The latest edition of the faction iconography I designed for The Akbarid Dynasty, the ruling clan of The Caliphate of Khashabar in my low-fantasy world, as well as an illustration of a desert cavalryman I originally retouched to feature the colours of the faction iconography I designed for The Akbarid Dynasty of The Caliphate of Khashabar. Both this faction iconography and this associated design are artworks I originally designed for a low-fantasy world of my original conception with technology equivalent to the late medieval and renaissance periods. Where formations of heavily armoured and mounted aristocratic knights in either suits of full plate armour or heavy coats of chainmail fight alongside professional armies of pikemen and matchlock musketeers. Where medieval-style stone castles are gradually being outsourced in favour of both lavish country estates and devoted military fortifications, or “bastions,” due to the technological advancements made in artillery design. And where fledgling nation-states in the form of kingdoms and empires look beyond the great oceans and the frontiers of the known world in search of even greater wealth and territory. In context to the lore of my low-fantasy world, The Caliphate of Khashabar is the single largest state in the entirety of “The Known World,” as strictly and traditionally defined and interpreted by the clergy of The “Conservative” Church of The New Gods, as well as the nonconformist preachers of the myriad “Reformed” and “Dissenter” Churches of The New Gods. Although technically not part of “The Civilized World” proper, both the Conservative clergy as well as the myriad Reformed and Dissenter preachers have come to a general consensus that the Erizen and Ashuryan tribes meet the standards of “civilized” peoples, despite subscribing to a strange and bizarre religion devoted to the worship of a single “omnipresent, omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity” as opposed to the one or more canon pantheons of deities more popularly worshipped throughout the civilized world, with each deity within the canon pantheons of The Old Gods and The New Gods governing a specific sphere or aspect of the human and/or natural world. This general assumption by the clergy of The Conservative Church of The New Gods, one that was later generally shared by the nonconformist preachers of the multitude of Reformed and Dissenter Churches of The New Gods, is based on the hard-earned, worldly knowledge acquired during the many historic “errantry wars” or “crusades” officially prosecuted and overseen by the sanctioned authorities of The Conservative Church of The New Gods in previous epochs of the history of The Civilized World. In the centuries following the gradual collapse of “The Romulan Empire,” or “The Empire of Mankind Primus,” at the hands of tribal Teutogen, Norscan, and Moravian invaders. Merchants, emissaries, and adventurers from the multitude of barbarian kingdoms carved out from the neglected remnants of The Empire of Mankind Primus have observed the magnificent, if not seemingly decadent, opulent, extravagant, perhaps slightly hedonistic cultural, technological, economic, industrial, and civilizational prosperity enjoyed the cultures and states within The Caliphate of Khashabar. Such was the degree of civilizational prosperity enjoyed by the peoples of The Caliphate, since it’s original founding by The Erizen and Ashuryan tribes autochthonous to the Khashabar heartlands, that the so-called “Civilized World” had not seen this same degree of prosperity and civilization since the mythical “golden age” of classical civilization enjoyed by the long forgotten dynasties of Romulan Imperators of The Empire of Mankind Primus. By the time that The Caliphate had expanded to the northern frontier of The Mazovian Plains, the multitude of barbarian kingdoms that formed during, and in the wake of the eventual collapse of Classical Romulan Civilization and The Empire of Mankind Primus had formed, or otherwise “amalgamated,” through a combination of petty conquest and diplomatic coercion into the nascent forms of the contemporary states of “The Civilized World,” as traditionally defined and interpreted by both the ecclesiastical and monastic clergy of The Conservative Church of The New Gods since it’s original founding by The Romulan Imperator Cassadorian the Great during his “Cassadorian Reforms” formally decreed in the wake of “The Enochian Heresy” that culminated in the expulsion of Saint Enoch the Sufferer and most of the surviving clergy of The Church of The Old Gods to the bleak, unforgiving wastes of The Vylkova Badlands, Where Saint Enoch the Sufferer and his clerical and lay followers would find new political allies and religious converts in the Gospodar warchief Rurik Vojvodin as the founding head of House Vojvodin and first Prince of Rus’skaya. Following news of The Caliphate of Khashabar’s incursion into Die Kurpfalz on the northernmost frontier of “The Empire of Mankind Secundus,” as it was called since the official coronation of the new “Emperor of Mankind” by Archpatriarch Demetrius IV to Prinz Heinrich Von Nymphenburg, Archpatriarch Ptolemeus II as 201st Bishop of Romulus and head of The Conservative Church of The New Gods publicly and officially prosecuted the first “great crusade” or “errantry war” against the monotheistic infidels from The Caliphate of Khashabar, who had “unlawfully subjugated and oppressed the pious and devoted worshippers of The Canon Pantheon of The New Gods who had peopled The Mazovian Plains northwest of The Empire Secundus since time immemorial.” The site he chose for the official, church-sanctioned prosecution of the first great crusade against The Caliphate of Khashabar and the monotheistic infidels that worshipped the so-called “One, True god,” known as “Arua” to The Erizen tribes and as “Eo” to The Ashuryan tibes as the founding cultures of both The Caliphate of Khashabar and “The Faith of The One, True God,” was The Morceaux Valley in The Kingdom of Aquitaine, where Galloys Lafleur as the mythical first King of Aquitaine and the maternal progenitor to House Williamson officially embraced The Faith of The New Gods following a prophetic dream revealing both his divine heritage to Shelyn as the patron goddess of love, beauty, art, music, poetry, drama, the grape harvest, and gardening, as well as his prophesized destiny to unite the multitude of Aquitainii tribes under his hereditary leadership as their first king and drive the Norscan warbands to the sea. The official prosecution of the first great errantry war against The Caliphate garnered attention from both aristocrats and commoners alike from throughout The Kingdom of Aquitaine, who assembled a mighty host that included tens of thousands of aristocratic knights atop their prized, thoroughbred warhorses and in their artificer coats of chainmail finely edged with gilded burnings under the collective leadership of feudal lords representing each of the great houses of Aquitainian nobility, including a Prince Vastorian Williamson as The Duke of Armagnac and the official representative of The Aquitainian Monarch and his dynastic household in this first, great “errantry war” to reclaim The Mazovian Plains from the worshippers of The One, True God. Throughout the centuries of bloody conflict and religious upheaval between the crusading monarchs and princes of The Civilized World and the sultans and sheikhs of The Caliphate of Khashabar that precipitated from The Caliphate’s initial expansion into The Mazovian Plains as well as the subsequent “first crusade” or “errantry war” as officially prosecuted by Archpatriarch Ptolemeus II at The Morceaux Valley in Aquitaine, both the crusading knights and sanctioned church authorities involved in all the great crusades and the errantry wars against The Caliphate have always acknowledged the seemingly advanced culture, technology, economy, industry, and civilization that had traditionally characterized the lands and the peoples within The Caliphate of Khashabar, as well as the truly endearing values, traditions, and morality that came to engender the worshippers of “Arua,” or “Eo,” as The One, True God of the Erizen and Ashuryan tribes, respectively. In terms of it’s historical and cultural inspiration, The Caliphate of Khashabar is loosely inspired by both The Islamic World and The Jewish Diaspora from the time of The Ummayad Caliphate to The Early Ottoman Empire, or both Islamic and Jewish civilization from late antiquity to the renaissance in European history, with The Erizen and Ashuryan tribes being roughly analogous to tribal Arabs and Jews of respectively.
