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Art by Anna Khudorenko and loosely based on 'Don Luis' by Jacob Ferdinand Voet and one of the loading screens in Europa Universalis IV.

The sergal species is the creation of Mick Ono and Kiki-UMA and are part of the Vilous setting.

This is an alternate history based off of a modded Paradox mega-campaign, so it's not going to be very realistic or academic, but I nevertheless endeavor to make it somewhat believable and interesting.

Content Warning: Religious Violence, Colonialism, Imperialism.

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Following King Jadak's baptism in 926 AD, the Kingdom of Sagaria Christianized and modernized at a remarkable pace. This was largely thanks to their communal and meritocratic social structure, which allowed them to easily adopt and spread new ideas throughout their society.

The sergals’ natural speed, mobility, strength, and endurance made them excellent soldiers, being famously able to outrun and outmaneuver light cavalry with ease. In 1021 AD, Europe got to witness just how powerful Sagaria and its military had become when Pope Innocentius IV requested that Queen Sifel I depose King Thomas of France. At the time, France was one of the greatest powers in Europe and considered to be second only to the Byzantine Empire. The Sagarian armies of Sifel I crushed the French military, and they did it easily. By the time Queen Sifel I had fulfilled the Pope’s request, France had shattered into several smaller kingdoms and duchies. This event ushered in the Sagarian Golden Age.

Having seen just how powerful the Sagarian military was, rulers throughout Europe sought to acquire their own sergal armies. Some provided immigrant sergals with land in exchange for military service, whereas wealthier rulers simply hired Sagarian mercenaries. Seeing the demand and wanting to offset their military expenditures, the sovereigns of Sagaria decided to rent out their armies. This turned out to be even more successful than anticipated, as Sagaria was not just offsetting the cost of its armies, but was actually making a good profit.

The Catholic Church sought to use Sagaria’s military supremacy to fight its religious enemies, they launched several crusades, primarily against the Muslim world. Sagaria’s sovereigns and commanders led each and every one of these crusades to victory, and brought the lion’s share of the loot back home with them. Between this and renting out its armies, Sagaria grew to become incredibly wealthy, and its rulers used this wealth to foster culture and learning.

In addition to serving as the sword and shield of Christianity, sergals came to be viewed as especially pious. This was because they possessed a highly communal mindset, a strong inclination for optimism, as well as an almost supernatural intuition. Because of these qualities, their holy men and women appeared to their human counterparts to have an incredibly strong connection to God, and as a result many of them ended up becoming cardinals, Popes, and saints.

Following its purchase from Sweden in 1107 AD, the Mecklenburg region was settled by sergals who founded Clan Edutirou. It did not take them long before they realized that Mecklenburg’s Baltic coast to the north, close proximity to where the Baltic met the North Sea, and its connection to the Elbe river made their clan perfectly situated for mercantile endeavors. Thanks to the sponsorship and investments made by the Sagarian sovereigns, the Clan of Mecklenburg rapidly developed into the dominant mercantile power in the Baltic.

As its wealth grew, the Mecklenburg Clan expanded into the North Sea. Only 50 years after being founded, Clan Edutirou controlled an extensive trading network throughout the northeastern Atlantic. They purchased coastal land all over Northern and Western Europe, where they founded trading cities and settled new sergal clans loyal to them.

Following the fall of the Byzantine Empire during the infamous Third Crusade, the Mecklenburg Clan seized the island of Crete in order to gain a strong foothold in the Mediterranean. The sergals of Crete eventually grew too powerful for Clan Edutirou to control, and in 1209 AD the Cretan Clan broke off from them, although they still remained part of Sagaria. From then on, The Mecklenburg Clan was forced to deal with the Cretans as partners and potential rivals, but this wouldn’t last.

The Mecklenburg Clan and the Clan of Crete became collectively known as the Mercantile Clans, and thanks to the incredible wealth they were bringing in, Sagaria grew increasingly more urbanized. However, it also grew more corrupt as the Mercantile Clans used their power and influence in order to further and protect their own interests. As they undermined the meritocratic system that had served Sagaria so well, the Kingdom’s leadership grew weak, thus ending its golden age.

The Mercantile Clans launched their greatest undertaking in the mid-14th century. After acquiring the Sinai Peninsula from the Papal States, in large due part to the sizeable sergal population who had settled there following the Fourth Crusade, they invested an enormous amount of resources and manpower to construct a flat, 7.3 meter wide paved stone road connecting the Mediterranean with the Suez Gulf, intended to serve as a highway for trade goods. One of the local sergal clans, Clan Felan, was given control of Sinai. Subordinate to the other Mercantile Clans, Clan Felan nevertheless received everything they needed to build a massive fleet of wagons and merchant ships so that they could transport trade goods in bulk from the east to the coast of the Mediterranean.

However, the ambitious plans of the Mercantile Clans had to be put on hold when the Black Death began to spread like wildfire throughout Europe, West Asia, and North Africa in 1345 AD. As it turned out, sergals were completely immune to the deadly plague, and although many sergals outside of Sagaria were killed by mobs of humans looking for scapegoats, the Mercantile Clans benefited immensely from the calamity. All of their human rivals, such as Genoa and Venice, were significantly weakened by the Black Death, and the Mercantile Clans took the opportunity to fill the void left by them. Once the plague had passed, the Mercantile Clans of Sagaria were unquestionably the dominant trading power in the known world. They even managed to persuade the Pope to grant them a monopoly on all maritime trade east of the Mediterranean.

With the Black Death behind them, the Clan of Sinai set up trade routes to East Africa, Arabia, Iran, and India. As Clan Felan brought in huge amounts of spices to Europe, the Mercantile Clans and Sagaria as a whole grew exorbitantly wealthy. However, Clan Felan saw only a small fraction of this wealth, as they were not permitted to sell the goods themselves, only deliver them to the northern ports of Sinai, where Mecklenburg traders gave them their payment and loaded the goods onto their own ships. In 1372 AD, the Clan of Sinai attempted to defy the Mecklenburg Clan, who responded by bribing a Sagarian army to occupy Sinai and butcher its Clan Matriarch and her family. Clan Felan did not dare defy them after that, and instead sought to maximize the flow of trade goods in order to increase their cut of the profits.

In 1441 AD, the Clan of Sinai purchased a substantial plot of land on the southeastern coast of India from the Maharaja of Tamilakam. And in 1444 AD, they established a sergal colony there, thus setting the stage for a new era of trade and colonialism. Clan Felan would later ask the sovereign and commanders of Sagarian to provide them with armies to help protect and expand their holdings in the east. In exchange for this, the Clan of Sinai would found well-maintained colonies for their combat veterans in the eastern territories. This arrangement proved highly successful, and it allowed Clan Felan to expand not just throughout India, but further east. By the mid-17th century, Sagaria ruled over the vast majority of India and the East Indies, as well as Taiwan, the Nansei Islands, and Jeju Island.

While Sagaria was conquering and colonizing the east, Sweden was doing the same in the west. Ever since the discovery of the Westlands, Sweden had become one of many European powers vying for control in the New World. Sagaria and Sweden had almost always had a good relationship with each other, and when gold and silver began to flow into into the latter's coffers, the Matriarch of the Mecklenburg Clan negotiated a trade deal with them. As the Mercantile Clans needed bullion to trade with China, they offered to sell their trade goods at a reduced price if Sweden agreed to sell them 80% of all gold and silver extracted from their Westland colonies. The Swedes agreed to the arrangement and the two kingdoms benefitted immensely from it.

The portrait above is of Lushia Elescar Felan, the Matriarch of the Sinai Clan from 1633 to 1674 AD. At the time of her accession, the clan was still subordinate to the Mecklenburg Clan, despite controlling vast amounts of territory in the east. They were not actually permitted to sell their trade goods in the west, and instead had to deliver them to Mecklenburg traders on the northern coast of Sinai who paid them only a tiny fraction of their worth. In addition, the Mecklenburg Clan's proximity to the Sagarian capital meant that in addition to their wealth, they also had much more political influence compared to Clan Felan. Lushia sought to change this. She took advantage of the growing discontent among the military commanders stationed in the eastern territories. In Sagaria, the commanders held a great deal of political power as they were the ones who appointed the sovereign and kept them on the throne, and they typically chose one of their own for the position, which ensured that the ruler of the Kingdom saw to their interests. However, in practice it was only the commanders stationed in Europe who could exercise these powers, as those in the east were simply too far away from the capital to exert their influence, and thus the sovereign served only as the represenatative of those in the west. Lushia suggested that Sinai be made the center of economic and political power in Sagaria, as it was the midpoint between its eastern and western territories. She convinced the eastern commanders to threaten to secede in order to force those in the west to accept this arrangement. At the time, the Sagarian military in the east had grown as large as that in the west, and so when the sovereign and the western commanders recieved the ultimatum, they saw no other option but to agree to it. Although they had been in the pocket of the Mecklenburg Clan Matriarch, the commanders of the west turned against her and forced her to grant the Sinai Clan a number of concessions, the chief one being control over the sales of eastern goods in the west. While the Kingdom's capital would remain in Sagaria proper, the city of Suez became an administrative center and the site where Sagaria's commanders would meet to appoint all future sovereigns. Next, Lushia used her control over the eastern trade to pit the Mecklenburg and Cretan Clans against each other, turning them into competitors and enriching Clan Felan at their expense. By 1650 AD, Crete and Mecklenburg had become subordinate to Sinai. Lushia further cemented her position as the head of the Mercantile Clans with the construction of the Suez canal, which was completed in 1671 AD, as it allowed her to consolidate their fleets into one.

If you want to learn more about this world, you can find my ongoing AAR of it here