Okidza

Okidza, officially Okidza-Okusha or New Okidza, is a city in west-central Bazwebwe, was the capital city of the former kingdom of Sanemi, and one of the largest settlements in the country. Founded centuries ago, the city has passed through several different governments and been nearly destroyed. The city was heavily reconstructed during the economic boom of the early Inyoni period, but has since stagnated in growth. It currently serves as a meeting place for tribes and merchants, with a low population.

Etymology
The name Okidza comes from the seSanemi language; oki is a word meaning a body of water, and dza means "on" or "along". Thus the city's name literally translates to "on-[the-]water", in reference to its location on the Sea of Gumbahlo's banks. In the name Okidza-Okusha, the word okusha means "new".

Early history
The area around Okidza has been inhabited by farming people for thousands of years, including the ancestors of the Nkondo people who currently inhabit the region. The lakeshore, where it is humid, is prime for growing sugarcane and rice; however, this is only a thin strip of land only expanded by irrigation. Most local agriculture was of drought-resistant millet and animals like goats and cattle.

Founding to Sanemi Liberation
The city as it is known was founded as the village of Okidza in 848 BKS by a local princess Imando Sozuncane. Seeking to form a polity of her own, as the second child of a previous monarch of the neighboring Sozuncane Kingdom, she and her followers founded a small farming settlement on the lakeshore. The town grew to encompass its neighbors, and the state, known as the Sozuncane-Okidza Kingdom to distinguish it from its older neighbor, lasted until 674 BKS, when it was usurped by the Mfene clan.

The Mfene clan changed the name of the state to the Mfene Kingdom, and the kingdom ruled the area for another few hundred years, until 461 BKS when the army of Sifiso the Liberator came to the city. A local, Sifiso was born into slavery in Okidza; however, he escaped to the north and allied with his fellow ethnic Shani, and built a coalition that conquered the city nine years after Sanemi's official founding. The city was proclaimed to be "liberated", and as a show of power over the defeated King Mthunzi II of Mfene, Sifiso established Okidza as the capital.

Under Sanemi
Okidza grew under the rule of the Sanemi kingdom to one of the largest cities on the continent, and the largest in the kingdom. Many great works such as the Wisdom District were created to house vast numbers of books and students attending the Royal University. The city's economy boomed as traders along the sea of Gumbahlo stopped at Okidza's docks, and trains of camels and mules carried goods southward to the Sand River Valley region. The city slowly went into decline starting around the 130s BKS, however, as decreased crop yields resulted in high local food prices, and many people emigrated to other parts of the country.

During the onset of the Kylorne Crisis, however, the city was besieged by hostile undead. The hordes ravaged the city's outskirts and killed hundreds; however, the real problem became famine. The mass death and destabilization, paired with an already-present food shortage, led to untold thousands of maSanemi deaths. An attack by a horde of undead in 3 BKS resulted in their entrapment in the Wisdom District by local authorities and volunteers, and the buildings were burned in a deliberate attempt to destroy the undead. Many of the perpetrators of the burning, unwilling to cope with having sacrificed their nation's greatest library and university, attempted mass suicide.

Rebuilding
The city was left to ruin after the burning, and the government of Sanemi entered a state of collapse. By the beginning of the Kylorne Tribal Period the city was only inhabited by farmers on its outskirts, who had deconstructed most of the abandoned city to use or sell its building material. However, as ruler Zoziyu I Inyoni came to power, she began to reclaim the abandoned capital, and rebuild several key structures. It is here that the current iteration of the city was created, and took on the name Okidza-Okusha.

Today the city still stands, though it is not a center of much activity. It receives the occasional visit from foreigners, but otherwise acts as a bloated farming settlement not unlike a larger version of the smaller countryside villages.