissatisfied clan leader. No other member of the clan dared to stand for election before the other clan leaders.

Something of a succession crisis erupted, as inter-clan tensions flared over the decision for the new Morkral of Salkhiin. Caozhu, despite paying tribute for centuries to Salkhiin, remained a powerful kingdom and saw this as an opportunity to pacify the warring tribes once and for all. With two thousand men, he marched north to attack during a Dagnair, a great conference of Beygul clan leaders where none attack each other and each present an argument for their selection prior to the election. The election is later decided by physically travelling to the home of the chosen Morkral to pay homage,and the candidate with the largest number of loyal men wins. King Yutong Dajun of Caozhu aimed to slaughter the respected clan leaders and thus secure Caozhu's primacy over the Beygul as the only viable leader for the region.

However his march north was interrupted in the Valley of Saaraan, where the Airin tribe lay in wait. Leader Yesu Dharga had predicted that Yutong would make such an attempt, and had outriders monitor the area until his predictions were confirmed. With just two hundred men, he descended on Yutong's camp during the night and slaughtered all two thousand of his men, who were wholly unprepared for an attack. Yesu did this by pushing heavy boulders down the slopes onto the camp to generate noise and chaos, and then had archers fire en masse into the frenzy, before with a hundred and fifty men he rode through the damaged encampment and slaughtered the bleary-eyed soldiers. He had also poisoned the wells in the valley in the days before, which the soldiers had drunk and so became ill and weakened.

Yesu Dharga arrived late to the Dagnair, not considered a real contender but having a few loyal followers, with the head of Yutong Dajun. Forty five out of the fifty main clans turned up at his yurt in the west a few days later.

Early Conquests under Yesu Dharga
Yesu Dharga instituted several controversial reforms to the leadership of the Beygul clans, removing traditional hereditary rulers and in their place promoting those he felt better fit the positions. This earned him the hatred of some who had at first supported him, and there were several attempted insurrections, each of which were brutally crushed. Yesu Dharga, in this way, also earned more support from the more downtrodden of Beygul society.

With a new competent and loyal set of commanders, Yesu Dharga rapidly invaded and incorporated the Kingdom of Caozhu into his own lands. He executed many of the kingdom's leaders, but the citizenry were left largely alone and the cities were not looted. Instead local groups were given representation in his new advisory Elder Assembly.

Early Conquests 

The Beygir Empire began with the death of Talchon Morkral, leader of the Surgir clan. His son Orgon was controversially elected to rule the clan. The nearby kingdom of Evrensel, a huge and powerful country spanning much of the continent which had always had terse relations with Salkhi, saw this as an opportunity to remove the powerful Surgir clan and further weaken the Salkhi.

Informants provided them information on the time and place of the next Osnair, where the important clan members gathered to discuss the fate of the clan. Evrensel sent troops to kill all there, removing many important Salkhi leaders in one day.

Orgon survived the attack, but it was forever branded into his mind. He called meetings with other clan leaders and convinced them to join him in wiping out Evrensel once and for all. Having experienced similar brutality, most agreed to unite as the nation of Beygir.

Once they were under his control, Orgon began restructuring the other Salkhi. He promoted new generals from lowborn families and removed leaders he deemed incompetent despite their lineage. Tensions rose within Beygir, but Orgon secured their cooperation when over the course of a week he rode an army right into the heart of Evrensel and burned their capital to the ground.

He continued over the whole nation, leaving nothing standing. The mighty and powerful Evrensel was left in ashes. With then formerly lowborn leaders within the tribe completely loyal to him, he turned his attention to other lands.

At his death, his son Goirin Morkral was selected as Morkral of the Empire and began the southward expansion. Through cunning politic and negotiations, he secured what began known as South Beygir as Beygul territory through winning the allegiance of clan leaders. He was also responsible for restructuring the empire into several Morkrallates under the Great Morkral, establishing the capital of the empire at Morokhot and the viceregal capitals at Aspor, Batil, and Kizin. Notably it was his decision to move loyal Beygul populations into what was once Evrensel, and today it is there (West Beygir, with its local capital at Batil) that the greatest density of Beygul people exist, due to the bounty of the land and mixing with the remnants of local populations.

Later conquests 

At Goirin's death, his niece Yerga Morkral became the Morkral, and arguably the most successful conqueror of even her prestigious line. She was controversially selected at a very young age, only nineteen years old, and immediately began negotiations with the theocratic state of Khagira, offering autonomy and military protection if they bowed to her rule. They refused, confident in their mountainous terrain's ability to dissuade the Beygul cavalry, but when Yerga seized a huge swathe of their territory overnight they relented. She had used the terrain to her advantage, exploiting narrow mountain passes to ambush what little Khagiran military defence came north to fortify the border.

Her crowning achievement, however, was Daolin. Daolin had a long history of terrorising their Salkhi neighbours, and was vulnerable after a recent civil war. A wealthy nation of 65 million people, it was also an extremely valuable territory. Yerga rode through the northern regions with little resistance, their strongholds in ruins and their fields burning. However unlike her predecessors she managed to secure her rule there by using their newfound wealth, from reopened trade routes through the former Evrensel, to rebuild that which had been damaged in the north's civil war with the south. She became a respected figure, and when she mediatised rather than executed members of the Edun dynasty, she became the legitimate ruler of northern Daolin.

The south presented a greater challenge. While they also had fields and strongholds destroyed, much of the nobility remained holed up in the Hai Region. Here they were surrounded by rich farmland enclosed by high walls, as well as by lowlands that could be flooded if the nation’s complex system of dykes and canals redirected the water to the area around the Hai region.

Yerga realised to storm it would be futile, and instead turned to the surrounding lands and the south's allies. Word of her ferocity and calculated efficiency had spread across the continent, and regions such as Haikan, a trading-based land loyal to the south, surrendered almost instantly at her arrival on their borders. At this time Yerga appointed her aunt, Ovaal Sudriin, and her second cousin, Uran Khoidriin, to lead similar campaigns in Damri and Mernove respectively under her very specific invasion plans resembling those that had worked so well in Daolin. They saw similar success.

After the sudden death of Emperor Honshe of the Yuhai dynasty, emperor of the southern Daolin, the rump state of Daolin officially surrendered to Beygir. A fungal plague had ravaged the food stores upon which the massive region usually relied during long periods of isolation, and compounded with a poor rice harvest it became evident that they could not continue an extended siege. At Emperor Yushui's coronation, he swore loyalty to the Morkral, and Daolin in its entirety was incorporated into Yerga's empire.

Her final 'conquest' came with the official incorporation of the Qunik settlement into the empire. Qunik is a very sparsely populated island far to the north, but a settlement of Daolese traders from Haikan has existed there for decades due to the valuable whale and ambergris resources in ample supply on the island. Up until ten years ago, this was a private possession of the Prince of Jinsi and his trading company, but has been officially incorporated into Beygul imperial apparatus in recent years.

Presently the newly discovered civilisation of Ahimo’i is undergoing negotiations in the Council to Beygir as to the conditions of their joining. Similarly, the prince of Gaohra (a former Daolese colony under Hamajin control) is in the early stages of talks regarding support in seceding from Hamaji and joining Beygir. Daolin's former colonies are attractive prospects for the empire, and thus plans have been drawn up to lead the invasions of Haritik, Almina and Sebandar. In a similar vein, Maiyon's lost colonies, Taoara and Bertak, could easily be incorporated, despite that Maiyon is not part of the empire. There is less potential for expansion westwards, but the island of Zolbets appeals to Yerga as it is a valuable port and its invasion is easily within Beygul military capacity. However to avoid a negative response by the Council of Kings, of which Zolbets is a member, thereby potentially incurring war with powerful nations such as Venkort and Eradina, Beygir is tactful and awaits aggravation by Zolbets as justification for invasion. Southwards, Beygir is at war with Ralat and Ralat's loss would mean rapid invasion and incorporation, and is engaged in a border dispute with Sunghala over a portion of land that Beygir claims is part of Khagira.

Influences
Predominantly based upon the Mongol Empire, with Tsarist Russian and Qing Dynasty influences. Beygir South is modeled on the Afghan Durrani Empire.