The Torochs of Fimbria

The torochs once ruled much of the subcontinent of Fimbria, roaming freely through its dense forestation, much more sparsely populated than the present-day kingdoms (due to a lack of settled agriculture in most areas) but living in peace, harmony and plenty. From the strange, timeless Ancestor settlements of the west and north, the great deciduous forests along the north banks of the Argen, to the bare stone plains of the Rathi Barrens, prior to the Crossing three rough groupings of toroch enjoyed the unspoiled beauty of the north-east corner of Revenoth - the Kerathi, the Ronay and the Telberee.

#### The Kerathi

This fierce group of torochs, whose name translates to "brave ones" in the D'ni language, probably exiled from the Marowoods and Faernofeld for violent tendencies, eked out an existence on the Rathi Barrens, surviving on the narrow pickings from the Garter Woods. Although comparatively small in number, this group was rightly feared by the other torochs, for the hard rock they worked into their hides, the extensive combat experience they bore from rights of passage and encounters with the local wildlife, and for the early iron-working they had developed just pre-Crossing. If it weren't for the strict code of honour governing these peoples, which dictated that they might only attack another toroch with ample provocation, it is theorised that they would have united the entire torochi people under a centralised state much as the Elvish Kings managed with the humans of Karanoth.

#### The Ronay

These torochs lived in the Marowoods and the East Faernofeld - their name translates to "people of the root", signalling their symbiotic relationship with their forested environment. They were typically the largest among the torochs, probably as they were the best-fed and because they didn't cultivate coatings of rocks but rather plant life and lichens, opting for a careful stealthy existence to deal with the few predators large enough to pose a challenge over any kind of battle-readiness. To outsiders, even many torochs, it appeared that these people were as simple as the animals they lived alongside - in reality, however, their long lives and strong oral culture of storytelling had allowed them to build up an immense lexicon of natural wisdom, in terms of the beneficial and detrimental aspects of flora and fauna as well as a limited ecological understanding of their environment which enabled them to pluck invasive species, contain outbreaks of disease and cultivate helpful organisms through their migratory behaviour - in short, they were effectively gardeners of the great forests, and it is believed they may have possessed more knowledge of the natural arts than even modern science has revealed, allowing them to live spectacularly long and healthy lives.

#### The Telberee

This group of torochs, the physically and numerically smallest of the main groupings, whose name translates to "the maintainers", were far more pacifistic than their brethren, eschewing even the occasional violent intervention against an invasive species or a boisterous Kerathi practiced by the Ronay; they mostly occupied the Ancestor settlements of the West Faernofeld, the Estir Woods and the Rimelight, establishing themselves in the strange, nigh-impervious stonework buildings of unknown purpose left behind by vanished precursor race. Despite the often cold, sparse environs of these abandoned cities, the Telberee practiced a strange worship of the vanished people that required them to maintain the ruins and to practice numerous rituals of unknown import within their walls. Although these rituals left them little spare time, the Telberee developed numerous innovations quite early on, such as parchment and a written language, a calendar and sundial to keep track of ritual appointments, ink, chalksticks and candles all for obscure mystical usage. Local Ronay tribes of a more mystical bent would sometimes keep their community of Telberee well-supplied so that they might continue their ritual obligations undisturbed, but more often than not these thin, pale torochs and their ancient dwellings were shunned rather than celebrated.

#### Crossing

In 288 AL, the First Azurite Crusade was declared from Folyan, and waves of armed human pioneers began to land on the east coast of Fimbria starting with a beachhead at Torbey. Previously, human explorers had been treated much like expeditionary elves of previous centuries - allowed to land on and explore the shoreline, but intimidated and discouraged the further they travelled inland, before ultimately being outright attacked by the Ronay or, more likely, the Kerathi when it was clear that warnings weren't being heeded. This time, however, the human landing parties were so great in number that usual policy went out of the window - the few Ronay the humans caught were killed on the spot, while the majority of the local torochs withdrew further into the Maro, determined to cut off the human advance at the treeline of the forest proper. This turned out to be a costly mistake, as while human settlements begun to sprout up and down the Settlers' Coast, the number of prospective crusaders arrive from Karanoth increased exponentially, and soon a small, desperate landing party in Torbey had developed into a number of large, land-hungry armies.

In 294 AL, the first concerted push was made by one of these, along the south coast where the Kerathi, fierce in their resistance but under-equipped and poorly organised, were slowly driven across the Rathi Mountains, while in 295 AL a large contingent of crusaders began to spearhead up the river Vandapas directly through the heart of the Maro, establishing settlements as they went, including well-fortified Rondelac and, at the furthest reaches of human expansion on the other side of the great woods, Marodell. From their walled settlements, the humans would slowly but steadily cut back the woods and cull the surrounding Ronay population, turning the great Marowoods from the "Sea of Life" of its namesake into carefully culled woodlots in a great, sparse plain in their relentless hunt for lumber and land. This slaughter only ceased when the Azurite Church, disturbed by the increasing savagery of the human settlers, finally settled on an interpretation on Azur's "lament for the godless" sermon in 301 AL and declared that the torochs, though a godless people, were to be pitied rather than hated, and to be brought into the fold of the Goddess' love wherever possible.

From this point the proto-language that would become King's Common, as well as a basic understanding of Azurite canon, began to take hold in both the Ronay and the Kerathi, with only the Telberee, yet isolated from the invading forces and strictly adherent to their ancient ways, mostly unaffected. Over the next half a century, even as the Maro dwindled in size and the humans pushed ever further inland into Fimbria, claiming Fyntunside and advancing into the Faernofeld and the Estir, the surviving Ronay tribes who hadn't been hunted into extinction, killed off by new diseases or fled into the far western reaches of the continent, were drawn into the hierarchies of human civilisation, serving as lower class labourers in the destruction of the environment they had once spent their lives preserving and learning agriculture in the place of their old ecology. Meanwhile, the Kerathi took somewhat to the martial culture inherent to many Azurite teachings as well as notions of state-building and various war-oriented technologies, organising themselves into much larger centralised chiefdoms and even birthing an organisation based on the Knights Valiant, the Knights of Wrath, to help coordinate the defence. Mankind was stopped at the Rathi mountains, and even founded the city-fortress of Orlock to guard against Kerathi raids. For a time, then, the Rathi Barrens maintained a fierce independence - nevertheless, the eventual total victory of mankind over the subcontinent seemed assured.

#### Subjugation

By 380 AL, the last untouched lands of the torochs had been thoroughly chartered, conquered and brought to heel by the human invaders - the Telberee provided little resistance as the crusaders settled within and around their city dwellings, and although some resorted to desperate defiance when their old faith was declared heretical and their writings were confiscated by Inquisitors, any revolts were put down by the authorities in the newly-founded settlement of Minkato, meaning "great scar" in D'ni, constructed along the banks of the Rend in the epicentre of the ancient cities. Even the Kerathi were eventually scattered and forced back by human commanders looking to forge a path to the Rathi stonefields for the purposes of quarrying, opening the way for another wave of settlers to cross the Rathi gulf and settle the lands now called Clovayn. With remaining pockets of independent torochi resistance few and far-between (though these last remnants have yet to be fully exterminated even by the modern day), the vast bulk of the population became fully indoctrinated by Azurite teachings, their native culture and language all but dying out over the following centuries as well as any of the distinctions between their people. Indeed, faced with oppression and discrimination throughout much of human society, many torochs latched particularly strongly onto the vague mercies of the Church and became fervent Azurites, the legacy of which can still be seen in the strong religious sentiment amongst the masses of the Torochi Free States.

In some areas where they were least populous, particularly the cities of the East Maro, the Settlers' Coast and newly settled Clovayn, the torochs slowly rose to a position of near-equity with their human conquerors, some advancing even to positions of relative power and prosperity through the Church, though most still constituted an underclass whether by law or by circumstance. However, oppressive laws and power-structures were maintained in the areas they continue to be most populous and, historically, most rebellious, such as lands in the West Maro and what was once the kingdom of Narymar. Indeed, their integration with the human populations of Fimbria was so complete that, when settlers began to assemble for the journey into Nivena, torochs made up indeed a disproportionately large number of the vanguard, and this is reflected in the large toroch population in those lands in the present day (one that continues to constitute a threat to the stability of the xenophobic Valiant Empire). For the best part of a millennia, then, this group has been considered a loyal, integral part of human civilisation, rather than any cohesive people of their own.

#### Rebellion

This all changed with the Torochi Uprising, which began in the so-called Evil Year of 1188 AL, 900 years after the First Crusade. At the start of the year, the temporary work permits, assigned to torochs to enable them to fill key gaps in the economy of Narymar following the devastation of the Century War, expire, and King Ramsey attempts to force these torochs back into their previous menial work by reasserting the old discriminatory laws; the largest western cities are locked down in a general strike, the king flees the capital, and the army is mobilised in Minkato and begins marching south to restore order. The grand college in Asterzo, fearing a dissolution by a hand-tied Church following the will of the Emperor Harlach Valiant, helps assist the local toroch strikers in capturing the city's armoury, thinking to put themselves in a position of strength from which to negotiate with the king. Panicked by this development, however, Ramsey orders a disastrous assault on the city by all nearby units; when this fails, the torochs of the city declare the short-lived Republic of Asterzo, and begin to advance out of city bounds and consolidate links with other embattled citadels. After a brief stint of total independence, the revolutionaries join Paragon Nochtica's Free States - weapons and supplies begin to flow steadily upstream. When Ramsey himself is killed in a create fire in Minkato started by toroch saboteurs, his army is sent into disarray, and by the end of the year Narymar has all but collapsed, with the other kingdoms on Fimbria declaring war on the Free States with little fanfare.

As all-out war has waged between the human kingdoms and the torochi Free States over the past 12 years, local uprisings in human settlements has increasingly put the loyalties of torochi citizens into questions, with only intervention by the Church staying the hand of rulers from pre-emptive retaliation against their own people - even despite this, minor crimes and loose pretexts are all that is required in the present tense atmosphere for local lords to cart their torochi miscreants off to great prison-fortresses like those in Castomar, and to many it seems that the bonds forged between the torochs and the humans of Fimbria over the past 850 years are breaking down in a tiny fraction of the time they took to build. In this new age of reaction, peaceful coexistence between the peoples is increasingly being called into question, not least by the elite of the Free States, who are attempting to revive whatever of the old ways they can discover in carefully preserved Telberee texts - the most extreme among them call for humanity's exiling to Nivena and Zo'an en masse, with the speedy growth of the Estir Woods into the Western Maro symbolising this reclamationist drive. Nevertheless, moderates on both sides of the war recognise that a prolonged continuation of the war is only likely to lead to vast, pointless casualties on both side, and that a settlement will have to be reached before one side forces the other into committing to a total war for the subcontinent.

Human-toroch relations are on a precipice, and while plenty want to revive and reinforce the co-confessional bond between these two peoples to end the conflict, zealots on both side complicate the issue and work to tip the balance, pursuing wild ideals for the final state of Fimbria, only ramping up the bloodshed that has already torn open the wounds of the Century War and continues to reduce the land to a shadow of its former self. And whilst some see the vale of tears that is the ongoing fighting centred in the Maro Valley, through which the torochs must pass to be reborn, others fear or hope that it is instead the death throes of a dwindling people whose culture is long dead and whose vital energies are fast being expended on an unwinnable war. Certainly, however, for all the peoples of Revenoth, it is the torochs whose future is the most uncertain, and the next few years, whether by the actions of the Church, the Empire, the successor kingdoms or the Free States themselves, will decide their fate for centuries to come.