by Arne Dam

The history of Kislev has many faces, depending on the angle from which you view it. In general, there seems to be two main schools of Kislevite (or Kislevan, as they say in the Slavic dialect) history. One is the Sigmarite school, which originated with the monks of the Order of the Anvil who believe that the Empire of Sigmar covers all land south of the Lynsk and consider the Kislevites to be unlawful rulers of Sigmarite land. The St Berthold Monastery in Ostland has housed many Sigmarite scholars studying the history of Kislev and is the heart of this school.

The other is the Tsarist school, based on scholars in the employ of the Kislevite government studying the history of Kislev. Unsurprisingly, it tends to glorify the history of the tribes who conquered Kislev and founded the new state. A third, more neutral, school has been taking form since the cult of Verena established a main temple in Kislev after the Great War against Chaos. Here, Verenan scholars have worked hard during the last decades to disentangle the biased accounts of the Sigmarites and the Tsarist scholars in order to reach a truer account of Kislevite history. Rumour has it that a draft was presented to Tsar Radii Bokha last year, but it was fiercely rejected and caused a diplomatic crisis between certain members of the bureaucracy and the cult of Verena.

The First Centuries and the Arrival of the Gospodar
One of the seminal manuscripts on the history of Kislev in the Empire is The Lost Lands by Albertus of Brizban, a Sigmarite monk who lived in the St Berthold Monastery two centuries ago. It is written in Classical, and most Sigmarite and Verenan libraries, especially in the north and east, will have copies of it. Some translations into Reikspiel are known to exist in private collections in Altdorf and Wolfenburg.

In the first chapter of The Lost Lands, Albertus writes:

When the Thurini and the Talabec peoples settled in the eastern lands that Lord Sigmar had bestowed upon them, few moved beyond the parting of the Talabec, where the proud city of Zwolen now stands. Pious and loyal monks of Taal established monasteries in this barbaric corner of Sigmar's lands and brought the civilisation and peace of Lord Sigmar to the few people making a living here. At the river Lynsk, the Thurini traded with a people they called Sibyrians, who looked like Norse, yet seemed more akin to the Thurini themselves than the Norscan barbarians. Apart from these few loyal Thurini and Talabec people, no-one lived in this corner of the Empire until eight centuries ago.

Then came the Gospodar tribes-men, mounted nomads who first raided, and then settled in the lands of Sigmar. They were fleeing the might of the Ungol horde, a tribe of fierce, mounted warriors who ruled the lands east of the Worlds Edge Mountains with an iron fist. The Gospodar, lead by the brutal warrior witch Miska Khan, slaughtered two large parties of missionaries and local militia, before a proper army was finally sent north to throw her out in the year 1515 IC. Following the defeat of Miska the Slaugtherer, the Gospodar accepted the rule of the local Imperial citizens. They were taught better ways to cultivate the land by the skilled Taalite monks, and soon multiplied across the lands between the Lynsk and the Urskoy. A people of many clans and few strong leaders, the Gospodar settled around the towns and monasteries and accepted the ways of Sigmar's peoples.

The Kislevite school has a rather different take on these events. Here it is important to note that Kislev consist of predominantly three different ethnic groups who have not always lived in peace. Thus, within the Kislev school of history there is quite much variation. The following account is from Boris Pitemkin's A Kislevan Chronicle from 2454 IC. Pitemkin was a Gospodar scholar, who was commissioned to write a new account, when the so-called Gospodar Triumvirate dominated the Imperial Bureaucracy of Kislev.

After the triumphant battles with the cursed goblins of the east, Boris Ursa Khan, the Forever Tsar, lead the Gospodar and the other tribes across the Mountains into Kislev. Immediately, he conquered the land from the few people of Sigmar's Empire who had ventured this far north. Also, once again the Forever Tsar met the pest of the greenskins, and once again he successfully routed them, banning them forever from this new and glorious Kingdom of the Kislevites, which Boris Ursa Khan declared precisely 1500 years after Sigmar had declared his Empire of the south.

The Forever Tsar ruled for 12 years, before he joined his forefathers. Yet he pledged to return to his people one day for the final reckoning with the Forces of Chaos of the Far North. Upon his death, Boris Ursa's daughter Miska Khan took the throne of the Kingdom and defeated two mighty Imperial armies as she extended the Kingdom south across the Urskoy. In 1515 IC, the Imperials brought forth Bretonnian and Dwarf allies, yet even then the brave Miska Khan stood undefeated in the great Battle of the Scimitars. As wise as she was brave, Miska withdrew her troops to the north bank of the Urskoy and thus the Kingdom of the Kislevites had established its southern border at the Urskoy.

As always, the truth is probably found somewhere in between the two accounts. Kislevite scholars have so far not been able to present written contemporary evidence of either Boris Ursa Khan or a Kislevite Kingdom, while Miska Khan is mentioned in various chronicles in the Taalite monasteries, rarely for the good. The Battle of the Scimitars in 1515 IC is mentioned in the Talabheim annals, where the Peerhaus sanctioned the employ of Bretonnian and Dwarf mercenaries to fight "barbaric invaders from the east terrorising the Upper Talabec and beyond". It further states that the campaign was successful, and the invaders were routed. Certainly, the so-called Talabec Barons from The Empire retained control locally. One should recall that this is during the Otilian Era, when the ruler of Talabheim rivalled the claims to the Empire of the elected Emperor.

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1) Usually, a few innovative Gospodar can be found in the top of the Bureaucracy, but very rarely does the top consist only of Gospodar, as was the case of the three Gospodar making up The Gospodar Triumvirate during the last decades of the Romanoff dynasty. One of their many ploys to consolidate their position was an attempt to rewrite the history of Kislev, stressing the fundamental role of the Gospodar.

2) Note that in Slavic, Kislevite originally signified one belonging to any of the half dozen tribes that escaped the Ungols together. Of these, the Gospodar was by far the largest, and most non-Kislevites ignore the distinction and simply call all of them Gospodar. In a Citadel Journal article, a few tribes are named, such as the Cossacks and the Tartars. Today, Kislevites use Kislevite for a citizen of Kislev, and Kislevan as adjective. In Reikspiel, Kislevite doubles as noun and adjective.