What do I call my country?

Oh shit, that's nice! I'm totally gonna use some of that in this setting! Thank you very much! Also, as a pretty massive Byzantium fan, I think I'm gonna be using that blog a lot from now on!

I can see the basis for those names, too. Limes for the defensive lines the Romans had in the latter days of their empire, right?

Turkey

...

Sounds pretty cool OP, though I have one question - if this nation's eastern borders are basically a big chain of mountains and forts, but this is effectively half the previous empire, how did said empire straddle the mountains in the past?

Are there a few big passes, or perhaps some imperial roads and bridges that worked their way through the mountains?

I hope you're gonna have some kind of dedicated demonic invasion that causes the empire to buckle and require aid so the Kingdoms of man must go on crusade to save the bulwark.
Seems like a cool setting, OP

Crusades to help the Bulwark (and maybe claim back some of the lost empire beyond the mountains for themselves) could be very cool, just hope they don't go like the 4th Crusade, where instead of helping they'd be pillaging the Bulwark instead

That's a good question! I figure that the empire used to span further east than that, but after the cataclysm obviously all of the wide open spaces and fields and stuff east of this fortress chain were just abandoned over time because they weren't defensible.

So I reckon there'd be some big roads, bridges and other infrastructure that's existed in the past, but it's either been taken apart so the stone can be used in wall-building, or they just keep the roads but use them to funnel demons towards specially prepared killing zones and traps nowadays. What do you reckon?

I like this idea! I know that Crusader orders totally exist, and there are monastic orders serving the Church and the College of Magic respectively, and they have a big investment in reclaiming the world from demonic incursions. The Church's perspective is that the demons are punishment for the hubris of the First Mages, and that their penance is to wipe the incursion out. The College wants to destroy them in order to find out where they're coming from and study it. Both of them, however, agree that these things are a massive threat to the world at large, and need to be eradicated as soon as possible.

Maybe there USED to be passes but they caused landslides to cut them off or at least narrow them

Yeah, rolling rocks down or detonating them with gunpowder and naptha and just creating artificial walls, especially where it's impractical or impossible to build fortresses in the area, right?

Compromise. Study where they're coming from so we can pinpoint what specific type of hubiris they're a punishment for, and not do that again

At least the orders can compromise insofar as they agree "bugger these demons, then!"

Don't matter how it got done, the point is that it was done. Preferably with a priest present to try and bless the stones

Warding the hell out of the walls would actually be a great way to keep a lot of them out. Probably forces those demons to send bigger stuff against the walls to try and knock them down and break the wards. Probably need some siege weapons built on towers to counteract them.

Or big ass holes filled with holy water
You could have an order of priests who's ONLY job is to just make tons of that shit for the war effort

I think we've all forgotten a very important secret weapon.

call it the March of Hell
March = a fortified medieval border province run by a marquis/marcher lord equivalent in rank to a count or duke depending on territory size
and march of hell sounds badass

Sounds good - I always like huge "lost ability" style stuff from a previous in "inheritor" kingdoms, buildings and infrastructure that they lack the organisation, skill and workforce to replace, but yeah I'd imagine a lot of the roads and bridges would get taken apart for fortifications and just regular buildings.

Though a big pass-spanning fortress-city might be cool, if there was say one place that HAD to be defended or else whole armies could easily cross the mountains - probably not a capital city, but the lynchpin in the defences for miles around

Alternately "Armageddon" could work, since in the bible that's the plain where the last battle at the end of the world is supposed to take place and that's kinda what's going on in this kingdom

Idea linking to this Acqueducts that link to mountaintop springs cared by monks who bless the spring itself, basically an electric fence for the first big demon dumb enough to try and bash it down. Or you could try to have it funnel into a waterfall over the "Gate" of somewhere, so there's no gate (Ususally) just a mist of demon killing holy water

Greek Fire, oh my god. Yes, we've got to use that. Especially since i don't reckon there'll be a reliable way to stop it from burning out of control across the demonic ranks. Probably something about fire is absolutely horrific to them, given the old trope about fire doing a lot to purge the hell out of some demons.

Oh shit that's a nice idea. I'm totally going to use that, just because of the sheer effect that'd have. Especially if you could just make it look like the end of The Hunchback of Notre Dame where all of that molten metal just spills out around the cathedral. Hell, could probably even try and flood minor passes in this way indefinitely.

I figure that one inspiration for this might be Hadrian's Wall, and in that case some of the forts along the wall itself eventually grew up into proper towns and cities. If you need to keep armies stationed at the walls indefinitely, you're going to end up needing permanent housing across the entire border, so I imagine that a few settlements sprang up into fortified cities from that need alone.

Add in an order of priests/monks who's main deal is to just bless as much water as possible and you're in business.
I'd imagine that this place would be ridiculously holy by the by, with pretty much everyone at every level of society being a cleric of some degree

Honestly, if it was that important, it probably would become the de-facto capital city.

I think I'm gonna have to agree with you. Honestly I could see a pretty big monastery network there as well, to keep the souls of the soldiers pure and to keep the walls themselves blessed and warded against the interlopers. There's probably so much divine providence that the wall's outer edges are just glowing with bright gold light at this point, keeping the valleys beneath them illuminated.

I was thinking stuff along the lines of like, EVERYONE in the city being a cleric. every damn thing from the houses, to the weapons, to even the food you eat is blessed or holy in some way

A proper fully clerical city? That would be incredible. Like a city-sized abbey or monastery totally dedicated to housing clergymen and priests and suchlike. Honestly, something built up in that gothic or eastern Orthodox style would be amazing at that scale, right? Make the Hagia Sofia look like absolute childsplay.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking

I'd say the capital doesn't want to be somewhere that's regularly under siege by massive demonic armies

Presumably not everywhere is so well warded, but yeah, around a fortified monastery-city you might have so much holy energy that it glows - call it something like "the Shining Bastion"

How well they get along with mages, Crusader orders and the kingdom's forces, seeing as all of them are garrisoning (and occasionally sallying out into the old empire) might be good for intrigue

Limes was basically any "border wall", whether it was a 3 feet fence or a legit wall like Hadrians.

also switch state name from Byzantine to maybe Rhomaion? :^)

The capital better be called the City of the Underworld's Desire.

Well, historically, Caucasus mountains were and its gates were owned by Georgian Kingdoms, that were sort of allies with Rome and Later Byzantium, but at occasions those Kingdoms threatened the Empire by opening the way for nomads to flood and pillage its provinces, so it was also a strong leverage against them.

So my idea is that you could make the Eastern border to be owned by powerful Princes that hold off the demons. These Princes are strong, largely independent players and have serious means to pressure the central government. You can also have several traitorous princes who plot against the empire to open the gates and allow controlled invasion for their private interests. This can make the setting more intriguing. Emperor doesn't know whats worse: Demons, or Princes who can allow Demons to invade when they desire so.

Nah, if anything the capital should have a relatively normal name... for a city in the Old Empire.
It's not the biggest fortification on the marches, or the monastery-city, it might even be "behind the lines", nearer the country's western border but it's the nerve centre of all the defences and it sees itself as the legitimate successor to the Old Empire (even if other kingdoms on the western side of the mountains have a better claim), and as such acts like it is one - same as if you asked anyone from Constantinople, for centuries they would say that they're Roman.

Not formally, but informally, same as Constantinople.

>for centuries they would say that they're Roman
Greeks left in Turkey are still called 'Romans', the term has survived well over a millennium.

Well that was formally "Roman" for a long time as well, courtesy of the splitting and Justinian's later efforts, but I agree that it should mostly be an affectation - everyone else knowing them as the Bulwark kingdom or whatever.

I kind of like the idea that their capital wasn't all that important before the collapse, maybe a provisional capital or something, if it's not too far from the other end of the Big Pass, but with the eastern empire falling to demons they kind of big it up, and people sometimes go along with it because of the job they do, but every so often one of the other inheritor kingdoms based around one of the Old Empire's bigger cities in the west reminds them that they used to be kind of shit.

That's giving me some EU4 flashbacks from when I was trying to play the poor defenceless li'l Byzantines. Wish I had an impassable chain of forts back then...

Just use a byzantine name, like one of the themes:
>Boukellarion
>Kephallēnias
>Kibyrrhaiotai
>Lykandos
>Opsikion
>Optimàtōn
>Sebasteia
>Neokastra

And if you want some additional info you could give a try to primary sources such as The Alexiad or The Wars of Justinian. If you want a secondary give it a try to The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire

That would be pretty amazing, actually. Probably also means that vassal states or dukes or the local princes could be corrupted by various demons to try and convince them to open the way to the empire itself. I wonder how they'd feel about the Emperor's insistence on sending a boatload of clerics to supervise them...

Yeah, the story here goes that, during the cataclysm, the empire got absolutely torn to shreds. The ritual to destroy that god actually happened in a lab in the capital city, and consequently the entire city just vanished who-knows-where, leaving a vast crater in its place (which has since turned into a lake over hundreds of years, naturally). It caused a lot of shit to happen, namely to fossilization of magic underneath the earth, the transformation of millions of creatures, sentient and otherwise, into trolls, giants and other monstrosities, and brought wild magic into the world. This place is the last bastion of the old empire, save for some subterranean or hidden towns populated by monsters who used to be Imperial citizens, still carrying on a twisted parody of classical life. This empire, though, is still really powerful by the standards of the day, and I bet that there would be a city like Constantinople to act as its capital (though I kind of want to change up the hippodrome to something even fuckin crazier when it comes to the races they watch). It would probably be a very big city built probably west of the Big Pass, into which all of the empire's trade flows. After all, in a place rife with crusades and war, there's always a great deal of commerce, especially since it's in the interests of every nation to keep these guys alive. To be honest, I don't even know what I should call the old empire. Maybe Rhomaion as the guy above said, and that's probably still how a lot of them identify themselves.

It probably was a pretty minor city, but due to its position, I bet it got real popular real quick.

Those names are all Greek to me!

Still, that's actually a good call, and I love it when folks link me to some nice historical sources, too. I'll definitely give those a look. Perhaps my uni has them available.

These names definitely seem to have the right stuff, though. Sound nice and eastern and out there for a big empire like this, and I can also turn the names i don't use into Thema. Thanks!

>Those names are all Greek to me!
Well, Byzantium / ERE was kinda Greece plus.

Actually no, Hellenization happened during Palaeologus dynasty.
Before that it was mix of Greek and Latin and before Herakles, it was completely Latin.

>Perhaps my uni has them available.
If you don't mind reading books on the screen you can get'em here

b-ok.org/book/931426/dc8a13
b-ok.org/book/2565745/90f2b0
b-ok.org/book/1444993/2235c3

And if you get bored and want even more info you could try searching some of the books named in The Grand Strategy, they ought to give some insight in the inner workings of the empire along with ideas for plot hooks, quests and characters

Definitely sounds like there's plenty of issues for the Emperor: not only are there near-constant attacks on his lands by demons (and if the biggest fortresses falls pretty much everything is fucked), he's got states to the west that don't really respect his position as successor (unless they're trying to make a crusader state in the demon lands, in which case it's all 'please spare some forces oh rightful Emperor'), he's got to rely on his princes to hold some of the forts, who may have ambitions of their own (and may make deals with demons), he's got crusaders, mages and priests, all with their own ideas about how to defend the empire and who don't get on, as well as usual ruling stuff like food, trade and diplomacy

And if the Emperor looks like a weak and incompetent leader everyone's perfectly willing to start a civil war to get someone else on the throne, because you can't let rot set in with demons at the gates.

There more you know. Thanks.

Looks like I've got some reading to do. I found The Grand Strategy in my uni's library, so I'm going to see about picking that up and using it as a jumping-off point for other reading. I think that'll be really useful, especially since the Byzantines are so unknown in a lot of standard fantasy tropes that I can introduce characters taken wholesale from history.

This. If stupid naming conventions annoy you convert it into another language and use that name.

T'was a pune, or a play on words!

Yeah, seems like the Emperor is going to have his work cut out for him. The College of Magic (separate from his own
Imperatoria Auctoritate Magis) and the west in general see the empire as useful but ultimately doomed, the Church has a lot of influence over the running of the country due to their necessity in keeping the place warded and blessed, and he's got to keep the empire in the black. Not to mention that some folks in the west believe they would do a better job ruling the empire with its huge manpower, farmland, silk and fossilized magic reserves. The expense of keeping a professional army for both border defence and internal policing must be astronomical, but at least some of it can be paid for by the capital's important trade route position, and money from the races and stuff.