Thó'ha Tribes

The **Thó'ha** are the tribes of Chozo who are known for their scientific prowess, and proscribed ideology of peace and cooperation among the species of the galaxy. The word "Thó'ha", as transliterated from the ancient Chozo song speak, means "Those Who Watch", or simply "Watchers" in the modern Chozia.

## History

In what would be now called 15000 BCE, a growing conflict of ideals created a schism between the older generations of the Ancient Chozo Empire that adhered more to the traditions of their conquering ancestors and the younger generations that were seeing more and more from the perspective of the empire's subjugated species, and debates over what the Mantle of Guidance truly meant that had gone on for a number of centuries grew into arguments between the differing camps before coming to a boiling point. Those who held to the older traditions of dominance maintained that the less advanced species needed to be herded toward their enlightenment with the Chozo as their clear superiors, always reminded that they were "lesser" and not equals. Meanwhile, the Chozo who had begun to dissent with traditional domination pointed out that guidance was meant to lift others up, and that the Chozo's charge was to teach with a soft hand, not to rule with an iron fist.

These clashes of ideologies eventually broke out into a horrific civil war, splitting the empire in a conflict that lasted a thousand years. Entire star systems lay in ruins by the time the war came to an end, many intelligent species wiped from existence, and the Chozo were left decimated by the conflict, with over half their kind wiped out. Of those that survived, one third were those who had demanded to maintain subjugation of the galaxy, and the remaining majority judged them for their excesses and evident self corruption. These tribes would be cast out in exile, warned to never return in punishment for their destructive ideals and the disaster they had brought upon not only their own kind, but on the rest of the galaxy as well.

The remaining tribes would take a new name to reflect the ideals that they had fought for and united under, the "Thó'ha". After rebuilding what was lost, the Thó'ha tribes would seal the great world fleets of their ancestors away in a pocket dimensional cryptum, to resist the temptation of becoming an empire of conquest again. From there it was determined that the Thó'ha tribes would work to help uplift the less advanced species of the galaxy, though it would need to be through more subtle means than their ancestors had done. The distant Ancients had all but installed themselves as gods to those civilizations they had influenced, and the Thó'ha could not repeat those mistakes.

### Retaliation

For nearly three thousand years, the Thó'ha tribes rebuilt their civilization and put into practice the method of enlightening other sapient species of the galaxy on more gradual scales than had been employed by their predecessors, and more allowing of those civilizations to founder their own cultures as opposed to forced assimilation of the Chozo's. It was an ideal that had proved to be successful, allowing the Thó'ha to shed the shame of their ancestors' ways.

Such an age of enlightenment was sadly not to last. The exiled tribes returned, carving a path from the outer rim to each major Thó'ha world in a massive vessel, eventually making its way to the skies over Zebes and assaulting the Thó'ha cities that had built up around the heart of Chozodia. Retaliation from the tribes was swift and brutal in turn, as the Thó'ha may have been pacifists in their ideals, but they were willing to fight for those ideals. The home system defenses eventually brought the exiles' ship down, sending it crashing down some thirty kilometers away from the ancient capital and killing all those aboard, but not before something was unleashed upon the planet, filtering through the very air of Zebes. It was the same thing that had been dispersed upon all other Chozo worlds that it had attacked on its way into the outer core belt, though the effects were not immediately seen, and would not be for many millennia.

**[FURTHER INFORMATION FORTHCOMING.]**

## Known Thó'ha Tribes

* Al'fá
* As'rám
* Búr'ni
* Chó'za
* El'nýz
* Gra'móu
* Ma'kína
* Nat'rá
* Thé'nau
* Thì'loo

## Trivia

* "Thoha" may be an anagram of *hato 鳩* (pigeon or dove) (replacing the *t* with a *th*) in combination with Thoth, the Egyptian god of science, invention, magic, wisdom, and many other knowledges, who bore the head of an ibis.