Reference: The Gnoman Empire - History I

On the eastern edge of the shallow sea, the Faci Mountains became known simply as Facia. In this large, mountainous, thickly forested island, the peace established in the wake of the Great Orc Rebellion did not last long.

The smallest of the Fugencian races had been crafted to handle the administration of Fugencia, and they had been among those who'd been most discontent with their roles in Fugencian society before the Star Shift. To add insult to injury, although these small people had comprised an extraordinarily large portion of those living in the cities, they had been among those given the lowest priority when the cities were finally evacuated.

Still, many of these people did escape to the relative safety of the mountains; unfortunately, most of these refugees had never left their city of birth before, let alone spent time in the wilderness. Given this lack of preparation, and their small size and relative physical weakness, it is remarkable that they survived the ensuing chaos at all.

According to Lady Heppa, their attention to detail, their capacity to learn and focus on complex tasks, and their ability to work for long hours with minimal sleep was "beyond human." Being urban dwellers, they were naturally more resistant to the diseases that ravaged the tightly packed refugees, and being exceptionally small, they could survive on less food than their starving kinsmen. Eventually they found comfort and safety in the high trees that covered the mountains, and life in the Facian forests hardened them, honing their innate mental strengths into what Heppa described as "remarkable cunning" and "breathtaking ruthlessness."

When the elves swept in with their orc armies, the former administrators readily turned on their prior masters, happily betraying them to the elves, who accepted their aid and granted them freedom and status second only to their own. They served happily in this capacity until the Great Orc Rebellion came, at which point, most of them stepped out of the line of fire and waited to see which side would come out on top.

Although orcs and elves alike knew that the small Fugencians' neutrality was a matter of self-interest, and denigrated them for their lack of loyalty, they assumed that the small Fugencians' intentions were to dedicate themselves to the survivors once the war was over. Much to the orcs' surprise, however, when the outcome was finally settled, the descendants of the seemingly meek administrative caste turned and struck at the victors. Their small size, quick bodies, and home-field advantage made them dangerous combatants in the thickly forested Faci Mountains, and after generations of war, the Facians ultimately drove the surviving humans, orcs, and elves from the island and declared themselves to be the people of Facia.

The Facians prospered, and after settling into a period of relative peace, they focused on developing maritime skills to match their proficiency in the forests and mountains. They became great shipwrights, fishermen, and traders, as well as explorers. They 'rediscovered' much of their lost country, colonizing scattered islands inhabited by orcs and humans who were too disorganized to fend off the coordinated tactics used by Facian invaders. The Facians eventually claimed dominion over the entire shallow sea to the west of Facia and named it, unsurprisingly, the Facian Sea.

About the Facian Sea: The waters are so shallow and often so peaceful, that it is sometimes possible to study the seafloor below. In fact, Facian mariners began mapping the sea floor as they rolled along the oceans above it, and as others have contributed since, we now have relatively detailed maps of what Fugencia must have looked like before its flooding. Of note, long, wide, deep trenches running along the sea floor have been determined to be ancient rivers. The longest of these, in fact, still connects to the mouth of the Gygian river, carrying cold river water along the sea floor down to the warm, tropical waters of the Facian Sea. Littering the seafloor, and particularly concentrated around these submerged rivers, are numerous ruins which now host massive coral reefs. Most of these ruins are nearly unrecognizable to the untrained eye, but one of these locations must be carefully avoided in rough weathers, as the structures remain tall enough to tear through the bottoms of ships.   

Eventually the spreading Facians reached the large landmass that had once been the expansive, high elevation plains that lay east of Fugencia's western mountains, the Gnoma Range. Shielded by the mountains, these plains had once been relatively dry, even desert-like in places, but thanks to the shifting climate, the rivers running down from the Gnoma Range had swelled and increased in number, turning the dry plains into verdant farmland. The Facians, of course, claimed it as "Gnomania" and took it for their own, gradually displacing or eliminating the disorganized clans of freed orcs and indigenous humans over the centuries that followed.


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