History is strange: recounting stories we did not live and characters we did not know. Yet, it shapes us. Our sense of self and view of the world are passed down. Some stories bring glory and honour while others bring shame. Many both.
This is such a story.
A people had formed in the fields and wastes west of the Talavero Mountains a thousand years ago. They came from northeast Yasteria - in the lands of the Asenes. Whether fleeing persecution or looking for opportunity, they arrived in waves and settled in Allegheny.
They did not find the land uninhabited. Nomadic tribes lived here. After centuries, aided by the benefits of iron tools and agriculture, they displaced and outcompeted the indigenous nations. They built castles of stone hewn from river quarries and mountainsides. They tilled the pockets of arable land while herders wandered the mountains searching for pasture for their livestock.
These were difficult times. Temperatures dropped at night while the Tep scorched them during the day. The rains were notoriously fickle and life struggled to eke out an existence. Nevertheless, they endured. Learning its patterns and understanding its ways, they rooted themselves here.
They transplanted the gods of the old country, refashioning them to explain the awe-inspiring phenomena and epic tragedies they encountered. While they emerged as scattered kingdoms, allying and betraying each other in petty wars, a leviathan was forming to the south.
The Kingdom of Bakil, in the heart of Yasteria, the birthplace of Paxism, was expanding its borders. It had taken lands to its south up to the coast of the Packilvanian Ocean. It had breached the defence of the Eastern Kingdoms. In the reign of High King Rawal I, Bakil, in its form as the Bakil Afhana (Realm of Bakil), or simply Packilvania, turned its eyes to the lands of the descendants of the Asenes, the Arcoidians who lived in Allegheny.