Kosalo Villages

When the Mekongga invaded and conquered the island of Lahat, they did so in the midst of a cultural crisis. They have long held firm to the ideals of Kosalo, which teach that the stability of the world is dependent on maintaining a particular divine order, an organizational scheme that dictates the proper place of everything, be it object, animal, or person. Upsetting kosalo would cause the current state of the world to collapse into a new version of kosalo, which may not have a place for anything from the older iteration. The Mekongga believe that each collapse of kosalo creates a worse world, with more suffering and more evil in it, and that only by maintaining a rigid structure with every thing where it belongs can this constant collapse and descent be forestalled.

When the royal family of Lampuato violated kosalo so flagrantly that the people revolted, there was intense fear that a collapse was near. The subsequent collapse of Lampuato's physical and spiritual ecology was caused by that fear (via the workings of the Egregoric Force), and confirmed the impending collapse of the entire world order in the minds of most Mekongga. Those who fled the island to eventually conquer the peaceful Tau Tanah of Lahat knew that they were continuing to push the order of the world away from a stable balance, but saw no other options they could accept. They convinced themselves that once they had control over the larger island, they would have the power to enforce kosalo on a large scale, preventing the collapse into a new, worse world.

And once they were in power, they attempted to do just that. One mechanism in their scheme was the Kosalo Astrolabe, a device designed to reinforce the spiritual framework of the current world order. It ties together many elements that reinforce kosalo and amplifies those effects. Kosalo villages are one of the elements that are tied into the workings of the Astrolabe.

When the Mekonggans conquered Lahat, they killed a large proportion of the native Tau Tanah people - so much so that it was questionable whether any pure Tau Tanah remained, or if only their cousins, the Tau Dilaut, had survived the invasion. In truth, there is a population of Tau Tanah still on Lahat, but they are almost all confined to Kosalo villages. These communities are carefully placed across the island in spiritually significant places, and charged with living in a manner as similar to the traditional Tau Tanah way of life as possible. The Mekonggans observe them closely to ensure that the villages do not deviate from this traditional mode. Supposedly, the Astrolabe uses these samples of traditional life to trick kosalo into behaving as if the invasion never happened.

Whether or not this is working is a matter of opinion. For those who believe in kosalo, they point to the way the world hasn't collapsed into an unrecognizable hellscape (the conditions on Lampuato notwithstanding) as evidence that the villages and the Astrolabe are working. Others claim that the world is not likely to collapse due to changes, and consider the rest of the world as their evidence.