In the year 967 of the Empire, Rhian invaded Sutan. This was unprecedented. Rhian and Sutan until that point had enjoyed an extremely positive and stable relationship. They were so intertwined both politically and economically that most of the rest of the world treated them as a single province. The war came as a shock, and many wondered why the Empire issued a war writ in the first place…of course, those people don't really understand how the Empire works.

In truth, tensions had been growing between the two provinces for hundreds of years. Sutan had been slowly moving towards a more egalitarian society for hundreds of years, while Rhian became increasingly…not.

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Over about a decade, unions sprouted up in all the major cities of Sutan. With the appearance of these male-driven unions, Rhian began a counter cultural movement within Sutan to suppress them.

Rhian couldn't very well act overtly—they were a separate province, after all—but there was enough political capital to quietly stir the fears of many in the existing matriarchy who were growing increasingly uncomfortable with the rise of male power. Most of Rhian enacted a policy of never trading with anyone who employed unionized men, but they also pushed a quiet propaganda war within Sutan designed to stoke the fears of the matriarchy. This culminated in a rather brutal purge, where unionized men suddenly found themselves without work and any women who supported them ostracized.

A tipping point came with a spree of murders that spread through all the major cities in 966. Hundreds of men died, tied naked to the porch pillars of prominent businesswomen who were known to support a more egalitarian view of equality. These men were tied up, usually in the early morning, and left to bleed out, their tongues cut out and their manhood sliced off and left in the mud. Not everyone fully bled out and died, so later murders would find their throats cut as well. The extremely clean cuts left no doubt as to who committed the atrocities. Only a shaper could manage a cut so clean, and only women could truly be shapers (culturally).

If the matriarchy thought this would cow the men, they were greatly mistaken. Within a few months of the murder spree, virtually the entire Sutanese economy ground to a halt as more than 80% of the men in the country refused to work. The murders resumed with a new fervor, but the work did not. The assault on the male class solidified the union in a way nothing else could.

With the economy ground to a halt, it wasn't long before Sutan faced major financial problems. Entire houses fell into ruin, although none of them were supporters of the union. In fact, not a single house supporting the union fell—they all ended up oddly solvent. Nevertheless, the entire province faced imminent collapse toward the end as their reserves bled dry.

After three months of this, two things became apparent: the province would not survive another month of strikes, and the union would not back down. An emergency quorum of Matrons was convened, but due to an odd quirk of the law, none of the fallen houses could attend. It was considered a disgrace to allow one's house to descend into ruin and therefore a question on their ability to walk the path of wisdom. They were barred from any quorum until such time that they could raise their house again.

The vote may have been…lopsided. Just a little.

The Fathers were then writ into the province and officially recognized, although not without also permanently writing in The Mothers as the unequivocal ruling body of the province—those present may be sympathetic, but they sure as hells below weren't going to give up their rule.

The Fathers didn't care. They'd made it abundantly clear who truly made the province run. Without them, there was no province.

The Mothers and the Fathers had finally entered a truce, a very uneasy and fragile truce.

That was when Rhian invaded, one of the dumbest decisions ever made by province, as history would recall it anyway.

Rhian's invasion galvanized the Sutan province against "the serpent within". The narrative shifted, and suddenly it was Rhian who committed the murders, trying to turn Sutan against itself in order to weaken them to this very invasion. The houses that fell, those that opposed The Fathers, were cast as puppet houses controlled by Rhian.

The narrative shift quickly—some say, too quickly, almost as though Rhian's propaganda network had been suddenly coopted. Whether this was actually true, no one knows. But the Fathers rallied, and every man went back to work overtime to rebuff the existential threat that Rhian presented.

It was a close thing, at least on paper. Rhian hadn't suffered three months of economic stagnation. Instead, they'd used the opportunity to "transfer" much of the wealth of the sympathetic Sutanese houses to them, all in an effort to fund not only their army, but quite a few mercenary armies as well. This left Rhian with an almost unbeatable advantage, and they might well have conquered the Sutanese province with ease if it were not for The Fathers.

While the Rhian emptied the coffers of many Sutanese houses sympathetic to their cause, the Fathers had been reallocating asset for…centuries. While the Rhian army and mercenaries (mostly mercenaries) marched on Sutan, The Fathers had been busy hiring their own mercenaries…for centuries.

And many of those mercenaries had been playing both fields, something the Fathers actively encouraged.

The Fathers had been amassing their own mercenaries. This fact was not lost on the matriarchy, at all. And yet, when presented with a mass invasion, they found it convenient enough to ignore the obvious ramifications, accept the "help" of the Fathers, and drive back an invasion they would have otherwise been helpless before.

And so Rhian found its own mercenary armies turn against them at the most inopportune times.

The Fathers and the Mothers had never been closer.

The "Father's War" was a short one. Rhian conquered two cities before being rebuffed thoroughly, their metaphorical tails tucked between their legs as their own hired mercenaries (many of which were male led) chased them back into their province. Sutan quickly rebounded, both the Fathers and the Mothers united in such a way that allowed them to quickly rise in prosperity.

And yet, it was a long war, one that arguably never ended. For Rhian never stopped trying to purge Sutan of its sacrilege, launching invasions every several years. The Sutanese matriarchs maintained their stalwart support of the Fathers, forever watching over their collective shoulders at the men who tirelessly worked to keep them in their place.