Fifty years after the seccession of Stryre, at the end of Varkar's final campaign against the orc-holds of the Erean Mountains, the central province of the Empire followed the example of the Stryrans and broke from Imperial rule. The character of the leaders of the revolt and their reasons could not, however, have been more different.Following the death and ascension of the Voice of the One in 453, the cult had been slowly growing in and around the places where the prophet had lived. The priesthood were a dour and intolerant lot, and for them the final straw came when Emperor Titus gave sanctuary and lands to the displaced orc peoples of the Erean Mountains in 1500. Anger turned to action, the people were stirred up and secretly armed, and late that same year, the priesthood decalred that the central province was no longer Imperial territory, but rather a Theocracy, for which they chose the name Nhased.
Titus was a different emperor from the man who had hesitated to risk an army to retake Stryre, however. Preparing carefully for more than seven years, he gathered a mighty force, put his best general in charge, and sent them into Nhased with instructions to retake the province, wipe out the priesthood and stamp out the cult of the One once and for all. He made several fatal miscalculations, however. He assumed the dwarves would march with the Empire, as they always had before; he assumed that Stryre wouldn't interfere; and he assumed that the elves weren't even interested. In all of this he was dead wrong.
The dwarves, disgusted by the inclusion of orcish troops in the invasion force, refused to send any aid at all. The elves of Belegond - by now the last remaining elven city - not only followed suit, but actually sent troops to the aid of Nhased. And Stryre sent a large force of crack troops to help its' neighbor, setting the scene for the good relations that have existed between these radically different nations ever since.
There was no one pivotal battle, but a long series of inconclusive tussles seperated by continual guerrilla attrition, coupled with increasing disapproval back in the Empire - several important Senators were followers of the One - eventually led to the withdrawl of the Imperial army and the reluctant recognition of Nhased as an independent country.
By 1655, life in Nhased was permated top to bottom by the influence of the Church of the One. While not oppressive or corrupt, the heirachy controlled the whole country and functioned as the effective nobility. Initiation in the cult was a requirement of citizenship, and all important business was at least overseen by a priest of some sort. The great mother-temple, the Cathedral of The One, was the largest religious structure ever created in Alair. There were several knightly orders which served the Church, of which the most notable were Vokrid, Rogryn and Fimgalet. Knights of Rogryn were particularly noted for their unceasing vigilance along the fringes of the Desolation.
Everything changed in 1792 when the Voice of the One returned to Alair with the Word of the One.
Preaching at first at the very front line, he entered the holy city of Karsten and spoke to enraptured thousands in the great Cathederal of The One. The People of the One, he said, should not seek to conquer the infidel, only defend and protect themselves against his wiles and assaults. In a paroxysm of religious remorse, the commanders of the Light Ones pulled their forces back to Nhased's original borders and opened negotiations for an armistice.
It was this point that Cardinal Gilraid, Commissioner of the Designators of the True Faith, made the shocking claim that the newly-appeared prophet was not what he claimed to be, but an Imperial imtelligence agent. While the presentation of evidence and counter-evidence, witness and counter-witness lashed back and forth, the theological debate and accusations of heresy and blasphemy were more fiery by far. The monolithic Church of the One had never known internal disagreement on this scale, and the schism split the entire Theocracy into fragments, with adherents of each side scattered randomly across the country, each man examining his own faith to choose his side. After several bloody years of confusion the two factions established themselves into stronghold areas and settled into a protracted and savage civil war.The Gilraidists, the larger party, were hampered by fighting a war on two fronts, with both the Empire and with the Voicers. The latter were still guided by the Voice of the One, upon whose head the Gilraidists placed an astronomical price.
In 1850 the Voice of the One, desperate to end the sectarian war between the Voicers and Gilraidists, began a complex and powerful piece of ritual magic, the Ritual of Flaying. The spell was targeted on the largest concentration of Gilraidist troops, somewhere in the Brinnon region of Nhased. It took a year to complete and when released, inflicted unbelievable amounts of damage to both land and life. The effects were far in excess of what was intended; shockwaves rippled out from the original target for nearly two hundred miles, exterminating all life and reducing the countryside to a magically poisoned wasteland. Technically, this won the war for the Voicers, but their country was effectively destroyed. Over half the population of Nhased was killed in one day. Karsten and Lanirkos were both ruined and the Cathederal of the One, centre of their faith, was destroyed and inaccessible. The Voice was not seen again after the Flaying, and it is supposed that he was destroyed by his own apocalypse.
The damage of the Ritual of Flaying extended over the eastern border and engulfed most of the war zone between Nhased and the Erlyid Empire, destroying ninety percent of the fighting capability of both nations in one stroke.
As of 2100, the tiny remaining northern splinter of the Theocracy of Nhased clings to nationhood, still loyal to the missing Voice of the One. The fortress Vokrid, once home to an order of knights pledged to fight the desolation, has been expanded to become the last Nhasedan city. The centre of what was Nhased remains a wasteland, no longer poisoned but uninhabitable. Many kinds of the Curst have migrated from the remaining Desolation to the Nhased Waste.