Onageria Part 2 - The Rejuvenationverse

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Purple Patch #1 · Jul 31st, 2017 · · ·

Onageria's more modern history starts off as it means to go on. Glory and doom in almost equal measure.

Liberation- Onageria
The black goats of Nag-Bahan had ruled in tyranny for nearly sixteen centuries. In much the same way as the Crystal Empire after Sombra's reign, the denizens had grown almost accepting of their dismal fate, hope and joy a distant memory.
But for a collection of small resistance groups living high in the mountains who would infiltrate the Bahan settlements one by one, kill the black goats and hang their carcasses for all to see as a message to others.
The Bahan cracked down on these rebels, hunting down not just them but their families, putting thousands to death as a means of intimidation.
A popular saying at the time was 'Never give the Bahan a Reason to kill'
Most gave up, quietly returning to the ghettos or leaving their homeland for good.
Except one. One warrior maid who always seemed to come and go like the wind, thought dead half-a-hundred times yet always returning, never giving up.
Her name was Dunneca (Meaning Grey Daughter). Her skill, prowess and charisma in battle were legendary, many believing she was Hidrun Hardhoof born again or perhaps even her long-lost descendent. For twelve years, she fought against the Bahan, every black goat she came across meeting a grisly end.
Yet she could do little to give her fellow donkeys hope as more and more innocents were put to death as retribution for Dunneca's actions, two hundred donkey lives for every black goat killed.
At this time, the two Princesses of Equestria, Celestia and Luna, were travelling the known world, spreading the magic of friendship and harmony to all good beasts. Dunneca was one such beast, training under Luna's wing, steadily gathering friends and followers as her actions not only gave her enemies fear but her allies hope. The donkeys began fighting back, outer settlements far from the municipal cities ousting their overseers and mustering at the gates. In time, the message of tolerance, unity and teamwork spread further and Dunneca's forces were joined by the other beasts of Onageria. Local griffon nests and canine dens joined them as well as the hardy boars, mountain goats and mouflon who knew the mountains better than any other, their former foes in the grey elk tribes, even the mighty Pygarg Shieldmaidens and the Divokoza, black and white antelope nomads who ran faster on the ground than an arrow in the air.
Over the course of three years, Dunneca had her army and laid siege to Duk-Bahan-Gurd, one of the strongest fortresses in Nag-Bahan, commanded by the most fearsome warlord of Baphometros's brood, Barduq ul-Bahan. Barduq was the most prominent executioner in the realm, having captured and executed countless friends and family members of Dunneca and her fellow rebels. His death would show the world that Onageria would be free again, that the donkeys of the land would die with blades in their grasp or live free beasts.
The siege concluded after eight days. The rebels had won their first stronghold, renamed Pinatsya (Believed to be named after an archaic term for 'Kick to one's gonads' but nothing's been proven). Barduq ul-Bahan was challenged to a duel to the death and lost his head, though Dunneca lost one foreleg in the process.
With the death of Barduq, the influence of the Bahan was diminished. Having fought over each others influence for so long, brother against brother and son against son, every individual castle occupants vying to outdo the ones next to it, the black goats were unable to work effectively together.
Marching swiftly, Dunneca took town after town, city after city, every liberated beast added to her forces fighting to free their homeland.
After thirty-two gruelling years, the last of the Bahan, Bazkugahl, was found hiding in a tavern on the borders and stabbed to death by a dozen of its patrons, his head delivered to Dunneca, the third Overlord of the now slightly-renamed Onageria.
Declared a palatine republic, Dunneca ruled justly and firmly until dying at the age of sixty-seven after a yearlong fight with Dryditch Fever, passing her title along to Poslo Nashluka, the most adept student of her late chief counsellor.

Civil War- North & South Onageria
The Republic of Onageria saw the births and deaths of around eighteen Overlords until the modern century when the Elements of Harmony once more awakened and chose Bearers.
The nineteenth Overlord, Gorlovic, was an unpopular ruler. Once a talented military officer, he had fallen upon the stresses of governance and trusted his inner circle all too well. Feeding him flattery and false reassurances, his court grew idle and Gorlovic turned a blind eye to the recent griffon invasions from Raptoria and the chaos that followed it.
One such courtier, foremost among Gorlovic's lieutenants, was Strigoli, known by those who detested him as The Scavenger. Strigoli was sadistic and cruel, having run prisons rather than commanded armies and treated any citizen protest as a death sentence, massacring dissenters in broad daylight. He never appeared in person and his role in the brutalities was largely unknown. To the court, he blamed foreign influences for the dissent, ordering persecution of the non-donkeys in Onageria, and to the people, he blamed Gorlovic, declaring it was time for an end to the Overlords.
Steadily, as tensions flared, Strigoli gathered a fighting force, assassinated Gorlovic in a parade in his honour, and declared himself Grand Colonel, an Overlord in all but name, dissolved the court, executed his political rivals and instilled himself as undisputed ruler of Onageria.
But elsewhere, Zerna Psenica, a university educator, political speaker and philosopher, saw Strigli's power play and refused to support it. Acting with a skilled frontier general, Tritica Ecmevima, he fled the capital in Pinatsya, fled to the city of Hemyonya in the south, convinced the local government to give him control over communications and cut Strigoli and his words off from the south almost completely. He, Tritica and their cohorts then set a bulwark at the borders between north and south, cutting Strigoli's power in two.
So began a civil war, a largely indirect conflict. Most actual fighting amounts to small skirmishes.
Ironically, the year the country was split in two was the year of the most bitter winters in history. This winter brought a famine which crippled the economy of the now divided realm and set both states to accumulating resources and keeping order in their own lands.
In the North, Strigoli and his secret police, the Coldwater Commandoes, root out and destroy any foreign influences they can find, as ruthless and bloodthirsty as their leader who regularly purges his own inner circle at any slight, real or imaginary.
In the South, Zerna and Tritica keep order as best they can, criminal families effectively controlling most of the land outside Hermyonya. These families vie against each other just as North and South does and most of the economy goes into financing the gang war.
Nonetheless, north or south, the Onagerians keep their heads down and their mouths shut, working hard to feed their families and praying to be kept out of the conflicts around them.
With a war that may either destroy them all or never come and a cycle of rulers that all end worse than the last, the denizens of Onageria largely blind themselves to the outside world for fear of being driven mad with envy, the dreams of peace, freedom, leisure and luxury appearing to them as little more than fleeting fantasies in a harsh and lonely land.