If a future historian were to know how long it took the Dakakh to begin settling in large numbers across rivers, they would disbelieve the anomaly, laughing the ashamed anthropologist out of the room. But it was nevertheless the case that The Dakakh had taken centuries to begin crossing over rivers in large numbers to create permanent new settlements. That is not to say the Dakakh never crossed rivers or settled the land across them; such a claim would be ludicrous. But for whatever reason, whether it be the large number of native Outlanders, or a superstitious fear of lands beyond the valley, it wasn't until roughly 4600 BCE that the Dakakh began to embark in large numbers. The Amdā Kassu was quickly lined with both Dakakh agrarians and pastoralists, but interestingly the northwestern Küfā Kassu took a great deal longer.

Though Dakakh, in search of new and plentiful pastures, crossed into these northwestern territories from both the south and the east, it took almost a millennium for the Dakakh to become a majority. Unlike with the sparsely populated steppes of the center-west, these lands were home to many Outlanders, and while these men did not bear a particularly strong or unified culture, there were a great number of them. Through centuries of bloodshed, intermarriage, and acculturation, these Outlanders gradually began to merge into the Dakakh culture, but this process was too slow to itself warrant cultural control over the region. The northwestern lands were won by sheer numbers, with a population almost a third the size of the Katzhai valley needing to cross into the lands over the course of many generations. Nonetheless, the force of culture and population radiated by the Dakakh was tough for even these Outlanders to handle. Though it took longer than the assimilation of the scarcely inhabited open steppes south of the Küfā Kassu, the northwestern territories fell into Dakakh control.

At the same time, A much more rapid migration was observed in a solely easterly direction. Usually, the Dakakh were loathe to travel too far from their ancestral Katzhai Valley‒which was perhaps another reason river crossings were so scarce in the earliest of Dakakh prehistory‒but in this case, the Dakakh not only travelled almost directly away from their home, but they did it with great gusto. It appeared that the reason for this rapid march was more than a simple desire for green riverside pastures. Something had pulled these men into new lands, and any man entering this new eastern frontier would not be hard-pressed to find it. Towering above the rolling steppe was Khazāsh [xɐzejc̨], a 4000 meter lone mountain, bearing rough rocky sides and glacial white ice-caps. The explorers that first laid eyes upon this land entered it fearing retribution from great and mythical beasts and monsters, but instead found the mountain. The Dakakh, who before had lacked a strong spirituality, found themselves instilled with some belief that this mountain was a protector of the Dakakh. Though these early beliefs were still evolving, the western Dakakh seemed as if a pantheon was brewing in their midst. Driven to this now venerated land, many Dakakh, both new clans and old, endeavored to settle within sight of the grand peaks of Khazāsh.

OOC: The Dakakh population in the territories North of the Küfā Kassu (northwest river) finally becomes large enough to warrant cultural control over those lands. And now that it's started, more cultural spread along both sides of the Küfā Kassu is to be expected. At the same time, Dakakh begin finding faith after the discovery of a grand mountain (expect a post on a more codified version of these beliefs next week). Map of new territories. The territory mostly obscured by grey on the map has been explored by the Dakakh, as seen in this post and this image.