The kingdom of Tokavsk is a midsized state located along the northern edge of the continent Helya.\u00a0 Situated between Strazhov to the west and Kurstukania to the east, Tokavsk is largely regarded as a buffer between the wild empires of the northeast and the stiff, elitist peoples of the northwest. \u00a0Northern Helya\u2019s ethnic groups are similar to one another, but the local belief that the west represents order and the east represents chaos has led to clear delineations among the population based on geographical location.\u00a0 As Tokavsk is roughly centered along the northern coast, it is regarded by its neighbors as the equilibrium of order and chaos.<\/p>\n
Tokavsk\u2019s origins have been reduced to legend, but a few suppositions can be made based on historical documents.\u00a0 First, Tokavsk was first mentioned in a census by the long-since fallen Bhrezhen Empire in 106 RA (Razan Age).\u00a0 It was described as \u201cA region surrounding the trading outpost of Orod that the locals referred to as Tokavsk, or \u2018Place of the Firs\u2019\u201d (The Sixth Census of the Divine Domain of Bhrezhen<\/em>).\u00a0 Little else is said detailing the milieu of early Tokavsk.\u00a0 In 504 RA, 84 years after the Bhrezhen Empire\u2019s collapse, a veken <\/em>(wandering monk) wrote of \u201cA strange principality situated betwixt the Fractured Lands [of Northeast Helya, a swath of warring factions which were slowly being absorbed into Kurstukania] and the realms of Strazhov and Norvatsk.\u00a0 Its people ascribe runes on their cloaks and bodies, on the surfaces of their huts made from skins, and on the ground.\u00a0 They understood the trees and how they breathed, something they claimed I as a foreigner would never understand.\u201d\u00a0 Indeed, there is evidence of early Tokavskans having an affinity for rune magic; several sources document instances of Tokavskans healing each other and sick animals with one rune and summoning winds and driving snows with another.\u00a0 Many of these are thought to be tales conjured to make Tokavskans appear backwards and savage, and almost no one doubts that the magics described within are untrue or at least greatly exaggerated.\u00a0 The point of divergence\u2014when Tokavskans became known as a distinct group within the Roskavan cultures\u2014is unknown, but it seems to have occurred between the first and second surviving records describing Tokavsk.\u00a0 Certainly, the Tokavskan culture was defined long before it grew into a state.\u00a0 Subsequent records reveal interactions between members of the court of Strazhov and a man by the name of Berin Saskat, who is accredited with the founding of the Kingdom of Tokavsk.\u00a0 It was clear that at that point the Tokavskans, as they were called by foreigners (the Tokavskans then and still do refer to themselves as the Zheren, and henceforth that term shall be used out of respect for the Zheren people and to distinguish between the ethnicity and the state), were already a well-established minority within the Kurstukanian empire.\u00a0 They were poor trappers and hunters, regarded as primitive by the ethnic majority in Kurstukania, and had very little rights.\u00a0 They could not own land, vote, or marry an ethnic Kurstukanian.\u00a0 Conversely, the powers that be largely left the Zheren alone in what would become a grave blunder.\u00a0 This gave rise to a solidification in ethnic identity, which in turn inspired some radicals into revolution.\u00a0 The initial rebellion had little popular support, and indeed it went largely unnoticed even by the Kurstukanian military stationed out west.\u00a0 But the overthrow of a local nobleman sparked outrage in western Kurstukania, setting in motion a chain of violent events that would lead to the Tokavskan War of Independence in 1001 RA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The kingdom of Tokavsk is a midsized state located along the northern edge of the continent Helya.\u00a0 Situated between Strazhov to the west and Kurstukania to the east, Tokavsk is largely regarded as a buffer between the wild empires of the northeast and the stiff, elitist peoples of the northwest. \u00a0Northern Helya\u2019s ethnic groups are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2243,"featured_media":21358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1852,1221,1611,1257,1851,420],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20556"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2243"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20556"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20562,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20556\/revisions\/20562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}