More of D'oril's inner workings

Working on Imperfect Hope has required me to look at the motivations of the antagonists with a critical eye. One way I'd done that was to detail the what/why/how/when/where of the plan. In IH's case, I needed to know why the empire was changing their tactics, in the earlier era (Sha'te Valley and IFGS times) they were driving straight at their foe in order to obtain...
The what. I hadn't detailed the reason for the Empire's aggression in Sha'te very well, I'd sufficed it to say that they wanted something in the south, and the K'tath were in the way. For writing, though, I"ve come up with a bit of a deeper reason. Wintergems... Once common in the empires lands, they were used and abused in creating control collars for dragons and demons (among other shadowy uses. The proble being, that using them in that way kills the Heart-Pine from which wintergems come. With their own supply all but gone, they found a new source, within the forests of D'oril.

In other words, the empire's aggression is a war for oil. Sort of. Anyway, one way I developed this plot line was to write the empire's history. Here's a blurb from the rough history of the empire of tallux.....

(Excerpts from History of Tallux, 2nd to 3rd empires, Gurn and Prable dynasties)

.....The series of military catastrophes that began with the debacle at the Battle of Five Passes (called Sha’te Valley by those of the eastern continent) weakened the last of the Gurn emperors. Gurn the XIVth had long relied on the competence of his generals, and following the assassinations and betrayals of his best commanders sent to conquer the wilds of D’oril while bolstering their ally, the Dar theocracy, he assumed direct command of the campaign. This proved to be his undoing, for Gurn’s control over the Demonguard, and specifically their commander Beauty became tenuous at best. The shadowgems that allowed his domination of the demonguard from afar lost their potency, and eventually failed entirely. As we later determined, Beauty eventually slipped his masters leash, dooming any further military progress in the D’oril region. All military units were ordered to return as best they could. This retreat, as well as the failure of the demonguard to maintain an actionable rearguard allowed the assassins of the northern alliance the time they needed to slip into the empire’s heart. Many of emperor Gurn’s most trusted advisors then fell to the assassins, and the replacements he chose were at best unreliable. When Beauty himself returned to the homeland with the remnants of what he now considered his own army, the changeling allied himself with the traitor Jun. The ensuing civil war lasted only 11 months, but exacerbated by the relentless attack on the empires leadership by the k’tath assassins and their allies, the fall of the Gurn dynasty became inevitable. Though the rebellion was crushed, it was nearly 30 years before an effective emperor emerged from the crowd of pretenders to take the reins of the empire of Tallux.....

.....Prable the First was vastly different from the dozen false emperors that preceded him during the time of chaos, and nearly the opposite of Gurn the 14th. He’d been educated in the temples of Seta, and throughout his long reign, he relied upon them almost exclusively for advice. It has been said that he was the first (and perhaps the only) emperor who essentially was advised directly by the demi-god himself, for he always chose the high priest of the temple as his closest advisor.

Prable’s first tasks, of course, involved pacifying the outlying regions on the western continent that remained in rebellion. The campaigns showed his prowess, both as a military strategist, ruthless foe, and diplomat. Many of the rebellious lands returned to the empire voluntarily, often following the untimely death of several of the more prominent leaders who had espoused their tentative independence. The success of his navy in suppressing the coastal raiders that sprang up during the chaos times marked the end of the rebellion, but before he could turn his attention outward, he fell ill, and died shortly thereafter.

His eldest son, Zuli (known as Prable the second) also relied heavily on the divine advice of the priests of Seta, but his adaptation of that advice was often flawed. In his early bid to gain access to the wintergems of D’oril, he plotted the course of both naval, clandestine, and diplomatic campaigns. These moves were designed to gain a foothold along the shores of the northwestern shores of the confederacy that had arisen from the loose conglomeration of merchant princes and Baronrys in the interior of the eastern continent. Zuli hoped to avoid the costly war against the k’tath that brought the fall of the Gurn dynasty by employing some complicated subterfuge within the fledgling confederacy in order to gain control of one of several ports along the rugged coast. Any one of these ports would have given Tallux a much more direct route to the forests of D’oril where the wintergems were found. However, circumstances spun wildly out of his control early in the campaign, and it became clear that Zuli’s prowess in both strategy and diplomacy would never matched his father.....