Anok-Imaskar

Anok-Imaskar was an empire that existed in ancient Kara-Tur, under the reign of Emperor Kujawa. It was one of the three successor states of the Imaskar Empire after it fell in, the others being Deep Imaskar and Solon. Later historians would mark the Anok-Imaskar period as the First Age of Shou Lung, as it was a precursor to the later Shou Lung empire. Others would even call the empire Shou Lung as well, or even just the Empire.

History
Unlike Imaskar's vassals, Durpar and Gundavar, which descended into barbarism, and the Raurin, which became a desert wasteland, the eastern provinces of Imaskar emerged relatively unscathed from the destruction of the western empire. The mountainous Khati province and the flatter Katakoro province were both protected from the Mulan rebellion by distance and the natural defenses provided by the Katakoro Shan. Within a year of Imaskar's fall, in, the surviving artificer Kujawa—who carried one of the False Imaskarcana, Dhonas's Shroud—claimed the Dragon Throne in the Khati city of Thakos (the former capital of Upper Imaskar ). With that, he declared himself Emperor and founded a new realm, Anok-Imaskar.

Anok-Imaskar was prosperous and quickly spread east, north, and south across Kara-Tur. It traded with its fellow successor state Solon to the west. Eventually, circa, Kujawa decided to found a second capital city to better govern the new southern lands his nation had claimed. He built it on a mountain plateau further south in the Shao Mountains, east of the Sempadan Forest. The new capital was called Tempat Larang. The emperor ordered the great Larang Highway be built along existing frontier outposts into the Shao Mountains. Many great magical scrolls and artifacts were traded from Tempat Larang to the empire during his rein. However, the southern empire was harassed by the Segara Sea Lords, powerful and far-ranging pirates of the Segara Sea. When Sangkal Chunbi, governor of Tempat Larang, issued warrants for their arrest, the pirate leader Chan Chiong tried to cut Tempat Larang off from the empire by seizing Sampar, the empire's only southern harbor. However, the canny Chunbi defeated Chan Chiong through a ruse and rehired the pirates, transforming them into a southern fleet for the empire.

Unfortunately, the nearby volcano Mount Bakos erupted in, covering Tempat Larang in ash and lava and in poisonous gases that slew the citizens. Over the following decades, the empire's southwestern lands were also abandoned. According to later accounts, the emperor thought this disaster was an omen from the gods, and hence abandoned his plans for the south, even erasing them from official records. Thus only vague legends of Tempat Larang survived.

Emperor Kujawa repeated the history of his former peers in Imaskar when he died fighting the celestial dragon T'ien Lung in. His death caused the empire to collapse, dividing into a number of warring states, including Chu'ta Te, Kao Shan, Mai Yuan, and Ra-Khati.

One legacy of the empire was the Great Library of Perpustakaan, which survived in the Shao Mountains but was little known beyond the range.

Geography
At its height around, Anok-Imaskar covered much of Kara-Tur, stretching from the Northern Wastes and the Celestial Sea in the north to the Segara Sea and Southern Ocean in the south. It did not spread west, owing to claims by Solon on the lands south of the Raurinshield Mountains.

Among others, it included the lands of Khati (the realm that would later be known as Ra-Khati) and Katakoro (the later Katakoro Plateau); and a large portion of what was later Shou Lung and T'u Lung, including Chu'ta Te (later Chukei) Kao Shan, and Mai Yuan (which would all be provinces of Shou Lung); and the southern capital of Tempat Larang in the Shao Mountains.