(Under construction)

The Murinal Empire (Murinali: ''Masrephi Murinat'' [ma'ʂe.pʰi mu'ri.nat]) is the state controlling most of [[PM/Murina|Murina]], a tropical region of the [[PM/Southern Continent|Southern Continent]].  Its head of state is the Murinal Emperor, though in political matters the Emperor is largely a figurehead for his Grand Vizier; the Emperor's real cultural significance is as a spiritual leader. The Empire is made up of many constituent nations with their own laws and customs; many tributary states on the Southern coast of the continent acknowledge the suzerainty of the Empire.

The capital is Murinabaq, on the Western coast of Murina, in the heart of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_monsoon_climate|monsoon country]].

The Murinal Empire is named for the rat (Murinali ''murinat''). The keeping of fancy rats as pets in Murinia has a storied history. According to mythic history, when the Bhexidu conqueror Aghoor the Terrible conquered the city later known as Murinabaq, a particularly beautiful domestic rat was presented as a gift to him by the Matupaphu princess Matia, who begged him not to carry through with his plans to sack the city and carry its spoils to the mountains. As he was unfamiliar with the proper handling of the animal, the rat bit him, resulting in a fatal infection. In the ensuing power struggle among the invaders, Aghoor's nephew Tubarang came to power instead. Tubarang, evidently more sympathetic to the achievements of the lowland peoples than his uncle, did not sack the city. The city (and the Empire) were not named until much later, when a campaign of new construction under the Nasēsru saw the capital renamed in an allusion to the dynasty's claimed descent from the Matupaphu via Princess Matia.

== History ==
=== Prehistory ===
The Murinal civilization arose in the river valleys of the western lowlands of Murinia, at least 5000 years ''ante descensum''. Writing was developed independently by this Proto-Murinal civilization, diffusing outward from the Musatabhin river valley settlements, but the indigenous pictographic writing system was supplanted by one adapted from the Belite system completely. In fact, the old Murinal writing system is now a largely undeciphered script.

=== Classical Antiquity ===
The Murinal civilization came into its own around 900 AD, when the Musatabhin river valley civilization expanded by conquest and colonization to control the area known as Great Murinia. Its founding dynasty, the Matupaphu, were overthrown by Bhexidu mountain people in 740. However, the Bhexidu dynasty assimilated lowland cultural and political norms. In 517, the Padrāmu dynasty came to power, and oversaw the conquest of the Ithenian and Eghenhadine kingdoms of the south in 511 and 502 respectively. A devastating plague, which spread from seafarers, caused the collapse of the first empire in 318 AD.

The Second (and current, by their reckoning) Murinal Empire arose in 210 AD. Its center was again the Musatabhin river cities. Its founding dynasty, the Nasēsru, subdued the southern dominions and many tributaries who had broken away as part of the collapse of the first empire. They rebuilt the capital, renaming it Murinabaq in an allusion to the mythic history of the region, and attempted to create a distinct Murinal (''Murinu'') cultural identity for the Empire. Nasēsru conquests added the Northern Dominion to their Empire, and came into conflict with the Belite civilization that had taken root in South Bel. The war went poorly for the new empire, and its expansion was checked, for the time being, by the Belites at the Belande river. A peace was concluded in 172 AD and a productive period of cultural interchange began despite the rocky start. The new empire had only a weak scribal tradition, Murinal literacy having much diminished during the 318-210 dark age, and the much simpler Belite system of writing was adapted for the Murinali language.

=== Late Antiquity ===
In 312 PD, during the chaotic final days of the long-enduring Nasēsru dynasty, the Seven Prophets appeared. Their followers diverged from Murinali traditional religion to form the [[PM/Twofold Way|Twofold Way]]. The Nasēsru Emperor ruling in 359, heeding the council of his priests, attempted to suppress the new religion as heterodox, but this attempt came too late to have any hope of success. It did, however, result in the martyrdom of the three surviving Prophets. The Nasēsru were overthrown and replaced by the Makhanhad, a theocratic regime of hard-line Twofold Way believers which promptly set about persecuting the practitioners of other religions. In particular, the erstwhile royal family were strangled and posthumously impaled in Murinibaq.

Having apparently subdued opposition within the country, the Makhanhad launched the Second Belite War in 376. Pushing North and East of the River Belande, the Imperial army invaded South Bel. However, the conscription for the war was unpopular, leading to riots in the capital. Fearing revolution, the Grand Vizier, a eunuch named Zhrasen Raō, deposed the Makhanhad in a palace coup. The conspirators installed the sixteen-year-old daughter of Kohanr (one of the Seven Prophets) as Holy Empress Jīcia, progenitor of the Kohandrū dynasty. A hasty peace was made with South Bel, the envoys of the Empire successfully concealing the internal turmoil of their state and securing substantial territorial concessions in return for a one-time payment in specie and agricultural products.

Zhrasen, given the opportunity presented by a young and pliable head of state, established the Grand Vizier as head of the Murinali Imperial government. The hardliners of the Makhanhad having been disposed of in the coup, he enacted a pragmatic policy of religious toleration. This included preserving the temple endowments of the recently-annexed Belvestine Dominion. The vizier also promulgated an Imperial Rescript extending official toleration to the "Ardamarites" (i.e. to the Solar Religion minority of the Empire) and removed civil debilities from those practitioners of traditional Murinali religion who had refused to forswear making sacrifices to the god Mākena, an action forbidden by the Twofold Way. Unsurprisingly, some pious Chutu (Twofold Way believers) were disturbed by these developments.

In 414, a schism within the Twofold Way shortly after the death of Zhrasen Raō. A delegation of religious fundamentalists, including some supporters of the deposed Makhanhad, came to the capital with the expectation that Jīcia would reverse the religious policies of the deceased vizier, and possibly appoint one of their number, a priest named Memeran, to replace him. However, she did not, having apparently come to agree with her advisor's religious outlook. When Jīcia subsequently appointed Kamen Raō, a vocal supporter of Zhrasen's policies to the grand vizierate, the delgation left and traveled to the Eghanhadine Dominion. There, where the Makhanhad had its strongest support, they anathematized the Empress as an illegitimate impostor, and successfully fomented a rebellion. The rebellion continued through 416, before the Imperial Army brought the Eghanhadine Dominion to heel. Hoping to heal the wounds of the civil war, the government again pursued a policy of toleration. In return for submission in civic matters and their toleration of other forms of worship, the Eghanhadine rebels were allowed autonomy in religious matters within the Dominion. The autocephalous hierarchy of Eghanhadine Twofold Way emerged shortly thereafter, headed by Memeran, who came to be viewed as an Eighth Prophet by his supporters. The State Religion centered on the Holy Empress began calling itself the "Orthodox" Twofold Way to distinguish itself from the schisimatics.

In 540, a great earthquake and tsunami affected the West coast of the Murinal Empire, causing catastrophic loss of life. Disaffection with the disappation of late Kohandrū emperors lead to the fall of their dynasty, with it being replaced by the Neo-Padrāmu. The Neo-Padrāmu were noted for their piety, but allowed the remaining temporal power of the imperial throne to be lost to the grand vizirate. Within a few generations, the grand vizier had even gained the right to appoint his own successor, albeit requiring the approval of the Murinali grandees; this had previously been an Imperial perogative. During this time, the Empire also extended its hegemony North into lands that would later be occupied by the Eastern Throne of the Empire of Atsef.

=== Imperial Age ===
In the early Ninth Cetury, even as the foundation was being laid for the emergency of the Empire of Atsef, the Murinal Empire prospered. Imperial policy increasingly recognized the usefulness of Murinali sea power. Advances in shipbuilding were fostered by Imperial policy, and several new ports were built, including that of Dibi Rūn in 818. Trade greatly expanded, with the Imperial treasury underwriting the risk of maritime trade expeditions in exchange for a portion of the profits, and providing loans for ship construction.

Tiring of raids along its eastern frontier, the Empire invaded and subdued unruly tributary states and nomadic pastoralists in the Tesrek mountains and the Khaman desert, annexing these as the the Khamanian Dominion in 866. Peace on the eastern frontier was achieved not a moment too soon, because shortly thereafter, the Empire of Atsef's armies arrived in the far North of the Empire, demanding tribute and submission. The region never having seen such a large and technologically advanced army, they quickly received it from most of the local kingdoms, with tributary buffer states rapidly shifting allegiance to the Solar Emperor.

In 871, after years of smouldering territorial aggression, war officially broke out between the Murinal and Solar Empires, the nominal ''casus belli'' being the persistent refusal of Murinali envoys to acknowledge the Illumination of Emperor Atsef. The Murinal Empire found itself in an existential war for the first time in its existence, losing its Northernmost Dominion to the Solar Empire. The peacetime grand vizier, being a man of letters rather than the sword, managed the war poorly. The Solar Empire's armies pressed southward, overrunning the Northern Dominion and then reaching the heartland of Great Murinia, in 874. In 875, they laid seige to Murinabaq. Though the capital was prepared for a lengthy seige, the appearance of an unexpectedly large naval blockade caused the grand vizier to lose his nerve and decide to surrender. One of the Murinali military officers defending the capital, General Henset, got wind of this, and his elite guard assassinated the grand vizier and, with the backing of many of the granddees, demanded appointment to the vizirate. When the Emperor objected, he was forced to abdicate in favor of his nephew. Unfortunately, posessed of a very high opinion of his new spiritual power, the new Emperor insisted on accompanying his troops to sally out of the city and harass the besieging army. On one such excursion, he was shot by an arrow, and later died. This brought an end to the Neo-Padrāmu dynasty, but not to the idea of the Holy Emperor; the new grand vizier supported the claim of an Ithenian Orthodox holy man, Oxansōsri, to the throne, with the understanding that the new imperial dynasty would be purely spiritual and symbolic in its scope; all temporal power would remain with the vizirate.

The Murinal navy eventually drove off the fleet of the Empire of Atsef, and, drawing on the the fervor and charisma of the Emperor Oxansōsri, the vizier Henset Raō was able to raise large armies from the South and far-flung Chutu colonies on the Southern coast of the Southern continent. These relieved Murinabaq, the besieging army having lost much hope of success anyway with the defeat at sea. The Murinal armies drove them north without a major confrontation, until a devastating battle on the Iunde river, in which the invading army was almost totally destroyed. This had the effect of permanently checking the ambitions of Atsef in the region. The Murinali army attempted to follow up its victory and liberate the Northernmost Dominion, but a brief rebellion in the East and the arrival of a second Solar army, hitherto occupied in a war with South Bel, put them in the frame of mind to sue for peace. The official end came to the war in 890, after a long truce. A peace treaty broadly favorable to the Empire of Atsef was concluded. The Northernmost Dominion was retained by the Empire of Atsef, but Murinali trade would be allowed, their ships were permitted to continue to access the Middlesea through the straits of Baraath, and religious toleration for the Twofold Way in the Northernmost Dominion was secured. Makhi Dhrana was officially identified with the God of the Prophet Ardamar by the Imperial Temple, giving religious legitimacy and hence durability to this toleration. The Imperial Temple also became the form of the Solar Religion endorsed by the Murinali state, with Imperial Temple missionaries being allowed into the Murinal Empire to proselytise the local "Ardarmarites" but not the Chutu. For the most part, they did not persuade the Murinali Solar Templars to acknowledge the illumination of Atsef, though some did.

Emperor Oxansōsri, being a celibate priest and astetic, did not leave a natural heir. His succession was secured through a sexless "spiritual marriage" with the daughter of Henset Raō, Zretimi. Zretimi, despite her purported virginity, soon became pregnant, and bore a son, who would reign as Oxansōsri II after Oxansōsri's death. Among those that discount the miraculous, the parentage of Zretimi's son remains speculative. As Oxansōsri was, by almost all acounts, genuinely chaste, it seems unlikely he was the child's biological father. In any case, the Oxansōsru dynasty proved durable, and continued through natural means, any expectations of Imperial celibacy being shattered by Oxansōsri II, who took six wives and produced many princes and princesses.

=== The Division, and Maturity of the Empire ===
In the 960s, the tributary princes of Qīnrat and Pensahiīph became uncooperative with the Murinal Empire, refusing to send tribute and treating Imperial Envoys disrespectfully. Soon, these tributary states were in open rebellion, and seized Murinali ships and goods in port; the Prince of Qīnrat also holding their crews hostage in an attempt to improve his negotiating position. The Imperial Army crossed the Nūr Phes river and swiftly crushed all resistance in the territory of Qīnrat; its rebellious prince was taken to Murinabaq in chains and replaced by a Dominator appointed by the central government. Pensahiīph held out longer, but the Empire besieged its capital, employing gunpowder weapons in significant quantity for the first time. Though crude, they had sufficiently useful effects to enter the armamentarium and receive further development. The Prince of Pensahiīph fled the capital by a secret tunnel in 967, withdrawing into the Great Desert where he reportedly took refuge in an Ardamarite Monastery. His generals negotiated a surrender, and like Qīnrat, Pensahiīph  became a directly governed dominion of the Empire.

In 1070, many members of the Imperial family perished in a plague that struck the capital, and the throne passed to Memejansri II, who had been only fifth in the line of succession, which had been codified early in the Oxansōsru dynasty. Memejansri, who was the patriarch of a branch of the Imperial family living in the Eghanhadine Dominion and serving as hereditary Dominators, which had accepted the Eghanhadine rite of the Twofold Way. This was popular with their subjects, among whom that faith was predominant, but it made Memejansri totally unsuitable for the Imperial throne to the orthodox religious establishment of the capital. In the end, Memejansri was assassinated during his coronation by Ardamarite extremists who feared that he would restore the Makhanhad in keeping with Eghanhadine eschatological expectations and purge the Empire of minority religions. Some sources claim the high preisthood of the Orthodox Twofold Way was complicit in this, but that seems unlikely, because as a consequence of the assassination, the Imperial God-Tower was defiled with human blood and had to be destroyed and rebuilt.

Following the death of Memejansri II, civil war was threatened. Vying for the throne were Memejansri's adult daughter Rujai and an infant from a more distant, Orthodox branch of the family. Many Eghanhadine nobles, having forged alliances with the tributary states of the East through religious missions, were ready to prosecute Rujai's claim by force of arms. In the end, after only a few riots and skirmishes, a peaceful settlement was reached. The infant Xōbha would be come Emperor of a new dynasty, the Xōbhadu, and Rujai would become grand vizier, on the condition that she abjure the idea of reinstating the Makhanhad. She was the first woman to hold this position, which she successfully passed to her son, making the institution hereditary and, for several generations, occupied by believers in the Eghanhadine Twofold Way.

In 1115, the Empire of Atsef collapsed in an event known as the Division. The part of the Empire sharing a subcontinent with the Murinal Empire became the Eastern Throne of Atsef. Ambitious elements in the Murinali administration seized on the losses of Murinali merchants and banks in the chaos of the collapse as a pretext for invasion of the tributary buffer states separating the empires. The Empire annexed some of these, ostensibly to restore stability, briefly restoring the Northernmost Dominion, but found it unmanageable. In the end, its independence was restored when the Eastern Throne invaded, facing little resistance. Peace was restored in 1117, the inconclusive conflict being ended with a treaty that restored the ''status quo ante bellum'' except in relation to the tributary status of some minor principalities, who would pay their tribute to the Murinal Empire for twenty years as a compensation for the cost of "restoring stability" during the Division. 

=== Modern Times ===
The Empire fought a mercantile quasi-war with the Kingdom of Heghom in 1150, which secured the Empire's trading position in the Middlesea. Murinali ships were allowed to trade at Heghomic ports; this would last until the 16th century resurgance of Heghomic naval dominance. The Murinali banking system was made an Imperial monopoly after a financial crisis in the 12th century related to the recent invention of fractional reserve banking. Astute viziers recognized the potential of cultivating a financial industry under public auspices, and not only were services maintained, the system was expanded Northern Continent in the 13th century. Offices of the [[PM/Imperial Banking Trust of Murinia|Bank of Murinia]] opened as far North as Pustile and the Noromane by 1289. Hard currency was moved only regularly; the bank operated mostly using an advanced system of bookkeeping and codes. The use of codes allowed legers and correspondence to be transmitted by ordinary couriers without fear of tampering.

Increasing trade brought increased foreign cultural influence. In an attempt to contain this, the Empire limited ships from 'distant countries' - all but the Eastern Throne of the Empire of Atsef, the Murinali tributaries, and the Pagan Kensus - to designated ports: Dibi Rūn, Dib Omazrar, and the new trading city of Dibi Murinat, which was constructed in 1401 for this purpose. 

In 1617, the Patriarch of Pustile, Vestan, declared his Illumination. This was not widely accepted among the Ardamarites of the Empire; the minority Imperial Temple rejected the claim officially, and the other Solar Templars mostly agreed, some publicly anathematizing Vestan and his illumination. The Murinal Empire provided loans to the war against the Pustilian Illuminant in the late seventeenth century; when this war went poorly, many debtors defaulted. Furthermore, the Empire's bankers were expelled from the Aelian States, and vast quantities of specie seized. These events precipitated a financial crisis in the Empire, and the fall of the Xōbhadu dynasty in 1709, whose destiny had become quite intertwined with that of the Imperial financial system.

After a brief dynastic struggle, the Thadremu dynasty came to power, headed by a vigorous middle-aged emperor Thadramen. Thadramen was a respected cleric from an old priestly lineage of the capital; his ascent was bankrolled by the man he appointed as his grand vizier, Jiseenr Raō, a spectacularly wealthy merchant. Jiseenr effectively bailed out the Imperial Bank and the state treasury in exchange for a partial interest in the bank's profits for fifty years, a legally questionable maneuver countinanced by the grandees of the Empire only owing to the dire financial situation they were facing. Jiseenr put the financial house of the Empire in order, and negotiated a series of treaties with the Empire's debtors in which lucrative trading concessions were obtained in exchange for debt forgiveness.

At the present day, the second Thadremu emperor, Thadramen II, reigns. The elderly Jiseenr Raō is still grand vizier, though his succession is uncertain. The Empire has had an impressive economic recovery.

== Geography ==
[[attachment:murinia.png|{{attachment:murinia.png|Map of the Murinal Empire|width="400px"}}]]

=== Climate ===
=== Terrain ===
=== Ecology ===
== Politics ==
=== Political Subdivisions ===
The Empire is divided into five Dominions (''srebaqu'') and the ancestral homeland of the Murini, Great Murinia. Great Murinia is ruled (notionally) by the Emperor directly, whereas each dominion is ruled by an imperial vassal lord, whose title ''srebāt'' is [[PM/Translation Convention|translated]] 'Dominator.' The Dominions are the Northern Dominion (''Srebaq Abha''), Ithenian Dominion (''Srebaq Ithena''), Eghenhadine Dominion (''Srebaq Eghenāda''), Eastern Dominion (''Srebaqi Rūna''), Belvestine Dominion (''Srebaqi Belbhesa'') and Khamanian Dominion (''Srebaqi Khamana''). Some Dominions contain Imperial Cities (''Azraru Masrephā'') which are ruled by the Empire directly, rather than by the Dominator.

=== State Institutions ===
=== Military ===
=== Legal System ===
=== Foreign Relations ===
== Economy ==
=== Agriculture ===
=== Trade ===
=== Technology ===
The Murinal Empire has global preeminance in metallurgy, siege warfare, and pyrotechnics. Although its seafairing technology was once the envy of the world, it has been eclipsed in the Middlesea by the Kingdom of Heghom and the Maritimes. The Murinal fleet is still known, and feared, throughout the Southern Ocean, from the Pagan Kensus to the many tributary cities of the southern coast of the Great Desert. The Empire maintains an active policy of technological assimilation, rewarding skilled immigrants lavishly for technical secrets. The Empire has a vibrant tradition of plant and animal breeding.

=== Finance and Currency ===
The Murinal Empire's economy was originally based on silver, measured by weight, in common with most of the region. Presently, the main unit of currency is the "head" (Murinali: ''gāph''), named not for the image of the reigning Emperor on it, but for its weight equivalence to an idealized head of Murinal barley, 3.63 grams. The one-head coin is of a rounded square shape, about 14-15mm on a side. It is made of an alloy of about 90-95% silver, with the precise composition depending on the time it was minted and the source of the metal. Most of the balance is copper, which is the only alloying element added deliberately to Murinal coin silver. Murinal coins are rectangular in shape and made by casting. Larger coins have a hole at one end to facilitate putting them on a string for storage, and "string" (Murinali: ''sratat'') is a term meaning forty heads, i.e. 134 grams of coin silver. Prototypically, a string would be five 8-head coins, and historically, it corresponded to 10 days of wages (the working days in the  [[PM/Calendar|twelve-day week]].)

The Empire has a robust system of public banks. Lending money at interest has been a lucrative Imperial monopoly for centuries, and the Murinal banking system extends almost throughout the Southern Continent, and even north to Heghom and the Maritimes.

=== Magic ===
== Demographics ==
=== Population ===
=== Language ===
=== Ethnic Composition ===
== Culture ==
=== Religion ===
The predominant religion of the Murinal Empire is the [[PM/Twofold Way|Twofold Way]]. The orthodox Twofold Way is the state religion, but the Empire has long pursued a policy of religious toleration. There are substantial minorities of [[PM/Belvestianism|Belvestian]] polytheists and [[PM/Solar Temple|Solar Templars]], most of whom are members of Old Temple denominations and are collectively termed "Ardamarites" in the Empire. In the jungle and high mountain regions, indigenous animistic beliefs are widely practiced, including their literate expressions as Murinali Traditional Religion. In the Belvestine Dominion, taken from South Bel by conquest, Belvestianism is actually the majority religion. Though the Empire does not sponsor the practice of the Belvestian faith, it did not interfere with the pre-conquest system of temple endowments that supported it under the Belite state.

=== Arts ===
The Murinal Empire contains many of the artistic centers of Selt. The Empire produces the best fine-art metal casting in the world. The textile industry is mostly centered around linen and cotton, and the fabric-making art is much less advanced than that of the Empire of Atsef. Oil painting on canvas is well-developed.

=== Cuisine ===
=== Animal Fancy ===
[[WikiPedia:Fancy_rat|Rat fancy]] is an ancient cultural fixation of the Murinal Empire. For centuries, aristocrats and commoners alike have engaged in the keeping of domestic rats. The Murinali people do not consider their domestic rats to be the same animal as common verminous rats, a viewpoint supported by the considerable phenotypic divergence between the populations. However, common and fancy rats can (and, to the consternation of rat fanciers, sometimes do) interbreed. Murinal fancy rats are very large, weighing about a kilogram. They come in a staggering variety of coat colors and breeds, though yellow rats are a perennial favorite.