THE FIJAIK GORREL

The reason there are “Histories” of the Confederated Metropolis of Gwij is that there is no one theory of history that is agreed upon or accepted. The problem goes back 415 years to when a historian, Dr. Breno Orl at the newly established Bradokern (later renamed Nyumem) University, attempted to find the exact origins of what is now the Confederated Metropolis of Gwij. Until Dr. Orl’s attempt at finding the origins of what was then considered indisputably as the origins of the “world”, people relied on the myths of Gwij’s creation. These myths never included dates and used terms like, “before time itself”, and “at the beginning of time”. These myths also included heroic and almost god-like characters forming the seeds of the city world of Gwij.

Dr. Orl did not set out to dispute these myths but just to put a more tangible timeline to it. What he ended up doing was turning the whole way people were thinking of the origins of Gwij and about themselves upside-down.  This drastically affected the religion as well, for before Dr. Orl’s academic investigations there was an ancient and influential religion built up around the creation myths of Gwij. This religion, called Bilik Gwij (Birthing Gwij), had and still has, though diminishing quickly, the largest following of any of the numerous religions practiced in Gwij.

Dr. Orl’s findings suggested a massive group forgetting of the “real” story of how Gwij (the city not the Confederation) came into being. He found, through years of painstaking research, that actual recorded history began about 350 years before the official formation of the Confederation (863 years before the present date) and stopped again a few years before its incorporation; being overwritten by a more modern interpretation of the mythic origins theory that is still widely accepted to this day. He wondered how there could have been such an abrupt change from myth to actual recorded history with real people doing real things back to myth mixed with the new history of the Confederation and why this has been basically forgotten.

In the background of these questions was his belief that the people of Gwij, with their vastly different skin tones, features, dress, and beliefs, were not created from various competing and geographically localized deities of the highly complex pantheon of Bilik Gwij would suggest but were from other places outside and far away from Gwij itself. He was an avid enthusiast in the study of the different cultures of Gwij and understood very well that very different cultures could develop in a small area with only the rivers or even hilly areas separating them as has been documented in Gwij in more recent times (particularly with the Cultural Mapping Law of 107 C.Y.). However, this did not answer Dr. Orl’s questions about skin tone and extremely different facial features and a few isolated cultures within the limited space of the metropolis – that, he believed, required immense distances being overcome to have these differences be so close together. Dr. Orl was a member of a small but growing group who believed that there were other civilizations within navigable distance of the Confederation. If his theory was true, an even more disturbing question arose; how could these different people totally forget where they originally came from? Less than 400 years is a very short time to forget your own origins and family histories – too short. It turned out that this abrupt change in history and the disturbing questions that followed did not go unnoticed before him. When he started secretly investigating this anomaly (a challenge to the accepted history would be a serious crime), he found, through word of mouth, that there have been several other secret investigations that for some reason or other stopped. 

 What made Dr. Orl’s investigations so different was he attempted to connect the change with that of his theory of the “Mass Forgetting” and the presence of so much human diversity in a relatively small area of land. Another difference was that these investigations and theories succeeded in getting published and an increasing number of Gwijians were influenced by his findings (Dr. Orl wrote his findings in his tome “Fijaik Gorrel” or “Forgetting Memory”). The central government was obviously upset by the popularity of Fijaik Gorrel” and a few weeks after its publication, it was officially banned throughout Gwij and Dr. Orl disappeared into government-imposed exile. The government attempted to discredit Dr. Orl playing up that he was from the rebellious and relatively new prefecture of Peadraj, therefore a sympathizer of the small rebel groups forming at the time against the government and Peadraj’s incorporation into the Confederation. It was true that he was a Peadraji but he was not a member or sympathizer with the rebel groups. In fact, if anything he was a sympathizer of the central government who was only concerned with history and uncovering a “real” history. After the publication of his “Fijaik Gorrel” he became increasingly disenfranchised with the government and became an outspoken critic but also remaining distant from the rebel groups of his home.

Unfortunately, the Fijaik Gorrel did not answer Dr. Orl’s questions but just put them out there for readers to ponder and for later generations of historians to answer. Even the recorded history that was found by Dr. Orl did not appear in the Fijaik Gorrel. Only scant dates and people found to be connected to the eventual formation of the Confederation were there to read. It is as if Dr. Orl was threatened not only with forced exile but death if he published the total history that he discovered. Despite the government ban on the book, it still can be obtained through black market circles and remains very popular. Every year there are more and more adherents to Dr. Orl’s theories and questions but as of now, no one has been able to expand and answer the questions of the Fijaik Gorrel and be able to tell (or even live to tell) the rest of the story.

There are those, particularly within the various groups against the Confederation, who believe that there is a strong connection between the outward hostility of the Confederation government toward Dr. Orl and his theory and the creation of the Cultural Mapping Law that came into effect less then 10 years after the Fijaik Gorrel was published. These people believe that the Mendren Government at the time created the Cultural Mapping Law to deflect attention from the debate over the ancient history of Gwij and origins of its people to the history of the people and cultures that were birthed from the city itself. In other words, promoting a new history of Gwij after Confederation by officializing and promoting the establishment of the Neo-Metro Cultures and their “new” histories but keeping the core history (the history of the creation of the Confederation and the myths tied to it) as the one thing uniting all Gwijians.

All Confederation governments since the inception of the Cultural Mapping Law have unequivocally denied any relationship between the outlawed Fijaik Gorrel and the Cultural Mapping Law. Each administration fiercely defends the Cultural Mapping Law as a progressive piece of legislature that protects the diversity and integrity of the many different cultures that have formed over the years in the metropolis.