The Schizo Northwest
A map of the Schizo Northwest.
Introduction and Overview
"I proclaim that this is the land of my ancestors and their struggles, one which I shall defend in our own." Excerpt from the Third Owl Republic's Oath of Soldiery
Introduction
Above a section of Vitubia containing verdant plains and sullen mountains, the unchanging winds blow as steadily as ever. But while its flowing breezes may remain constant, the world that meets it head on has shifted, shuffled and turned upside down and back.
In the far north, blasts of bitter-cold air throw themselves upon covered beings; men which wander among giants stagger and screech of places, people, and experiences from a degraded time beyond common memory, barely comprehensible to those who live long enough to hear them.
Further south the wind goes. Gradually, the conditions become more humane. After passing an area rumored to be the home of a 'miracle people', it rushes through and interweaves with branches and leaves, held up by thick trees.
One tree moves. Something that shouldn't be in his forest is running into it: a screeching and sobbing person that cannot be called from his looks as exactly human. Clouded in thoughts but his intent clear, it impales the intruder clean through his chest with one of its mighty branches. As he emits a final, terminal screech, his friend flees.
The tree stops, leaving the body to fester upon the scarred and newly red-stained branch. Was there a custom to disposing of it? Did he need to tell of this invasion of territory? The tree consulted itself for answers, but could not find any; for the only reply was monotone static and dark feelings, punctuated with short and hollow imitations - dim sounds, twisted visuals and garbled actions - of the world which it lives in, but no longer could experience. Giving up, the tree opted to leave the body on the branch. Surely, it will remember soon what to do with it.
Absconding from a forest of death, the remaining non-human, a biological product of his invading progenitors, returned to his village of residence. Shaken by it all, he vows to never wander far from his home again - someone else would take his job as a merchant. Soon enough, a young man, barely of an age appropriate for it, replaced him. Unknowing of the world beyond the confines of his village, he is given supplies, wares, even a tantalizing bit of gold, and set off down a westerly road which was rough and beaten.
Though his route is perilous and winding, he soon finds himself descending altitude. Eventually, he reaches his destination: a "border-village", as his elders called it. Beyond it, the road was watched by armed and trained soldiers, intent on letting no one pass - at least, that was the surface view of them. Regardless of this, he set up his stall and began bartering. The armed soldiers only watched.
Another man came to the border village. A second, older trader. With shock, the young man watched as he fearlessly approached the troopers and handed them gold. Like a set of curtains, they parted before him, and so the older man went on.
The wiser merchant, now past the checkpoint, traveled inland. His endpoint was a special one: the city known to its inhabitants only as the Capital. It was big, beautiful by his own standards, and slowly crumbling. It was the citadel of a once grand Republic of which its third iteration now claims to inherit. Although it clings onto its illustrious legacy, it can never reach the heights its podium once stood at. Arguably, it has even regressed. The merchant recalls the proverb that is passed around the more cynical people of the city: the Third Owl Republic is decaying with the corpse of its founder.
His goods, like many others, ultimately find themselves at a port on the coast. Dockworkers load them onto cargo ships which travel south, into a port that one could swear once handled a lot more ships long ago.
A grizzled customs worker carves the seal of a star onto the wooden crates containing them, and soon they are distributed even farther by traders: they go to the kingdoms of its east, to the various "corpos" and local governments of its south, and further beyond, to the polities emerging from an ancient wasteland, to the local governments and "corpos" of the southeast, to kingdoms and tribes barely known by a name stretching from the plains to the mountains to the cold, cold tundra where demi-men roam with giants.
This region is uniquely colored by war - both inter-species and intra-species - and shaped by the peace which follows them. Like a grand cycle, life here goes on and breaks down. It is an unending epilogue to the chronicles of events occurring centuries ago - an invasion unlike any other and the resulting (or perhaps only assisting?) collapse of human domination.
This region is the Schizo Northwest.
Overview
Everyone treats their end differently.
Some choose to stay defiant in the face of it. They elect to struggle against inevitability, either desperately or pridefully, unwilling to lie down and accept their unyielding fate. Others may capitulate, seeing no point in resistance to something that always arrives to take them. Still others are fearful of the unknown which rides along with the end, their final moments being one of agony, of confusion or fright or terror. There are only two constants which apply to the end. First: all shall have to turn to it at one point or another. Second: every end comes packaged with a new beginning.
So too is the case with Vitubia. The history of the northwestern portion of the Holocontinent, though somewhat lost to time, is one filled with these ends and its peoples' reactions to them. It is important to remember, however, that history has so far not yet ended. Like the belief of Reincarnation of certain schizo religions practiced in the Shtregi Mountains, the actions of the past, of those who faced their end, influenced both the present and the future.
No scholar of the past will contest that the history of the northwestern Holocontinent is one filled with the conflagration of conflict. Moreso than others, this area has come to be not from the tip of the pen, but from the tip of the sword. Great nations and peoples of the times before were founded from it, defended with it, and fell to it. Such is the cycle of life and death.
Perhaps the greatest war of them all took place in a momentous time. As the world itself faded and fell apart, hostile invaders flooded the gates of countries already on the brink. Coming from the cold wastelands amd rising up in humanity's midst, these familiar marauders - the mentally broken and newly empowered schizos - wasted no time in causing chaos and destruction wherever they went. It was well and truly the times of the end. In this period of great crisis, it is where the responses to the end mattered most. Some kept fighting to the brutal finish. Others buckled immediately. All, however, eventually lost to the forces of insanity - and thus, the stage for the future was set.
Six hundred years have passed, but the curtains have not yet closed. Far from it. Tribes, roaming descendants of both conquerers and conquerees, dot the open expanses and tall mountain peaks. Vast swathes of land remain out of reach from the concept of a nation-state. Villages new and old remain mostly solitary, barring a traveling merchant or two, belonging to no one but themselves. Like everywhere else, everything here has regressed.
The closest resemblance to the past lies within the ancient nations and cities of the western coast. Here, civilization endures. Traders trod on beaten roads from village to village, taxmen demand tribute and organized armies camp and patrol the grounds of their nation. Some even dare to live as if nothing had ever changed.
Travel past the barrier of protection that a border provides however, and things become very, very different. Those who wander into the unknown usually do so armed. Many areas aren't dangerous, per se, but in a soil with undiluted freedom coursing through its veins, anything can happen. Better to be prepared than to be potentially dead.
To the north, squabblers duke it out over relics from gods. To the very south, the spirit of the Sakura stands guard. And to the east, a race reviled by many sit in a state of weary peace - for their ancestors had shed blood to seize the world for themselves, and their ancestors' offspring had their blood shed to keep it. But how did this race get there? Both their own legends and humans' memory of history tell that long ago, they begun a great invasion...
The Great Invasion
"Woe to my forefathers! They saw the reflections of ravenous beasts in their steel and stood against them just so my son couldn't even dare to stand and watch a field?" Sippe Avanzi, Turigardian scholar
The trouble began long ago. It was a calamity - at least the ancient legends claimed it as such. The crops had dried, the poor were starved; the air had chilled as the sun caught afire at the horizon. Nothing like it had been seen before or since; the acts of the world were beyond explanation. Extraordinary times like these lead to extraordinary events. That would be the chain of logic, at least, that could explain their expansion.
Not Quite Men
Feral savages. Unreasonable monsters. Perturbed creatures of the damned. Some may call them by only slightly nicer names, some of which live on to this day. Lightcrushers. Maziz. Spletnokii. Inhumans. There is only one race on Vitubia which has obtained these dubious honors: the Vitubian schizos of yore and their offspring.
In appearance, most are somewhat similar to human beings; usually they tend to be lankier and have thinner skin, with much smaller amounts of hair on the head and none to be found on the body. Their nails too are sharper than human nails - almost like claws - and usually act as a last-ditch weapon when a schizo has no other on hand. Despite the thin frame, their bones carry with them a strength even greater than that of a man's; their average running speed is a little higher than the human average as well.
The schizo has been a persistent foe. Even before the world's radical transformation, they were noted in fragmentary writings dated from the era as having been an enemy of old nations. How threatening they were at that time is unclear. Upon the start of the calamities of the past, however, it was as if a switch were flicked within them. As if inhibitions were unshackled and the uncertainty and insanity of the times had been channeled into their very essence. Soon, they would let out a primal, aggressive rage that would make the land itself quake and shudder in fear.
Enemy at the Gates
The assault of the rampaging schizos was one to be fought in the interior just as much as on the borders of all the civilized territories of the world. As great armies and hordes assembled in the northern wastes, entire towns began to fall to madness and despair. Bands of schizos and human marauders terrorized and plagued the citizenry, necessitating considerable diversions of resources - already reduced as a result of the massive crisis in the world in general - from the front line to deal with the threat.
Soon enough, the informal crusade of the schizos began. The shields of human warriors stemmed their tide at the beginning, but the conditions were not in humanity's favor. Many areas were quickly overwhelmed, expanding the conflict's number of fronts and exposing more and more populated areas to the horrors of the invading army.
Very few governments could hold on for long against these odds, and none would last forever in the face of countless schizos pouring into the fields. Despite this, the few surviving histories of the time noted with a tone of near-reverance that one nation demonstrated its resilience and held its ground until the bitter end: the Owl Republic. Adept and experienced in the arts of war, the Owl Republic - now called the First Owl Republic - fought on for many years against their unnatural foes. How many is disputed by different sources and legends: some say it lived for five years before its defeat, while others say it held the line for twenty five years. The true answer may remain unknown for two hundred and fifty more years.
The common myth which the heirs to the First Owl Republic gladly extol from birth to death is that they alone were the only ones who put their all into fighting the schizos. Was this true? It is difficult to say. Other people of the current-day Schizo Northwest would tend to disagree. But then again, nobody wants to claim they came from a nation of losers and cowards.
A Villain's Welcome
However long the First Owl Republic and its fellow states lasted, it was an inevitability that it would all come to an end. And so it did. At some point, the Republic's capital - the City of Victory - was sacked by the schizo forces and set to the torch. It was an event, immortalized in paintings for centuries to come, which would never truly be forgotten even as decades of knowledge and progress were in the flames of the burning libraries and schools. Today, it is disputed on racial lines who actually set off the fire. It is undisputable, however, that with the loss of the capital came the death knell of the First Owl Republic.
It might have been possible that scattered elements of the Republic's army and citizenry fought on after the Capital's sacking, but the general opinion is that the first war between humankind and schizokind ended then and there. There were no peace treaties nor ceasefires. Any surrender was unconditional, subject to the whims of the crazed victorious schizos.
Although humanity in the Schizo Northwest feared for their survival, many of their worries were thankfully somewhat overblown. It had been years since the world's end had burst-charged the schizos' power; by this point, this said power was already fading. Their infamous madness had begun to subside - though they would obviously never be very "sane" by any human standard, the schizos, lacking purpose and energy, began to regress and relax. They had won their great crusade. Now what?
The exact fate of the conquered human lands was not uniform across it. The schizos had no centralized government, no unifying leader - the closest thing to that being numerous generals of different schizo armies. Having no plans to truly build a schizo nation of their own, the land was instead first-come first-serve to whoever wanted a piece of it. Many personal fiefdoms and minor kingdoms were established, led by schizos who could do what they wished with their new gains with near-impunity. Some humans therefore were treated with brutality and viciousness; others were left to essentially govern for themselves as long as they paid a monthly tribute.
The schizos themselves soon settled down into their own communities, rarely mixing with human ones. And for more or less three hundred years... everything was finally - yet extremely reluctantly - at peace.
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Intertempora
"My life alone is worth nothing. You have waged war against my people, and my people will avenge me tenfold. This war will not end until your feathered helmets lay crushed and soaked with blood. By your gods, let it be known!" One version of the last words of Hari, King of the Schizos, before his execution at the hands of the Second Owl Republic
Though the sounds of battle had long faded, the memories of the struggle among the human inhabitants of the Schizo Northwest had not. Village elders kept the stories of the fall of the old world in their hearts and passed it down to their children: the heroic actions of themselves or their comrades ("and the whole lot of them actually ran away, could you believe it?"), the reaction upon hearing of the sacking of the Capital ("when my grandpa heard the news, the old man fell over dead on the spot"), the nations before the mighty invasion ("you would have loved to see those Black Fleet boats, they came from so far away...") and in general of a distant, nostalgic era where humans were kings of the vast world before them ("I only wish you lived in my time instead of yours. You could've made such a great soldier...").
War is a horrible mistress, but peace is a fickle one. Even without the benefit of history's hindsight, it was obvious that the losing side was not satisfied with staying subservient to their new masters. Although detailed accounts of the old times soon began to disappear, the raw fact that civilization fell to barbarian conquerers would remain in the hearts of the human populace for generations to come. It would only be a matter of time until a new great conflict would arise; one that could avenge their forefathers and end the schizo menace for good.
Chains Loosened
To condense roughly six hundred years of history into even this many passages can be a tall order. It is even more so when like a dimming light, more artifacts of the past have begun to succumb to nature. Nevertheless, a portrait of the past can be rebuilt - and a quarter of a faded painting is still a painting.
In the aftermath of the Great Invasion, humanity now had neighbors. The schizos, having regained at least some mental faculty, saw no point into returning from wherever they once originated from. Though they had entered a new land, to settle in the unknown frontiers was a much more preferable option than taking a long trek home - if they even had a previous one. Rather quickly, schizo communities, hamlets, villages and even entire towns sprang up across the new land, especially within the mountains and remote plains of the east. Most of these schizo villages were closed to humans (and vice versa for human villages), with the various schizo states and kingdoms being administered from them.
While this isolation was preferable to both races, it was not one that would remain. Over the years, in the coastal areas (and to a lesser extent, the central areas) of the Schizo Northwest the balance of power began to shift. First went the regimes which treated their human subjects with oppression; one by one, peasant revolts would overthrow them and establish their own, human kingdoms. Being poor and uneducated, these new governments felt no connection to the ones of history; there were no new Hoshiyomi states, no new Owl Republics. Usually, they named themselves after their villages, their people or of ancient names for their region. Nothing more than this was desired.
Taking from the examples of the first peasants, other humans began to agitate and revolt. Some of these local rebellions succeeded. Others were crushed. The isolation of those schizo administrators who fell was the catalyst for their individual downfalls. As for the fate of overthrown tyrants, some were executed. Some fled to other schizo communities, where they may or may not have been executed for reasons of various credibility. Some schizo communities turned on each other for the same reasons. Others sought to fight back against the change in power. And so, a new time of strife began, both inter-race and intra-race.
Human states clashed amongst themselves for territory and resources, but many turned their weapons towards their old masters. In a small and spiteful reflection of history, some schizo villages were raided and burned. Their surviving inhabitants, terrified and desperate, tended to flee eastward towards their own kind. As the violence continued, a demographic map that would relatively persist up to the present day and would underline the great struggle which was to come began to emerge: the humans, to the west. The schizos, to the east. At the center, a volatile mix waiting to finally erupt.
It was in these times that a man named Seer Avi was born. Other than the fact that he was born to an educated family in either the small town of Ome Neshii or the regional center of Khumin (now known as "Aviichi"), very little is known of his early life. By the time Avi appeared in the known historical record, he had already shown himself to be a decent diplomat and brilliant tactical planner, having acted first as a general in the army of the Khumin city-state before becoming a capable advisor to its ruler. It was also known that at this point, Seer Avi had a passion for history and a pining for an idealized past. A plan had begun to form in his head, one that would be realized after Avi was designated the ruler's successor. Almost immediately upon the former leader of Khumin's death, the new, ambitious leader made plans for an expedition to the east. The destination? An ancient city, now nearly depopulated. The objective? To revive an ancient idea of the past: democracy, strength of humanity, and unity.
A Republic Remolted
The ancient Capital had never really recovered from its age of glory. Various ruins, the ones that weren't already fully destroyed at least, dotted a maze of ancient cobble paths with ramshackle houses and buildings conjoined to them. Controlled by a rather large schizo chieftain, it was one of the few places in the Schizo Northwest where the human and schizo populations mingled with one another. And in Seer Avi's eyes, it was a prize which must be taken. With one order, the Capital was placed under siege. Messengers delivered one sentence to said chieftain: hand over the city or die. Unfortunately for Avi, the chieftain preferred death to dishonor. And so began a pitched battle on the outskirts of the city: one that thanks to Avi's bravery and cunning skills was won handily by the "president" of Khumin. The ancient city was his. Now, it was time to make use of it.
On one fateful day, it was declared to a gathered crowd that the Second Owl Republic was born. Uniting the Capital, Khumin, and several other regions which quickly came under his control, Seer Avi had positioned himself to be in control of the largest human nation (in the region) in centuries. Quickly, Avi set up a republican system of government, one admittedly somewhat more centralized than its predecessor, but a democracy nonetheless. The clock was fixed and reset; from now on, at the summer's full moon, a lunar calendar would be established. The year was 0 ANF: 0 years after the new founding. And so quantifiable time was revived; it seemed as if civilization itself was returning.
Over fourty-two years of rule, Seer Avi transformed the Second Owl Republic into seemingly a model state (though how much of it was true and how much of it was historical propaganda is contested), if one that was scandalously lenient towards schizo communities - the desire for revenge burned brighter than ever for many, now that humanity had a taste of its power before the invasion. Their wish was granted in 43 ANF. In that year, Seer Avi, founder of the Second Owl Republic, a name known as far south as the land of the Sakuras and beyond the mountains of the east, rapidly fell ill in his bed. Supposedly, he had passed away within hours. He had not even the time for an autopsy before his grand funeral began.
The funeral was closer to mass hysteria than a proper commemoration of life. Weeping citizens, deciding that a man as great as Seer Avi did not deserve to be taken by the earth, seized his body from its procession of soldiers and took it for themselves. Wood would be stolen from benches and stalls; lumber stores would be ransacked by grieving men and weapons and portraits would be pilfered. His body, carried and tossed in a mob of figurative widows, was brought to the outskirts of the city, to the site where he had won the Capital. There, a grand funeral pyre would be built, one of wood, weapons, portraits of him and of his Republic, sparsed with jewelry and clothing of its own citizens. It was a pyre that would tower over any grave and spread his ashes in the wind: according to old burial traditions, it meant that all the land was his place of significance. Legend tells that when the pyre was lit, the smoke could be seen from the house he was born in.
The law stipulated that after Avi's funeral, an election would be held to choose the new leader. The enforcers of the law had other ideas. A day after the funeral, citing a "lack of order within the city", the military took to the streets and occupied key government posts. Soon, Great-General Agust Nurmane was the law. From now on, whatever the law said, goes. Soon, its eyes would be turned towards the odious elephant in the room: what to do with the invaders of humanity's own land? Great-General Agust Nurmane knew the answer. Coincidentally, it was the one he knew best.
The Second Owl Republic would go to war.
The Great Reclaimation
Though the news eventually made its way to the central and eastern regions, few seemed to pay heed to the events ongoing within the ancient Capital. In the east, the schizos had recently begun to fully appreciate the value of gold; soon, various conflicts would begin over the possession and crude mining of it. The central plains, in the meantime, was processing the idea of new identities - soon, a man would proudly declare himself to be a Susaran or a Gardita, the meaning of such a term to be sculpted by the running waters of time.
Strange tidings were soon to arrive there over the years. There were talks of new alliances in the west. Rumors of entire settlements being called to arms. Human men with swords moving north, south, and east. Caravans of wide-eyed schizo refugees with nothing more but their clothes and their despair. Sightings of smoke plumes on the horizon. Soon, the tidings turned into avalanches of omens. The feathers would be red. The grass will be black. The dirt will hunger; the sky will tremble. Some humans and schizos both realized what was to come, but many more remained clueless until the feathered men came to their doorstep. If the doorstep belonged to a friendly human, they would bring with them great news: the Great Reclaimation had begun.
In 47 ANF, Nurmane's raised and ready armies had one goal: reseize the land of their ancestors from the schizos which had settled there. There would be no quarter. While they weren't entirely hellbent on slaughtering any schizo they could find, the armies were noted to be rather... uncontained at times. Schizo villages were to be burned, their male inhabitants slaughtered on the spot if they resisted - and sometimes even when they didn't - the rest would be cast away. Their possessions were to be seized by the shaded Republic and used in whatever way was necessary to defend it. War called for measures beyond the pale, but the potential of rebuilding a land of the past was all worth it. Now was the time for revenge.
As the Owl Republic pushed in the central lands, the various schizo communities of that area quickly came to understand the nature of the threat. Messengers were sent east, their requests begging the recipients to help their brothers in their time of mortal peril. Some small raised forces went west. Others couldn't believe it, or had no motive to help - after all, why should they care about something so far away?
Though organized resistance soon appeared, the trained and disciplined armies of the Second Owl Republic cut through them like melted butter. Every day, more houses would burn; more corpses would lay at the feet of the crusaders, the defenders of humanity. Further east the refugees went. Further east the pursuing army traveled. However, as they marched on, the enemy armies would soon grow in number. More and more schizo petty-states and tribes would soon come to realize that they could no longer afford to bicker amongst themselves or lie in ignorance. The feathered men were coming, and with them an overwhelming scythe which would listen to no compromise. The seeds of schizo unity were planted, and they would very soon begin to germinate.
Soon, Nurmane and his forward units would sight the eastern mountains in the distance. This part of the campaign would be the most difficult, that much was obvious, but no place could be left untouched. As the feathered men advanced, a great deal of the schizo race finally realized what was to come for them if they did not fight here and now. The future of their people hung in the balance. All must join together, or be slaughtered alone. A unifying figure must lead them to victory. Schizokind needed a King.
Many tribes and communities gathered together to find one. And soon, one would be found. Among the armies of the schizos, a dashing, tall commander named Hari stood out from his peers. His voice was inspiring, his charges heroic, his tactics impressive; he was the very model of a king. And so, he became the first of his kind - the Vadhti, the king of the east.
It was Hari who was to lead the armies of schizos as they fought for their own homeland: the one their ancestors had fought to take for their race. As Nurmane prodded into the mountain passes, the schizos began to deny Nurmane of precious looted resources. Wherever schizos fought on in the central plains still, they began to burn their crops. In the gold mines, they would try to cause cave-ins. Villages were burned preemptively, to deny the Owl Republic even the satisfaction of doing so themselves. It was a true life-or-death struggle, one which began to reach its apex.
A series of climactic battles in the mountains then took place. In the end, against all odds, the schizos were the ones that emerged victorious at the end of them. Great-General Nurmane would finally have his first major defeat - and Hari his first legendary victory. The tides of war would slowly begin to change.
By 52 ANF, Hari began pushing back. In a year, the central plains were once again the field of battle. More and more schizos arriving from the north and further east were flooding to Hari's ranks to take part in the hostilities. For the first time in a long while, all the schizo race desperately bathed in a ray of hope. However, like a cloud smothering sunshine, the good fortune would not last.
It was by happenstance. Hari and his entourage, unfamiliar with the central plains as much as his mountainous abodes, took the wrong turn at the wrong time. An enemy patrol spotted them first. The struggle was short yet decisive: the King's guards lay dead, their ruler seized and soon shackled. The days of Hari were now numbered.
Nurmane, as per usual, had no appetite for any dealmaking he could have done with the schizos. It was said he himself made the decision to publicly execute the king in the streets of the Capital. An uncertain amount of days later, Hari stared at an unfamiliar jeering crowd chanting for his slow, agonizing death. Much like the method, his sentencing was slow; it was delightful to the crowd as the anticipation boiled with the tar.
Hari's last words, unsanctioned by his executors, are no longer precisely known. The general gist of them, however, is preserved: the Second Owl Republic would pay for their transgressions with blood. The words soon turned into blood curdling screams. Soon after, the King of the Schizo's head was on a pike.
Enraged by the endless death wrought upon their people, the schizos did not turn tail and flee when they heard of the fate of their valiant king. Their resolve merely hardened. The war would continue.
And continued it did. For years and years, humankind and schizokind stained the central plains with guts and gore in a period of unimaginable carnage. Farms were painted red, then lit in orange. Slowly, the Second Owl Republic was pushed back. As their resources dwindled, the political situation within it became more and more unstable. Protests were crushed, riots were suppressed. Nurmane, once the head lion in his den of generals, gradually found himself in more and more peril.
Although there were cracks building up for years, the first hole in the dam opened up in 63 ANF when the city of Avessii declared it would no longer supply troops for the brutal eastern war. It would be the death chime for the entire Republic.
Within a year, the Second Owl Republic's mighty war machine turned (partially) on itself. Nurmane's generals were no longer loyal; they had instead started bickering amongst themselves for patches of conquered land. While the war continued being fought in the central plains, the domestic situation spiraled to the point of no return.
Nurmane himself, unable to keep the Republic secure, would soon be deposed. At least, that was the plan concocted by a group of ambitious officers. Thanks to a sympathizer within their ranks, Nurmane soon learned that many of his generals and political figures within the Capital had grown sick and weary of the Republic's unyielding downslide into destruction. They would all have their own ideas on how to fix it, but for now, the first item on the list was simple: eject the leader.
Under the cover of one winter night in 71 ANF, Nurmane likely fled the Capital. From then on, he disappeared from the historical and administrative records of the era. His plan and fate, to this day, are lost to history. The final downfall of the Second Owl Republic was at hand. Within a year from his departure from it, the schizos were once more on the doorstep of the fated old city.
By 73 ANF, the civil war of the Second Owl Republic reached its terminus. Entire regions, reaching back to a simpler past with their peasant origins, declared their independence once more. In the Capital, all hell had broken loose. Factions of the military were battling in the streets; the civilians had joined in too for one cause or another. The schizos did not need to repeat the actions of their ancestors - the Capital was soon once more billowing with smoke. No invasion required.
The schizos, somewhat decentralizing and endlessly hallowed out themselves by merciless conflict, declined to push further into the human heartlands and left non-combatant humans in the central plains be. Although fighting continued for another few years amongst the inhabitants of the former Second Owl Republic, the collapse of one of the greatest human nations in centuries eventually led to yet another bitter peace.
A few more centuries fly by. Over time, much like the intertempora between the First and Second Owl Republics, the idea of grand human unity under the Neimlis was put aside and buried in the dirt. However, the memory of an apocalyptic conflict between humanity and the schizos, rejuvenated by over a decade of bloodshed, continued to be remembered. For many, many years, life would go on, people tending to their own communities and local areas.
That is, until a local politician in the Capital began working towards a dream he thought was impossible.
The Third Owl Republic
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Arisen Anew
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The Borderlands
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Clouds of Darkness
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Blood, Tears, and Trees
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The Forest Which Remains
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Weeping Silence
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Decomposition
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Sheocu Atyko
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Once We Were Brothers
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On and Between the Peaks
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Weary Eyes and Fragile Peaces
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Frozen Treasures To Die For
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Tundra of the Ancients
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The Factions
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"What Do You Mean 'Leave'?"
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Land of the Stargazers
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The Heavens, Split
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Westward Nations: A New Identity
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Eastward Nations: The Distant Men
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Peripheries
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A Hostile North
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To The Far East
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Rumbles Southwards
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