The wake of the Fall of the Theocracy saw the rise to power of the people of the eastern peninsula, known to the Cholaeic peoples as the Chalycidicans, after their foremost city-state, Chalycidice. As favorites of the God Emperor, the arrogant Chalycidicans had enjoyed a singular autonomy under the Theocracy, and at the time of the Fall, they already possessed an ancient and sophisticated culture and a high level of technological achievement. While the rest of humanity struggled with their new-found sentience and the abrupt collapse of the old order, the Chalycidicans, after a very brief period of turmoil, reorganized and flourished, entering into their Golden Age.
There is evidence that the God Emperor's pet people had been taking advantage of the Theocracy's decline even before its Fall, establishing communication and trade, in direct opposition to their patron's edicts, with the urban Theocratic centers of the coastlines north and south of Cholaeic lands. Although not expansionist by nature, the Chalycidicans did settle beyond their prescribed borders after the collapse of the Theocracy, building new cities at the mouths of the Arveth, the Tyr, and the Lun. Primarily, though, they preferred to dominate by trade and cultural imposition, and in the years following the Fall, they had a strong influence on the people of the coastal region of Tyr known as Rhowen.
The Chalycidicans were not, however, terribly interested in the Cholaeic peoples, whom they considered hopelessly primitive. Their interests lay northward, to the Tyrulean city-states of the Dawn. Like the Chalycidicans, the Tyruleans had an urban and mercantile culture and had never been followers of Love and Reason. In the days of the Theocracy, the Tyrulean cities seem to have been led to take part in elaborate ritualized worship of the God Emperor; when the Theocracy fell and the people gained sentience, they adopted a polytheistic variant of their old religion, offering worship, placation and sacrifice to all manner of spiritual entities.
The Chalycidicans patronized the Tyrulean cities and directed their development, teaching them the arts of astronomy, navigation, glass-making, mathematics, and writing. To this day, the Tyrulean city-states use the Chalycidican alphabet, numerical system, and a variant on its calendar; many of their legal and administrative structures are peninsular in origin, and the Tyrulean language itself shows a strong Chalycidican influence. A half century after the Fall, the two cultures were closely enough allied that their ruling families had begun to intermarry; together, they dominated the trade of the Known World, and their cities served as the centers of civilization and learning in the new post-Fall world.
