Conquest of Nīwulā Valley
Among the oldest of tales told of the first Sō-Thadi Soyaewa, none have been told as much as his conquest of Nīwulā Valley. A man barely grown faced the entirety of the Valley's fractured tribes and brought them down one by one.
The campaign continued on for over a decade, and even then the conquest would not come to completion until the reign of Soyaewa's grandson, Sō-Thadi Tēhlebao 'Whiteflame', also called 'the Uniter'.
The continued division between Upper and Lower Valleys led many scholars within and without Nīwulā Valley to disagree when the conquest of Soyaewa truly ended. Most scholars during the First Age counted the conquest as having ended in 36 Y.Az., with Soyaewa's death, a view the Yuiwian Temples seemed to corroborate.
Some, mostly newer, accounts would instead claim the conquest incomplete before Tēhlebao's victory against the Upper Valley barbarians, and the aforementioned Sun King's marriage which finally brought unity to the Valley at large, especially as fighting continued throughout the reigns of the first three rulers of the Lower Valley.
Prelude
Three leaders worked together to bring unity to the Valley with blade and flame. These were Soyaewa and his two siblings, his brother Kēhmao and sister Sībyēmu, both younger than Soyaewa by a few years. Their planning began after a brutal attack by a neighbouring clan nearly brought an end to them and theirs. Older versions of the tale say this was an act of vengeance as part of a feud between the two clans, though later versions dismiss the whole affair as a simple attack by barbarians and wildmen enthralled by false gods.
From the ash and embers of their destroyed home did the three siblings rise and take lead among their people. Soyaewa, wounded and limping, walked up to the hill beneath which his clan had made their home for generations, and prayed to Sō and Nui for strength to burn his enemies, as they had him. In return for their wrath he promised the Valley, kneeling in their name.
Sō and Nui, for that single moment, passed by each other in a brilliant eclipse which darkened the sky. On the hill upon which Soyaewa stood, a new, bright flame danced around him.
In other tales and songs Soyaewa and his siblings were dying - or even already dead - admist the smouldering remains of their family beneath the eclipse, when Soyaewa gasped breath once more and stood up, fully healed and with the power to call and control the fires of stars themselves.
North of Bloodwater
Soyaewa, Kēhmao and Sībyēmu began their conquest not with spear and flame, but by unifying many of the smaller clans who had endured beneath the cruel heel of the Tribe Nibaonhō since the time of their grandfathers. Located in the Foothills against the World Mountains, Nibaonhō itself had been a loosely connected tribe brought together by one of their leaders, known as the Old Man of the Hills.
The Old Man and the rest of Tribe Nibaonhō fell to a united force of several clans brought together by the three siblings. What lands the Tribe had claimed influence over was now taken by the victors. This included the Bloodwater Pass, a gorge named after all the blood shed throughout the many ages of fighting between several clans. Through it flowed River Ābyaho, also called River Laehhi. The way of the conquerors was clear to the south, where the rest of the Valley remained, for the most part, unaware of the coming storm.
Heart of the Valley
Past Bloodwater Pass, the force Soyaewa commanded had grown considerably after his conquest over the region around Lake Mīzlaega. While the siblings had been equals before, it was the custom among the clans of the East that the eldest take lead, whether that difference in age was years, decades, or minutes. Thus it was the right and responsibility of Soyaewa to lead their people, while Kēhmao and Sībyēmu assisted as best they could.
Unlike their home, where each clan lived mostly in isolation away from each other, along River Nīwulā people lived loosely associated within larger tribes. Clans lived as independent individuals through peaceful times, but would join together as allies when threatened from without. Such was the case with Suohlaewya, a tribe named in the honor of its founder Tigae Suohlaewya, who had claimed the lands between Bloodwater Pass in the northeast and Lake Akao in the southwest.
The current Tigae of the tribe, called Ēlyawuodi, was known for his calmness and careful nature. While he had defended his people and lands for as long as he could hold a blade, he took no pleasure from it and had grown weary of war and bloodshed over the years. Thus, when three strangers passed into his lands with a host and asked for an audience, he was quick to agree. Whether they had come for war or peace, he preferred the bloodshed began and stopped at himself.
But Soyaewa, and by extension his army, had not come to take lives in Tigae Ēlyawuodi's tent. On the contrary, when they left his abode, they did so with a permission to lead their people downriver toward conquest. Sībyēmu stayed behind to ensure that should the brothers return victorious, the lands and people of Tribe Suohlaewya would submit as well without the necessity of death.
The Lower Valley
Unlike on the shores of Lake Akao, there was no peace to be found when Soyaewa and Kēhmao led their people eastward. Tribe fought against tribe for glory, honor, survival, for old gods and nameless spirits left behind by the host of Soyaewa with the burned down tents of their dead families. The low fields of Nīwulā Valley offered little in the way of opposition with people divided by generations of forgotten feuds and newly acquired grudges.
Even then it took Soyaewa three years of fighting before the rest of his enemies came to him, heads bowed, in search for peace and survival, even as the price was turning their backs on the old, true gods of land and sea and the sky above which they had followed since the beginning of time, to say nothing of the freedoms lost to rule their lands and people how they saw fit.
To the surprise of Soyaewa and Kēhmao, when they returned to Lake Akao, Tigae Ēlyawuodi offered Soyaewa his own daughter along with the vows of submission they had previously agreed upon. Sībyēmu encouraged Soayewa to agree, claiming the tribe would much rather follow someone connected to them than a complete stranger.
The Upper Valley
By the time Soyaewa and Kēhmao returned to Lake Akao, the tribes of the rocky fields of the Upper Valley had taken note of the newly arisen threat. By now the year was 25 Y.Az and the
Lower Valley celebrated the coronation of its first Sō-Thadi Soyaewa upon the hill where he had only two moons earlier taken Tigae Ēlyawuodi's daughter Mayolē as his wife, becoming a true member of the Tigae's clan and tribe.
After those few months of peace, the conquest continued with Soyaewa leading from the front with his brother. Sībyēmu remained behind once more to ensure their earlier achievements would not begin to crumble as soon as the Sun King turned his back. In this, both Tigae Ēlyawuodi and Nuondi Mayolē proved a great and greatly needed help.
The battles against the Upper Valley became much lengthier and bloodier for Soyaewa's people. Unlike the separated targets they could isolate and defeat in the Lower Valley, here their opponents had gathered together in fear of the coming great war.
For a decade Soyaewa fought alongside Kēhmao and the brothers he had gained when accepted into the Suohlaewya tribe. Over the next decade, those binds would be forged again in the fields of many battles, until Soyaewa's death in the year 36 of Dawn Age.
Aftermath
Soyaewa never completed his dream of uniting the entire Valley under him, but he did bring together what would be known as the Lower Valley, which reached from Lake Akao and Lake Mīzlaega as their westernmost regions all the way to the eastern coast against the Far Sea.
Soyaewa's marriage and joining with the Tribe Suohlaewya brought much needed aid and men to his side, and even after the unification the newly crowned Sō-Thadi kept many of the clansmen near him as friends and advisors. In the centuries to follow, many of their descendants would come to found some of the most influential families in Nīwulā Valley.
In much of the Lower Valley Sō and Nui became the only gods worshipped in the faith called Yuiwia, "the Way of Stars". Small temples began to be built in their honor, always for one or the other and never both. Whoever kept their loyalties to the Old Ways and the primal deities did so in silence and secrecy, for to claim a spirit equal to a Celestial was seen as heresy at best. "It was
not the spirits of old who brought peace and light to the Valley, but the Celestials above", the most zealous reminded anyone who would listen.
"a yu tēhyu a na yu agonu pē ko naobe Soyaewa, na ko saelya Yodē ayo aha."
"In the ashes of the dead was born the Morningbird, who sang life into Light."
Soyaewa
"anao tē anu kēgi nahō ko ebya
awu na sēhyu anu na sē sudūna."
"with flame and blade they cut through the shadow and all the wildmen.""...a kaogyaho yomya sē aeyu agōyo
a yuna, anu pē ko yodi ēlya."
"...as they cried to all their false gods,
and were met with silence."
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