Separated from their 'homeland' in the east for generations, the Facian colonists in Gnomania became "Gnomans" and prospered due to the good farmland of the plains, the rich mineral resources of the mountains, and the abundant lumber from the rain-forests to the the northwest.
Just as Gnomania was beginning to thrive, Facia reached its peak. The Facians had prospered a bit too quickly within the confines of their mountainous island, and after some attempts to colonize lands to the north and south failed catastrophically, and even a failed attempt to cross the Morn, it had become increasingly difficult to convince people to uproot from the overcrowded cities and leave Facia. Besides overpopulating the island, the Facians (who had gained little experience with agriculture even while serving the elves) had exhausted their limited farmland and even over-fished the waters off of their shores. They attempted to sustain themselves by pressuring their colonies to provide a greater share of their resources to the Facian homeland, but eventually the colonies rebelled and cut them off. Facia broke down into civil war, and all but destroyed itself.
And then the Gnomans stepped in.
Having followed the decline of Facia from afar, and having made a dedicated effort to learn from their kinsmen's failures, they eventually decided they couldn't stand by while the civilization that birthed them fell apart entirely. With great numbers of healthy and disciplined soldiers, the Gnomans swept across the sea from the west. They forcibly reunited the wayward colonies and eventually seized control over their ancestral homeland outright. This aggressive 'peace-keeping' endeavor marked the formal end of Facia and the beginning of the Gnoman Empire.
The Gnoman's next pushed westward, into the mountains. The Gnoma Range was chiefly inhabited by the "dwarves", descendants of Fugencia's stout, powerfully built industrial laborers and miners. The Gnoman's initially clashed with their cousins over water-rights, the inhabitants of the great city of Dwara holding the headwaters of one of Gnomania's major rivers hostage. Eventually the Dwarans faltered, unable to hold their ground against a sustained siege by a civilization cultivating millions of square miles of cropland to feed their armies. Emboldened by their victory, the Gnoman Empire moved to seize control of the entire Gnoma Range, bringing them into conflict with all of Dwara's sister cities.
It was, initially, more than the Empire could handle, and it became their most costly war. The Alpine War finally reached a turning point when one of the cities negotiated its voluntary annexation, joining the Gnoman Empire under a charter which preserved a great deal of its autonomy. Many others followed suit, and the rest ultimately surrendered. As the dwarves bowed out of the war, the Gnomans' chief opposition became an alliance of humans and orcs organized by elves who'd returned to Fugencia's west coast. The elves had persuaded their former servants that they would eventually be annihilated by the Gnomans, and that their only hope was to seize control of a massive subterranean Fugencian fortress that the dwarves had been restoring in an attempt to tip the war in their favor.
The war's final battle lasted a full winter, and was fought at the gates of an ancient Fugencian citadel. The elves had laid claim to the place after forging an alliance with a number of dwarves who rebelled against the treaties their brethren had made with the Gnomans. The Imperials and their new dwarven vassals confronted an army of orcs and humans united by the elves and supplied by the rebel dwarves, but the long battle and freezing conditions eventually broke the alliance of the western kingdoms. The rebelling dwarves eventually surrendered to their kin, and the orcs and humans once again betrayed the elves, this time delivering them to the Gnoman Empire. In exchange, the Gnoman Empire absorbed the kingdoms on the western coast, forging the same agreements they had with the dwarven cities. The former coastal kingdoms and the inhabitants of the Gnoma Range formally entered the Empire as Western Gnomania.
From there, the Gnoman Empire spread along the Gnoma Range to what had been the northern and southern reaches of Fugencia.
The range trailed off into an island chain to the south, which defined the southern edge of the Facian Sea. The Gnomans had initially settled the largest of these islands, Tulusa, which also sat the closest to Gnomania, and had attempted to establish peaceful trade with the inhabitants of the hundreds of smaller islands that spread to its south. Unfortunately, ownership of those islands was contested by three different, powerful kingdoms on the mainland south of the islands. The Gnomans made multiple attempts to negotiate peace with these kingdoms, or at least some sort of treaty that would allow the Empire to trade with the islands unmolested as a neutral party, but after one treaty negotiation ended with Tulusa itself being attacked, the Gnomans' naval forces moved into the islands, formally claiming many of them for the Empire, and committing to an ongoing, four-way war that continues to this day.
In the North, the predominantly human descendants of the Fugencians had survived comfortably on the farmlands surrounding the massive Gygian river that cut through the Gnoma Range and emptied into the Facian Sea. The poor mineral resources had made metal tools and weapons a precious commodity, however, and they'd been unable to reclaim their ancestors' former glory. Many accepted Gnoman rule simply for access to plows and other work implements fashioned from Gnoman steel. This brought the Gnoman Empire's influence to the lands just south of what is now Caelia.
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Interested in reading more about Kaleida? The Rise of Azraea, Book I, is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination. It is currently available on Amazon.
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