State of Hashuru

The State of Hashuru (Itarakoské: Hashuru turam, Hashurukoské: Hashuruten Kengem) was a political entity which occupied the lands of Hashuru, along the middle reaches of the Ansarién river valley.

An ancient state which came into being independently of the Empire as early as the Guha Dynasty, it was alternately an ally and foe of the Guha and in the first centuries of the Omé Dynasty. By the third century of the Omé, Hashuru increasingly identified itself as a vassal state of the Empire, and it would become one of the most powerful states in the Omé Empire, and in the early decades of the Har Dynasty.

The Hashuru state was destroyed during the Har Dynasty, with the capital being captured in 78 Har, but was reconstituted after a revolt after a few decades in 133 Har. When the Lein Dynasty took over the Empire, tensions with Hashuru led to a major revolt and the second and final destruction of the state by Tairazun Kasan in 21 Lein. This heralded nearly half a century of oppression from the Lein government, which eventually eased off in the reign of Athain, and was dramatically reversed in the era of Sora.

Origins
There are many different accounts of the state's origins. Among the Tarakasane, for example, the most prevalent story is that of a brother of the man who founded the Guha Dynasty who, being dissatisfied with the small fief provided him, left his post and went south among the 'barbarians' in order to gather them against his own brother.

The Hashurukasane, remarkably, also claim political (but not ethnic) ancestry from the Tarakasane, going even farther back into the semi-legendary Damu Dynasty which preceded the Guha. In their telling, they descended from nobles dispatched south to bring holy water from the Ansarién back for religious rites in the north, but were dissuaded from doing so by a series of sacred signs, and eventually were assimilated into the culture while creating their own state over the Hashurukasane.

What evidence there is suggests that neither was completely the case, but rather than the Hashurukasane - who were originally organised on a tribal basis, with complex inter-tribal relations - began organising themselves into tighter units in response to increasing pressure from the Empire in the north, in a slow process. This appears to be borne out by the fact that the first states to form arose in the north, exposed to the Empire; some of the earliest surviving written documents of the Hashurukasane involve treaties between the tribes to come together in mutual defence. From this step, federations of tribes and finally fixed political units began to arise, with frequent borrowing of northern forms of political legitimisation.

From the other side, the surviving annals of the Damu Dynasty at first indicates the peoples to its south as 'tribes', 'clans' and 'barbarian villages'; in its last century, however, names begin to appear and to be compared in analogous terms to known states within the Empire. Two especially prominent names were 'Urik' and 'Ashor', both of which were mentioned sending tribute to the Empire as well as 'rebelling', or at war.

Urik disappears within the first decades of the Guha Dynasty's rise to power; it is possible that the Urekmis river, one of the major rivers in the north of Hashuru, was the power base of this state. If this is the case, it is also possible that Urik was destroyed by the joint action of the Guha and the rulers of 'Ashor', which by then were being known as Hashur. While this opened the way for the Guha to advance farther south, it also meant giving away the rule of the entire region over to a single state, a move which would have momentous consequences.

Guha Dynasty
While the details of the state forming process remain murky, by the time of the Guha Dynasty's first century, the political contours of Hashuru had become quite clear. The turmoil in the north enabled the inchoate state of Hashuru to conquer much of the Ansarién's southern watershed, and possibly to then destroy Urik and split its lands between Hashuru and the Guha. While no direct evidence exists to prove that the latter campaign took place, it does serve to explain the disappearance of Urik, and the repeated references to the 'plains of contention' which underlay centuries of war between Guha and Hashuru.

After decades of skirmishing and mutual fortifications, in 76 Guha, Tairazun Kamané of Guha personally led a southward expedition to destroy Hashuru once and for all. This first blow in the war between north and south was a complete fiasco for the Empire. The army, which was said to have numbered more than 200,000 men, was harassed constantly by the Hashurukasane, and having attacked in the summer - dry in the north, but stormy in the south - quickly bogged down and was debilitated by illness and heat. The Hashurukasane waited until autumn before counterattacking; Kamané died attempting to escape, and it was said that just 5,000 returned to their homeland, dealing a serious blow to the Guha's capacity for central control from which it never quite recovered.

This expedition, and the centuries of open war it would lead to, cemented the reputation of Hashuru as a powerful foe of the Tarakasane early in their history. Besides the Red Plain, occupying a gap in the mountains where Hashuru and the Empire have direct access to each other's heartlands, there were also other fronts of conflict; in Ansa to the east, the two great powers constantly tried to gain influence over the local people, a process which ironically led the Ansakasane to begin forming their own political units.

Capitals
Over its history, the state of Hashuru had several capitals, changing them according to political circumstances. In its earliest years, as one of several states in the region formed from different confederations of tribes, the kingship had no fixed capital but moved from tribe to tribe managing business. This would become untenable as the state expanded towards the west and the south.

The first known fixed capital of Hashuru, appointed not long after the conquest of Urik, was the city of Renlékhdi, situated near the conjunction of the river Sutusumis with the Ansarién, on the eastern end of the Hashuru heartland and facing the Cloud Mountains to its north. The position of the capital was itself testimony to the expansionism and energy of Hashuru; besides being the closest point of the Ansarién to the northern border with the Empire, it was also near the eastern frontier of the time, and served as an excellent military headquarters.

Renlékhdi served as a capital for about a century and a half, overseeing eastwards expansion up to the shores of Lake Condova, before it shifted its capital - along with its ambitions - even farther to the north. The city of Bakhtomar was moved away from the Ansarién entirely, following the river Ritimis north into the plain which links Hashuru with the Empire. It was from Bakhtomar that the ascendant Hashuru launched northward campaigns, which devastated the Guha Empire, and also here that they would enter relations with the Omé Dynasty, eventually becoming a semi-independent vassal of the Empire.