Kzmr

Kzmr (Kzmr: Kzmr Smpn, pronunciation: [kəzamr̩ səmapn̩]), officially the Kzmr Autonomous Country, is an autonomous region located in western Baphia, having a land border with Jkawi to its south and a maritime border with the Union island of Sakle to its southwest. Its capital and sole permanent settlement is Srn.

Organized as a confederation of nomadic clans, of which there are currently seventy-four, the Kzmr Autonomous Country was formed when the former Kzmr Confederation joined the Democratic Union of Baphia in 1815.

History

Main article: History of Kzmr

Prehistory

The first inhabitants of modern-day Kzmr were most likely proto-Kaneeds who left the Jyosti Islands during the Third Ukilen Migration circa 2500 BCE. These early settlers eventually diverged genetically to form the xeric Kaneed subspecies.

The earliest artifacts whose date can be properly ascertained are those from the Mount Rknu archaeological site, which includes a variety of objects such as ceramics and jewelry dating to roughly 2300 BCE. This is the type site for the eponymous Mount Rknu culture, who unlike the modern Kkzmrri, are thought to have led a sedentary life at an extremely small population. Artifacts associated with the Mount Rknu culture are no longer attested after circa 2100 BCE, and some scholars propose that the sudden collapse of this culture resulted from a famine.

Bronze head of a Kzmr herder's crook, from the Museum of Early Ukilen in Turku.

The nomadism of the modern Kkzmrri ostensibly began around 2000 BCE, as artifacts such as herder's crooks and tent stakes begin to become attested in this period. These proto-Kkzmrri eventually separated into the ancestral groups of the three modern morphs of xeric Kaneed, with the sophonts in the far northern tundra adapting as the Beringian Kaneeds and those in the desert and shrublands forming the Blanfordian and Karagan Kaneeds. In Kzmr oral traditions, the common ancestors of each of these groups are known as Mntmr, Þsnmr, and Fkshmr respectively.

Protohistory

Though internal historiography of Kzmr is extremely sparse until the formation of a unified Kzmr identity in the 16th century CE, precipitating the establishment of the Kzmr Confederation, there exists a rich body of oral history with relatively little variance between clans. In addition to this, sources from Baphian antiquity provide an external view of some eastern Kzmr clans.

East Ukilen raids

A set of modern-day bbxvi from northern Kzmr.

A great wealth of historiography, both internal and external, exists regarding the participation of various Kzmr clans and septs in the East Ukilen raids, particularly the Raid of Bongsibon in XXXX CE. Unlike the longstanding tradition of oryx raiding, which to this day remains a typically nonviolent variety of theft, the actions of Kzmr razzieurs during this period were quite devastating to the local population, causing roughly half of the Kali casualties in the Raid of Bongsibon. Smaller-scale trans-Baphian razzias continued well into the Nth century. The spoils of these incursions, often goods which were unavailable or difficult in the desert climate, were particularly valuable to the Kkzmrri in this era, and the legacy of this unilateral transfer remains in Kzmr culture to this day. For instance, the bxvi, a stringed instrument of Kzmr folk music, is derived from the Kali viol, first brought to Kzmr during these raids.

Warring Clans Era

The Warring Clans era began with the decline of the East Ukilen raids, a trend that led to an increased population from returning razzieurs in conjunction with the gradual exhaustion of Bongsibon’s more important resources. The resulting resource crisis, roughly lasting from XXXX to XXXX CE, is known as the Kzmr Famine. Exacerbated by historical overgrazing and the resultant period of sandstorms known as the Years of Dust, the paucity of reliable food caused an upsurge in oryx raiding.

These new inter-clan raids, ranging from minor skirmishes to standard warfare, stimulated the development of a tributary system in Kzmr, in which more vulnerable septs or clans paid levies, usually in the form of dairy, livestock, or forageables, to their more militarily adept counterparts in exchange for a guarantee of protection by the suzerain. In some cases, suzerains could themselves be tributaries of other septs or clans. This system allowed some suzerains to live a sedentary lifestyle off of these levies, prompting the construction of manor houses which constitute the earliest permanent examples of Kzmr architecture. After the decline of the tributary system, the manor house of Srn and its surrounding villas were repurposed as a phylaciopolis – a city consisting of storehouses, archives, and residences for their workers.