History of the Bog community
History Long Past
Long long ago, as was all of Thiusland, the east was the domain of gigantic elemental beings. The area was then mostly covered by a large lake inhabited by earth and water giants who slowly shaped the land closer to what it is now. But when a great fire threatened the great Urboral tree, the giants rallied against it, and fought fiercely in an attempt to save the primeval tree, sadly to no avail. Most of the water elementals perished in the battle and the remaining earth giants, overrun by sorrow, laid down in defeat on the eastern edge of what is now called the plains and the north, forming the great mountain chain that now borders the bogs. Although most of the earth elementals fell into a deep slumber, not all of them rested. Slirabh, the giant serpent of rock and stone whose body makes up a jagged mountain range rising a hundred meters high into the sky, was still awake. Its sorrow gave it a purpose, and inhabited by that purpose, it stands as a guardian of the nature of Thiusland against all forces who might threaten it.
Some time passed, and some tenacious and magic-welding lizards, escaping from the clutches of the dragons ravaging their homeland, made the journey across the shifting stones on the back of Slirabh to end up at the bogs of the east.Thirty or so lizardfolk, members of two families, who joined together for the journey travelled in relative harmony. Their voyage was well chronicled by Zliphia, who made great mention of the cooperation between the two families, freely sharing their spells in a way wizards of their homeland never did. This uncommon collaboration was instrumental to their survival. While only ten of the original travellers made it, the ones who did found welcoming wetlands filled with insects, open land, and tree cover that was like paradise to them.
The ten original survivors of the journey were split between two families; the Viparas and the Skinks. Those who considered themselves a part of the Skink family settled down early on and built a small village in a protected glade away from the rocky ridges. The Vipara on the other hand, after some debate, gathered some supplies and grew their numbers over eight years in preparation for an expedition far into the bogs.
During their journey, the Vipara first went west, using the stars as a guide. At this time, Thiusland was ruled by beasts, giants were in their early years and elves still roamed freely. As they would rest at night around a campfire, the lizardfolk were reading the stars and interpreting their celestial secrets which they used to deepen their folk magic practice. Unbeknownst to them, the elves were watching and following the lizardfolk along their journey, marvelling at their ingenuity in star-reading and spell craft that seemed to come as second nature to them.They were also pleased with the diplomacy they demonstrated when meeting the snakes of the eastern hills, which we now know as slitherskins, and how quickly the two found an understanding.
Back at the foot of the mountains, the Skinks had built wooden walls and fences around their shelters, taking the wood from a forest they found north. From that fort they would venture out and hunt large insectoids to sustain themselves and gather materials and plants from the woods. They quickly became skilled hunters in the treacherous bogs and saw martial prowess as a paragon of value. Storytelling and the gathering of knowledge grew in importance in their culture, for hunting routes and fighting techniques could be shared through stories, as well as preserved in intricate sculptures that would illustrate the best hunting routes. In three decades, they had built a system of marks inscribed on bark that would be the basis of the written Repitilenoid language and the first form of writing in Thiusland.
Around the third decade, the Vipara were now on the southern shore and were met by an elven spirit accompanied by strange pink skinned and hairy creatures they called gnomes. The elves insisted that the lizardfolk bring the gnomes with them back to their main city in the east, as they could teach them lots. The Vipara gladly accepted as their curiosity towards these people was unmatched, and together they started the long walk back home. Along the journey the gnomes spoke of their inventions and ways of farming, techniques and concepts the likes of which the Vipara had never heard of, and the gnomes observed as the magical acuity of their hosts never ceased to amaze them. The Vipara returned thirty six years from the day they left to the glade and introduced the gnomes to the few Vipara who stayed behind and now lived on the outskirts of the grand fortress of the Skinks: Xedoc.
The Recent Past
In the immediate aftermath of the return of the Vipara accompanied by the gnomes to the families sharing the bogs there was unease, but it settled as the gnomes were truly impressed by the Skinks’ building and writing and showed respect towards their way of life, the Skinks though gave no grace to the gnomes in return. To calm tensions, the Vipara and the gnomes built their lodgings away from the Skink’s fortress into the boggy surroundings, developing homes sitting on long wooden stilts and adapted the gnomic agricultural practices to work within the wet and swampy environment. The cultivating of quiff swelled the insect population, the planting of Kozom trees in nurseries brought many birds and the east saw a half-century of prodigious growth in population from these efforts. This population boom was shared amongst the Skinks and the Vipara but as the Skinks in Xedoc struggled more as a result of it, as the now much more common prey threatened their hunting tradition and their fortress became crowded and living conditions deteriorated as the population swelled. And so, as discontent grew in the fortified city, the Skinks grew resentful of the Vipara who seemed to have no such issues.
The Skinks attacked at daybreak, and destroyed tens of stilted homes while Vipara and gnomes were still fast asleep. They held them to a violent ultimatum; submit to the rule of the Skinks or be exiled. The Vipara called for the gnomes, since with their long lives most of their elders remembered life under dragon’s rule. Their wisdom was that the Skinks could be reasoned with if given enough time so they accepted submission under the promise of no further bloodshed. The Skinks extended the walls and defences of Xedoc to encompass the villages built by the Viparas and the gnomes, and claimed the combined settlement as one city under their protection. And under the rule of the Skinks, the Vipara grew closer to the gnomes who got relegated to the outskirts, having developed new spells and cultural touchstones in their years together.
The ruling Skinks worried of revolution coming from their subjugated siblings so they tried to insert a wedge between the gnomes and the lizardfolk in order to disrupt the harmony existing among them. A decree was passed making all lizardfolk equal to each other, but also have a higher status than folks of other races in their now proclaimed Repitalian Republic. It is also during these tumultuous times that the Republic saw slitherskins arrive, as well as desperate lizardfolk who came to Thiusland by boat to the south and a retinue of salamander folk of green and black colorations. The immediate and open assimilation of these newcomers irked the gnomes who had been part of this society for generations now and were still treated as lesser, but the final straw was when the new salamanders were given land that had been passed down in a gnome family for over a hundred years. The gnomes rose up in protest, using illusion magic to scare back and intimidate the lizardfolk enforcers. The ruling Skink family was put on the backfoot and in this hour of unease a Salamander man by the name of Vivonox caught the ear of the Skinks and began drumming up support for a full raid on the gnomish people, with intent to kill. The night of the raid came and a mob of two hundred salamanders and Skinks went to the gnomish neighborhood to burn it down but found it empty, the gnomes gone, their crops harvested and their stores barren. In secret, those who still considered themselves Vipara earned the gnomes’ trust and smuggled them out of the city to the north, beyond the bogs, hoping for them to find a better life there.
The salamanders and the newly arrived lizardfolk were sent out on duty of restarting the farming in the wake of losing the gnomes, but their knowledge and ways of doing was lost, or, more so, hidden by the Vipara who kept detailed records of all the techniques, technologies, stories and names of the gnomes during their time with them. The Skinks grew frustrated with the inability of their new allies and the newcomers grew angry at being pressured to provide for an ungrateful upper class. The Vipara pushed at the divide as much as they could and finally massive protests broke out all over Xedoc coming to the old fortress gates, to the home of Skinks. Faced with numbers they couldn’t hope to withstand the Skinks parlayed and an agreement was made that all the people of the big city would vote for their government, that any and all would be welcome in the bogs, and that no group could hold de facto power over another. With this parley came a week of deliberations and talks which were recorded in writing for the coming generations. It set the stage for a new era of the bogs in which the people would rule.
The God’s East
The public deliberation on the governance of Xedoc was reaching the six year mark. The group advocating for the communion government had the biggest support, followed by the council system, and a small faction of protectionists. The debates were widely attended but no strong consensus was emerging on how the people wanted to organize their society, as the factions honed their arguments and rebuttals week after week. As the talks reached a stalemate, no one was prepared for the protectionists to walk into the debate theatre one day, holding a copper-eyed lizard folk child that they proclaimed was a god, one that was found in the bogs, much like in the reports coming from the north, the plains and the west. The crowd erupted in questions, disbelief and cheers as this divine presence was about to drastically change the debate on how Xedoc would be ruled.
The God child had been found by Vivonox the Salamander, a minor dragon hiding amongst the Lizardfolk, as he was flying over the bogs on an evening hunt. The dragon could smell the power emanating from the child and quickly came up with a plan to see the lizardfolk fall under his rule, something he has been scheming since he arrived in the east. They introduced the child to the remnants of the Skinks and filled their heads with dreams about how they could use the child’s supposed divinity to get the upper hand amongst the scaly society of Xedoc. The dragon advised them to wait for the child to grow old enough to be able to speak before revealing them to the world, so they took them to a cottage near the mountains and waited. Vivonox then proceeded to slowly release its acid breaths onto the farmlands, making the crops fail and bringing the fear of famine back into the Bogs. The God child, now older, came and purified the acid from the land, in one farm, and showed the people its great power, telling them they could do so much more with their belief behind them. This tipped the scales of debate and the God was voted as the sole ruler of Xedoc for a period of ten years.
Vivonox, elated of their plan’s perfect execution, revealed their subterfuge to the God child and requested favour for their help. The God was furious at the deception and unleashed unrelenting magic at the dragon in a terrible clash of power, magic that stole not only the life of the Skink retainers but some of the God’s own life force, leaving the God’s body crippled and scarred. The revelation of the dragon’s betrayal made the God paranoid and an intrusive thought kept growing in their head; they must know everything, which over time kept growing and turned into they must be the only one who knew everything. The God ordered the hunters to travel out into the world and hunt, but not beasts or food, but book, scroll, and knowledge of all kinds and bring it back to them. In tandem, they had a large library built in the former skink fortress and hand-selected trusted servants to be the only living beings allowed inside.
Around that time, the God wouldn’t leave their home anymore, making rulings through proxies and decrees spoken from the parapet of their fortress, and even this was a rare occurrence. The one time the God left was when a meeting of all five of the found Gods was called for in the south. For the occasion the God, now named Enigmatic Decay, journeyed in a covered carriage to meet their so-called siblings. This gave an opportunity for the Vipara, now wearing the denomer ‘the Life Brood’ to act. They persuaded one of the God’s servants who was allowed in the library to let them know of any books or knowledge of import that came to its shelves, they made contact lines with the gnomes who gave them magic techniques to protect their minds from the God and dug out a cavern in the western mountain range to retreat to if ever hunted. All they could do to try and prepare against such a strong power as the God, was to build a network, a community and gather knowledge in order to find a way to win in any small way possible.
Enigmatic Decay returned from the gathering with a host of smallfolk who were in need of relocation from the south east, and were taken on by the God in exchange for the South’s archival tomes. Once settled, the confused people of Xedoc gathered at the fortress and the God decreed that the halflings would harvest peat for export, and make slabs of adobe for the creation of a grand tower while the Lizardfolk would train in the art of magic to go and aid the rest of Thiusland, now united under the Gods.A few years of unguided construction passed before the God announced the birth of a child, their child, who would become the ruler of Xedoc while they focused all their efforts on the construction of the majestic Tower of Tomes, which they would move to once the tower was completed. The Life Brood understood that the moment the God would move to the new tower would be their best opportunity to strike and put an end to the rule of the God in the east. So they began moving in the shadows and putting those sympathetic with their ideals into the construction crew.
Nearly half a century passed before the tower was completed. Fallacia, child of Decay, had grown and ruled over Xedoc with an attention and a zeal much unlike their parent. The existence of the Life Brood had been exposed by Enigmatic decay by reading the minds of those embedded in the ranks of God’s retinue but untrained, and their members, or those Fallacia deemed as members, were hanged publicly for all to see. What the God did not understand however was how deep the movement had become and never guessed how close to Enigmatic Decay some of their members were. This allowed Zamchol’s efforts to pass forbidden knowledge and spells to the resistance to stay unnoticed. For ten years the halflings were being taught spells to confuse casters and protect their minds from intrusive spell weaving, for ten years weapons were traded for in Hologall and enchanted in secret. And after these ten years, the moment finally came for the Life Brood to rise again, and in the week of celebration of the completion of the Temple of Tomes, the grandest tower in all of Thiusland, all plans went into motion and the Determined Few rose in the east.