Yalta Empire

Yalta Empire
Basic Information
Government	Symbolic Imperial Monarchy (feudal administration)
Ruling House	Imperial Bloodline (extinct following the Cataclysm)
Geography
Region	The Central Continent
Area	~2,550,000 km²
History
Founded	IY 1
Dissolved	IY 722
Society
Race	Human
Language	Common

Also Known As
the Eternal Empire the Cradle of Mankind

Overview

The only home of mankind.

The Yalta Empire was the first nation established by humanity on the Central Continent. It has since fallen, destroyed by the catastrophic event known as the Mana Cataclysm.

Details

The Yalta Empire was the first nation ever established by humanity, and is regarded by many as the ancestral homeland of all humankind — a legacy reflected in one of its enduring epithets, the Cradle of Mankind. Though humans had long existed in scattered communities across the world, the Yalta Empire marked the first time humanity came together on a large scale to form a unified culture and society.

The Empire's foundation traces back to a divine oracle received by the representatives of humanity, through which they were granted the most fertile land available to settle. Upon this land, humanity established a nation under a single imperial bloodline that served as a symbolic and spiritual cornerstone — holding no direct political power, but embodying the unity and legitimacy of the Empire. Actual governance was carried out through a feudal order, in which regional lords held authority over their respective domains and administered the land in the Emperor's name.

As a reflection of humanity's obscure and far-flung origins, the Yalta Empire was home to a remarkable diversity of cultures and languages, each having developed independently, yet coexisting within the borders of a single nation.

The Empire grew and prospered, but the discovery of the Mana Monolith — a stone of extraordinary size and magical potency, said to be the progenitor of all commonly known mana stones — introduced the first fractures within its political order. The conflict was not one of ownership, but of principle: whether the Mana Monolith should be used at all. Compounding this political strain, the Empire's rapid expansion had begun to outpace its ability to sustain itself. Pressure for new territory mounted to such a degree that some called for open confrontation with the gods themselves, if that was what it took to secure more land.

As political and social tensions accumulated, the Mana Cataclysm struck, reducing the Empire to ruin. Those who survived scattered across the world in search of new lives. The land where the Empire once stood still bears the name Yalta, but it is a wasteland now — the epicentre of the Cataclysm remains perpetually ravaged by mana storms, rendering approximately three kilometres around the blast origin uninhabitable to this day, while the surrounding ruins, though scarred and desolate, can still be traversed and settled.

Trivia

• Though the Empire fell nearly two centuries ago, it is remembered by several names. Most enduring among them is the Eternal Empire — not a claim that it truly lasted forever, but an epithet born of the wish that it had. The name survives in the lament attributed to Vortigern: "The Eternal Empire left behind nothing but a millennium of ash — consumed in a single flash of light."