The land of Hove

The Land of Hove (draft)

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."                                                                                                                                                            ~Ephesians 6:12 KJV

It was silent on the streets of Shelva. The pavements and streets were empty of people. A breeze could be felt coming from the shores of the city, announcing the arrival of light as the sun rose from its resting place. And as soon as the sky granted passage for the first particles of light to burst through, the birds were there to separate the darkness into a new beginning, singing happily. And so indeed, a new day in the land of Hove had begun.

Almost a thousand years have passed since the fall of the great empire. a kingdom so vast that it reigned over all the lands known to the world. The empire was ruled by the Two Eternal Kings, who kept a perfect balance over all life and death. The kings believed in numbers and followed them to obtain constant perfection. brilliant mathematicians, able to calculate possible outcomes for any matter that was presented to them. From battles of war to financial policies, populations. The kings never wavered from being led astray from the path of their divine calling. Even if it meant purging the land of the people who were not accounted for,.

They believed they were gods and that they had been given the gift of reading the secret scriptures of the cosmos. It was this divine gift, they believed, that gave them the right to grant life to whoever they saw fit and keep it from those they deemed unworthy. The more the kings of the Empire embraced their self-proclaimed divinity, the more their love for power grew.

The kings had measured that they would be unable to control Hove after a millennia. The empire would become unstable because of an increasing chance of rebellion, food shortages, and a populace that knows nothing else but poverty and oppression. The Kings of the Empire measured carefully the time left of their reign, and because of this prophecy haunting the two kings, they searched for ways to postpone this inevitable demise.

Desperate to keep all they had conquered, the kings turned to the realms of Choshek. Dark realms where there is no light. Only the Humans have the power to engage with the spiritual realms. But always at a price a man can't bear. The Eternal Kings were given relics with great power by a demon from the realm. They were promised eternal rule over the world of Hove with an iron fist. And neither humans nor giants could stop the reign of the Eternal Kings. So as they rest assured that their daunting spell had been broken. The Capital of the Great Empire on the island of Radah, lied in ruins.

No one knew what had become of the great empire that once stood for granted. But word spread fast and people started to rebel against the remaining occupiers in their homelands. It was known as the years of imperial persecutions. Many imperials faced the wrath of an occupied people that had been under the rule of the empire for more than a thousand years. The remaining land of the empire in the west, was officially declared war upon by the three nations to the north of the capital island, known as the three cornerstone alliance. The three nations and the Ascendant of the old empire had fought a hundred year war, ravaging a vast part of the continent of the Ascendants. Even now, hundreds and hundreds of years later it is still known to the people of Hove as the wastelands of the great war. A horrific monument with the size of an entire nation that stands the test of time.

It came to a truce, but the old empire was forced into isolation for 7 generations. Only after the last person of the last generation had passed did the Ascendants of the old empire become independent nation with open borders and a seat at the meetings of nations. And the land of Hove entered a time of peace and prosperity. The nations restored to them the border of their ancestors.

The Old Empire became a distant memory to many, except for two nations. The ascendants, of course, whose king could not let go of the potential inheritance of his ancestral bloodline. And he swayed his people into believing that they were the superior people above all other nations. And the Technocracy of Chokma, who have devoted their lives to the causes of the magics and sciences of this world.

Even after a thousand years, nobody still had an answer as to what happened to the eternal kings and their once glorious capital. Most people dismissed it in their minds as a civil war and were mainly concerned with celebrating their freedoms as sovereign peoples.