An Overview Map of Kaelaross

This map shows the four Empires at their height, just as the Wars between the Empires broke out.
In the Northeast is Toutus, the yellow border showing the extent claimed (not necessarily controlled) by the empire. 
In the Northwest is Bursia with the red border
In the Southeast is Bellenos with the magenta pink border. 
In the Southwest is Telthus, which has not been described yet. I'm thinking about leaving this only outlined for anyone else to fill in. 
The areas already detailed in this blog (the Kingdom of Teiglin, the Godsblood Straits and Walrus Freehold) are in the boxed areas on the west coast of Toutus.
In the south of Bellenos there is the region that contains Tekhumis the Desert Port. 
As can be seen from the map, the Empires, though great, did not cover the whole of the surface of Kaelaross - large areas are unclaimed. Some of this is uninhabitable wilderness, others dominated by barbarian tribes and a few places there are small, independent realms that refused to be dominated by any of the four empires.

Map of Bursia

This post follows on from Bursia - the Human Empire.
Unlike previous maps of Toutus and Bellenos, I have completely filled in the physical geography.

For ease of comparison the map is to the same scale as that for both the Bellenos and Toutus maps.

If I have the time and patience, I may detail each boxed region separately in a similar way to Toutus being split up into manageable regions such as Teiglin, Walrus Freehold, and the like.
The red dots are all city-states, though which ones have survived the Summoning and which have collapsed into ruin has not been decided yet. The three metropolises (previously over 100,000 inhabitants each at the height of the empire) are the only three city-states to be named on this map - None have survived the Summoning.

Notes about Bursia

This post is a follow-on from the  first post, Bursia, the Human Empire

Athletic and Gladiatorial Games

Sports and games were an important part of Bursian life. In the early days this was athletics, including running, javelin throwing, archery and wrestling. However, this evolved (degenerated?) into the far more brutal and bloody gladiatorial games, where humans (usually prisoners of war and condemned criminals) were pitted against monsters, wild beasts or each other. Since the Summoning, the surviving city-states do not have the resources to put on this sort of spectacle regularly, but every Bursian city has (or had) an arena or circus for sports and shows. This sort of bloodthirsty entertainment still ousts theatre and athletics out of the spotlight when there is a surplus of criminals or captured enemies.

Social Classes and Slavery 
Strictly speaking, there are no nobles or royalty in Bursia. Early during the age of city-states the last kings were overthrown. However, the Emperor has become a king in all but name. The most notable difference is that the bloodline is less important, as adopted sons and occasional elected Emperors demonstrate. Similarly, there are no aristocrats, but there are patricians - wealthy merchants, retired generals, political advisors and land-owners from whose ranks senators are elected. 

Social stratas were not tightly fixed, and there was some meritocracy. A talented labourer could become an artisan, an artisan skilled at business could become a merchant. A merchant good with social skills could become a patrician. A patrician with political nous could become a senator. And a senator who offers strong leadership when the Empire is in trouble could become the Emperor. Such social climbing would be unthinkable in Toutus.

Slavery has a history in Burisa - right through its early days of city states, republic and first empire, slaves were the principle hard labour force of the Bursian Empire, rowing galleys, working in mines, tilling the fields and providing the brute strength for construction. However, during the Age of Tetrarchs, the abolition of slavery became a matter of heated debate. In the following Tetrarch War, slavery and its abolition was at stake, and the victor of the war, Emperor Aurelius, abolished it in BY 564.
However, since the Summoning and the collapse of the Empire, some surviving settlements, even city-states, have re-introduced slavery, particularly those with an influx of homeless refugees. For those surviving settlements that have not done so, this is an affront to their values, and this could lead to war.

The Academies

The Academies were a vital part of Bursian life, and where city-states have survived the Summoning, they still play a role. Academies started off as schools, and still perform that function. They then developed into centres of learning and research – philosophy, law, history, nature and the like. Some of the greatest thinkers of the ancient world were attracted to the great academies of the larger city-states even before Bursia became a republic. Academies then started to include the study of magic, and mages joined the academies, particularly as the Republic grew and developed. During the first Empire and the Age of the Tetrarchs, the Academies and their scholars (including the mages) stayed politically neutral (and often neutral in alignment as well). However, with the Tetrarch War, Aurelius the Great persuaded the mages of the Academy to become the guardians of stability within the Empire.


Armed Forces
The armed forces of Bursia were organised into legions - self-contained armies about two or three thousand strong, with their own auxiliaries, baggage train, engineers and staff officers. The more recent legions were equipped with banded mail, large shields, javelins and short-swords, but older ones were kitted out with long spears, bronze armour (AC 6) and round shields. These legions saw action in many lands during the Wars Between the Empires, including defending the Bursian homeland. They were renowned for their tight formation and unflinching discipline, often staying silent while their enemies hollered and jeered. The legionaries themselves were all heavy infantry, but their auxiliaries were cavalry, archers and skirmishers, sometimes from different parts of the Empire, sometimes from totally different lands.
Before the rise of the Empire and during its early days, the legions were raised by each city-state. However, after a notorious civil war that nearly caused the end of the Bursian Empire, the legions were kept under strict Imperial control and were often composed of soldiers from different city-states in the same formation.

The navy relied mainly on galleys, powered both by sails and by oars (manned by slaves in the early days). These galleys were not good for wide open oceans (the rowers needed plenty of food and fresh water), but they were effective closer to shore where supplies were more available. The galleys were often more maneuverable when winds were slow.

Architecture
The Bursians were also great builders - whereas Toutus was renowned for its castles, Bursia built entire cities to precise architectural plans, with its well-known columned fronts, mosaic tiling and beautifully carved friezes, while sanitation was maintained with aqueducts bringing in fresh water, sewers disposing of foul water and bath houses where well-off citizens could stay clean and also relax and chat.

Religion

Religion was taken seriously, and magnificent temples were built, but the priests and clerics never had the same level of social or legal authority as in some places (such as Toutus, where the lawful churches give moral and spiritual support to the rulers).  There was also the tendency to worship neutral rather than lawful deities, as Bursia in general was more interested in prosperity and stability than morality or humaneness. Vought, Khazep and Partheusa were all popular, while the clergy of Sestarna and Chelmor complained too much about slavery and gladiator games.

Bursia - the Human Empire

In the west of Kaelaross, beyond the ocean that borders the western side of Toutus, there is Bursia, the Empire of Humans. For the most-part this racial monopoly is not intentional - humanoids and demihumans simply have not made it to the Bursian landmass in any great numbers. However, there is a streak of xenophobia that means that those humanoids who do make it to the shores of Bursia will not always find a warm welcome - at best they will find themselves treated as curiosities bombarded with awkward questions, at worst treated as non-sentient animals or invading aliens.

A History of The Empire of Bursia

From around -800 BY, humans established a number of nations and city states along the east coast, and until the Wars between the Empires they were gradually colonising westwards across the continent (a map of which is found here) - the further west you go, the less civilised Bursia gets. Cities have often been more important than wide areas of land (such as kingdoms and provinces) and Bursians will often identify themselves as belonging to a city or town rather than a region or kingdom. Cities have always had a level of government of their own, but in later years the city-states became more of a local government, overseen by the Imperial government.

There had been a few cities that were ruled by kings in the early years, but they were often overthrown by popular uprisings. From -205 BY to 0 BY, Bursia was a republic with elected senators from cities meeting in the capital Thoraxis. However, this was never entirely suitable, and when a crisis arose in BY 0 (several city-states wanted to secede from the Republic, forming a rival), the requirement for strong leadership meant that the first Emperor was chosen. The quality of Emperors has varied considerably - the good ones maintained the Empire and established good laws and financed great public works. The bad ones were notoriously despotic, tyrannical and whimsical and on occasions outright insane. The succession evolved from senators being elected as Emperors by their peers to Emperors making their sons senators and directing the senate to elect their sons, to Emperors choosing a worthy successor and adopting them as a son.

During the Bursian Civil War (BY 482 to BY 497) there was a rapid exchange of Emperors as generals seized the Imperial throne with their armies, and were then bloodily overthrown by rival generals. There were over 30 “Emperors” in this civil war, some of whom were murdered after only months in office.

This ended in the rather strange compromise of the Age of the Tetrarchs (BY497 to BY 561), where Bursia was split into four quarters, each ruled by a Tetrarch (effectively an Emperor of a quarter of the Empire). The Age of Tetrarchs collapsed into the Tetrarch War (BY 561-562) but ended when Aurelius the Great re-established the Empire as a whole once again, this time with the backing of the mages of the academies as well as the Senators.

This Second Empire, with the Emperor being backed up by the Senators and the Academies, proved quite stable and survived even through the Wars between the Empires up until the Summoning. Not even the mighty Bursian Empire could withstand the wrath of Bhael, especially after being weakened by the dreadful wars against the other empires. 


After the Summoning

The Bursian Empire collapsed along with Toutus and Bellenos during the Summoning. The chaotic god Bhael opened up numerous Chaos Portals in the middle of cities, and chaotic monsters flooded out, attacking other nearby settlements. It is interesting that hardly any of the chaotic monsters in Bursia are humanoid. Instead, the portals have connected to Planes of Chaos that include many human Chaotic cultists. Thus even the enemies of the Human Empire are humans, rather than humanoids.

The tendency to form society around a city has re-emerged after the Summoning - surviving settlements have formed into city-states, with smaller towns and villages becoming junior partners or vassals to larger, independent cities.

The Continent of Bursia is more than the Empire of Bursia. The Empire still had not colonised the western half of the landmass, and there are huge stretches of wilderness, particularly in the arid, dusty southwest beyond the Greycap Mountains. Not only are there wild beasts and monsters, but also human barbarians. It is interesting that there are no orcs, goblins, gnolls or other such humanoids in this wilderness - men can be just as brutal and savage, and the tribes of western Bursia were just as much enemies of civilization and order as any ogre or kobold.

The follow-on posts to this are Notes on Bursia and a Map of Bursia