NationStates

The largest that the Freehold of Ephyra has ever been is how it exists today, sprawling in excess of 5 million sq km. Last century territorial acquisitions in the Caucasus from Russia, solidifying control over tribal regions in the south-east Levant and Mesopotamia, parts of Arabia, and along the east and northern coast of Africa have broadened the horizons of Ephyral control since the end of the Great War from 1940-1946, marking the start of what is being called the Modern Period.

The end of the High Period, marked by social, moral, and territorial decline as the power of the Freehold which was previously dominant began to slip behind the rising powers of the New World and the ascendance of the Russian Empire. Many mark the start of the decline with the Russo-Ephyral Wars of the late 18th century, during which the Ephyral access to fresh slaves brought by Tatar raiders through allied states in the Crimea was crushed with the Russian assault and destruction of the most prominent Selian colonies located in southern Ukraine. Ephyra's Tatar allies also suffered heavy defeats and as the concept of the nation-state spread, failed to ever regain their nomadic raider preeminence.

A similar fate befell the western slave trade, as Ephyra's own corsair ships and allied pirate and privateer vessels began to be outpaced by the growing might of the navies of the New World, specifically designed to counter the slaving threat of Ephyra. Most raids took place at sea, with ships held at ransom and if none was offered or failed to meet the demand, crew and passengers would be taken and sold at auction into slavery. This eventually culminated in a war led by the Republic of Washington against allied north African states supported by the Freehold, a war which saw Washingtonian victory and the end of Ephyra's economic domination.

Provinces rebelled or were given client status to form buffers, and Ephyra's entry into the industrialised world was later, less complete, and by the time of the Great War, found itself at a major disadvantage, with the only factors stopping the Russian advance from penetrating into Selia itself being the mountainous terrain and the fortification of the defenders. Allied supplies and mass-focus on industrialisation in urban and surrounding areas however enabled the Ephyral to turn the tide in the last several years of the war, pushing deep into Ukraine, and ending the war significantly stronger than it had entered. In the following decades it asserted its rights and claims to certain previously held but lost territories as well as new ones, conquering historically allied states and new areas.

The Freehold of Ephyra is currently therefore at the zenith of its power. However, historically it was just one nation or state amongst many of the broader Selian culture, an idea now synonymous with Ephyra as it rules all of Selia and most ethnic Selians, but historically did not do so and competed for power against other states. One of these states was Arconia, a kingdom in the north whose name now lends itself to a province of the modern Freehold. Arconia and its king, Anaksagon III, are renowned for creating the largest culturally Selian state in all of history, spanning some 8 million sq km at its height. This major addition was achieved through the conquest of the Persian Empire and its territories.

The empire founded however did not survive long after its own foundation, and lived on instead through its successor states. Ten years after the completion of the conquest, the ever more unstable king Anaksagon III died. Fearful of his sons being similar in nature to the dead king, Anaksagon's former companions and generals established a fragile regency, and began battling politically for control over the empire. Marriages, alliances, and coalitions were made against some members of the companion council, and war broke out in the years following the old king's death. These wars solidified the existence of distinct successor states and the permanent end to the Arconian Empire, but introduced a new age of Selianisation and cultural dominance across the Near East.

The Freehold's tactic of Selian unification was the idea of a shared history of the Selian people under the new Ephyral identity. The Ephyral state embraced the history of Arconia and treated its legacy as its own, and most importantly as its birthright. The patterns of conquest of the early Freehold mirrored that of the Arconians, and even today, attitudes remain of an inherent Selian right to conquer the world.