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 people who would become the Gožyars in the time before the rise of the Wizkanian Empire comes from what of their myths and legendary accounts can be substantiated by archaeology or other primary sources. Many of these early proto-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. Additionally, the old Gožyar gods often play an active and even central role in these narratives. Many of the tribes mentioned in these early writings also seem to appear in the records of the Wizkanian Empire.

The first instance of a large amount of proto-Gožyar tribes being united under one polity occurred in the Wizkanian Empire, which covered much of the proto-Gožyar territory in southeastern Alutra. Most of the tribes in what are now Izlegal, Aquizireiki and the western Gožyaries became client states of the Wizkanian Empire, and eventually the Wizkanian military would be composed mostly of troops from these disparate tribes. Their prominence in the military would ultimately lead to a surprising amount of authority in Wizkania being wielded de facto by Gožyar military officials and soldiers, despite them holding no real de jure legal power, and the Gožyars would be the only subject ethnic group to remain loyal en masse during the empire's collapse.

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.