A Short History of Sawelas and its Peoples
Around ten thousand years ago, our ancestors crossed the ice bridge that connected the old country to Edorath, leaving the tribe of the Mind behind. When the time of ice ended soon after, the bridge disappeared and the three tribes were separated from the other forever.
Most of our ancestors continued west to settle Lonknohlas, Weroklas, and Lesh Kalae — which are now three of the largest and oldest civilizations on Earth. But there was one small group that split from the others and instead traveled south.
They called themselves the Una, which meant ‘people.’ When they left their larger family and went on their own way, there were an estimated 5000 members of this small tribe. They were led by Ik-to-po and his family — which consisted of his wife and five children, along with his three brothers and their families. The four men led their tribe southward through what is now Esterlenth and Methyo Genlas.
Because they were isolated from the other peoples and three main tribes, the Una soon forgot about the Powers, the Holders, and their old country across the sea as the generations passed by. The Una came to worship spirits that they believed resided in all things, from animals to clouds to rocks. They built small round structures made of stone and mud that stood for hundreds of years until the mud washed away and all that remained was a circle of broken rocks. The Una believed that spirits came to these circles to rest, and that if a person entered one while a spirit slept, he would be granted untold blessings.
The Una had no writing system, but were amazing artists who painted with extreme detail on cliff faces and stone. A handful of petrified wood has also been found over the last century, carved with people conversing with nature spirits. The most famous of these paintings is near modern day Kosta, on the underside of an outcrop of rock that shelters a small cave. In the cave the remnants of campfire smoke can be seen, having stained the ceiling. But beneath this outcropping is a painting of what anthropologists consider to be the Una depiction of the solar system, with animals and spirits taking the places of planets and stars, and in the center is the Earth depicted as an egg. The entire painting is well over ten yards across, and places have been eroded or defaced over time so that we will never be able to see the full picture.
The Una lived on the eastern coast of Methyo Genlas for several hundred years, developing their culture as a sea-faring and nature-revering people. Soon their ships took them across the Strait, where they discovered a new land. It was a huge island, and many of their people settled their permanently to raise farms and families.
Soon, however, invaders from other tribes — such as the Guong who would soon found Jong-uen — discovered the Una living in isolation on the coast of Methyo Genlas and raided them for slaves and resources and land. This went on for many years, with different tribes trading occupation of the Una over the generations.
Finally, under the leadership of Yupo-kamuy, the Una that remained in Methyo Genlas overthrew their oppressors and sailed across the Strait to the large island. They called it Kunwa — “Land of the Sunrise.”
The Una lived on Kunwa for thousands of years. Meanwhile, the rest of the world developed while the Una remained in isolation, not concerned with other peoples. And then, around 2800, Emperor Sha of Jong-uen (by this point in time a world superpower) invaded Kunwa and claimed it for his own, both the land and the people.
What followed were decades of horror for the Una. In today’s terms we would certainly call it genocide. It began with the killing of all Una over the age of twenty, and enslaving the others. No Una was allowed to live past age thirty after that. They were slaves to the Jongua for two hundred years.
In the year 3036, a small slave rebellion rose in Kunwa, gathering momentum until an Una slave by the name of Chish led a slave army to the capital city Ngua to kill the Jongua governor of the island nation. Chish and his fellow slaves were unsuccessful in overthrowing their captors’ government, although they did manage to kill Governor Jing.
The surviving slaves of the rebellion, including Chish himself, were gathered up by Jong-uen’s soldiers and were each made to dig their own graves. Each slave’s hands and feet were removed, then their tongues and eyes, so that they could not see or speak or move in the afterlife. After that, each throat was cut, and the slaves were buried in the graves they had dug for themselves. The severed body parts were sent to Emperor Shen in Jong-uen, who had them preserved in a locked box. To this day, the locked box is an heirloom for the descendants of Shen, a reminder that power comes from fear and control. The box is on display in the Red Palace Museum and can be viewed by any tourist.
In the 3910’s, Methyo Genlas was at war with Lesh Kalae. The prophet of the Soduqir religion in the desert country had exiled those who did not follow his interpretation of their book of scriptures, the Bagh’ra. As a result, the surrounding nations had a surge of refugees that they could neither feed nor control, and the civilized world was falling into disorder. Methyo Genlas (still known as Jong-uen), who had the largest and most powerful army, was called on by other nations to do what they could to end this civil conflict in Lesh Kalae.
After fighting several battles with the Soduqir, Chancellor Lao-Nguen (the title of Emperor died when the nation was reformed into a commonwealth in the 37th century) met with the prophet of the Soduqir and made him an offer. If he would stop the fighting and call an end to the war, Lao-Nguen would give to him Kunwa for all those he deemed unworthy of their birth country. The prophet took the deal, and from that time forward, Kunwa has been home to millions of Bahim-Soduqir (unorthodox).
With the Common Tongue agreement in the early 38th century, many country names were changed. The Valk was now Esterlenth, Djinbai was now Danuras, and Jong-uen was now Methyo Genlas. Kunwa was renamed Sawelas.
With the extinction of the Una and their language, the colonization of the Jongua, and the introduction to the Bahim-soduqir religion and Kalaea language, Salwelas remains one of the most changed and most diverse countries in Edorath.
Once in a great while, a local or a tourist will take a walk through one of Sawelas’s many forests and happen upon an old circle of stones, overgrown with moss and grass and tree roots. They might notice the strange structure, or they may not. Either way, they continue on and soon forget.
