Rodoka: Difference between revisions

|official_languages = Tavari<br />[[Wikipedia:Estonian|Rodokan]]

|national_languages =

|ethnic_groups_year = 2020

|demonym = Rodokan

 

There were some 400,000 Rodokans living on the island, many of them in the city of the same name located on the southern coast of the island, when explorers from [[Tavaris]] arrived in the year 1620. First contact is recorded as having been markedly friendly. By that time, the Rodokan people had established a government of some twenty loosely-confederated tribes whose chiefs acknowledged an elected High Chief as their leader. The Tavari agreed to settle in open land and traded with the Rodokans. Akronists led the Tavari settlement efforts with an interest in spreading the faith, and a vast majority of early Tavari settlers were Akronists. Akronists shared with the Rodokans a great spiritual and economic significance for the ocean, which was an early point of bonding for the two groups. While [[Akronism|Akronists]] could not eat the meat of land animals, both could share in seafood, and both hunted whales and used whale oil products. As Rodoka has a drier climate than mainland Tavaris, with a distinct dry season, the exchange of different crops and agricultural products was an early bonding point between the cultures. Tavari rum, distilled from sugarcane, became very popular among the Rodokans, as they did not produce any distilled liquor. The Rodokans gave the Tavari the name "''ruumkandja''," meaning "''rum-bearers''." The first and largest Tavari settlement was Lantaž, meaning "paradise," that was settled on the coast approximately 1 Tavari monai (1.053 km) to the east of the Rodokan's largest settlement, also named Rodoka.

Relations between the Tavari and Native Rodokans remained cordial in the first years of Tavari settlement, but markedly declined in the year 1632. That year, an Akronist Temple was opened in the city of Rodoka after having been under construction since the Akronists first arrived. During the consecration ceremony, the High Chief at that time, Jürjo, is said to have brought a dead lamb to the Temple and offered it to the Akronists to eat - apparently intended as a joke. The bringing of a dead animal killed for sustenance into a temple was a grave desecration, which was made worse when blood and eventually the body of the lamb itself fell to the floor of the Temple. This event would cause an irreversible desecration of the building, and the Holy Ambassador representing the Matron at the service actually collapsed and died upon the lamb falling to the floor. The High Priestess of Rodoka, Ilara Lendreaž, ordered that High Chief Jürjo be killed to atone for the desecration. This would lead to the outbreak of violence between Akronists and the Native Rodokans.