The last hundred years of the Brindisian Empire, from 1300 to 1400 UC, coincided with a large migration of peoples from Klatchistan and the circle seas beyond into Brindisi's home land. These peoples, mostly artists and scientists, came in the main to avoid religious persecution or the wars that were being fought between the kingdoms of Klatch and Ankh-Morpork. The vast majority of these settled in the Chicochulo province far from Napoles, by now no longer the Capital, but still a power base for the Emperor. San Castillo town, in economic decline brought on by the chronic fall in population due to the political instability of inept imperial government, welcomed these wanderers with open arms.
At first the presence of these strange immigrants from lands outside the imperial sphere of infuence was accepted but seen only as a curiosity, after all, the Brindisian population was not unused to strange cultures or practices after their long history of slavery, and the free slaves who had become part of the community. Indeed, many of the decendants of the former slaves now held prominent positions, especially in the provinces of Chicochulo and Sicilana. However, before long these craftsmen, artisans, and thinkers started to effect a subtle influence on their local societies. A kind of passive revolution started to occur in these previously backward places, mainly fueled by the schools and places of higher learning that were by the most part set up and run by the Klatchistani scholars, pleased to find students eager to learn, and flattered by the respect and status that they found so easily amongst the farming populations.
Before the end of the sixteenth century Brindisian noblemen and merchants were sending their offspring to the university in San Castillo as a matter of course. Gaining an education, that is, having a knowledge of the arts and sciences, became a sign of status in itself. Brindisian society as far away as Mantanares became obsessed with 'Culture', Opera became the new fashionable passtime and those who had embraced the ideas from Klatch started to look for ever more sophisticated ways to amuse themselves, no longer were the monied classes content to waste time in orgies and idleness.
The result of this education of those who would be expected to run the country was as obvious as it was dramatic. Having been taught how to think and challenge ideas and theories these new leaders of the country started to look critically at the Empire and even at the person of the Emperor himself, Maximilion Grande. Seeing the empire in a way that their ancestors never had, they saw that Brindisi was virtually unchanged since the conception of the Empire, for all its wealth and power. In the early spring of 1612 the senate country was rocked as the senate rebelled against the holy person of the emperor, a more detailed account of the incident is recorded elsewhere, suffice to say that each and every member of the senate were equally responsible for his murder, having each impaled him once using their own rapiers, a weapon worn by the senators to mark their status. The Empire was disbanded, slavery abolished, and the lands held for so long in servitude to Brindisi were granted freedom along with trading concessions as sovereign nations.
While the downfall of the Emperor also brought about the disbanding of the senate and plunged the country into a state of near permanent civil war which our own grandfathers would have been born into the tail end of, the Klatchianis are remembered with fondness in our lands, and the influence on our architecture, music and culture in general is easily seen, not to mention the obvious effects of intermarriage. The system of government that replaced the Emperor, the rule by the noble houses, is the same system that we continue to enjoy today in this age of prosperity and peace.