The Totian-and-Kitalan War, The Totian Schism
There was seemingly no end in sight for the raging war between the Totians and Kitalans.
To make matters worse, politics began to worsen within the Imperial ranks of Totian leadership. Many years earlier, Emperor Alec had promised to, when the time came, hand his Throne to his biological son: Alec II. However, such a promise was envied by Bryan, Emperor Alec's stepson, who believed that the second marriage gave Bryan's family priority over such matters. To compromise with the ordeal, Alec gave Bryan the title of Frontier Legion General for an area extending to the Moorlands in the present-day Great North. Bryan took advantage of this and began to exercise his new powers independently, setting his own laws and policies across those lands. To prevent a coup, Alec instilled five other Legions to cover the remaining areas of the Empire. By the late 800's BCE, there were eleven such Legions. Nevertheless, Bryan continued to bend but not break his loyalty to Emperor Alec as a superior authority. When the war began with the Tahns, which would eventually lead to the war against Kitalos, Alec summoned Bryan to send a large part of his Legion to the battlefield in the South. Knowing Alec's intent, Bryan stated that he would only do so if promised Alec's place instead of the legitimate heir, Alec's son. Alec was opposed to this; so he sent Zacharias and his Legion instead, leading Bryan to hold a grudge against Imperial authority.
In 799 BCE, the Totian people were unhappy with the ongoing war. Such a conflict was leading to an increase in taxes; and travel restrictions in the South were implemented. In this environment, Bryan came forward with the idea that his rise to the Imperial throne would mean the end of the war with a Totian victory, heralding the return of peace and prosperity. Knowing that he would have to fight a bloody conflict to attain such a level of power, Bryan wasted no time rallying and recruiting common peoples in the streets of the Totian capital. In October of that year, Emperor Alec died of a sudden illness; and it was not discovered until much later that an assassin working for Bryan had tricked Alec into consuming a lethal dose of "poison honey." The Imperial government named Alec II to be the next Emperor. However, on the night before his inauguration, he too was assassinated, this time by another unknown assassin who slit his throat. Over the next five days, the city of Totia erupted into chaos, with factions fighting each other. In the end, Bryan won against the divided opposition and declared himself the Emperor. He immediately sent a messenger to inform Zacharias, loyal to the late Emperor Alec, that he had been relieved of his position.
It was December of 799 BCE before Zacharias received this message. However, instead of obeying the orders of Emperor Bryan, a man with whom Zacharias had great distaste, Zacharias proclaimed himself Emperor of Totia, establishing the city of Mauros (present-day Egdir) as the temporary capital of the Empire until the city of Totia was recaptured. In March of the following year, Emperor Bryan sent two Legions to dispose of Zacharias and his forces. When these Legions arrived to the battlefield in May 798 BCE, they slowly made their way along the coast of the Inland Sea before being stopped by a bulk of Zacharias' defenses in the Sea's Southwest corner. However, in September, they launched an assault "punch" and gained the Northern half of the Chemkan Mountain range. Zacharias, wanting to concentrate his forces on the growing threat from the North, set out for Kitalos in the hope of forming a peace treaty.
In January 797 BCE, after four long months, Zacharias arrived in the white pearly landscape of Kitalos, accompanied only by two escorts. After a week of discussions, he and the Kitalan Council signed a compromise, which stated that if Kitalos and its allies ended the war against Zacharias' forces and fought alongside him in the war against Bryan in the North, that Zacharias, who would rule as the Emperor in Totia, would ally with Kitalos and their allies against other hostile forces.
Zacharias returned to Mauros in April 797 BCE to find the city under siege; Bryan's forces had swept the Southern territories in Zacharias' absence. However, Zacharias had received a message about this far enough in advance that he found a hiding place from the enemy. It was from here that he secretly recruited enough people and harnessed enough resources that, in the following September, he launched an assault powerful enough to break the siege and push Bryan's forces back as far North as the St. Eschel River. Bryan's Legions rivaled the assault in February 796 BCE, reclaiming territory up to the river of present-day Jo Reneed, where a stalemate boundary formed.