16th Century Dagwe fa Shukowa that is, the Obibo calendar

"The Invader" had been the nickname of an Alááfin three generations ago. It was this Sanòwá the First who had started the trend of conquering large swathes of northern land, continued by Sanòwá the Second. While the lands they conquered had once been a part of the Alááfin's sphere of influence, the land was rather foreign and the invasions came with huge costs. Two armies were utterly destroyed in the process, a third was so expensive it almost bankrupted even the enormously wealthy Alááfins, and the fact that the soldiers were constantly in the north had been the catalyst of one succession war already. And all of this only one century since the conquest of Ewo-Ife, a land still unhappy about the forceful hand of Kayasha pressuring them from Uwára.

The result was a boiling kettle in the Alááshu fa Tozàn that would change the history of the Obibo forever. Sanòwá the Second died in 1502 DFS and was succeeded by her only child, Alááfin Káyugwá, who was faced with two crises immediately. In Eastern Ewo-Ife, a rebellion coordinated by the local nobility sprung up and spread quickly, facing little resistance from local soldiers. After all, the small professional army Káyugwá had, left crippled by expensive invasions and poorly executed half-hearted reforms, was in the north. The most capable soldiers she had were either the slave soldiers of the Orange Banner or the Tágwá Bóràò of the Hellenes, but the former were too small to fight a war on their own and the latter too expensive for her to afford at the moment. The second crisis was of similar nature: a peasant revolt in the northeast, led by a heretical priest in Tazaraga. There was little to do about that, sending in the troops would just take them away from other places, making them more likely to fall.

Káyugwá wished to expand the gold output of the mines in Soyofàn, so she sent more slaves to the mines and upped the quotas. The result was the opposite of what she had desired: the slaves rebelled in a bloody and unsuccesful fashion, but the policing magistrates had to put down most of the slaves and for a while the mines had to be shut down. Word of Káyugwá's brutality spread through Tozàn from slave to slave and instead of increasing the gold production, the movement of gold towards her treasury came to a screeching halt. What followed was trouble in the capital city, Uwára, as the nobility there as well as the family of Káyugwá became very unhappy with her decisions. They conspired to have her killed and betrayed her along with the Palatial Guard, tasked with defending her life.

Members of the Palatial Guard leaked the plot just in time for Káyugwá to flee from Uwára. She united with the Orange Banner, who were still fiercely loyal to her cause, but in her absense in Uwára, she was deposed and a new Alááfin was coronated. As a matter of fact, three were at three seperate locations in the same week. Disagreements over the succession of Káyugwá who was still alive had led to a conflict between proponents of dynastic change and traditionalists, leading to three seperate coronations which somehow managed to occur in harmony with eachother. Of course, street fights ensued afterwards and a war erupted in Uwára between the three pretenders over control of the palace, the throne and the crown.

Meanwhile, governors of the provinces saw the trouble brewing from leagues away and prepared for the coming wars. While some openly declared their loyalty to Káyugwá or one of the pretenders, most simply decided to raise their own army, ignore every command from the outside and act as they saw fit until a strong Alááfin returned. Until then, they could run their own kingdom and hopefully avoid the storm that was the succession war. The previous one had already demanded too much blood from the provinces.

Káyugwá fled to Nijaay, the most distant province from Uwára. No one followed her and she failed to coordinate a push to take back the capital. In Uwára itself, the pretenders killed eachother until the Hellenes won, who had the biggest stick of the capital, or at least the most reliable one. The Hellenes decided that no one was going to be Alááfin and that the nobility could rule the city and the Alááshu as a council. Uwára became a nest of murders as families were constantly at eachothers throats for the imaginary authority offered by the council, because no one outside the city listened to what there was to say. The Hellenes retreated to their quarter and sat out the murders, yet they had been clear enough and would not allow an authority to dominate Uwára until they themselves found a way to do it themselves and avoid being murdered.

The consequences of these events for Tozàn will be explained soon.