Mimis
Mimaurki are 3-foot tall bipedal marsupials, with large heads and snub tails. They were created as the result of a divine experiment. They are marsupials with large craniums and short-statured bipedal bodies, shaped so to reveal to the god whether intelligence could result from something other than primate, and, starting on something as close as marsupials, he would then impose these conditions on other species to see what would happen. Lizardmen were to be the next, but before the god could continue his antics were noticed and banned against with a change to their divine creed: this non-meddling extended now not only to existing sapients but to creating new ones as well.
The Mimaurki were, however imbued with intelligence, allowed to live. They very soon entered their neolithic period and began to spread across the Andrian prairie. Their first recorded structures were red mud-brick terraced forts, built around the bases of the colossal Reppok trees. These are thought to have once been supplemented with wooden or bamboo thatched structures, perhaps atop the walls or scattered in villages around the more permanent structures themselves. In the Mimaurki legends they went up the trees to escape predators, monsters and spirits, which makes sense due to their small statures.
Whether the legend is true, they have been living in the colossal trees ever since, initially building decks and huts. From petroglyphs it can be inferred the huts were made fully of long grass, tied together in rows to form a permanent structure over a light wooden skeleton. It is believed they lived like this before ever creating their mud-forts, as hunter-gatherers that returned each night to the house atop the tree. Hang-gliders were one of their earliest inventions. Bamboo and cowhide structures were often enough to help them travel long distances and from tree to tree. In their Paleolithic period they discovered mushroom farming in the underfoot as a lucrative food-source that became widespread across the savannah. This, alongside huge tubers, taro, cassava, barley and rice along riverbanks provided a stable, large food base to allow for expansion of their civilization. Now, the rather isolated and islandlike nature of the Reppok trees they based their settlements from made it hard to exert too much control or maintain a communication network, meaning the trees would stay sovereign city-states throughout most of the Mimi's history. That didn't stop a few from trying, though, and they left behind many marvellous ruins of ambitious infrastructure.
Even before discovering metallurgy, pockets of mimaurks were springing up at the river mouths and in the coastal bamboo jungles, logging and trading, sending their wares up the lazy, snaking rivers into the savannah. The majority of building materials among the mimi are bought from this trader culture, known as the Kyosera, because it is ill luck to take wood from one of the Reppok, the only trees except for scrubby willows found on the plains. The Kyosera themselves built stone temple-works, impressive in their craftsmanship but not grand. It seems they kept their kingdoms small, content to merely serve as the overseers of trade. It was in their hills that the first copper was discovered amongst their race, which was primarily used until outside traders introduced iron and bronze to the Mimi in 200 TER.
The Mimi city-states of the interior were isolationist, allowing trade from the outside only to go through the Kyoserani first, and being highly wary of outside visitors. They largely did warred amongst themselves, utilizing geode bombs, Blekhn melons, hang gliders, and even large, 4-person gliding contraptions in their defences of the trees. This period was known as the Bavum, and lasted from roughly 2,000 TER to 1780 ARR.
During the Bavum a seafaring culture in the islands offshore thrived, voyaging far and wide on their catamarans. These voyagers were known as the Mukhur, and it is believed that they were the first Mimis to be seen by the outside, as captives and curiosities of the Ngningwah. The Mukhur were perhaps best remembered for using Geode bombs and other such incendiaries, traded through Kyosera secretly, in their naval conflicts.
The Interior became united under a theocratic federation when a central tree, imbued with magic, grew to be titanically large and thusly inhabited by religious leaders and figureheads, as well as becoming an important political site for all the most powerful kings to convene. It organized itself into an autonomous city-state called Khosrafa and began consolidating power through divine right, and spurred its allies to fight a holy war against any dissidents and seperatists, thus expanding its reach. It wielded very little actual power over its subject trees aside from a code of laws and taboos which were strictly upheld by the respective communities, aside from this cultural influence there was not much Khosrafa could do to enforce anything personally. The trees under Khosrafa still fought during this period, though to a lesser degree. By 1780 ARR, Khosrafa had the nearly the entirety of the Tree-states under their rule. Thus began the Khosrafan Federation.
As this happened, a great deal of cultural diffusion occurred within Kyosera, where rich, fuzzy merchants gazed from their villas down the green slopes and at the feather-slice sails of dhows on the blue. Evidence of influence from the outside was widely apparent here, and this began to bleed into the interior. The Mimis were conquered and colonized by the Naisyar-Dalo briefly in 2370 ARR, as the Naisyari weilded mortars and fire magic, and had aid from the Kyosera (which drove quite a bit deeper the cultural hatred between the coast and the interior). The Warrrior-queens of Naisyar were driven out by mass revolt in 2406 ARR, alongside their own empire's collapse, yet some remained in the savannah. These became known as the witches of the plateau, who sometimes aided trees in their wars but were not to be trusted. Many more of them flocked to Kyoseran cities to ply their trades as assassins, merchants, scholars and courtesans, and one of whom, 12 generations removed from her Naisyari heritage, became a praised governor til her death in 2499.
Over time a shift from the tree to the river had been happening, even before Naisyari occupation. Trees were places of power, sure, and religion, of course, but money makes the world go round, and the money was farming vast agircultural complexes with water from the riverbanks, or trading through travel on the water. This resulted in what became known as the Mimi Dark Ages, as what seems to be a boom-town phenomenon meant mimis began settling anew around the until-now largely untapped resource of rivers. But without the proper infrastructure, these cities degenerated into anarchical plutocracies, where only the rich had the proper housing and means to defend themselves, and bandits and sellswords took plenty of opportunity in this. Only when the cities began to actively work for the good of their communities and, over time, establish walls and paved roads did proper civilization along the rivers resume. Dozens and dozens of small states, sometimes centred around a Reppok, sometimes not, began vying for power in a new Bavum age, with court intrigue reigning supreme and the red witches of Kyosera returning to the interior with their own stakes in the game.
A blasphemous river-urchin began preaching against the trees. He became known as Rat, the Burning Hewer, and he led his followers to destroy trees through poisons, through digging up roots, and through burning the trees. He targeted many, and succeeded, before he was slain in battle by prince Armayokk, dispelling his order. The few trees left became sites of holy pilgrimage for the new Mimi civilization. It was under Armayokk's grandson Vadavi that the interior contacted the outside, looking for an alliance. Mimis became an explorer people, carrying their Reppok saplings far and wide to distant lands. The Interior empire was still somewhat at odds with Kyosera and so could only do so through the Mukhur. Mimi ships became a common sight in many far-flung ports, from jade Rascant to Qol to Tharbandis, and it was mimi ships that sighted the land of Scaril.
When the Neo-Rhaazite messiah arose the Mimis were genocided by his enemies during the war for divinity.
Structure
For much of their history the mimis existed in independent city-states, until they were united, federally, under a central authority. This continued for a few centuries before they were conquered and subsequently went into a dark-age period.
Demonym
Mimi, Mimaurk
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