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The Garlean Empire once controlled the majority of the Three Great Continents, the enormous landmass that encompasses Eorzea. Until some fifty years ago, Garlemald was a remote and sparsely populated nation which held little more than a fraction of the northern continent of Ilsabard. But with the arrival of a technological golden age and the concurrent emergence of a brilliant young legatus, Solus Galvus, in the span of a single generation Garlemald established itself as one of the most formidable forces in all of Hydaelyn.
Garlemald is unsurpassed in the field of magitek, a technology which it exploits with devastating effectiveness in warfare. Unperturbed by their lesser numbers, the Garleans went forth upon gigantic flying warships, bearing powerful weaponry the likes of which the world had never seen. One nation after the next fell before their relentless onslaught, first those of the northlands, followed by the sovereign states of the eastern continent, Othard. Employing suppression and conciliation in equal measure, Garlemald indoctrinated the peoples it conquered, thus integrating them into its ever-expanding territory. So it was that the Garlean Empire came into existence.
In the year 1557 of the Sixth Astral Era, the Garleans brought their campaign of conquest to Eorzea, swiftly bringing the city-state of Ala Mhigo to its knees. Yet following the subjugation of Ala Mhigo, the Empire suddenly ceased its aggressive expansion.
For a time, it seemed as though the Empire’s complete subjugation of the world was all but inevitable. However, Emperor Solus’s failing health and eventual death triggered a war of succession, and following a protracted campaign on Eorzean soil, Gaius van Baelsar and his XIVth Legion suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the newly unified Eorzean Alliance. Thus did cracks begin to appear in the Empire’s armor, and as the Scions of the Seventh Dawn continued to intervene on behalf of the oppressed, the Garleans went on to lose control of Doma in the east and Ala Mhigo in the west. To compound their woes, the new emperor, Varis, had scarcely won the throne before he was slain by his son Zenos, who had an agenda all his own.
Zenos then colluded with the Ascian Fandaniel, and using his father’s corpse as a medium, summoned forth the primal Anima. The imperial capital, which had become the stage for a bloody civil war, fell silent as nearly every soldier and civilian remaining was turned into a tempered slave.
Though both Anima and the Telophoroi have since been eliminated, Garlemald struggles to recover from the devastation. The leaders of the subjugated territories bide their time, making no moves to resurrect the fallen Empire, and it remains to be seen what the future holds.