Passing through the knowledge in the mind realm about the mortal realms in making history is so interesting.
The intercontinental trade started by Jomei I brought great changes to the human continent. With the enormous continent, that's not even completely explored, the interest in sea exploration used to be quite dismissing.
To make matters worst, the deep sea, was not a safe place, it was filled with magical and qi monsters, that came to be, because of little "human" intervention. Near the coast was the place where humans usually fish, so any powerful sea monster that appeared there usually ended up being quite fastly hunted, as magical meat is quite a valuable resource.
The difference was quite easily spottable, on the coast, the sea was calm and peaceful, but if you go deeper, you may find giant clownfishes, which seems like a normal one, but bigger than a whale with protuberant teeth, and that is carnivorous much more dangerous than a shark; giant whales, that could easily eat a small boat; and the dangerous put breathtaking coral towers, that are a tower of several interconnected corals, that went from the deep sea to the sky, it has a scary suction force that inside water may allow the corals to eat a whale whole, and out of the water to eat several birds; and many more.
Now returning to the subject, the sea trade worked as a sort of renascence to the human specie. Some fishermen villages became cities, and some already existing sea cities become very powerful. It is easy to guess how much wealth the intercontinental has moved around human civilization. The beehuman's magic and qi honey, mead, and most recently created perfume, were highly sought after and expensive items.
Likewise, some of the human's northeast and northwest products are very sought after in the beehuman continent. They include coconut, potatoes, sweet potatoes, bananas, cassava, avocados, pineapples, guava, coffee, watermelon, and more... There is also a lower demand for human glass and bronze ornaments. This happens because beehumans have not learned yet how to make glass and they don't have many bronze smiths.
All human products were, though, a lower tier of luxury goods, compared to the beehuman ones that are very expensive and the highest level of luxury, as the magic and qi honey are besides quite tasty and refined drinks worked as elixirs.
The human continent ended up developing a trade structure that worked as followed: northeast coast cities sells their products to southeast cities and the beehuman continent; the southeast sell their products(gooseberries, carrots, apples, lemons, blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, onions, olives, apricot, lettuce, grapes, wine, corn, rice and so on) to the northeast and works as a trading post to the northeast trade, which means that southeast city got a lot of money for simply being a ship stop for the northeast and some beehumans ships.
Most of the south crops are also grown in the beehuman continent, but because of the proximity, the prices of southeast crops are much lower than the northeast.
Strangely enough, I still am not used to the new continent's nomenclature. After humans discovered they were not living in the continent but in a continent, they started naming it the Saub continent, in honor of their first patron god. Likewise, the beehumans also named their continent after their first patron goddess, it now name the Kessian continent.
Amazingly, the beehuman's kingdom that Jomei first traded with was only a kingdom in name. It was, in fact, a republic, which have a kingdom in its official name. It is the only republic among the spread beehuman kingdoms.
But the question one might make is: how? It all started at the start of the demigods' era. Each of the ten demi goddesses that started the beehuman specie, have a castle of their own and is spread all over the Kessian continent. Each of them formed their own family, which with the long lifespan they saw grow into a big family or clan, close to their death, nine of them chose their successor to rule the family, some chose from the eldest line, others from the strongest, the wisest, and so on...
But one did not choose a successor, ending up with several lines of succession disputing who should be the next queen. However, as the family was not that big and they feared splitting apart if the fight did not come closer soon, they ended up with a decision that was not enjoyed by any of the succession groups, but that was the most pacifical one. All the successors would govern the family together. As the family village ended up becoming a small town, this successor group ended up becoming a council.
Each of the successor groups as time passed ended up becoming a clan, as the town laws determined each clan chose a clan head and each clan head have a seat in the council that ruled the republic. The ten beehuman nations that were quite far from each other took a long time to meet up, but when they finally did they started trading with each other, though that relationship got some thorny moments, with some border skirmishes, that sometimes ended up developing into wars.
In this scenario, the republic was the most looked down upon nation, as the only republic. It got suppressed by its two neighboring kingdoms with high trade taxes; its citizens were given less respect than others while visiting their nations; constant war threats; unequal forced treaties; and so on.
The country even renamed itself kingdom to try to soften its bad relationship with its neighbor. But they got somewhat lucky as the nation closest to the seas and the only one with some fisherman districts. They became the first to establish trade relationships with humans.
Their fishing villages became port cities, and they got a monopoly over the sea trade with humans for a long time. Their neighbors could overtax them with their products and the ones they export that came from humans, but they are the only ones that can sell them.
As the ones to most interact with humans, they learned something interesting from them, the mercenary system. One day, their neighbors want to exploit them again. Tired of this, the council came up with a simple, but effective measure, they started a war, and using a large amount of wealth they got from their trade position, they contracted thousands of human mercenaries.
The human, especially the qi healers, ended up as quite a useful card, mainly because healing honey was expensive, even on the Kessian continent, because magical and qi flowers were hard to grow properly. The army from the republic was not only larger, with a different type of soldier that their enemy did not have any experience in fighting, but they have healers that help to recover the army faster and reduce the number of casualties.
So they, the republic ended up, with the support of human mercenaries and quite a lot of money, annexing its two neighboring kingdoms.
They later renamed themselves the Republican Empire of Kessian. Annexed one more kingdom in the following century. Later having some wars with their neighbors, sometimes taking territory and others losing a bit and it continued. It even annexed the fifth nation for a couple of years, later being forced to withdraw, because of a short-lived coalition of the remaining nations.
The empire's mild expansionists tendencies, which only started wars, when given an opportunity, led to a mild fear among its neighbors, so diplomatically any alliance between its neighbors ended up being short-lived because the empire only needed to explore their inner conflicts or mutual fear of betrayal and it collapses as a castle of sand.
To make matters worst, beehumans could not use the crude, but effective strategy that human kingdoms use to form alliances, which was the marriage between the nobility.
The empire was the first to introduce a slave system, as they enslaved all inhabitants of the kingdoms they first conquered, though they were much more lenient with their later conquest.
Beehuman Continent
Now that the introductions are done, let's start a tale. All beehuman's nations have a political system that strictly separated the army and the civil power as a part of their matriarchal culture, it was a division done by gender, no man was ever allowed in an administration position, except in the army, though the woman could enter the army in most cases, and males of the high status usually were housekeepers and took care of the kids.
Paskwüw was the country where male status was the highest, not because they could join the administrative sector, but because a woman could not join it. So basically, their power was divided into two halves between the two groups.
As per tradition, the country was ruled by the queen, while her male concubine, the status of king does not exist in any beehuman country, commands the army. Edith, the eighth, queen of Paskwüw, and her husband Caddock, the commander of Paskwüw's army, were quite the ambitious people.
There were six countries on their continent at their time now. As three were swallowed by the empire and one ended up being set free from the empire's clutches, only to have its parts swallowed by its neighbors.
Since the demigods' age, the beehumans raise some horses. But the amount was limited and the use as well, they were not much valued, as only pretty good riders ride horses, as there had been no such things as a saddle.
The keeper of the stables in Paskwüw came up with the first models of saddles, Caddock was quick to imagine the possible prospects that this simple, but the Epoque-making invention may have. After much effort, the worker and Caddock, as the opinion of a very experienced rider like Caddock surely mattered and helps a lot, got themselves a much better design for the saddle.
His worker ended up being recompensed with a baron status and got a reminder to keep the saddle secret, though, passed some years living as a luxurious hostage's life in the capital, to keep his mouth shut until the time was ripe.
It was then that the hard part started, Caddock and Edith, worked to create, under the shadows, what would be remembered as the first cavalry unit of the Kessian continent. Edith helped expand their horse arsenal, secretly contract experience horse raisers and erase the traces of their project; while Caddock got himself working on the development of military strategies and the training of personnel. Both their vast ability and dedication were scary. Caddock by himself advanced military science by decades, while Edith could hide their enormous project traces by decades.
Paskwüw was a plains country, easy to attack, and hard to defend; if not because of its strong military the country would have fallen long ago. The only region that was easier to defend was the mountainous terrain from the grand duchy of Trevena, which conveniently was the only part that has a direct land frontier with the empire.
Trevena region used to be a country and is filled with mountainous terrain. However, it had been completely conquered by the empire and its royal family ended up self-exiled in Paskwüw. Later, the nations' coalition ended up expelling the empire from Trevena, which took a long while, but the previous royal family was not reestablished as king, and their territory ended up being partitioned by its neighbors, only being left with the grand duchy of Trevena, that only amount for a small portion of their previous domain.
The grand duchy was awarded as a sort of compensation by the alliance to the Trevena's royal family, it is a vassal state of Paskwüw, which is somewhat a foreign concept to the deeply centralized beehumans' nations. This alliance decision, which determined for a country(Paskwüw) what to do with their own conquered territory was accepted by Paskwüw, but soon after the nation left the alliance and that was the beginning of its downfall.
But how did a nation with a naturally good defense, like Trevena, end up falling to the empire? They were busy fighting a successor war and the losing side, have the terrible idea of bringing a foreign power(empire) to ensure their crown, even guiding them through the torn mountain path. The winning and losing sides reversed.
The losers exiled themselves at Paskwüw, while the winners waited for the coronation that never came, as most of the royal families there were butchered, with only the children being left alive, but being transferred to the capital of the empire.
Now returning to the current timeline, after their project was concluded, they started their plans. It all started with an unexistent army movement, being found near Trevena's grand dukedom. Then, a fast war with the Empire took over the whole Dorinda region, previously known as the Dorinda Kingdom.
How was it so easy? It was not. First transporting horses through the mountainous grand dukedom was only possible, because of the pathways and underground corridors that precede centuries. They had been previously used by the Trevena Kingdom to send reinforcement to the frontiers quicker.
Later, the couple played a simple and effective tactic, attacking with the cavalry, before the enemies have been prepared to defend.
The surprise attack was very effective as Caddock ended up beheading the enemy general responsible for the empire's frontier in the first battle.
For their plan to work, they have to divide the army into two: the cavalry and the infantry. Edith ended up becoming responsible for the infantry, while Caddock was away, and the more logistical part of the army. While the infantry assembled and took a hold of the frontier fort of Dorinda, the cavalry dispersed and harassed the local nobles' forces, forcibly stretching them and avoiding the local armies from effectively assembling, as the local forces tried to find the dispersed cavalry, but failed miserly.
When the supply line was finished, the intensity of cavalry reduced but not subsided to mislead the enemies a bit. Groups of cavalry and infantry started to hold off the interior little by little, slowly stretching and dividing the forces of the empire into different forts.
Fort by fort, the Paskwüw's forces took over the entire region before reinforcement even came. A marvelous strategy that my amateur words may not be good enough to describe. It not only showed the use of the cavalry, but also the capability that the couple has in war tactics.
As I have not made it clear, what is their ambition and why did they start this war? To build an empire? No. They just want to eliminate the threats that endanger their people's peace like the empire, which is not a small ambition at all, after all, they want to get rid of an empire. But one may ask why the empire, and not any of the other kingdoms, may become treated as well.
That's because true peace with an empire is impossible in their opinion something that I agree with. That's because the empire is a sick nation, it must expand to survive or face its downfall, why? Because an empire tends to be a melting pot of contradictions held together by fear and the greed of the conflicting parts for more power and wealth.
For example, the Claeg and Ahlai's regions of the republican kessian empire are filled with slaves half-beehumans, slave beehumans, and low-level human nobles, all in some way, unsatisfied with their current status.
Both regions were the first two kingdoms that the empire conquered. In that war that created the empire, to ensure the mercenaries' loyalty, the republic gave the ones with some achievements, some land in the conquered area, and their leaders, ended up getting a noble title and land. Human nobles, though, did not have any influence in the political game, they were excluded from it, being basically big farm owners.
Although there were female mercenaries, they were few. So humans ended up buying human females from slave traders, which was hard with the Great Siraj Kingdom blockage on it, and with permission and stimulus from the republic a lot ended up getting some female citizens from the Claeg's and Ahlai regions as their bed slaves. To a matriarchal society like the beehumans, making a group of women slaves of men showed how much the republicans hated their two exneighbors.
The beehumans nobles in the Dorinda region are not satisfied with their current status as well. The internal conflicts in the Dorinda region were much smaller so the region was much more valuable than Claeg's and Ahlai's regions by the empire. Though it is the most far from the capital and the one that reinforcement took the longest to get to.
It is important to note that the empire also have broken the republic traditions and laws, long ago, by giving noble titles to its council members and their close relatives, restricting the valid votes to the ones from nobles, the free commoner from the empire central region still voted but their votes were simply not counted. How they did do this? Suppressing their own people with force. So the empire was basically an oligarchy that pretends to be a democracy.
After the empire lost a fourth of its territory to Paskwüw, the other nations got some confidence and decided to unite to expel the empire from at least the Claeg's region.