A queen had taken the throne in Ewo-Ife, the Deltaland. As ruler of the eastern half of the hallowed ancestral homeland of the Obibo people, their birthplace, this child of the 16th century would have a profound impact on the future of the Alááshu of Tozàn, the country of the Obibo people.

Following the crisis of the Alááshu's 16th century, the east of Ewo-Ife had seceded. The cause had been a religious quarrel after Kayaist preachers had become more aggressive in trying to convert local Wúgists. However, after the rebellion, which had been unsuccesful in taking control of the western delta, a king had taken power in the place of the Wúgist priests. They had been branded heretics by their own superiors and their hierarchy had broken down.

The king, Oba Afèlà, could not maintain the bureaucracy of the Alááshu, just like the parts that did not break away, but instead of falling to the control of the military nobility, Oba Afèlà's Ewo-Ife adopted a way of personal rule where practically anyone with influence was family of the Oba. Afèlà ensured the loyalty of his generals and ministers that way, but he had to spend most of his life after taking kingship at the head of his army, so he failed to build a state that could last. While he had succeeded at defending his kingdom from both Tozàn nobles and Yoáwá petty kings, who saw the rebellion as an opportunity to ransack and plunder the wealthy city of Fufemba under Afèlà's control, his death in 1535 DFS marked the end of stability in Deltaland.

Between 1535 and 1558, Eastern Ewo-Ife saw three kings and four queens: although Wúgist and not Kayaist, they too more or less adhered the principle of matrilineal succession for titles of nobility. The chaotic period eventually came to an end when a commoner seized power from the children of Afèlà: a woman by the name of Ofugémi became the Queen of the Delta. More ambitious than her predecessors, more ambitious than even Afèlà, it was said that Ofugémi aspired nothing less than to become the Alááfin of Tozàn.

Ofugémi was born, likely around 1525, as the fourth child of a farmer in the Mbóri polders. She grew up in an area where food was plenty and there was no shortage of anything. Although her youth was free from the chaos that plagued the queendom, when Ofugémi grew older and became more aware of the world around her, she was confronted with the chaotic period in the shape of refugees, who went begging door to door for food around the Mbóri polders. A succession war had broken out after the death of Afèlà, and although a strong candidate could protect the lands around Mbóri, it was obvious that other areas were not so lucky. Ofugémi's connection to the conflict would not be limited to helping out refugees here and there, as harsh taxes were imposed on those spared from the plundering war, straining her father. While it was one thing to face being unable to maintain her carefree lifestyle, the war came really close when Ofugémi's two older brothers were drafted to fight for the pretender in Mbóri.

With just his daughters and wife left, Ofugémi's father began hiring refugees to work on his farm. While he thought he would be praised for offering them a job, the workers resented him for paying them a daysman's wage, not enough to provide for their families. When the lord began to levy the working refugees into his army, many of them turned against him and became bandits, because he would have likely paid less than people like Ofugémi's father and sent them to their deaths. Ofugémi's family also fell prey to the refugees-turned-bandits. Ofugémi herself had by chance been outside in the fields when they struck, leaving her as the only survivor of the looting. With nothing left, the young girl, barely old enough to wed, became a refugee herself and fled to Mbóri, hoping to find her brothers.

When she arrived in the big city, the squalor of the slums and the misery of the veterans, often mangled or maimed with festering, untreated wounds, already told her that looking for her brothers was not going to help her. If they were alive in the first place, for what reason would they be any better of than all the wretched souls lying around the streets of Mbóri? She had little choice but to turn to the slums, just like all the other destitute refugees, and between begging and crime, Ofugémi learned soon that the latter filled her belly much faster. Quick-witted, enduring and determined to survive, she became a good thief and a better liar. Her short, boyish and childlike appearance made the other thieves see her not as a girl, who in the slums generally turned to prostitution, but as a colleague, yet also not as a threat, but as a sort of endearing type of sidekick.

Ofugémi's father had taught her to speak properly, like a lady, because he had always desired good marriages for his sons and his daughters might've as well learned along with them. In Mbóri, other thieves also taught Ofugémi how to read and write, invaluable in assessing the worth of some stolen objects and also in forgery. She learned to act, talk like both middle and upper class, blend in, be convincing. Ofugémi became a charismatic and persuasive young lady.

Enrolled in a sort of band of thieves, Ofugémi's rise in Mbóri was nothing short of extraordinary, but it brought downsides with it too. A petty thief could sleep well, knowing that after she had stolen their thick porridge succesfully, no one would be after them. They had nothing and they had no dangerous enemies. Ofugémi and the rest of the band had made enemies of the rulers, hpwever, and they had stolen enough to be the target of other thieves. In 1546, when she was roughly twenty years old, Ofugémi considered the situation becoming too dangerous, so she took aggressive action and betrayed her whole gang, took their whole fortune and fled Mbóri to Fufemba.

It was during her flight to Fufemba that Ofugémi, once more confronted with the horrors of war, decided what to do with her life. It had felt awful, sealing the fate of her comrades, but she saw that the world was still harsh and that only harsh decisions would let her survive. She was willing to go the distance, but comparing the world she knew to the world she had once known when she was an innocent little girl, Ofugémi did hesitate in choosing which world was better. If she could go from destitute refugee with nothing but her clothes to a rich thief capable of convincing the richest nobles of her lies, what stopped her from going from a determined woman with a bag of money to ruler of the land?

Ofugémi made her way to Fufemba and started her army, just like that. She visited the camps of soldiers camped around the city, in service to the place's ruler, and hand-picked soldiers, simply paying them with the money she had to desert their post and follow her. She had no record as military leader, but she was persuasive as ever and the one thing she was honest about was her determination. Also, her funds, though limited, did not lie. With just shy of a hundred poor soldiers, Ofugémi found herself important enough to be hired by an enemy of Fufemba's ruler, and using that money to pay her soldiers, she joined an army not much bigger than her company in what seemed like a hopeless attempt to take the city.

For all that, Ofugémi had not spent all of her time in Fufemba in the military camp for nothing and she was well aware that stupidly, the soldiers were camped outside the walls. Although her opponents were more numerous, Ofugémi's men knew the terrain just as well and she had the element of surprise. After persuading the captains of her employer to follow her attack, she struck the military camp at night when the soldiers there did not even know that she was coming for Fufemba, since she had left just a while ago. When she had defeated the city's soldiers, there was no one left to defend it and she had won the day. Her employer was installed as the city's ruler and he, some nobody grandchild of Oba Afèlà, immediately proclaimed himself king. Ofugémi married the fool, taking command of all his troops from their power base in Fufemba.

From there on, Ofugémi would not see her husband again until his final day, because she took the soldiers west and left the city behind. Her name soon became feared among the other pretenders, although even they feared her more than their rival for whom she supposedly fought. Winning battles, persuading unaligned mercenary captains, taking cities and securing the hearts of soldiers just looking for a good cause, Ofugémi could do it all, spending the next decade properly terrorising Deltaland's elite. In 1557, she stood before Mbóri, the last city in her way. Looking at the place that had made her what she was, Ofugémi felt no burning the slums, assaulting the walls and leading her army to victory. The end to a wartorn beggar's worthless life today was the peaceful life of a happy child tomorrow.

In all but name, she ruled the Eastern Delta. Together with her army, loyal to the bone to Ofugémi herself, she merely had to walk into Fufemba, find her husband and give him a glass of poisoned palm wine. He knowingly drank it without resisting, as he had been aware of his fate for some time now. Ofugémi had brought peace to the east of Ewo-Ife and she was crowned Oba in Mbóri. However, this was just the beginning of the accomplisments of the Queen of the Delta.