Gožyaries

The Gožyaries, formally the Confederation of the Gožyaries, is a located in East Alutra. It is bordered by Martland and Chijeragne to the south, Aquizireiki to the west, Ecoralia and Lathadu to the north and the Sedic Sea to the east, across which it shares a maritime border with Salia.

Pre-history
The origin of the Gožyar people is still a matter of debate among archaeologists and geneticists, however it has long been theorized that they may be the descendants of the first anatomically modern humans to inhabit Eastern Alutra. They do remain somewhat genetically distinct from all of their neighbors and they speak a language isolate. However, these differences are fairly muddled after thousands of years of intermingling with other peoples as they migrated into Eastern Alutra, and the vast majority of modern Gožyar people share a common ancestry with other Eastern Alutrans. Despite this, these trivial genetic distinctions and the traceable Paleolithic character of their language—such as the presence of the root word for “stone” in Gožyar words like “axe” and “knife”—and presence on the continent has led to the long-held misconception that the Gožyar people are “living fossils” of the earliest modern humans to settle Alutra—a misconception perpetuated by many Gožyar people as some kind of point of cultural pride.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the modern Gožyar people have some relation to other prehistoric peoples such as those of the Old Gundahar culture in what is now Ordrey and the Cayr, Marrinagh and Crayee cultures of what is now Lathadu. There are two predominant theories. The first is that the Gožyar people existed alongside these other peoples as part of an array of pre-Sedic cultures. The second is that the Gožyar people are part of a continuum of these cultures that evolved and intermingled after being driven south by the migrations of the Sedes and became what are now the Gožyar people.

Whatever their origins, archaeological discoveries of the last century have revealed what was long suspected: that the Gožyar people used to cover a significantly broader expanse of the region, particularly to the south and west, before the subsequent migrations of the Sedes and Aquizi by land and the Martes by sea. In fact, a substantial number of Martic, Aquizi, Chijerois and Izlegalian places derive their name from old Gožyar words.

Antiquity
What little is known about the Gožyar people in the time before the rise of the Sedic Confederacy comes from what of their myths and legendary accounts can be substantiated by archaeology or other primary sources. Many of these early Gožyar narratives demonstrate the impact of the migrations of the other Alutran peoples into the region; invasion, distrust of outsiders, the search for a new home and the preservation of culture and religion are some common themes.

Many of the tribes mentioned in these early writings also seem to appear in the later records of the Sedic Confederacy. It is also during this time that the term Gožyar first appears, in the form Goashar, the Gundiagh rendering of the Gožyar word for “horseman” from gož, meaning “horse” or “to ride” and -yar, an agent suffix. During the time of the Sedic Confederacy, the disunited Gožyar tribes would often swear nominal fealty in order to gain support against their rivals amongst each other and the Aquizi.

Sometime during the decline of the confederacy, the semi-mythical king Eayalmad—the Gundiagh form of the reconstructed Ëyalumad, of unknown meaning—led a large Gožyar army on an extraordinary raiding campaign into the south of Sedic territory. For much of the confederacy’s decline, Gožyar chieftains focused on pilfering the dying polity, on whose former prosperity they grew quite fat. There were even brief periods in which Gožyar chieftains held power over some of the southernmost settlements of modern-day Lathadu. These successes, however minor, and the newfound absence of a large threat to the north allowed the many Gožyar tribes to be consolidated under only a few principalities.