Clan Odarezi

> *"Am I to understand by this that Paragon Nochtica no longer wishes to honour our pact, which has held for nigh a millennia? Does she not remember that this land, our valley, was not stolen or settled in some ill-begotten colonial war a few centuries ago, but was discovered by our people, green and immaculate, longer ago than any other than the kraal remember? Has she overlooked how our people suffered, suffered dreadfully at the hands of the invaders she groups us with by her words and actions?*
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> *"What a savage place this world has become - more peopled than ever, yet filled with anguish and spite. It seems that this is not yet the elect time for Zuxan to arise and feast upon the ungrateful inhabitants of Revenoth, so we must take matters into our own hands: to steer clear from the bitter conflict of states that now rages over the whole world, I am quite willing to sacrifice our pride.*
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> *Make it clear to the Paragon that any aggression won't be met merely by a farmer's defensive coalition or another dam, but will be treated as a direct attack upon the empire itself, and responded to in kind. I do not wish to see our old aquatic friends squander their lives in a pointless battle they cannot win, nor do I desire to invite the Imperial Army into our valley when I have no assurance they would leave - so let us pray that this threat is the end of the matter. Let us hope, and ignore the little voice in my heart that tells me that Nochtica would not have forced this confrontation if she was not preparing to wage war upon all mankind."*
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> **Nasrin Beheshti, Queen of West Myridea, in private conference with the Elder Council of the Odarezi Clan**
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#### Ancient History of the Odarezi

Possibly the longest-settled people in Revenoth, the Odarezi Zami'ite clan was founded by a mixed group of toroch and human nomads after they stumbled, parched and emaciated, on Lake Odarez and the vast and fertile Myridea Valley surrounding the central Marazaki river. The sheer fertility of the land encouraged the Odarezi to abandon their nomadic ways; however, they remained committed to the Law of Stone, with administration of the burgeoning civilisation handled by a council of the 100 oldest citizens and property merely in the hands of who built it and who lived in it.

Even the fertile river banks were open to be worked by any who could do so with their own hands; the most applied families yielded the most food and thus ate better, gained the privilege of rearing more children, and could share the most at festivals, with struggling and sick neighbours, and in the yearly sacrifices to the slumbering primordial being at the bottom of the lake. For a while, the Odarezi people were perhaps the most prosperous and contented anywhere on Aurora, as well as one of the most numerous (though they built no cities and were thus still fairly sparsely settled).

Ultimately, however, this golden age was shattered, as all things are, by conflict. The first sign of trouble came when the Marazan lenks, who had overpopulated their native isle of Atl'alchanto and the surrounding shores, begun to ingress further upstream in the search for further fishing and hunting territory. Coming upon the peaceful Odarezi and seeing their fields of wheat and corn, the lenks naturally assumed that the Zami'ites were herbivorous weaklings who would be driven out of the Myridea Valley with a show of force, and despite being vastly outnumbered they began to launch riverside raids on the farmers.

As a decentralised, seniority-ruled people, moreover one unused to conflict, at first the Odarezi had little response to these acts of aggression other than rebuilding the torched cottages and supporting the destitute farmers; some isolated attempts were made by communities to fend off the lenks with just their farming implements, but most such skirmishes ended inconclusively, and these raids only grew in frequency. The best minds of the clan council were put together for a solution - eventually, the controversial decision to dam the Marazaki before it joined with the Kremisi (and thus grew too wide for a dam to function) was reached. A vast squad of volunteers was mobilised, and probably the world's first dam, at least in living memory, was constructed across the central Marazaki over the course of a few months.

With the water flow and fish supply now under the control of the Odarezi, the lenk aggressors were eventually brought to the negotiating table, where the former party agreed to cede control over the Kremisi entirely in exchange for a guarantee from the latter of their territorial rights around Lake Odarez. It was a deal both parties walked away from fairly satisfied, and over the next century hostile relations matured into mutual trade and even some cultural exchange.

#### Post-Crossing History

This diplomatic ingenuity, however, would not serve the Odarezi as well over the next half millennia, when, during the period from about 300 PA until the Second Crusade, growing bands of nomadic Zami'ites would unite under the banners of various Kôgans and Kôgers and proclaim ownership over vast sections of Zamiel. Conqueror after conqueror would ride into the Valley of Myridea and demanded plentiful supply for their armies from "their subjects" the Odarezi, with the settled people powerless to resist these imperatives. Although they mostly avoided a part in such conflicts, the Odarezi population stagnated, and even began to decline as young sons and daughters were conscripted by passing horse lords and the land was overworked and depleted.

However, this was just a lesser woe compared to the dark age that began with the arrival of crusading armies from Fimbria, which upon briefly inspecting the Odarezi's peculiar faith declared the clan godless infidels and begun to systematically purge their settlements on the eastern bank of the Marazaki, either incorporating the homeless population into filthy, ramshackle colonial settlements, driving them across the river or simply killing them on the spot (a tactic much preferred by but not exclusive to the Valiant Hearts). In the course of a few months, half of the Odarezi civilisation was uprooted and dispersed, with the surviving western half struggling to cope with the influx of refugees.

Ultimately, in a bid to avoid further deaths, the elder council decided to gather the landless refugees into mass settlements, which would eventually gain walls and complete the transition into cityhood, as well as electing from their ranks a presidential figure, the clan speaker, who would negotiate with the crusaders for a share of the food harvested from the clan's own former land. This speaker role was only ceded further power by the council in order to coordinate a defence against opportunistic neighbouring Zami'ite clans, as well as rogue lenks looking to destroy the Odarezi dam or simply to pick a fight; ultimately the governor-stroke-general speaker would evolve into the hereditary monarch they had effectively functioned as for a while. With this, the unique, prosperous Odarezi society was finally shattered, the remnants becoming just another small kingdom on the western banks of the Marazaki.

#### The Precarious Present

The Odarezi clan has made some gains in recent times, however; after securing the favour of Zaliti Kôgan by assisting her armies in their invasion of Nivena, they were allowed to resettle some of the land on the eastern bank of the Marazaki. What's more, when Zor Zamexi fell to the machinations of the Valiant Empire and the land surrounding the Myridea Valley was annexed into the kingdom of Calicosia, the Odarezi were able to strike a deal with the newly crowned Emperor Hidelith Valiant, who was desperate to feed his war-torn empire, becoming an imperial client state and ceding control of the southern Odarezi lake region (where the emperor wished to construct a naval base to guard against a second attempted crossing from Zamiel) in exchange for keeping the territory they gained under the Zamexites and protection of their western border by the Imperial Army.

It is a deal that has held for a decade now, and is likely to continue to hold until the empire stabilises, although Hidelith has received extensive criticism for compromising with infidels from more extremist parts of his court (and little praise from more moderate sections), so if he were to prove more impulsive or zealous than most believe him to be the situation could change very quickly. Ultimately, however, the Odarezi have survived for nearly a millennia and a half through heart and guile, the last thousand years of it under direct threat of invasion, and predictions of their demise have until now always been overly preemptive.

#### The Monster of Lake Odarez

Although the Odarezi more broadly follow the pantheon of gods common to much of Zamiel, chief amongst whom is Zanor, the kraal patron of humankind and all the lost peoples of the world, local legend speaks of the first Odarezi nomads, who, upon arriving at an old, dried-up river, despaired that there was no water in the world. Their cries attracted the attention of the wandering giant, Zuxan, who stomped through the desert with the intention of eating the desperate people. When the Odarezi, who had all but given up and had little energy left in them to run anyhow, didn't flee from the approaching giant, Zuxan declared "Why, I can't eat you! You are few in number, broken in spirit, and thin and dry like old twigs. I shall wait here, and sleep, until you have grown fatter and more numerous - then you shall be a meal worth eating!" Upon announcing this, the giant settled down on a nearby mountain range, crushing the rock with its great bulk - and where it broke the rock, water flowed from the peaks, first in a trickle, then a flood, until the giant was submerged in a great lake, and the river flowed again, turning the land green.

The grateful nomads dutifully settled near the mountains and the lake, making the best of the giant's gift in anticipation of their imminent consumption; however, when they found that life was simple and easy in that fertile valley, they began to donate the excess harvest to the creature under the lake, dropping it into the water at the end of winter (this festival in fact roughly coinciding with Springvyst, though no one really knows which came first), in order to keep the giant sated - since Zuxan had promised to return only when they were fat and plentiful, the Odarezi unusually sacrificed more such food at times of plenty than they did after the odd poor harvest as other sacrificial cultures might be wont to.

This festival continues, to much derision from local Nivenans and imperial soldiers stationed in the Agdis South naval base, to this day - the Odarezi proved especially resilient to Azurite missionaries, with their faith growing if anything stronger and more complex in response to recent woes; some among them speak, indeed, of a stirring of Zuxan, prophesying that the giant will awaken once again in the civilisation's most dire hour, when all hope is lost, to destroy their enemies and protect its future meal much like it did when it created Lake Odarez.

However fanciful such rumours might seem to outsiders, they have certainly helped preserve the spirits of the Odarezi, perhaps providing them the impetus to patiently reclaim their lost farmland during the Zamexite invasion where other peoples might long have succumbed to despair and dispersed. Zuxan is often associated with the legend of Undea's Titan, believed to have created all the rivers of Revenoth with its tread, and this has in the past helped to deter the various local conquerors from actually annexing the lake and the green valley stretching below it, preferring to simply extort the submissive Odarezi for a share of their harvest; despite this superstitious fear, Zuxan was canonised into the Unified Faith as a minor deity by the Council of Qeotal.