The Banishment of Twaliz

The Banishment of Twaliz refers to the sudden disappearance of Twaliz, one of the earliest Experimental Duchies, in the year of Lacessa 1251 (A.E.D 1516).

Foundation of Twaliz
The Experimental Duchy of Twaliz was formed in the year of Lacessa 1174 (A.E.D 1439) when a group of settlers left from the nearby Duchy of Palta to form a new Experimental Duchy in the unsettled marshes to the northwest. Although the initial colonists were principally of a freethinking and philosophical cast, as Twaliz grew it began to attract a large population of mystical alchemists from all over the delta. These sects, in addition to practicing that ingenious but ignoble science, studied the Alphabet of Donisso Donissi with exceptional zeal for its arcane mysteries. These fanatics, with their enthusiasm for both unholy experiment and fearless inquiry into the hidden knowledge of ancient sages, were the cause of some tension in the duchy, but on the whole tolerance reigned.

The Banishment
On 7 Donnebromion, the year of Lacessa 1251, a wild and unkempt man by the name of Jeorl arrived at the gates of Palta accompanied by a giant sloth, of the kind one finds in the dense jungle. He declared that this great god (meaning the sloth) had appeared and swallowed up the Duchy of Twaliz, banishing it from the world on account of its many sins and that if the citizens of Palta did not repent they too would face the same fate. For several days he remained outside the city, tolerated as a madman and an eccentric, until his wild companion fatefully slew a boy who had taken to taunting it. The boy’s father demanded vengeance and the city guard put down the sloth and hanged Jeorl.

Soon thereafter a traveler who had been bound for Twaliz returned to Palta, bearing the news that the city was simply no longer there. Where it once had stood there was now a great pit, as though the city had been plucked out of the earth by some great hand or biting mouth. Further investigation yielded no sign of what might have been the cause, although speculation has remained rampant even in our day.

Effects
As news spread of the mysterious disappearance of Twaliz, as well as Jeorl’s strange and unsettling (though of course eventually empty) ultimatum, the established duchies of the St. Montaigne, which up till then had viewed the new experimental foundations with detached amusement, if not disdain, began to look upon them for the first time as the threats to civilization and stability which they were. Soon after news of the Banishment of Twaliz reached the eastern regions of the delta, swells of popular hysteria (and a fateful inability of the nobility to tame the mob) precipitated the Niallin War, the first major conflict between experimental and established duchies.

-Sir Eadmon of Lacessa