Khuikh Quests
The Khuikh Quests (or Kuikh, from Deng khu.éex’, 'gift, invitation') were loose polities that made up the political landscape of what is now northern Lutoborsk, in Kadalkhia, the Homul Peninsula, and the Mezhadchenye river plain, in the 11th to 17th centuries. These regions were referred to as the Questlands or Poskivshchina (pos'k, from Lutoborian sʹkáty, 'to seek') relative to states to the south.
While 'Khuikh' initially referred to the quests as social practices and customs, they became metonyms for the inhabitants of the region in Lutoborian and later southern Joriscian usage. Dengs, Vaduls, and even Badgajoghs have all been referred to as 'Khuikhs', and northern Lutoborsk is also known as 'Khuikhland' (Kuikhivshchyna).
History
During the 10th century the northern Undughu Empire was taken over by various champion warlords establishing themselves as feudatories after the Anabasis to Abani, and independent princes after the Secote conquest of Outer Joriscia. In this 'proto-Khuikh' era Quests as a political system began to emerge as adventurers vied for power whether directly or through khaa raids, supported by the influential culture of the highly successful Unzenne order, but largely within states still at least formally continuous with imperial structures or older ideas of the Undughu polity.
From 1060 to 1180 the north was under the hegemony of the Neghay League, an attempt by the Huziwal house — whose scions had conquered by khaas a great number of realms around northeast Joriscia — to create a new expansive Joriscian state based on ezny relations and the sea power commanded by Khuikhland. However, its defeat in the Khuikh War of 1172–8 against Jatarnatly Kothyn and the Lutoborovid Confederacy soon dissolved it. The Lutoborovids installed a Prince of the Khuikhs based in the Mezhadchenye to oversee the collection of ožidomy from the northern princes now submitting as tributaries, but by Mistipolk's War of 1212–15, the Prince Mistipolk of Ruda had established an independent kingdom, and north of the Mezhadchenye plain the Khuikhs became a sphere very loosely under the influence of this realm, rather than the states of the Dovhyi Tableland. As the authority of Mistipolk's successors waned, new centres of power emerged around Tazesh and Tashuka. Old titulature and pretensions, already withering in significance, were almost completely abandoned in the course of these upheavals, and the self-evident recognition of adventurers and Quests became the basis for a quasi-resnullian order at the formal level.
The office of the Prince oversaw another brief era of hegemony in the 1300s when the Izyamirovids took control of the Mezhadchenye and the princely title, then fought the Izyamirovid Wars against the Aborovid Confederacy. By the 1350s they were defeated in the Mezhadchenye where the Hulyaysonovids established the Severnyy Kingdom, which would bring lasting authority to that region and remove it from the Questlands; Homul and Kadalkhia correspondingly broke away immediately. The princely title was restored in 1489 when Volodimir III wrested claims of hegemony over the north away from local princes and the Severnyy, with the assistance of Kothyn. However, the new Prince, seated in Ruda, was to quickly become an independent ruler, and one who was not exceptionally superior to the other adventurers at that.
Starting in the 16th century, a sedentarising Aborovid elite began to dispatch cadet members of the knyazy north to secure tribute and military assistance from Khuikh forces, as well as to expand trading opportunities and spread their religion, mainly Siriash. This generation of incomers brought armies and institutions that were able to establish more lasting kingships in the north, heralding the end of the Quests. These new Commanders were also driven to use religious reformation, namely the assertion of Siriash or Cairo-Sirian syncretism (the Khuikh Compact), to gain the loyalty of subjects and fortify against the influence of Vaestism that was causing major conflicts in the Aborovid Confederacy. They also intervened in conflicts to the south to defend Siriash there, beginning with the Unjust War, providing for further centralisation and consolidation of a chain of command.
By the late 17th century, the Quests were superseded by the Vadul Komandje Kingdom (founded 1667 after the War for Ruda) and the Deng Kadalkhian Confederacy (founded 1681). Their origins in the Quests showed in the binding of their war economies with affairs in the Lutoborsk, known as the Tardy War, and perhaps fated them for absorption by the new Vesnite state, whose security demanded their submission. The immediate cause of their downfall, however, was the internal conflicts over the legitimacy of the princes' absolutism as draining military endeavours failed to attain their objectives, while unrest emerged from the spread of a popular 'semi-Vaestism' as the appeal of Siriash weakened. Severnyye and Komandje were conquered in the Peridot Wars, and Kadalkhia was annexed in the March to Foshky by 1833.
Politics
A Quest was not a clearly governed state or polity, but an exchange of favours or contracts between northern Joriscian freemen as highly independent political actors and entrepreneurs. Quests were initially demands of tribute and then military service by late Undughu governors or the Prince of the Khuikhs, but soon encompassed any declaration of a demand, request, or challenge to local factions. Each Quest was typically viewed as a one-off transaction, exchanging the performance of some task for compensation, future favour, or a reputation of audacity, in the case of quest-givers with little else to offer besides a provocative challenge.
The figure and office of debatable authority was the 'Quest-giver', who was always presumed to be of some means and standing, which could be material, political, or spiritual; rewards for their Quests were drawn from these profiles appropriately. From the 10th to 12th centuries Quest-giving was mainly an extension of the prestige of Undughu warlords or attempts by guilds to buy protection; from the 13th to 15th centuries authority was a natural privilege of the most successful Quest-takers (mainly military adventurers) that accumulated prestige in a freely competing environment; and from the 16th to 17th centuries the rise of Aborovid Commanders as more established rulers turned Quests into the instruments of incipient states, by which these new rulers co-opted both entrepreneurs to serve their goals, and various institutions such as native priesthoods, lamnearies, or subordinate kunentsydoms that further defined and reinforced state structures.
Distinct organised polities were secondary in Khuikhland to the concept of a wider ecosystem of actors in constant exchange and negotiation with each other, a highly open one in which every capable post-Undughu freeman could 'form' a state all by himself. The overall economy of quests was reciprocal and self-balancing, since once accumulating their own standing Quest-takers would either need to redistribute a 'surplus' of prestige, or in practical terms attain a social position that makes cooperating with others necessary, both accomplished by Quest-giving. Conversely, Quest-givers were also more than happy to fulfil the needs of others with what resources they had themselves, important in cementing their position on other fronts. Polities in the Questlands have been described as circles of influence akin to chandane, but it has also been argued that the great indebtedness powerful quest-givers had to their ostensible clients, as well as the numerous different factions one could be involved across, mean that simple monadic structures are insufficient in explaining the totality of quest culture. In military terms, and politics that related to the southern courts, the quests produced small numbers of headmen overlapping in authority. At times charismatic or cunning leaders were able to, like the Undughu Emperors before them, rally forces from across the Questlands, but these were built on little to no institutions and almost always dissolved once they died or left power.
The most well known type of quests included military service (including khaa raiding); demands for tribute or requests for particular goods; and various spiritual services. Starting in the late 16th century quests became agreements and contracts expected to work over longer periods of time and even be indefinitely renewed, some amounting to complete systems of land tenure or military service, and eventually turned into laws to be enforced by legal and administrative forces that created the new 'Mustered States'.