Xiaxo lies deep within the southern confines of the Kirat Empire, a land of sweeping plains, rolling hills, and rivers cutting their paths through ancient forests. The Luxo Ocean crashes into its southern shores, whipping salt-laden winds into the highlands, and the rugged Pamchai hills stand as sentinels against the invaders coming from the east. But to the west lie dense jungles that sprawl untouched and alive with myth and peril. Xiaxo was once a haven. Its people live in harmony with the land; their traditions, deeply woven into the fabric of nature. History has been unkind to such tides, however. From being free, Xiaxo is now at the edge of extinction, suspended between a past that it cannot forget and an empire that wants to rewrite its future.
A hundred years ago, Xiaxo had waged a desperate war against the Kirat Empire, dominion vast and merciless in its insatiable appetite for conquest. Xiaxo's warriors fought not for conquest but for survival, wielding the land itself as their weapon. They struck from the shadows, their ambushes precise, their retreats swift. Every village, every forest, every ravine became a battlefield. The Pamchai trackers led enemies into the hills to starve until they could reach them. Kirati legions starved and died before striking. River clans turned their boats into swift war vessels, then struck supply lines and disappeared in the mist. The jungle-poisoners left the land sick beneath enemy feet, their knowledge of flora changing simple wounds to festering death.
But even the greatest tenacity could not stop the machines of the Empire. Black metal towers rolled through the fields of Xiaxo, belching fire and lightning, reducing whole villages to ruin and smolder. The skyships of the Empire were called Aeras: they rained down destruction from above, and legions of trained battle-mages, imbued with sanctioned magic, carved a path through the defenses of Xiaxo. It wasn't won by superior strategy, but by sheer attrition. The Empire never tired, never stopped. It had more bodies to throw into the fray, more resources to burn, and an unshakable belief that Xiaxo would be brought to heel.
When the war finally ended, it did not end in triumph but in exhaustion. The Treaty of Nerma bound Xiaxo to the Empire, and its rulers were permitted to govern in name only, but not in deed. They bent their heads and paid tribute; their old magics were proscribed, and their lands were taxed into submission. Forests that hid warriors were denuded for Imperial roads. Holy rivers became highways for Imperial commerce. All that was feared was tapped. The jungles were tapped for resources. Years went by and Xiaxo became a great trading centre, with natural wealth feeding the Empire's insatiable thirst. Tlangthar, once a city of refuge for warriors and sages, had turned into an industrial hub where the skyline had smokestacks and streets were lined by structures of the Imperial order but the city itself never losing its traditional ecological design.
Nonetheless, the spirit of Xiaxo did not break. It simply went into hiding.
Xiaxo was well shielded before the roads of the Empire had invaded its land by its geography. The mountains and dense forests made passage slow and dangerous, and its rivers dictated where settlements could rise. Now, the Empire's grand highways connected cities, making Imperial rule efficient and swift. However, the same roads that brought prosperity also brought danger. These roads became veins through which the influence of the Empire spread, but Xiaxo's rebels saw something else in them: weakness. In the shadows, insurgents planned. The same guerrilla warfare that once bled the Kirat armies still lingered in the minds of those who remembered the old ways.
Resistance thrived in whispers. In the valleys, the ancient ones taught their forbidden magics in secret; their knowledge burning like a glowing ember against the Empire's law. Rebel scribes copied down ancient texts within hidden enclaves, smuggled them into places where the watchful eyes of Imperial enforcers didn't reach. The Dysno, the official religion of the Empire, had declared them to be heretics, burned down their shrines, and set up monumental buildings that extolled the magnificence of the Empire. But faith is hard to kill. The old gods of Xiaxo were not forgotten yet.
Something, however, had changed in the world. A new presence filled the skies and the waters, watching, waiting. The Kirat Empire, at its strongest, had started to be afraid of something greater. Whispers were spoken of unseen forces moving in the high courts, allegiances shifting like sand in the tide. The leaders never spoke of this, but even their movements conveyed their fear. Xiaxo used to be some small province under a great empire. It no longer was; it was never again a captured land. In fact, a battleground for a much greater existence than itself existed.
The thing is, is Xiaxo gonna rise from those ashes, or is its very identity going to be swallowed whole by the steady march of progress?
One thing is sure—change is coming. The winds carry the smell of something brewing, injustice fueling a slumbering volcano that is waiting to erupt.