Two months after the North had been won, a letter was circulated to the various outposts of Elton’s new empire and to every vassal. Few of the soldiers and nobles (who at this point were basically just exceedingly wealthy soldiers) who received the letter could read it, and fewer still could understand it, but those who did told others. Elton was declaring himself a divine personage, but in whatever terms a reader’s religion would choose to understand it. To Buddhists, he would be a bodhisattva, to Christians a saint, to Jews a prophet, to the Imamite Muslims, the Mahdi. He had received this knowledge upon becoming “confused and forsaken after victory… unsure of what was to be gained and lost”. Elton claimed to have retreated into the great redwood forests and to have sealed himself off from the outside world for a month in order to meditate. He claimed to have seen, after ten days of hunger and thirst, Emperor Norton himself appear to him and give him his “path to walk”. Norton told him that all faiths in California had a reflection of the Truth and that that Truth was most strongly expressed by him at this time. Norton also declared him to be his descendant and successor, and ended his visitation with “Claim your title, great emperor, and abide”.
Elton declared a new religious order in his
Invincible Letter (named because of the supposed logical invincibility of his arguments), but a new political order was also in the offing. Along with the letter came an exam, in five parts, to be administered in the presence of ten respected witnesses in the span of five hours. All existing vassals of the North who failed the exam would lose their posts and be replaced with those who did, and all rank-and-file soldiers who did well would gain immediate, significant promotion. This was such an assertion of top-down authority that it was tantamount to a declaration of war on the entrenched nobility. Somewhere around twenty percent of the vassals took it in good faith, as did eighty percent of the soldiers. The proportion of vassals taking it seems strikingly high and can probably be attributed to a general fear of Elton (and indeed when the vassal responses are arranged by location, there is a statistically significant correlation between them and relatively short distances from Elton’s fortresses). Around ten percent of both of those pools passed the exam. The rest of the vassals rose up, hoping to bring down Elton as the Kings of Waters had been brought down and humiliated in the past. The rebels failed in their ultimate goals, largely because they were completely unprepared for revolt and geographically spread out. Still, they outnumbered Elton’s forces by a significant margin. The conflict was immensely destructive to the North and the Winelands and it took seven years to resolve. If an outside power had launched an invasion, Elton’s hard-won state would likely have completely collapsed. The other powers, however, were busy. Sinclair was launching successive campaigns against the Sierra Nevada tribes and Death Valley warlords and was too poor to go on other offensives. Abbas had attacked Hernandez and Rubinstein had decided to align with Abbas and stab Hernandez in the back. But Hernandez ruled over the rich lands of the lower Valley and lower Gran Francisco and had narrow, easily defensible fronts on both borders, so long, grinding stalemate was looking to be the order of the day there. Raiders from Cascadia and the steppes could and would invade the North, but never in numbers enough to seriously attempt any conquest.
Once the war was won, there were more than eight hundred vacant slots ready to be filled by a class of educated, loyal, enthusiastic young men (and they were only men; women's rights were better than the norm in California, but they still weren't anything we would recognize today as good). Some of these young men went on to do nothing very much, managing a minor office out in the middle of nowhere and receiving no promotions. Others spawned great families. Two of the four Fractured Empire Period Kings three hundred years later were directly descended from those first batches of successful test-takers. Elton’s goal was nothing less than reshaping California in his own image, and the first seeds of the Empire’s sprawling bureaucracy were sown here. At this stage, Elton’s Empire was still mostly an army with a state attached, the populace felt little attachment to the new leadership (though this was still a step up from their general revulsion towards the old), and Elton himself was looked at as a crazy man trying to foist a religion that no one understood particularly well onto the populace. It is important at this stage to talk again about inevitabilities.
Given the absolute disparity economically between the Winelands and every other part of California, it was likely that their owner would be able to, once unified, project power to all other parts of the region (thanks also to its advantageous location). It was not inevitable that this person would be Elton Yudkow, or that it would happen in the early 24th century, or that the Celestial Empire would form as a result. Even if Waters had been killed in the exact same way and Elton had done the exact same things, it was not inevitable that he would crush Chu and Flores or do so as quickly and resoundingly as he did. It was not inevitable that he would break the back of the vassal rebels. For a few decades yet, in fact, we are not short of possibilities. We must always remember that history is at once a game of odds and an accretion of the small. Occasionally there will be fluke results. Often things get more likely with time, and occasionally some paths only have one necessary outcome. But that is not so all the time. If there is anything you take away from my work, it should be that. Elton was a genius, a brilliant leader. But there have been a hundred thousand other brilliant leaders and geniuses in the history of the world, and most of the rest had their heads rotting on pikes in the end.
But this is a history of this world and not of other worlds, and we must discuss what Elton did do. After the Exam Revolt, the North was not just unified on the map but unified in administration and intent, with efforts being made to unify it religiously. Yudkow was ready to push outward once again.
Hernandez had made quite a start to the war. King Kendrick Hernandez realized that a vigorous response was needed if his desperate situation was to be rectified. Instead of trying to protect all fronts, he struck at only one. Emulating to some degree Elton’s methods, Hernandez withdrew all his forces from the Socal front, knowing Abbas would take quite some time to gather his forces, and smashed Rubinstein enough for them to withdraw having gained nothing and lost time and men. Elton and Kendrick came to an understanding over Rubinstein. Elton was to seize all of it in exchange for state subsidies towards Hernandez in the ongoing war against Abbas (which was later amended to include Sinclair, who had been persuaded to join three months later). The war was swift, and Rubinstein was destroyed.
In discussing Elton’s rise, we neglect Kendrick’s. Historiographically, the difference is sharp (only six academic works have been published about Kendrick's life, as opposed to at least 1200 about Elton's). This is unfair. Kendrick was an extremely competent, important ruler, with comparable ambitions and interests to Elton (and was reputedly a kinder person) who happened to make one understandable mistake. Worried about overextension, he left Rubinstein to own all its lands and consented to a Yudkow takeover. Had he been bolder, had he reached more, there is a chance we would be speaking of the Celestial Empire of California headed by and linked inextricably with the Hernandez family. But Rubinstein fell, and, while the united armies of Sinclair and Hernandez were rampaging through Orange, Yudkow’s armies crossed the border into Hernandez-controlled Santa Cruz. By the time they frantically pulled back, it was essentially all over. One large battle was fought near Carmel, a crushing ambush in the hills. Abbas took the opportunity to push into Sinclair. By 2363, there were only two powers of note in California. Some Hernandez cadet branches remained independent in the southwest, but they were not to last long.
Some idea of the resulting Yudkow-Abbas conflict may be gleaned from this map. Abbas now had a long, awkward border, much of which they had newly acquired and were totally unfamiliar with. Elton had a much shorter front (albeit also in newly-conquered territory). Elton’s base of power was also much closer to much of the frontline. It is a testament to all of that that Abbas fought as well as they did. The war dragged on for eleven years, Elton consistently losing every battle of note that came his way (though often very narrowly) but still making slow, consistent gains. The resulting Peace of Los Angeles was in many respects a peace of exhaustion. Both sides were in utter disarray and operating at less than a tenth of the strength in which they both started. Still, if Elton came to a draw in the field, he achieved a modest victory at the negotiation table. Abbas would become part of the Celestial Empire but keep control over Socal as a King, retaining significant autonomy. The Sinclair lands were not to be included in that deal and would be administered by bureaucrats and vassals of Elton's choosing (a recognition of reality). Abbas was to retain full religious control "without molestation in any way" and Elton was to renounce his and his descendants' claims to the Imamate in perpetuity. It was a relatively poor peace for both sides, but it was peace, and it was badly needed. California was unified at last. Precariously unified, but unified all the same. Now a state had to be built, an infinitely more difficult task.
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Here we are, finally. an update. I can now get back to reading other AARs and responding to comments on this one without feeling incredibly guilty.
I do have a couple of questions, though. First of all, does this sound like a plausible peace, given the circumstances as presented? Second of all, I realize not all of my readers have written AARs before, and perhaps not any CK AARs, but if you have, do you have any tips on how to write battles? I realize this isn't a narrative AAR and my focus is never really going to be on wars, but I'm finding it really annoying to just go "side X won a bunch of battles" and leave it at that. Thanks to all for your lovely comments and to
@DensleyBlair for his ACA vote. Not that I'm fishing for those or anything. Those things are cool, and even if you're not voting for this AAR (or you hate this AAR with a burning passion for some reason, in which case why are you reading it?), you should vote.