Turbulent Period

The Turbulent Period was a 750-year long period of Maruleegi history spanning from the development of industrialisation at the end of the First Dark Period to the establishment of the communist world-state at the start of the Second Imperial Period.

Beginnings
Towards the end of the First Dark Period, the world was more connected than it had been since the peak of the First Empire thousands of years earlier. Goods from anywhere on Escrib could be obtained and traded, and merchants who made use of this fact became wealthy and powerful.

Some merchants, especially established ones, were troubled by this, since a connected world meant that there was competition from distant parts, often undercutting their own efforts. In response, they searched for ways to increase the productivity of their own goods. This increase was found in machinery and fossil fuels, which increased the rate of economic growth by an order of magnitude.

Cold War
Following the third Great War, the two victors emerged, both with developed bioweapons projects. Either of them deploying their bioweapon stockpiles would decimate Maruleegi civilisation, and, in order to maintain their competitive edge, both were developing even more virulent strains that would spread faster and kill even more reliably.

This meant that direct confrontation would be impossible; both sides knew that they would be completely wiped out. Instead, they engaged in a proxy war, each side destabilizing the allies and politics of the other in the hope of eventually rendering it weak enough that the cold war would end without requiring the deployment of bioweapons.