Iami Aeruma (born aboard the Стария Свети Ирония, off the eastern coast of Utara — died in Silver City, Despotate of Silvermoon) was an absolutist despot of the people of the Despotate of Silvermoon and the second monarch of the Aeruman Dynasty who reigned till her death.
Early life and rise to power[]
Born to exiled Ashura-Chana military strategist Alma Aeruma and his wife Kadesion Aeruma, she was the first female ruler to take power in all of the First Region of planet Antioch. Aeruma came to power at age sixteen after her father died of natural causes, shortly after the public execution of Ashura-Chana assassin Shalma Ompia in the Selishte River (later known as the Argent River) sparked her interest in the body of water. Aeruma reportedly noticed a glimmer of some material released as Ompia's body scraped the southern bank of the river nearby where she was standing; she collected a few of the minerals as they passed by her on the river and showed them to her father, who died before he could take action. When she came to power, she ordered a portion of the river bank excavated; what she discovered, the lindori gem, was linked to lore of great value that she had heard from nomadic locals of Mun Lindore and Utara and from traders from the distant Federation of Tugal. She capitalized on the tales she had heard, trekking north to the Angelino Falls to identify a location where a dam would be constructed in the future when Silvermoon had acquired a reasonably large treasury. She ordered the excavation of Livre Pool sixteen miles to the south of the capital settlement of Selishte, a bank where the gems had been purportedly acquired by tribesmen, and discovered the lindories in bulk, trading them to local tribes across Mun Lindore for massive earnings. Aeruma brought 500 citizens from Selishte and settled them at what she coined Cape Argent, a peninsula nearby the estuary where the Selishte River met the oceans. The settlers founded Cape Argent City after Iami Aeruma's name for the geographical figure.
Later reign[]
Using the money acquired from the local tribes of Mun Lindore, Aeruma established Cielograd Laborers' Camp south of the Angelino Falls and ordered the construction of Cielos Dam to stymie the flow of the Selishte River and make the mining process easier. The first large-scale international shipment of lindories was sent to Oporto Arawica, the capital city of the Tugali Federation; this increased the Aerumaen Despotate's reputation as a rich nation dramatically. To employ elements of propaganda in an attempt to extract as much wealth from the oncoming flow of Tugali traders as possible, Aeruma renamed Selishte "Silver City," the Aerumaen Despotate the "Despotate of Silvermoon," and the Selishte River the "Argent River," emphasizing the silver-like qualities of the lindori gems that were worth so much credit to the people of the First Region.
The completion of the Cielos Dam made the mining so efficient and the ouput of gems so great that prices dropped in Tugali trading cities and demand through bartering with Mun Lindorian tribes fell dramatically; Tugali traders stopped arriving, and the prosperity of the nation began to falter. At this point, Iami Aeruma decided to start negotiating trade agreements with the old Ashura-Chana nation on continent Bianco. However, she died of heart failure before any consensus could be reached, and the proposal died out with her.
Legacy[]
The great prosperity that Aeruma had brought, paired with the relatively peaceful period she ruled in, proved to serve as a positive effect on her reputation; Silvermoon responded to her death with sixteen days of mourning, mirroring the number of years she had lived before she had come to power. Aeruma was considered a greater leader than her father, who was considered to be of ambiguous moral character to the Aerumaens.
Iami Aeruma was succeeded by a daughter she had illegitimately with the merchant Xaymacia Burradur from Oporto Arawica whose name was Yardia Aeruma. Yardia Aeruma was the last despot of the Aerumaen dynastic line to take power in Silvermoon.