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than a league from the new coast. After an intense period of
rebuilding, it became abundantly clear that their tremendously shrunken
homeland would no longer support a burgeoning population. With
typical Melcene thoroughness, they attacked the problem from
every possible angle. One thing was absolutely certain; they had to
have more land. The Melcene mind is a peculiarly
compartmentalized one, their answer to any problem is to immediately form a
committee. The 'newlands' conmmittee which was drawn up to
present possible solutions to the Emperor arrived at its final
proposal only after considering every possible alternative. They
concluded that, since they could not make new land, they would be
forced to either buy or take lands from someone else. Since
southeastern Mallorea lay closest at hand and was populated by people of
their own race, it was to that region that the Melcenes turned their
attention. There were five rather primitive kingdoms in
southeastern and east central Mallorea occupied by peoples of the same racial
stock as the Melcenes themselves; Candahar, Darshiva, Peldane,
Cellanta, and Rengel. These kingdoms were overrun one by one by
the Melcenes and were absorbed into their growing empire.
The dominating force in the Melcene Empire was the
bureaucracy. Unlike other governments of the time, which frequently
operated on royal whim or upon the accumulation of personal power,
the Melcene government was rigidly departmentalized. While there
are obvious drawbacks to a bureaucratic form of government, such
an approach to administration provides the advantages of
continuity and of a clear-eyed pragmatism which is more concerned with
finding the most practical way to getting a job done than with the
whim, prejudice and egocentricity which so frequently mars more
personal forms of government. The Melcene Bureaucracy in
particular was practical almost to a fault. The concept of an 'aristocracy of
talent' dominated Melcene thinking, and if one bureau chose to
ignore a talented individual - of whatever background - another
was almost certain to snap him up.
Thus it was that the various departments of the Melcene
government rushed into the newly-conquered mainland provinces to
winnow through the population in search of genius. The 'conquered'
.people of Gandahar, Darshiva, Peldane, Cellanta and Rengel were
thus absorbed directly into the mainstream of the life of the Empire.
Always pragmatic, the Melcenes left the royal houses of the five
mainland provinces in place, preferring to operate through
established lines of authority rather than to set up new ones, and, although
the title 'king' suffered reduction to the title 'prince', it was widely
considered more prestigious to be a 'prince of the Empire' than a
"king' of some minor east-coast kingdom. Thus, the six principalities
of the Melcene Empire flourished in a kind of brotherhood based on
hard-headed practicality. The possession of talent in Melcena is a
universal passport, and is considered more valuable than wealth or
power.
For the next 1800 years the Melcene Empire prospered, far
removed from the theological and political squabbles of the western
part of the continent. Melcene culture was secular, civilized and
highly educated. Slavery was unknown, and trade with the
Angaraks and their subject peoples in Karanda and Dalasia was
extremely profitable. The old Imperial capital at Melcene became a
major center of learning. Unfortunately, some of the thrust of
Melcene scholarship turned toward the arcane. Their practice of
Magic (the summoning of evil spirits) went far beyond the primitive
mumbo-jumbo of the Morindim or the Karandese and began to