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Jeor [dʒe ˈɔr], broadly speaking, is the area between the Jei valley (Niormen) and the Čiqay river. Politically, the name refers to the successor state to the Jei Union.

Etymology: Wede:i Jeiwor ‘west of Jei’, Ax. Jeiwor, X. Jeor, Old Skourene Ḍabriŋ

Jeor never participated in the irrigation works of the Xengi valley; its orientation has always been maritime and commercial. This has contributed to it being independent more often than not.

Under the Jei

Jeor was urbanized by the Jei starting in the first century ZE; its chief cities, originally independent city-states, were (west to east) Śelawor, Mo:mor, Nakani:, and Do:nai. Of these Mo:mor has the best natural harbor— a large inlet with a narrow entrance, easily defended— and it has always been the natural center of the country.

When the Jei states started uniting— a self-reinforcing process fueled by fear of being left out of a powerful combination— Jeor found itself united with Jeinizun, on the Jei delta, the largest and richest Jei city-state. The process culminated in the Jei Union (250), which dominated trade in the south for centuries.

The Union had nearly forgotten the Ezičimi; but in 702 Axuna, the richest and most populous of the Ezičimi states, under the nive Urizbeliš, went to war against the Union, and captured Jeinizun.

The Jeori Empire

Jeori Empire
702 - 1150, 1327 - 1975
Native: Jeiboruŋ
Verdurian: Žeór
Capital: Mo:mor
Government: Monarchy
Ruler’s title pæźîw
Language: Wede:i
Religions: Wede:i Mešaism

By dynastic rules dating back to the original union, this left the prince of Mo:mor, Toma:un, the sovereign of the Jei. Tomau:n set himself the task of not only recovering Jeinizun— which was done by 705— but sweeping the Ezičimi out of the ancient Wede:i lands entirely.

He made a good start before his death in 719, conquering the state of Ran and half of Axuna, as well as pushing forward to the mountains in the west. He also took the opportunity to increase the cohesion of the Union, abolishing many local chieftainships, unifying legal codes, and establishing the primacy of the monarch over the entire nation. This reorganization, as well as the shift in the center of power from the Jei to Jeor, makes it convenient from now on to use "Jeor" (also the name of Tomau:n's dynasty) to refer to the state.

His son Suma:un conquered Yewor and Saxun (the northeastern coast of Luduyn). He sent embassies to the eastern Wede:i states, Do:ju and Raśakbori, to invite them into his empire; when they refused these incomprehensibly yabbering strangers, he invaded them and deposed their kings (731-5). He also presided over a reform of the writing system (744).

He then spent several years in fruitless campaigns against the remaining Ezičimi; in 744-5 he dispossessed the Čia-Ša from Bolon, and settled it with Jeori. He was planning a renewed assault on Axuna when he died in 749.

It had not been long enough to build imperial institutions; the empire required a strong character to hold it together. Suma:un’s son La:ia was the opposite: young, indecisive, and hopeless on the battlefield. His first initiative, in fact, alienated almost the whole country: he asked for immense contributions to rebuild Jeinizun on a larger and grander plan. (Suma:un had moved his base of operations to the traditional capital in order to better to direct the war on the Ezičimi, and of course La:ia was raised there. The result was to destroy the loyalty of both Jeinizun, which saw him as an alien, and Mo:mor, which saw him as a deserter.)

Within a decade the empire had collapsed into squabbling factions, led either by ancient commercial elites now sick of empire, or generals seeking military glory; only Jeinizun was still loyal to the young prince— and only till his own brother deposed him.

Swift decline

The generals now struggled to reestablish the empire; since they were cut off from the merchants who had funded Toma:un and Suma:un’s wars, the Axunemi and the Skourenes found it possible to encourage the inter-Jeori carnage by subsidizing them. The general We:se:lai succeeded in uniting the empire in 819 and even recovered Tannevi and expanded the foothold in Mnau; but he was assassinated seven years later, and the civil wars resumed.

Axuna cannily exploited the struggles, intervening several times and receiving territory from the winners. The nive Tazipivu conquered Tannaza (830), and by 850 possessed the Xengi valley. His son Tima pushed the Jeori out of Rajjay and Bosan entirely, convinced Van to join him voluntarily, and conquered Jeinizun and Na:iwor. In celebration, he renamed himself Timai and his empire Axunai (890). (The suffix -i in Axunašin is the augmentative, as opposed to a diminutive.)

His sons mopped up Bolon and the rest of the Jei valley, and took some of the Jeori colonies in Mnau; the Čia-Ša poured into the hinterland of Jeor, and took over the Čiqay entirely. Jeor was reduced to a strip of coast from near the Čiqay to Do:nai (by 930).

The Jeori colonies on Jecuor and southwestern Mnau were not immediately absorbed by the Axunemi, but became independent as Boriju (‘eastern islands’). It was conquered by Axunai in the 1100s.

During the next milennium, Jeor was independent, except for the period 1150-1327 when it was under the rule of Axunai, conquered by the emperor Jouvuneir. (Do:nai was not recovered after this.) In many ways it functioned as an Axunaic state; indeed, its ruling classes typically married Axunemi princesses and spoke Axunašin, and even the peasants’ lexicon was about 30% Axunašin. During the Axunemi civil war of 1635-48, the Jeori sent an army to the assistance of Axunai.

In 1356 the Jeori revised their syllabary again, abstracting the glyphs somewhat in the manner of the classical Axunašin syllabary, and adapting the script to the current phonology of their language.

Gurdago’s Second Empire

For some centuries in the late second millennium, Gurdago attempted to resist the Kurundasti invasion of Skouras; when this ultimately failed, they looked elsewhere for states that seemed ripe for the picking. Jeor and Čiqay seemed to fit the bill. They turned trading entrepôts into fortresses and then into colonies, which ironically was the same progression the Jei had followed around the beginning of the first millennium. The process was essentially complete by 1975.

However, Gurdagor rule was onerous. The Jei had ruled for centuries through local chiefs; but Gurdago effectively destroyed local power structures and imposed their own imperial administration. Always suspicious of rival sources of power, they destroyed large temples and monasteries, taxed native trading companies, and repressed the native nobility. Even guild organizations were required to accept Gurdagor oversight. No native enterprise larger than a medium-sized craftworks or farm was tolerated for long; and any surplus wealth the country generated was for the use of the local Gurdagor administrators (the Gurdagor had no overseas nobility), or was shipped home to Gurdago.

When barbarians invaded the southern plain, the Gurdagor at first saw only opportunity: they occupied Tanel in 2380, and when the Sainor broke the army of Niormen, it was the Gurdagor who rushed in and occupied the country, while the Sainor pressed on to the richer Xengi valley. The Bucair, meanwhile, pressed hard on Jeor, breaking through to the sea in the region east of Čiqay.

The invasion of the Gelyet under Hiuraz destroyed these advances. They conquered Niormen directly and pressed hard on the coastal cities, while Axunemi fleeing the destruction of Axunai freed Tanel.

The Gurdagor attempted to reclaim their lands upon the death of Hiuraz, but the Gelyet's new anaraz, Länguraz, took this as a personal affront, and made it his first business to conquer their holdings. Lacking a fleet, he was unable to push them out of the islands off the coast of Jeor.

Under Xurno

The new state of Xurno was a reinvention of the Axunaic state, based on city-fortresses that could outlast a barbarian siege, massive peasant levies, and a well-trained cavalry to counter the barbarian horse. Established in 2530, it had liberated the Xengi valley by the end of the century, and conquered Bolon, Jeor and Tanel by 2620 (under the emperor Isaoric).

For the next five centuries Jeor was a fairly content province of the Xurnese state, and Momor regained its prosperity. With native institutions nearly destroyed, however, Axunification was rapid; by the end of the period, only a few remote rural areas were still monolingual Jeori speakers. The same could be said for the ancient Wede:i polytheism; the cities were now almost entirely Endajué.

Xurnese militarization did grate on the Jeori, who never entirely identified with the fears and aspirations of the far-off Xengi. During the Revaudo revolution, Momor and Nakan quickly decided for the revolution (~ 3000). Revolutionary fervor motivated the reconquest of Šelawor and western Jeor, which had been nibbled up by the kingdom of Čiqay in the previous generation.

Rather than join the Revaudo state, the revolutionaries established themselves as the new state of Tásuc Tag (which see for further history).

The Xurnese province to the north of Tásuc Tag, with its capital in Dzuelis, is still called Jeor.

Provinces of Xurno
Xazno - Bolon - Bozan

Bukanel - Rau Niormen - Rajjay - Šuzep - Rau Xengi