Dawn Era
During the nonlinear creation of the world, a tribe of Wandering Ehlnofey, the group that would eventually become all non-mer, non-hist races of the world (at least as far as we know), arrive in Yokuda. They are the ancestors of the Yoku, and believed to be closely related to the Nedics of Tamriel and the Giants of Atmora, the primary physical difference between them and the Nedes was their darkened skin. They were slightly taller than the Nedes, but not nearly as tall as the Giants of Atmora (who have since grown quite a bit shorter).
Early Merethic Era
Some time after the so-called "Sundering of Aldmeris," the schism of the various Elven sects (Ayleid, Altmer Chimer, Dwemer, Maormer, Falmer, et al.), an Elven sect known as the Left-handed Elves (hereafter referred to as the Lefthanders, solely for convenience) arrive in Yokuda.
Merethic Era through 1E 700
Empires rise and fall. Events occur. Any random thing that took place in Yokuda anyone needs to make up occurred in this time.
- Dating it in the Yoku way follows these rules:
1. Do not ever use the phrase "in the old way of reckoning" or any permutation of it. For fuck's sake that's so cheesy. Say "in the Yoku system" or the "Western system" or something if it is an Imperial document. If it is a Yoku document, use that date as if it were standard and give the "normal" date as "in the Eastern system."
2. If it took place in the first era, add 1636 years to the date to get the Yoku date.
3. If it took place in the merethic era, or before 1636 in "their way of reckoning," decide if it was the late merethic or middle merethic. If it was late, chose a date between 900 and 1500 for their date. If it was middle, chose a date between 100 and 700.
4. Yoku dates should be used sparingly, if at all, in Tamrielic documents. They should only be used in reference to clearly recorded history.
(NOTE! No map of Yokuda before the sinking should EVER be made by TR!)
This is a non-exhaustive list of places in Yokuda. Use them or make up your own.
-Al-Zheika: A major city on the eastern coast. Possibly of the same tomba as Kongatjana, they are at least near each other. Its most famous monuments were the two palaces, each of which held a different utei. The White Palace was said to be "brilliant and ornate, carved of porcelain mixed from Morwha's milk, but as if made from the sea foam crest atop the breaking waves of the [sea]." The Black Palace is less ornate, but larger and more impressive in its physical might. Al-Zheika means "Morning Star," and it is probably built on a peninsula, having been at the time the most eastern city of Yokuda.
-Ichano: Major city of the Seipar tomba, located on the edge of the cliff of Seipar Canyon.
-Kongatjana: A major city on the eastern coast. Possibly of the same tomba as Al-Zheika, they are at least near each other. Its most famous monuments were the "Thousand and Seven Minarets," one devoted to each and every family of gods except for the Evil House of Parhei Ita, the Barons of Misrule, known in Tamriel as the Daedra. Once a season, the Rainbow Choir takes to the minarets and sing rainbows with their voices in joyous worship of the gods. Each singer sings a unique color which merges with the others into a beautiful rainbow. [url=http://img345.imageshack.us/img345/741/rainbowsingerscopyoz1.jpg]Pictured here, by Pound.[/url]
-Kulong: A seaside city of little importance, somewhere in the western area.
-Orichalc: The Tower of the Lefthanders, its significance is discussed in a later section. It is not located within any city, but in the open Shiori plains. Looking westward from the top of the tower, the sun sets between two distant and otherwise lone mountains.
-Minn: The "capital" of Yokuda. The so-called "High King" has his seat here. It is filled with temples and monuments, such as the Tomb of the Ra Trana (the Great Martyr, whose name is forever wiped from history, see below on the destruction of the Lefthanders) and the Air-Garden. Nothing remains after the destruction of Yokuda, and its entire populace died.
-Qanteim: A bay in the northwestern part of Yokuda. The cliffs here include ornate and enormous carvings of various Yoku gods, which are said to speak to people who get close to them. The path to the faces is very dangerous, however, and many have died trying to reach them. They can be seen from a distance at sea.
-Seipar Canyon: Homestead of the Seipar tomba, the canyon was a great and beautiful region. The most major city of the region was Ichano. The "Skyriders of Seipar Canyon," an elite group who learned to fly on the edge of the sky itself, disappeared after the sinking of Yokuda.
-Shiori Plains: Plains in the southeastern part of Yokuda, controlled by the Lefthanders. The Orichalc tower, among other things, was located here.
-Zembantoi Mountains: A major mountain range in the west of Yokuda.
AND MANY MORE TO COME IN TIME
Make up your own, PM me if you do so they can be added to the list
Yoku Politics
The Yoku political system was a clan-based hierarchy, and it is somewhat feudal. However, there is a great deal of social mobility in Yokuda, and stature is mainly based on how much of a badass you appear to be.
The basic unit of govnerment within the Yoku system is the tomba, plural either tombu or tombas, the leader of a tomba is an utei, plural uti, utei or uteis. They are rather like clans, though there isn't necessarily a family connection. Each tomba does, of course, have its own state. In Old Yokuda, there were more than a hundred. After the sinking, the survivors were organized into 7: Herne, Cespar, Kai, Nahukh, Hegathe, Gilane, and Hunding. Their homesteads should be mostly obvious, Kai is of Stros m'Kai, Nahukh is of Sentinel, and Hunding is of Rihad. Since then, two more tombas have been formed, Skaven of Skaven, and Nudri of Dragonstar. Hunding died off eventually, and Taneth, Rihad, and Elinhir are all no longer organized under a tomba system.
A member of a tomba is either an ansei (plural ansu) or a mansei (plural mansu). A mansei is just a member, an ansei is a respected member. All members of a sinos (explained below) are ansu, as well as a large number of other respected members. A mansei becomes an ansei by either the support of the utei, an itei (explained below), or a certain number of ansei, depending on the tomba.
The lowest level of organization within a tomba is a sinos, plural sinosi, which is a specific kind of family, basically the tomba's peerage. Most people are not members of a sinos, and most sinosi have some sort of territorial claim. The head of a sinos is called an itei. The method of selecting an itei was different for each family, some were democratic in nature, some hereditary, some involved violence. A sinos was validated by the tomba it wished to join either by the tombana ba, the Wide Council, which was made up of all the tomba's ansei, the tombana sun, or Narrow Council, which was made up of all the tomba's itei, or the tomba's utei. The main qualification to found a sinos (to which all your descendents will be members) is to be a huge badass. A sinos's name is the given name of its founder. For example, Yaswa Ei-Azel is of the Azel tomba, founded in Old Yokuda by Azel, who conquered a great deal of land for her original tomba.
All tomba-wide decisions are made by one of the three bodies described above, the utei, the tombana ba, or the tambana sun.
Meanwhile, all recognized tombas send representatives to the litombana, or the Council of All Tombas, which makes decisions and elects a leader, the uei-utei (imperials call this person the yoku emperor or high king). The uei-utei has little domestic power, his only function is in leading the Yoku against external threats, such as the Left-handers.
Also note that dueling often refers to dueling in the school of shehai, where the moves are largely faked in a process of one-uping each other until someone is unable to defend themselves and surrenders. Though some honor systems, such as the one described in the Skyleap, require that the winner kill the loser, most do not, and defeat often does not mean death, just a loss of honor.
Lefthanders and the Orichalc Tower
The Lefthanders were Elves, and everything that implies.
That is, their theology was based on a rejection of Mundus as a flawed plan, and their ultimate goal is its total destruction. They broke with other Elven factions over how best to enact this plan.
All Elves took the same general model, that of the creation of a Tower, in mimicry of the Zero Tower, Ada-Mantia, used to create the world. These towers were used to focus creatia, magic from Aetherius, so that Mundus would reunite with Aetherius and this mistake would be undone. Each Tower had a corresponding Stone, a kernel around which the Tower operated.
None of these Towers succeeded, obviously, though that is not to say that they could not, just that in some way the plan was not fully enacted. Most are no longer operational. Crystal Tower is most certainly functioning, though it was either a failure or it isn't finished yet, after several millenia (not at all implausible, the Altmer think very long term). Falinesti may be operational. Snow-Throat may still work, but its operators are long gone. White-Gold Tower did function until the events of Oblivion, and Nu-Hatta believed that it could very easily have destroyed Mundus, but with the loss of its Stone, the Amulet of Kings, it is now useless.
Note that there are exceptions to this generalized description. The Chimer-turned-Dunmer rejected the entire theology and built no Tower, and the Dwemer, though they built a Tower, had a rather more esoteric goal. Also, it has been recently suggested that Towers cannot succeed at all as long as the mannish races (or possibly all of the Wandering Ehlnofey) continue to exist. Now back to Yokuda.
The Left-hand Tower is known as Orichalc, and it used the precious red mineral of the same name in its design. The theology behind it was based on the Sun, Magnus, who departed from creation. A simplified description of its function would be that it is used as a knife to rip open the sun while it is setting, such that the sky itself is set aflame and a direct link between Aetherius and Mundus is permenantly formed, removing Oblivion from the picture. Its stone is called the Sun Set Stone, and another name for Orichalc is the Knife Which Shall Burn The Sky.
All of this should only be used as a backdrop to any story being written, as Left-handed theology is not understood in modern Tamriel by anyone at all, except perhaps some of the higher-up Altmer in Alinor, who would never think to publish it. So definitely never go into this in-game.
In the more mundane world, the Left-handed Elves fought many wars with the Yoku over their history. They never enslaved the Yoku, like the Ayleids did the Nedes, at least not fully anyway, and in the end they lost.Their story is very much left empty. They should be used mostly to invoke the idea of "Those Who Are Our Enemy," rather than depicted in any actual detail.
The Defeat of the Lefthanders
The two races of Yokuda had a history of almost perpetual warfare. After a very serious string of battles with enormous casualties on both sides, a cease fire was agreed to around 750. The following 8th century 1E was a protracted cold war, as both sides developed incredibly potent weapons of mass destruction with which to threaten eachother, and, other than attacks by extremists, did not actually fight. During this period, the Yoku were lead by the so-called Emperor Allal (Only Imperials call him an emperor, Yoku use the term uei-utei. His regnal name means "viper" and he was a decorated warrior in the afformentioned battles). By the end of the cold war, he was incredibly old and had had one of the longest reigns in Yoku history.
The Lefthander project was, of course, Orichalc Tower, which was presumably not yet operational, because they would have had no reason not to use it. Obviously, it was considered a serious threat to their way of life by the Yoku, who would prefer that the world they lived on not be destroyed. As its design and function became more and more clear to Yoku leaders, they became increasingly concerned with how to destroy it.
The first development in this department was the creation or discovery of pankratosword, a sword move which creates a magical explosion with the potential of about 120 megatons of TNT. It was developed by a team of advanced "swordsingers," who used their knowledge of magical trigonometry and vector calculus to determine the most powerful sword move imaginable. After careful analysis, the plan was rejected on the grounds that it would lead to the entire destruction of Yokuda. Many members of the team would later become members of the Hiradirj, an important faction in later years.
The second development was the creation of the so-called Twenty Seven Snake Folk Slaughter, which, through myth echo and reproduction of stellar interactions, was able to direct a devestating attack against a specific target. It was an enormous success, and when it was used some time in the 730s, it sundered Orichalc and destroyed Lefthander civilization. Four dancers from the perimeter of heaven, while the remaining 23 take the form of constellations. Four become the serpent, each holding an orichalc blade. The remaining 19 first become the Thief, who is quickly broken by the serpent, forming into the ritual and the tower. While the ritual moves around the circle, the four members of the serpent ruthlessly slaughter the twelve members of the tower. Their souls are united into one, the Ra Trana (Great Martyr), and all memories of their specific purpose is erased from existence - they are utterly eliminated. Through precise exactitude in their movements, these actions are echoed with the sundering of Orichalc tower and the destruction of the Lefthander civilization. This occured in 784.
One surviving member of the team was Diagna, who would later rise to even greater prominence.
The Destruction of Yokuda
Within a year of the Twenty Seven Snake Folk Slaughter, Emperor Allal died. There was sharp division amongst the litombana about who to elect as his successor. The two final candidates were Franjir m'Sura (usually called Frandir Hunding today) and Soq m'Zemam. Franjir's support came mostly from more northern and western tombas, while Soq's were mostly in the opposite area. Franjir's tomba, Undeing, was very influential and had produced a number of uei-uteis in the past. He himself was not its utei, nor even the itei of his sinos, but he was an impressive warrior, one of the best of the day. Soq was the son of Zemam, the founder of his sinos, who had fought alongside Emperor Allal in the last real battles with the Lefthanders and was considered a hero to many. Mostly riding on his father's coattails, Soq m'Zemam was chosen to be the next uei-utei.
He chose Hira for his regnal name, a word literally meaning "arch" in the Southern Yoloki dialect (similar to Yoloki, the main father of modern Yoku, but highly influenced by Aldmali, the Lefthander language). It had connotations of strength and endurance (Hiradirj, a faction whose importance will soon be discussed, means either Resiliant Force or Unshatterable Shield). Unfortunately, this was not an accurate name, and his reign saw an enormous rise in fighting between the tombas and against his authority. The Undeing tomba in particular refused to acknowledge his leadership. He was not an evil lord, just an ineffective one. It did not help that his election had been so contested, or that his predecessor, Allal, had been an exceptional warrior, incredibly longlived, and had led the Yoku in their greatest triumph.
The fighting between the tombas amounted to an all-out civil war, which was exceedingly dangerous in a civilization with h-bomb sword fighting moves. One particularly fanatical faction was the Hiradirj, mentioned above. It is possible they believed that Yokuda itself had in some way lost its honor in an irrepairable way. It is possible they were bitter over a recent defeat. It is possible they believed they could control its destructive properties. For whatever reason, they did the unthinkable: they performed the pankratsword, cut the atomos, the uncutable, and sank Yokuda.
The Western Migration
Legend has it that after the destruction of Yokuda, great flocks of rainbow plumed birds, led by a great enormous bird believed to be Tava herself, led the Yoku to the island of Kruzka. There the refugees gathered, and the surviving members of the litombana held what is called the Ana Djesal, or Emergency Congress. Hira had not survived, and a new emperor needed to be selected. Franjir, a survivor, was unpopular among Hira's old base, and even seen as responsible to some degree for the sinking because of his escelation of the civil war, though he himself had fought strongly against the Hiradirj. The perfect choice was obviously Diagna of the Twenty Seven Snake Folk Slaughter.
Diagna m'Otanswi was respected by all members of the council for his contributions to the defeat of the Lefthanders. He was older than both Hira and Franjir, having participated as a young man in some of the very last battles that Allal and Zemam were famous for. He had studied under some of the most respected strategists of the day and was considered a born leader. Ultimately he was elected without contest and took the regnal name Emperor Oshiru (meaning tiger), which he is sometimes called today, though Diagna is often used.
The Yoku arrived in Herne around 800. Dating this is difficult, some sources say it took them 16 years to get across the ocean, which seems dubious to me. Vaguely refering to 1E 800 should be good enough. Upon arriving, he sent Franjir out on an exploration of Hammerfell proper, a story which is continued in the next post.
Woohoo! Done with Part I!
2. How would the Left-handed Elves be called by other elves (as in "Bosmer, Altmer, Dwemer...")? (I'm guessing that we'll leave this blank until Bethesda makes something up, if Bethesda makes something up, but it's worth a try. 
)
