Bakh

The Bakh were a people that served as the ruling elite of an eponymous southern Roscian civilization in the 6th to 10th centuries CE. Although a comparatively short and chaotic period of the region's history, it saw a number of pivotal social developments.

Originating as Guto invaders established on the ruins of the Uko, the Bakh complicated the complex religious and social conflicts of the late Uko involving onisen, Ibo, and other institutions, adding to it Manian Pastism being spread from Sheh. Bakh-led empires such as Kesa, Chiry, and Afakupa established expansive dominions, using Manian-inspired engineering projects guided by dejin to clear land, tame the Ilefean rivers, and reshape society for new visions of an agrarian, hydraulic empire.

By the 7th century, new religions like Ikugwa and onipe orders emerged under foreign influences and from local tensions: the former created a new theological universe according to which behavior was punctiliously cultivated, while the latter rallied followers behind teachers of divination whose prophecies were regularly translated to major scientific and political projects. Identification with these movements became crucial to Bakh states by the 8th century, and the rise of Eje as a codified competitor to Ikugwa sparked the Frying Wars in the 9th century. In eastern Ilefe, the power of the Bakh were eventually eclipsed by Asusu cities, which asserted rights known as ikike to establish polities through speculative contracts known as imeghe.

The Bakh period would be definitively ended by conquests of the First Doran Empire in the 10th century. While the negotiation for ikike in the east continued under the imposition of Doran rule, the western regions were devastated by warfare and resettled by the Baniwi from the Toyonu coast west of the Kirobi mountains.