Urdasia

Urdasia (/ɝˈdeɪʒə, ɝˈdæsiə/ Atumay: Urdéša [ʔuɾˈdeʒa] ; Caxalautian: Urudasaya [uɾudasaja]), officially The Allied States of Urdasia (Atumay: Urdéšatuya Nágavašunúm; Urdasian Caxalautian: Ngarakaumi Urudasaya), is a country located on the west coast of southeastern Fernost bordering the Palena Ocean. It is bordered by the Autonomous Belarusian Republic to the north, Pelbagai to the south, Samudrayanam to the southeast, and has maritime borders with Palena to the west. It has an area of 2,779,020 square kilometers (1,072,990 square miles) and its population is estimated at about 30 million people, making it the 49th most populated nation in Diyar, but also one of the least densely populated. Urban development in Urdasia is concentrated in only 3 areas, around Saragay just north of Pelbagai, around Astí in the central valley, and around Tatahari in the northwestern coast.

Etymology
Urdasia is an anglicization of the Atumay word Urdéša, meaning "listening place", or "place of prophecy". The name is linked to the nation's founding around the Takirua religion in the mid-1800's. Before the modern founding of Urdasia it was known by a myriad of other names, the most common one in Atumay being Kávaša "mountainous place", referring to the rugged and elevated terrain of the Atumay homeland, and the most common one in Caxalautian and other Lautan languages being Padan "frontier, edge, remote place", due to it being the remotest reach of Lautan civilization and colonization. The name Padanga continues to be used to refer to the coastal region and Kávaša to the inland region. Since the nations unification and consitutional convention in 1848, the official name in English has been the Allied States of Urdasia.

Prehistoric
Human habitation of what is now Urdasia began in around 17,000 BCE with a southward migration into what was then a mountainous grassland. These early inhabitants had developed simply farming techniques by around 5,500 BCE and archaeological evidence points towards a semi-nomadic culture based around subsistence farming for over a thousand years. Climate change caused the gradual desertification of southern Urdasia and led to a dramatic decrease in the population by 1,500 BCE.

Ancient Padan 400BCE-1000CE
Starting around 400 BCE, the formerly nomadic populations of southern Urdasia began to coalesce into three major civilizations. The first of these was the Urakutu civilizaiton, which developed several urban and elaborate ceremonial centers in the highlands just north of the Marukya desert. The archaeological record shows the emergence of the other two civilizations around 200 BCE: The Yavi civilization developed in the Marukya desert and whats now Pelbagai, constructing massive irrigation projects and developing the first writing systems found in Fernost. Meanwhile, the Suyutu civilization emerged in the southeastern plateau near Samudra, and Suyutan city states, which constantly made and broke alliances with each other, quickly became the dominant military powers in the region.

Northern Urdasia, including the modern urban core of the Astí valley remained populated by hunter-gatherers, known today only by the exonym Magaychi "wanderer", during this period. Based on archaeological evidence, the Magaychi were quite distinct from both the Atumaya people who could come to populate most of the area, and from the three urban civilizations to the south. They may have had more in common with the Miškuakay civilization to the east, but identifying them linguistically or culturally with other groups has proven elusive due to their distinctive nomadic lifestyle, lack of much lasting architecture, and lack of written language. Coastal Urdasia was home to the Miškuakay culture in the northwest, which emerged around 800 BCE, and developed metallurgy and rudimentary ships. The presence of goods from all over Fernost in Miškuakay archaeological sites indicate that this culture traded widely with other ancient cultures in the region. Farther south along the coast was the Yagašay culture, which was densely populated but never politically united, characterized by tiny city-states in never-ending competition and conflict.

Middle Period 1000-1512
These broad cultural groups appear to have lasted for centuries, until further desertification and migration caused the destabilization of these civilizations around 1000 CE. The drying of the Magaychi homeland led to them invading and possibly later being absorbed by the Urakutu and Yavi civilizations to the south, which then both collapsed before recoalescing into the a single Siyayu civilization in the south, which constructed ever more elaborate irrigation projects and religious complexes. Starting around 500CE and intensifying by the 800s CE the Suyutu civilization fell victim to a mass migration from what is now northern Samudra. Suyutu city states become much more fortified during this period, and warfare appears to have become more violent.

These migrants were Atumay people, who spread northwest and came to occupy the former homeland of the Magaychi people and displaced the Miškuakay until the latter civilization came to occupy only the most coastal areas. The Atumay expansion over Urdasia is somewhat of an anomaly, as they do not appear to have been particularly more advanced than the peoples they replaced over northern Urdasia, and seem to have kept more or less the same culture as they had had in northern Samudra rather than adapting significantly to the high desert. The Padan Archipelago off of Urdasias coast was settled by Teokori-speaking Palenan peoples as early as 500BCE, but beginning in around 900CE they began to settle the Urdasian coast and quickly became the dominant civilization there. Teokori-speaking peoples traded extensively with both other Palenans and mainland Urdasian civilizations. These Palenan people appear to have spread remarkably peacefully, eventually totally replacing the remnants of the Miškuakay and Yagašay cultures by around 1300CE.

The remaining Suyutu city states collapsed between 1350-1450 for mysterious reasons, with Siyayu cities also being abadoned in favor of smaller settlements around the same time and their writing systems being forgotten. This was possibly due to further climate change, warfare, or a myriad of other reasons which are hotly debated by Urdasian scholars. In any case, the Atumay, Teokori Palenans, and the scattered remnants of the Siyayu and Suyutu were the peoples encountered first by Orvosians in 1476, when their explorers first sighted Urdasian shores.

Colonization and Trade 1512-1818
Although sighted by Paxinarians sailors some decades earlier, the Padan Archipelago and mainland Urdasia did not fall into the Orvosian sphere until 1512, when the island of Wakayo was conquered by the North Palena Company, which had been granted a charter to discover and the economic value of the area. Company rule over the islands meant Orvosian government control over the area was consistently weak, for better and for worse. The North Palena Company was free to exploit both the locals and the environment, but its lack of actual authority meant that Orvosian immigration to the Padan Archipelago was a trickle of sailors, families, and adventurers seeking new opportunities rather than any true effort at colonization. Palejarans were the first to settle Padan in significant numbers, followed by Terbakarians who typically came as officers and officials for the North Palena Company.

In 1680, the North Palena Company moved the center of their operations from Wakayo to the city of Pelbagai, at the mouth of the Siya river. The city grew into the epicenter of Orvosian culture in the region, with the remaining Siyayu being absorbed into Orvosian colonial culture. This period saw substantial immigration by Takiximilians and Bahasans, with Wahons and Paxinirians also making up a significant percentage of the colonist population.

Rather than form ethnic enclaves, Orvosian immigrants had a marked tendency to culturally mix with and intermarry with the indigenous populations, first absorbing the Siyayu while adopting and adapting much of their cuisine and art, and then mixing with the Teokori. Cultural synthesis with Teokori-speaking Padans led to the decline of Orvosians in the region retaining their various Orvosian ethnic identities and gods, and the emergence of a new Padanga ethnicity. The local dialect of Caxalautian became heavily influenced by the Teokori language to the point where Caxalautian speakers in the Orvosian core struggled to understand it, leading further to the self-identification of the Padanga as a new ethnic group.

By the early 1700s CE, Urdasia was roughly divided into the Padanga speaking regions of the coast and islands under loose Orvosian control, and the Atumay speaking interior which was not controlled by any foreign power but was nominally claimed by Orvos. The North Palena Company attempted to assert its control by setting up Orvosians born in Orvos as the ruling class, but it became increasingly clear to the Orvosian government that control over the far-flung colony was slipping, and it cut investment in the area to favor trade with more southerly regions.

Starting in the early 1800s, local Padanga began to petition the Orvosian government to force the North Palena Company to employ locals as magistrates, or to revoke the charter and accept Padan as an autonomous territory of Orvos. By 1808, various local conflicts had broken out into a complete, if disorganized revolution and company rule was broken. Padan was at first granted autonomous territory status like Palejara in 1810 before being further spun off direct imperial control as simply an "Autonomous Protectorate" in 1821.

Religious Awakening 1821-1839
Padanga interpretations of the Lautan religion had begun to diverge centuries earlier, due to relative isolation and synthesis with the local Teokori folk religions, with the Lautan deities reorganized, some forgotten, and some new ones added. This divergence from Lautan orthodoxy finally culminated with the public prophecy of Teokori doctor named Tagakita Idyalin in 1818, when she began spreading a very different interpretation of Lautan gods and cosmology, describing humanity as the literal children of "the divine couple" and proclaiming the purpose of humanity to be emulating and striving to be like these two gods.

By the early 1830s, this new religion - called Takirua and claiming to be the restoration of the original Lautan religion before "mistaken ideas had taken hold" - had spread like wildfire in the Padan Archipelago and attracted thousands of adherents. The new religion also found many opponents from both the growing skeptics movement in the increasingly secular core Orvosian society, and from Lautan orthodoxy. "This new heresy from the western isles is a blatant corruption of our values with foreign ones like that of Garalie, and a vicious rejection of those gods which have guided us for centuries. Doctor Idyalin is nothing but a charlatan and a fraud." - Official Statement of Emperor Penolak Onaakua

"What we see now in the Padan Territory is exactly the opposite of what we need in Orvos. Its people have utterly abandoned logic in their new religious fervor, and have swallowed the ramblings of the indigenous 'messenger' Doctor Idyalin hook, line, and sinker. It is clear the poor woman - capable doctor though she may be - has suffered since childhood from a mental affliction we can now name as schizophrenia." - Pamphlet from the Takuta Skeptics' Society Although the territorial government of the Padan Archipelago was officially tolerant of all faiths, such sentiments led to fierce, sometimes violent persecution of the new religion's faithful. Idyalin led her followers from their original base on the island of Wakayo onto mainland Fernost, where they settled en masse in Tatahari. The idea was that a new home - one even more remote than the Padan Archipelago, would provide safety from religious persecution. This hope was not fulfilled - in 1838, at the age of 37, Tagakita Idyalin was murdered by an anti-religious extremist whose son had converted to Takirua.

This triggered what became known as the "Great Migration", as the vast majority of the religious Takirua Movement community she had founded migrated across the Kuyapaga mountains into the continental interior.