XII. The Annals
It was around this time that Alexius grew eager to learn of this land's past, and attentively listened to the records of yore for hours on end, with Saracid the Librarian reading to him from one of his great tomes. In between his debating with his council on the best courses of action, fretting over potential Pillager raids, finalizing the designs of the wall, and laying the stone bricks and cobblestone himself, he found time to escape to the solace of the library, where Saracid would read books aloud.
From these books the Emperor learned of the great tales of history: of the bravery of Arahaman the Iron Captain, who had led the villages of the Northern Forests in rebellion against the Pillagers; of the cunning ingenuity of Crer Yusault the General, who had fearlessly rallied the people of the Western Mountains to defend themselves against invasion from their neighbors; and of the magnanimity of Admiral Neresen of the South, who had so swiftly captured the coastal towns in his time like a child picking flowers.
He was particularly interested in the reasons these great men had failed. Invariably, their villages first rose in prominence, then became mighty in their regions and subjugated their neighbors or their oppressors. Then they waned in glory, sometimes after the leaders had died, sometimes not, and all were conquered and subjugated, turned into what they had been before.
Intently the future Emperor listened to the fates of these men and their villages. Arahaman had died early in battle against the Pillagers, and his villagers were annihilated, subjugated, broken up, and spread to the four directions so they could never unite again. Crer Yusault had foolishly imposed the strictest laws on the villages he had subjugated, and the subsequent rebellion destroyed his forces; he himself was famously thrown from the mountains and left to the wolves. And the villages under Neresen similarly rebelled against his rule because of a certain law he had implemented, where every villager under him was forced to give him one emerald for every ten they had earned. In response to this they drowned him in the Ocean Sea and burned his palace to the ground.
Alexius heeded carefully from these tales, and concluded that the reason they had failed was because they had not prepared fully for every possible situation. Prudently, he decided to bide his time in conquest. Glorious battles, dramatic speeches—those could come later. For now, he would consolidate and build.
Alexius also told tales of the great men of his land, which the librarian eagerly listened to and transcribed carefully. His land was vast, and the place he came from was but one of many in an enormous world. In his past, one Alexander had conquered many cities and had created a great union at a young age; another leader, called Caesar, had done similar things in service of a similarly great land, as had another leader named Napoleon, who had come far after Caesar and had used something called "artillery" to split up and conquer his enemies.
Throughout these tales a certain word was passed around which the villagers had never heard before and which Alexius could not exactly translate: empire.
When he was asked what he meant by this strange word, Alexius replied by defining it as a sort of confederation of villages, spread out across great parts of the world. "If all the villages of the Plains came together," he said, "I would call this an empire, for it would be a vast oneness, united by one leader." The villagers found this idea fascinating, and despite some of them scoffing at so fantastical an idea, they nevertheless pondered its possibility through the moons.
Throughout all these happenings the wall continued to grow higher and higher, its sturdy stone layers reaching into the heavens with crenelated fingers. And it became good in the eyes of Alexius and his council.