History of the Halassurq Peoples

Source: https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/choice-of-rebels-part-1-wip-thread/1601/2477

Before the age of “Hegemony vs Empire” there were centuries of migration back and forth across the rugged Erezziano Isthmus, with Halassurq-speaking peoples coming from the vast eastern continent and the ancestors of today’s Shayardenes and Erezziano pushing up from the coast of the smaller continent.

One of the most successful groups of mounted Halassurqs fought their way all across the isthmus, sacking as they went, until they came to the great plains north of Aveche and established themselves there as pastoralists. The handful of settlements they left behind on the isthmus were conquered or assimilated over the years… but the Nyr pastoralists expanded to fill the whole northern peninsula, periodically plundering the neighboring agriculturalists and building grand but sparsely populated cities along the spine of hills in the middle.

Indeed, their expansion didn’t stop at the borders of today’s Nyryal and the Hegemony… while the cold reach west of the great firth never supported many settlements, some exiles of the Nyr pressed on between the wasteland and the mountains until they once again reached habitable grasslands in the southwest. Those tribes, descended from the kinslayer Brurq, dominated and intermingled with the previous inhabitants of that area. The land came to be known as Braurach and its people as the Brauracha – a savage folk, prone to cannibalism and Goety, whose language was nonetheless still recognizably related to Halassurq.

Back in the northern plains of Nyryal, the Nyr increasingly preferred trade to plunder. The coastal city of Umri, where they received trading ships from their newly Imperial cousins in Halassur, became the cultural and intellectual capital of the Nyr tribes. Glorious Nyrnakan remained the political capital, where the great coalitions of families gathered once a year to agree on things like migration routes, trade policies, and the occasional conquest. It was also the religious capital, home of the gods who had sustained the Nyr through all their wanderings.

The last Great Gathering of families in the (by then) Nyrnakan Republic was to agree to ally all the Nyrish tribes to their cousins in the Halassurq Empire. This meant war against the fast-expanding Karagonds, who had clearly set their sights on the whole continent, not just Erezza and Shayard.

Unfortunately, the Halassurqs were unable to make progress up the isthmus toward Karagon, so the Nyr were left to fight largely alone. They held their own for a while, but after a long and brutal war the Thaumatarch Hera dropped a mountain on Nyrnakan, marking the end of Nyrish liberties (and religion). Forty years after that, the Brauracha’s infamous Goety was reported to catastrophically backfire, creating the Xaos-Lands… and leaving Halassur with no independent allies against the Hegemony.