Rallied together by millennia of tradition that had been trampled for centuries not only by the Dragonlord but other conquerors before him, the Alo Pagtria, a term that is used both to refer to the desert city-states in general but also to their people, redefined themselves in the spiritual iconography and heart of their native cultures to embrace a unified, new future.
It was a scorching desert south of the sprawling mountains that dominated Ticonderos. For thousands of years it was a place uninhabited by mankind. Who would want to make home in such a relentless, barren place. Why? Thousands of years ago, in the northern tundras of what has become Elnard, when resources began to grow too short for too many mouths, about half or more of the native population began driving southward to find more suitable climes for habitation. They began to settle into what has become Domhnath and the plains in which Kingspeace has now been built, further south to the western coasts where the King of Coin rules the land today, and some few even made it to the rocky southeastern shores. The desert lie beyond yet more mountains and it seemed actively hostile to human life. Unfortunately, foreign human life would prove even more hostile to their own very human, native-Ticonderean lives.
They came, at first, from the north, in powerful oar-rowed galleys built for transport, not war. Tall and sun-kissed, strong and proud, speaking a foreign tongue, yet ill-suited to the cold. Their journey was long, perilous, and desperate. They were disproportionately many. The natives of northern Ticonderos were welcoming at first, despite early misunderstandings and hostilities, but the foreigners from the sea just kept coming by the hundreds, by the thousands, their homeland claimed by some horror or catastrophe lost to the ages, remembered by no living soul. So the natives moved south.
They came, next, from the east, in carracks driven by sails that caught the powerful westerly winds. Dark of skin and wiry of hair, speaking a new foreign tongue, worshipping but one foreign god, used to hot, barren sands and not temperate rain forests. Their journey was long, perilous, and desperate. They were disproportionately many. The natives, now of eastern Ticonderos, were welcoming at first, despite early misunderstandings and hostilities, but the foreigners from the sea just kept coming by the hundreds, by the thousands, their homeland engulfed in the blood and flames of civil wars. So the natives moved south.
But then they came from the south. The natives had moved as far south as they could. The tall, sun-kissed men that had come north had already come south as well, taking the lands along the western coastlands of Ticonderos. The mountains were claimed in large part by the Oreiad who had lived there for time immemorial. So the natives began roughing it in the desert south of the massive mountain range that dominates most of Ticonderos. They carved out a meager living there. They had made peace with the little they were able to claim for themselves and took pride in the strength they had shown to survive and thrive in this desiccated place. But then they came from the south. First the bronze and curly haired men, large and muscular, suited to both sea and heat. And yet, next the holy men, gaunt and pale, they seemed to hate climate and land of all sorts equally and wore this hate as armor against all that would oppose them. The native Ticondereans had tried to be welcoming, despite numerous early misunderstandings and hostilities, but the foreigners would not stop coming, would not stop killing, would not leave them their lands that had been won and bought by generations of sweat and blood and death and rebirth.
The natives had been forced onto the Isle of Mourning even before the Dragonlord had breathed flame across the sweltering desert of slavery and broken promises. Thousands of natives died before the dragons took to Ticonderos’s skies in conquest, and the number became horrifically too great to count or attempt to imagine during the Dragonlord’s tyrannical reign. The Ticonderean natives were painted as savages, followers of a despicable pantheon of horrific Dhogem deities that brought nothing but uncontrollable mutation and the “blessings” of barbaric demon-gods bent on destabilizing and destroying all human culture.
But Ticonderos’ native population would not stop fighting for who they were and what they believed in. Centuries of good will, of building bridges were behind them, the seeds of rebellion planted within family lines longer than the whole family of the Dragonlord had been alive. There had been centuries of congruence between the millennia old natives and the peoples that had conquered them, or attempted to, both spiritual and physical. The majority of the native peoples, and people of mixed foreign and native descent, in the area had exchanged traditions and assimilated their spiritual systems into a compatible network of religious beliefs. When the time came that the Dragonlord and the religious zealot that swept the capitol after him were put down for good the Alo Pagtria asserted themselves for the first time in thousands of years. They rallied. They stood together and the foreign nobles they fought forced them into conflict against their conscripted armies of native slaves and their peasant descendants. Many enslaved natives turned on their cruel masters and eventually the Alo Pagtria took for themselves a kingdom, long passed between various cultures and conquerors. They took the desert and they built a new nation upon it through sheer force of will.
While the Alo Pagtria are ruled, ostensibly, by divine right, the God-King and the lower Sovereign Kings of the City-States are said to be chosen by the gods, each is in turn supported by advisers elected by a council of noble families from the territories themselves. There is a religious ceremony to it all, but in the centuries of being conquered and defeated in the name of various cruel gods, the Alo Pagtria have taken a defiantly agnostic approach to rule and diplomacy. The strong will survive and the weak will die out – unless they are protected. The Kings of the Alo Pagtria know all too well what the lords and kings of foreign descent will do to hold on to their power, stealing ancestral lands, taking slaves, and forcing kin to fight kin, and thus know that their most vulnerable must be shielded by their strongest.
The Waybetween 