Text written by a self-styled “Explorer”, name redacted.
The following text is not for consumption by the general populace, strict level of clearance must be presented for the text to be made available. Leaking the following text is tantamount to leaking military secrets and will thus result in capital punishment.

The history of Respublika Owl, a rising nation on the western edge of the Holocontinent, is shrouded in mystery despite its relatively young age. When it was founded, as well as the state of the land before its foundation could best be described as vague. An interesting thing to note, considering both the pride of its citizenry and a not insignificant interest among the nation’s scholars regarding world history.

While no ages are specified in official records, its safe to say that these lands were not entirely unpopulated when the current populace of the republic arrived at these lands. Early records tell of long wars of attrition with the various tribes of what is commonly known as Schizos, the hilly environment proving defensible not only to the new settlers but also to the native tribesmen. These wars are often portrayed as a generally slow push from the western coast toward the eastern hills until the Schizo tribes were pushed into a corner and ultimately annihilated by a temporary coalition between the Hoomans and their various neighbors, the eastern mountains of the Brrat monks providing the anvil to the rest of the coalitions hammer. A hard fought and slow victory, that is how history portrays it. But what if there is more to these early wars than what official records would have us believe?

In the eastern hills of the Republic, there are tales of strange creatures roaming during the night. Nightmares, the locals call them. Monsters that snatch away disobedient children that stray too far from their families. To many, these Nightmares are simply fairy tales meant to scare juvenile Hoomans into obedience. Initially my research in the region was mainly meant to discover the origin of these tales and compare to various folk tales and monsters throughout the Holocontinent. My discoveries here have however been shocking, as it appears that there is more truth to these tales than I originally had believed.

Hiring a local hunter I had met in one of the eastern most villages of the land to act as my guide, he had brought me southwards along the mountainous border until we came upon a cave. It was good that we had come upon it during daytime, my guide had said, as that which dwelled here only stalked the hills at night. Curious, I wished to approach the cave for a closer look, only to be physically restrained by the Hooman. Insulting my intellect, he asked if I had a death wish. Apparently, he had not heard of anyone who had encountered whatever dwelled in those caves and lived to tell the tale. As he spoke, I noticed two red orbs staring at us from within the darkness of the cave’s mouth. Assuming it had the humanoid body shape that the tales spoke of, it appeared to be nearly two heads taller than myself. That said, I had not managed to get a good look before we were forced to make a hasty retreat back to civilization if we were to make it back before nightfall.

The following day, I had made it back without the local to guide me, as I had concluded he would likely try to prevent my exploration of what might be an incredible new discovery. For the sake of preserving my own life, I did not venture far in, but what I managed to see as the sun angled itself to peek as far in as it possibly could was just as confounding as it was concerning. The mouth of the cave opened to a larger room, wherein lied a large altar in front of a crudely made effigy of some sort. There was something on the alter which, while I couldn’t see it too well from my position, I could clearly make out the smell of. A cadaver. I must have let out a gasp at the realization, as shortly thereafter I could make out movements from the shadows in the cave. Long, elongated and thing limbs stretched out. Pale as a ghost they were, and I had little intent to stick around to find out how territorial or hungry whatever was stirring was.

My outing did however reveal two things about these cave dwelling creatures, as what lived there was quite clearly not truly human.

1. It has a significant level of intelligence considering that, while crude, it was either able to craft or find and use both the altar and the effigy in a way like how a human would.
2. It appears to have some sort of ‘god’ with its own form of worship. I do not think it’s possible that it was just mimicking other religious rites as it likely has had very little opportunity to observe various human traditions.
   If the latter of the two could be observed in multiple instances, it would mean that there is some form of communion between these creatures. Indeed, it might even be that there might actually be tribes of these creatures, and that I had simply retreated too soon in order to confirm if it was solitary or not. Could these be remnants of the Schizos of the pre-recorded history of /who/, or could there be a different reason behind why these creatures dwell in the area that was the final zone of battle for the Republic’s establishment?