Freewrite on linguistic history
To be edited or consolidated or whatever, just freewrote this
The way I see it the Okhian Empire some X000 years ago spread so far it fragmented - as is wont to happen. But unlike the classic "empire collapse" trope, it didn't violently fall so much as it spread so far and so much autonomy was needed by constituent city-states that over time the largest and best-equipped constituents just organically ended up more powerful than the imperial government, and ultimately wound up in general control of a constitutional monarchy. There was no plot or secret motive, it was purely a matter of the economic balance shifted. Think of it like the empire was starting to fragment and dissolve, so rather than driving a wedge into those cracks, House Rhylan caulked them with their own resources and power to keep it together, until over a couple hundred years it turned out there was more proverbial caulk holding the empire together than actual empire, so it gradually shifted away.
I really wanted a more optimistic and humanitarian approach to a collapsing empire.
Meanwhile to the extreme south or east (haven't decided which), the empire had already a more or les self-sufficient half (think Byzantine vs Roman) which called Rokhia, so they kept doing their thing. While the creolization along the coast and outskirts happened to actually overtake the formal Okhian languages and then spread in all directions (Okhian was barbarically complex and the island and coastal languages were very simple but primitive so the creole ended up being WAY more practical), the far north wasn't really part of the empire so Axolah and Silloch developed on their own and are the closest remaining languages to Old Okhian. Axolah continued developing quite a bit, Silloch stagnated somewhat because they were relegated to an island and a very small coastal presence.
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