/who/ History - Events and Developments



Introduction

Hello! This is a repository of /who/'s past. Everything currently written about the Owl Republic that does not apply to /who/'s current state, as well as any "how things became what they are" can be found here. There are also anecdotes of individual events, such as the first Premature Hoosmoot and the build-up to the passing of the AFA.

A timeline may be in the works at some point in the future, though it is unlikely.

Please note that though the events are largely sorted by the age in which they took place, they are not strictly in chronological order.


Calendar

The Hooman calendar is split into three ages, intended to mirror the development of their nation. The ages are as follows: E.S. referring to the times of Early Settlement, O.R. denoting the Owl Republic, and N.S. being the current days of a New Start.

One curious aspect of this system is that E.S. progresses backward. To give an example: The first Hoomans settled in what would become the port city of Avisporte in E.S. 152, but the first recorded maritime contact between an Avisporte ship and a v-fluke orca took place in E.S. 36.

There is also no year 0 in any of the three ages. It goes directly from E.S. 1 to O.R. 1. There was some deliberation of whether to make the final year of O.R. also the zeroth year of N.S., but it was ultimately decided against to reduce possible confusion in bookkeeping.

Lastly, although the Hooman calendar uses the same system as a whole with most/all other Holo nations, one point where it differs is when each year begins in a given age. The end of E.S. and beginning of O.R. are with the signing of the Proclamation of Unification, generally seen as the beginning of the Owl Republic as a unified nation-state. N.S. 1 began with The Nameless One's apothnitosis. This resulted in O.R. starting in late summer and N.S. beginning mid-spring.


Early Settlement

Initial Hooman Travels (to be added)

The Taming of the Toehound (status uncertain)

History of the Pegasus (to be added)


Owl Republic

Inventions and Innovations

The Hoomans learned that imbuing the Nameless One's influence into objects amplified their ability to conduct sound by better maintaining vibrations that passed through them. This was eventually used to make wires that could send messages from city to city across the republic, though the only messages that could be sent were comprised of clicks and pauses. Although the Hoomans sought to be able to actually speak through these wires, their inability forced them to make do with what they had. This was what led to the Owl Republic codifying a system where specific combinations of clicks, short pauses, and long pauses denoted specific letters, allowing for near-instantaneous communication over long distances. This code, as well as the installation of a network of "ticker stations" across the Republic and utility poles connecting them via wire over these large distances, are believed to have greatly contributed to the nation's cohesion and functionality even in times of strife or famine.

A good amount of Hoomans still wanted words rather than clicks, so they conducted various forms of experimentation on sound recording. The nature of these experiments was all over the place; some were individual while others were coordinated, some mundane and some magical. The scattered nature of these experiments led to breakthroughs in other sound-based fields that saw civilian and official use. Horns that strongly intensified the voice of whoever spoke into them were carried by military units to better coordinate orders, while "music boxes" that could be engineered to play back recorded sounds were made to play hymns of the Nameless One. Some dolls started to have pull-cords that, when pulled, played back a spoken message. Yet despite these lone innovations, the ability to verbally communicate in real time from one city or town to another eluded Hoomanity.

Another invention sought out by Hoomans that they were unable to create was an alternative to balloon-based air travel. The Hooman populace has been deeply distrustful of balloons ever since the Hindenwawa Tragedy (a sentiment that continues to this day), and so many attempts were made and approved by Parliament to fund research of heavier-than-air flight. Sadly, none of the research provided favorable results, leaving non-balloon flight a pipe dream in the Owl Republic. In the flurry of legislation passed in the emergency session held after news of the Nameless One's impending apothnitosis, one was the approval of a last coordinated attempt to create a machine that could fly high without hot air. No sources have reported any success or failure on this front and salvage efforts have failed to recover any physical sign of such a machine existing, though some who claimed to have witnessed the cities raze themselves claimed that they saw shapes flying above and into the flames.

With the Nameless One's departure, Her magic faded from creations infused with it. This led to various inventions being rendered unusable for their intended purposes; the horn amplified the voice as much as a regular horn and the wires became inert. There were still some sound-based things that still worked fine though, like the music boxes and the talking dolls, and this led to hope of non-magical ways to bring the lost technology back in some way.

The Rise of the Morbs

The later days of the Owl Republic saw the nation in gradual decline. Though there were little if any nationwide problems with marriage rates or fertility, the native population was in a period of stasis rather than growth. Technological innovation as a whole stagnated. The Nameless One's influence upon the land and its people had been diminishing resulting in poor crop yields, and Her people slowly abandoned the temples built in reverence of Her.

In place of the temples rose the Morbs, enigmatic Hooman women who claimed to receive portents directly from the Nameless One Herself. Though first branded as heterodox or even heretical depending on the specific city's temple, the Morbs were greatly favored by the general population and over time became the ones the Hoomans consulted for tidings from the Nameless One.

There was some dispute in Parliament over whether to recognize Morbs as legitimate, but with the broad support of the people as a whole they were eventually accepted by the government. There were few clergy members to protest this, and most of them saw the writing on the wall and acquiesced much of their religious authority after Morb legalization and became scribes and lorekeepers, documenting the women's tales. They would also still make the "It's time!" declaration, though it would be referring to what the Morbs had to say most of the time.

C-tube History

In the following years, a renovation commonly made was the creation of amphitheaters in which the Morb(s) of a given town or city could speak of the Nameless One's words and exploits. These were typically built extending from the local temple, allowing it to be used as a backdrop. The format was never formally standardized, but the high yet narrow multi-tiered semicircle seating arrangements around the stage led to the public colloquially calling them "C-tubes". Here the Morbs would reveal their tidings before enthusiastic crowds, however rare or common that may be.

The Nameless One's apothnitosis and the Owl Republic's self-inflicted devastation left many a Hooman in a state of aimlessness. Yes, it was better that they kept the embers of their civilization hot so as to leave less land for Schizos to call their own, but what hope did they have of their days getting better again? In these dark times, many went to what Morbs were left for guidance.

Though they had lost their connection to the Nameless One and had no quick means of communicating with each other, nearly every Morb had come to the same conclusion: to keep Her spirit alive among the Hooman population by retelling what She did in her divinity and providing shows of these deeds as best they could in the local C-tubes. Hoomans, remembering the days of C-tube tidings, flocked to the amphitheaters in great numbers to see and hear the Morbs retell the passages of yesteryear.

These oral retellings quickly proved to differ from the old tidings in the days of the late Republic. For one, as there were no more live tidings of the Nameless One, the tales or passages had to be hand-picked by the Morbs performing them. This resulted in greatly increased coordination and amicable communication between scribes and Morbs, with the former looking through the archives for suitable writings to be recounted. The fact that these were all retellings also meant that they could be performed with regularity and that non-Morb Hoomans could be called upon to aid a performance.

Owl Republic's Military

The Owl Republic's land military was quite the spectacle. Though not suited to engage in wars of conquest, the Republic's system was oriented around repelling any besieging force, whether that be Schizo raiders or an invader from a foreign land. Cannons and other siege engines were both plentiful and strategically placed, walls and other static defenses were strong and expansive, and armies consisted of well-trained conscripts.

Regardless of whatever any Hooman may tell you, /who/ never had a formal navy. Yes, the Republic had ships both armed with cannons and able to house several dozen passengers, but they were never in a situation where they could comprise a fleet. Most of the time these vessels were used as transportation to other nations.

M.E.S.

As the Nameless One's domain was civilization itself, there was a widespread belief across the Owl Republic that traces of Her influence could be found not only in /who/ but within all cultures and civilizations of the world. It was with this belief in mind that Parliament established the order of the Maybe Everywhere Scribes, a title that saw multiple abbreviations over the years until it was simply called the M.E.S.

M.E.S. agents, as they came to be known, traveled to foreign nations with their initial and primary objectives being to look through theological records of the nations they visited in search for mentions of the Nameless One as well as to catalog the general nature of their inventions and infrastructure. They would be stationed in their assigned foreign countries for a year on average, and the first few agents worked out of pocket, often working local jobs to make ends meet.

After returning to the Owl Republic, M.E.S. agents released their findings to Parliament, though they often gave minor teaser-esque anecdotes to their families ahead of time. At the beginning of the year, all reports were compiled into a summary that were distributed to the various temples across the republic which then relayed these reports to the greater populace.

There was never only one M.E.S. agent assigned to a given nation. Rather, each nation that had the M.E.S.'s interest was assigned the calculated minimum number of agents to maintain a constant international presence in a cycle of "travel to foreign nation, stay in foreign nation for one year, travel to /who/, stay in /who/ for minimum of one year".

Though not initially having their diplomatic authority, M.E.S. agents were often seen as ambassadors, as their actions and behavior were seen by Hoomans back at home as reflective of /who/ as a whole. This discrepancy was remedied not too long after the order was established to properly align the duties with the public's perception of them. The issue of their pay was also remedied to some extent, exempting M.E.S. agents from /who/ ship travel fees and providing them a stipend to ostensibly help sustain them financially during their time abroad.

As the M.E.S. grew in perceived importance, so too did the standards by which a Hooman could be considered fit to serve as an agent. Initially allowing volunteers, it eventually came to be that only the best of the best mentally should be allowed to join. As one of the perceived prerequisites was a deep understanding of the Nameless One's role in the greater Holo Pantheon, /who/ temples became training grounds of sorts. Indeed, most M.E.S. agents deemed too old to go abroad (sometimes referred to as "sore in the foot") spent the rest of their professional years at the temples training prospective recruits and otherwise serving as archivists or other advisory roles to the Morbs.

When news came of the Nameless One's impending apothnitosis, the duties of the M.E.S. faced a great change: agents not en route to or active in a foreign nation, as well as all agents in training, were given the responsibility of trawling through the archives and determining which were worth being catalogued in the Republic's final years.

After Her apothnitosis, the M.E.S. largely ceased to be. Though a select few still volunteered to travel to the remaining Promise nations, the lack of centralized funding for the practice combined with the belief that the Nameless One no longer had any meaningful influence on the greater Holo Pantheon led to this practice dwindling sharply in the early years of /who/'s third age.

Therefore, the former M.E.S. agents' focus turned inward and they took advantage of their ambassadorial reputation to serve such a role on an intranational level to keep the now disparate and disconnected towns of /who/ together. Thus, the M.E.S. became the first batch of what would be known as the Aves (or Skols, for those living near the Sea of Scotos).

Early Public Sentiment Regarding the Pink Angel

The Pink Angel Acknowledgment Act was the official go-ahead to publicly speak of her in /who/ (conditionally), but even though it passed with unanimous approval in the Hoosmoot of N.S. 2 and was the first issue raised for a vote in the standard Hoosmoot format, knowledge and talk of her was not something that was entirely absent beforehand. It was many years of developments both at home and abroad that saw a gradual shift to the perspective that the Pink One was more than just schizoid ramblings intended to destabilize Hoomanity's commitment to the Nameless One over the course of the second half of the second age.

This shift began with the Great Upheaval in /HAHA/ that saw much of the world changed. /who/ was not directly affected, but Hooman groups providing aid noticed commotion surrounding texts depicting a pink angel that seemed to have a kinship of sorts with the Holy Tomato. Though censored by the institutions that the information was presented to back in /who/, some of these individuals leaked that tidbit and similar information to their families before submitting these findings to Parliament or the local temples. This gradually led to small pockets of Hoomans coming to believe that the Pink One spoken of by Schizos wasn't necessarily as harmful as presented, nor made up as insisted by authorities.

Regardless, discussion or even mention of the Pink Angel was illegal due to the perceived risk of invoking Custodial wrath for worship of a non-Chuuba. In retrospect, it is believed that the uptick of M.E.S. volunteers in the later days of the Republic was due to the curiosity they had of her in spite of this. Those who were unable to qualify as M.E.S. agents sometimes traveled abroad anyways to learn about the Pink One in a practice that retroactively became known as "worship tourism", even if no such worshipping actually took place.

Curiously, even though the Lands of Laughter were the origin of foreign information of the Pink One, it was a different nation that was seemingly subject to the most "worship tourism": /uuu/. Shortly after the rise of their new goddess a sect depicting the Pink One as her consort supposedly arose. The rumors of this cult, combined with the already warming relations between /who/ and /uuu/, were believed to have led to a rise in Hoomans traveling there to learn and speak of the Pink One without fear of persecution.

Regardless of where Hoomans went to learn of her, any spoken or written word of the Pink One was very severely punished even by the Republic's harsh criminal justice standards. All trials in which the defendant was accused of having made any deliberate reference to the Pink Angel were held publicly and no evidence that mentioned or alluded to her could be presented save for a highly redacted missive from the Pink Angel herself declaring that she is not a Chuuba and must not be worshipped as one. Additionally, all executions for these crimes were prolonged to exacerbate the criminals' suffering. Still, talk of her managed to persist in one form of another. Historians believe that the rise of odd choices of wardrobe (wearing all-white beneath black cloaks in communities by the seaside) and phrases ("going to observe hyraxes" when none have ever been known to live in /who/) in the latter days of the O.R. age was at least partially driven as a way to go around the legal apparatus.

When the disastrous day came in which the Nameless One made it known that She would cease to be a goddess, Parliament was rushed into an emergency session. Much legislation was passed to address the future of /who/, ranging from the initial drafts land cessions to neighboring nations to grants provided to efforts to preserve inventions that relied on Her influence to function. The Republic as a whole, not just the cities that resolved to go down with their Chuuba, entered a state of all-hands-on-deck for the next few years between the Grave Pronouncement and Her apothnitosis. The need for manpower led to less severe persecution and prosecution of nonviolent crimes, and many smaller communities flat out didn't charge anyhoot for non-religious acts involving the Pink Angel. This, combined with some framing her as a figure who could serve as a possible future subject of worship (a sentiment that to this day is deemed to have no merit), resulted in public discourse of her surging in those times.

One of the actions taken in these final few years of the Owl Republic was the compilation of records concerning the Nameless One into a single concise document that would be distributed to all communities that chose not to partake in Operation Zero. M.E.S. agents not on what would be their final missions abroad spent most of their time pouring through various cities' archives to sift through all the writings of the Nameless One for this purpose. Multiple times during this process, Schizoid writings of the Pink One were "mistakenly" leaked to the public, further spreading recognition of her. Historians have conflicting sentiment on whether the purpose of these leaks was to lend credit to the "future Chuuba" rumors or to discredit them.

Regardless of the nature or veracity of any rumors spread about her, public knowledge of the Pink One continued to spread in the Owl Republic's final months until she was known about in every corner of the country. Though it was initially agreed that the Hoomans who returned from the Tower dimension were to do so solely to carry out Operation Zero to avoid Schizoid commandeering of Hooman settlements, many of the returning Hoomans grew to have second thoughts on perishing with their cities when the time came. Many had chosen to hold onto hope that the Pink One would eventually ascend to godhood in spite of various theological documents indicating a lack of desire on her part to undergo apotheosis, and it was this hope that led Hoomanity to persist in Viti.

From Grave Pronouncement to Operation Zero: The Final Years of the Owl Republic


New Start

The Troubled History of the AFA

Hoosmoot rarely lasts a single day. When discussion and/or deliberation goes on into the night, the event is paused after the current topic is settled to allow for eating, drinking, and sleeping. Foraging and hunting in a moot's night are not unheard of. A few bad-faith individuals quickly learned this could be weaponized by wearing other Ave's out by talking, and talking, and talking, until they decided their position wasn't worth the incessant yapping. This was ultimately what led to the Anti-Filibustering Act, which in an act never done before or since, was a vote passed with at least one Ave held at gunpoint. An attempt to censure the ones who held the guns was attempted, but as the Ave who raised the issue extensively filibustered against the AFA, the measure was dismissed immediately.

The First Premature Hoosmoot

The typical Hoosmoot is formal and scheduled well in advance. However, on rare occasion circumstances arise that mandate official action to the degree of a Hoosmoot. When this comes about, the event is referred to as a Premature Hoosmoot.

The first time this occurred, a town was propositioned by a foreign nation for a treaty with /who/. The town promptly sent its Ave and other trusted Hoomans to nearby locales, calling for a Premature Hoosmoot on the ground of establishing diplomatic ties with a foreign nation. The foreign diplomat was given room and board for two weeks while waiting for the Ave's of the other towns to arrive and provide feedback and either consent or dissent to the proposed treaty. To mimic a typical Hoosmoot, the local populace of that town vacated the town for the duration of the moot.

The first Premature Hoosmoot was conducted on-the-fly, as there were no agreed-upon guidelines at the time for how to conduct one. This issue was immediately raised and subsequently passed with unanimous approval at the next Hoosmoot.


Edit

Pub: 03 Oct 2025 10:49 UTC

Edit: 28 Nov 2025 05:38 UTC

Views: 57