Akko Soleth

Akko Soleth, also known as Ankhitsu, was a Goblin scholar living in the city of Grisa (in the Uraki Imperium) who moved to the Vulperium in February of 2022. She’s written books, drawn many maps, and has since become both a City Planner for the capital city of Aroforn and a Government Minister during her time within the Vulperium.

Appearance
Akko Soleth is a short goblin with a multi-hued green skin covered in dark patches and black oil stains. She has short ashy brown hair and aureolin (yellow) eyes. Her main outfit is a reddish-brown travel poncho with slacks and workman's boots, but she is also known to dress in many other outfits due to her love of fashion. One of her more common outfits is a burgundy coat she wears for her job as Head Archivist of the library in Aroforn.

Personality
Though she once kept shyly to herself growing up, she tries to move past her old hesitancies and maintain a friendly air around others who cross her path. Her religious and cultural principles guide her to help others who need it even if it’s at the expense of herself. She also finds it hard to be shrewd in her dealings, although people often attribute that to her kind. With the wisdom gained on her travels she finds herself giving advice to others, meeting a situation with her own kind of wit, and writing many books supported by the cultural knowledge she has gained. The biggest drawback to her personality is that because of events within her past, she’ll often be eager for battle or bloodshed in personal conflict even if peace remains an option, and because of her intense connections she creates with other people, she can drive herself into a passionate fury if she sees something she perceives as an injustice to a person. It is a struggle for her to temper these reactions in her everyday work dealing with the different conflicts that arise though she tries her best to manage.

Her Faith
In keeping with her original tribe’s beliefs, she believed that spirits inhabit everything, from the plants, trees, rocks, to even mountains or a running river. It is these spirits that were to be respected as if one were a guest in their house as her tribe would forage and make its across the forests.

In a belief unique from but still playing into her people’s faith in nature, she has as a result of a revelation in her travels come to believe that the sun itself is the divine source of everything, giving daily worship and praise to it alongside incorporating it into each of her personal philosophies, even changing her original tribal family name to “Soleth” to reflect this belief.

Because of her now living in a majority-Vulpur city where other cultures used to be frowned upon, she keeps personal details on her faith to herself only.

Early Youth
Akko was born in the late years of Eldham's colonization to the Lebahki tribe of Jungle Goblins, located within the Phoros region. Different from the Rathnir goblins of other far-off cultures though, she was raised in a culture which lacked ideas of personal property, as life within the jungle meant that there was an abundance of food and goods to go around and to be shared willingly between members of the tribe. She was also raised in their religious tradition which worshipped the nature that sustained them, believing there to be spirits in every living object aswell that were to be respected. It was these values that were instilled within her as a young goblin growing up, but even though her people thrived off this lifestyle, they knew that the bounty of the jungles wasn't infinite and it was healthier for them to travel across their continent of Phoros to other jungle forest regions. Other jungle goblin tribes would also seasonally migrate into their own land aswell putting strain on the resources and their culture.

When she was about 12 years of age, her tribe would set off for one of these journeys, known to be dangerous for the many monsters or settled peoples who would see them as a threat. Their destination was the jungles of Pheonaria in the east but they first had to pass through the sandy dry plains of Azuma-Zi. The goblins sustained themselves with food from their storage and whatever they could scavenge along the way. So while she was on the desert plains, Akko took the initiative to head to what looked like a village destroyed in an old war with dilapidated wood houses. As she was searching a dusty cabinet in the kitchen of one of these homes, she heard the cracks and strains of wood and the second floor beams collapsed in on itself, blocking the doorway and exit to the building. Failing to find a way to escape and despite her calls for any kind of help, one unfortunate fact stuck in her head that had been hammered in for the past several months: The migration was one of the most important things to the tribe, and she would be left behind.

She was stuck in the wreckage for three days, surviving only off her ration packs of berries, bugs, & packed boar meat. Desperate and afraid, at noon of the third day there was the sound of an axe breaking down through the rubble as the sun shone in on the goblin. A gruff-looking human with cobalt blue hair had found her along with his looting party, as they had been trailing the trail of the other goblins for the scattered resources they were leaving behind in their camps. The blue-haired man, an ex-knight of the Auroran Order known by the name of Talin Feydh, brought the fearful & alone goblin Akko into his custody and became something of a father figure to her, training her to fight with a sword and help in the "jobs" his groups would undertake.

Adolescence
Set on the road with a new path in life, Akko had grown accustomed to and followed the warrior who had saved her from starvation. The independent way of life in which he had been steeped though was one of banditry and the "liberation" of goods from defenseless towns and travelers. Akko would share guiltlessly in this lifestyle with her mentor, and this would become one of darker secrets she would keep later into life as she did not ever speak of her past to others: The fact that much of her wisdom of the world and early personal wealth that served her later in life was ill-begotten through the tip of her sword. Even in the modern day she would remember clearly her first kill, the blood caked under her fingernails as she pulled her knife out from a stranger's collarbone, smiling towards the approving look her father had given her.

A season eventually came that a greater and more long-term job opportunity arose. Constant warfare in a large swathe of the Drakaesland region had left many communities there shattered, and it was Talin's plan that he put together a band of raiders to take advantage of the chaos. This raiding party would be known as the Twelve-Claws for some of the more-animal races that helped comprise it, from Feles to Bearfolk. Long after their job was finished would it stick together as Akko would travel with this band for the next half-decade across many different continents and climates, living only off of what they would take from others. The other vagabonds of the group were interested mainly in coin but Akko had found her own self taking an interest in the mystifying literature and cultural works that were to be found in their shares of loot, researching and learning more about the world through this way.

It was one evening while walking a good distance from her raiding party to examine her share of loot in private that she experienced a "Revelation", a strange vision that seemed only to overwhelm her as she fell to the ground in hysteria. It was from this moment that much of what she had seen and much of what she had still yet to see in the future became clear, how the pieces of the puzzle would fit into place, and how beyond all else there existed a greater supreme will in the universe: That of Solana, Theios, The Sun, She who went by many names and was seen by all. Akko would serve as if the hands of God reached directly through her, to collect and spread knowledge in her name to illuminate the masses to greater truth.

Settled with a task of such highest devotion, Akko Lebahki in the tradition of births in her ancestral culture took a new matronymic surname for herself: Soleth. Her road forward would lead her away from the group and life she had known, and though they gave protest, they respected her decision for the reliability she had given them. It then was so that she packed together all the important artifacts she had collected from her years of looting with her and walked away at dawn's light, towards the rising of the sun.

Life in Uraka
After months on the road travelling through the old ruins and ancient cities of Eldham, Akko, with her bag of books strung over her back, came upon the Guarati forest. An ancient jungle known to her people that was on the outskirts of the territory of Urak, the core region and capitol of the Uraki Imperium. Hoping to visit the city center to trade and learn more on the goblins who were able to have founded such a powerful settlement, she stumbled and spotted a young woman tending to some flowers on a riverbed near the approach to the city. As Akko called out to her for directions, the young girl introduced herself as Lumi, princess of Alania, the heartland principality which contained the larger suburbs of the Urak islands. Akko was stunned that someone so young could be leading a region of so large a size and influence by just herself (though the blow was lessened by them being near the same height) but she would soon come to learn all she would want about Uraki politics as she was invited to settle down in Alania within Lumi’s town in the region known as Grisa, which had been suffering for some time from population loss that had left the streets empty save for a few remaining citizens and foreign travelers passing through on their way to the trade and military hubs in Urak proper. Seeing an opportunity to get to work on writing her books and committing to her research in comfort in the beautiful garden city, she agreed to settle into a small home on the western river of Grisa, purchased with a few of her bags of gold she had saved.

Over her entire stay within the city, she would utilize greatly the notes and information she had obtained in her international travels to craft a greater story and documentation on the many different species who inhabited and lived their lives out in the world. This well-researched encyclopedia would be published with the title "Catalogue of the Races in Rathnir and Eldham" and would help gain her widespread acclaim in the scholarly community. The large volume of letters and feedback she received for the book meant that she would be constantly writing new editions. Within time she also became fascinated with the lore of the region she had made her home in and focused herself secondarily to studying the forests and ancient culture of the Gurakan people who used to live in the ruins to the west of Alania. The Gurakans were a prominent civilization from the early Eldham colonial period that was eventually destroyed in an ancient war, with the depopulated region falling under Barbossa and then Uraka. As her studies and collections of artifacts grew, she became unhappy with the small scope of her home and set to using the materials and construction knowledge she had accrued from her travels to build a bigger estate on the river in the style of the surrounding Grisan buildings.

Though this house was a pleasant upgrade, Akko still saw the canal infrastructure in that part of the city as rotting and in disarray, and so after asking for permission from the Princess for it to be rebuilt, she would over her next months within the city design a small waterfront district in Western Grisa with new shops, a houseboat, and a new bridge crossing the great river and leading westwards into the yet unsettled jungle forest.

The then principality of Merchant's Guild of Osria, neighbor to Alania, would later gain an imperial lease over the empty forests in Guraka. Akko tried to negotiate and provide input for the two heartland regions but the stage was eventually set for Osria to take dominance within the region, and so as a result Akko found herself as a citizen providing assistance to both lands.

Guraka stagnated under Osria for a month until it was given a new owner and renamed to Guratzo, with the primary settlement being the newly constructed city of Kushintium, whose policy was to set on fire as much of the jungle as possible in order to make way for houses for Uraki citizens moving in. Akko considered the Uraki colonization of the region to be mismanaged with no thought given to the historical and natural character of the region, the leaders' only focus given to quickly and cheaply-built modern houses. She provided city and regional development plans to the leaders of the region in it's infancy and tried to call for the creation of nature and forest reserves, but the colony city ignored these calls and continued in it's actions with the city leader claiming to have a personal vendetta against trees, treating them as pests in the way of his town's growth.

She still tried to keep up her good intentions as she helped build roads through the jungles to connect these new colonies and provide them with her research on the people's who lived there in the past, but she was ultimately disheartened as part of what she saw as her land was devastated as if someone carved that piece of the earth out with a knife.

Adding to her disappointment would also be international events, as though she retained pride in her local city, she became disappointed with her nation's government which ironically resided mostly in the city directly neighboring her own (and whose emperor she often saw walking outside her house). The primary reason for her disappointment was her nation's ambition in declaring a globally unpopular imperialist war against the nations of the northeast, with the leaders wanting to claim new lands and focus on conquest instead of focusing on actually developing the depopulated provinces of the vast empire and rebuilding it's dying cities, a problem which persisted not only in the empire's far off vassals but even in what was claimed as the nation's imperial heartland, her city of Grisa suffering greatly from lack of new blood and struggling to keep up with the costs of land upkeep. Not only that, but entire neighborhoods were declared abandoned, infrastructure was falling apart, and the region had become plagued with bandits and crop thieves that attacked the outskirts often while the military did nothing to help, instead parading in "enemy" cities in far-off wars.

With her frustration with the nation coming to a head, she made plans to emigrate away from Uraka and move her large inventory of supplies obtained from her expeditions to a new country. Before moving on, she wrote drafts of a book titled "The Chronicles of Grisa" with information from the few events she could find in the dusty annals of the city's archives: Primarily it's origins as one of the founding members of the Merchant's Guild of Osria and it's more recent history as being home to the Vanguards of the Uraki Imperium, the nation's original citizen army force from before it had begun to rely solely on mercenaries.

Forays into Rathnir
In her researching of worldly events and the state of affairs of different nations to which she might move her livelihood to, one piece of news in particular unavoidably caught her eye: The end of the infamous Bardonian empire in Rathnir and it's subsequent breakup into many disparate states, one of them being “The Goblin Empire of Askonia”, made up of some of the most skilled warriors to have ever fought for that nation.

This was a new concept to her considering her background and all she had learned of how persecuted goblins had been, to find that there was now a nation of global renown that had enough self-determination and strength to carve out a place for itself... It felt only fitting that she study this phenomenon, and so it was in packing her supplies that she would journey long on one of the great trade vessels across the oceans to the northwest, to help build a nation meant for all Goblinkind.

When she finally arrived under the heavy rains of Spring, she found the capitol to be a small ramshackle village built in a mix of traditional Andornian-human architecture and makeshift wooden shacks, much of it underground. Quickly she delved into learning the history of this region such as how Askonia had once been a march on the edge of the kingdom of Andorn, but it's goblin citizens had proven themselves in battles and raids many times earning their reputations as some of the best warriors on the Syltor continent. Being accepted and allowed to settle by the king Gobbo, she picked for her home to be a goblin-styled shack on the hill overlooking the valley where sat the great "Bone Tree", monument to all the victories the empire's army had won. She hoped to contribute to the scholarly development of the nation and create many great works during her time there, although the way of life of this nascent goblin nation would soon come under shocking threat in the weeks that followed. The neighboring nation of Annover which had similarly broken free from the Andorn's yoke had once happily promised the hand of its princess Bobo to one of the leading goblins Galrouch of Askonia, but because of Bobo's liege and son Bingo's bigotry against the goblin race, he forbade her from going to her love and threatened Askonia with war if they tried to push the issue. Indignant at the international humiliation this incident was causing for their new nation, the goblins under their emperor prepared for war to take it's place amongst the respected nations. Despite her scholarly lifestyle, Akko being witness to these events took up her blade once again in support of Askonia's actions as she had kept memory of her combat training from her youth and saw it as a matter of pride that no bigotry against goblins goes unpunished. She would join in on a quick response raid on their capital that left the forces of Annover reeling, the aftermath of which left their lord Bingo dead on the cobblestones and the lands absorbed into the wider Askonian sphere, placing it as one of the most powerful players in the region as with the further collapse of it's former overlord Andorn to the north, Askonia would also gain control of the strategically important port city of Savras.

With prosperity assured, Askonia would continue making waves in the years that followed, including coronating it's goblin empire with the crown of it's former overlord in the region. It was a nation where might-made-right, now lord over many of it's own smaller vassals. In such a position Akko Soleth still saw for her own future a different path laid out, and although she was most at home with her goblin people, she struck out to find a new nation that could help fulfill her grand visions for the world and for her goddess.

Emigration to the Vulperium
Returning on the trade ships back to Uraka, she found it in an even more desperate situation than when she left it, as regional hegemonies emboldened and appeased with the power they were given in the former-autocracy were plotting on their own to carve their own nations from its rotting corpse of empire. Studying the old maps in her dusty manor for any other nation candidates that she might become a citizen for, her mind was left in indecision. It was only after seeing an old scholarly magazine that she came across one headline that would grab her attention. "The kingdoms of Vulpinia and Eros in their union start off their new era with the construction of the first ever steam-powered vessel, a technological marvel the first of it's kind to be seen in Eldham". An excerpt from the Vulpin Tribune. She delved much more into researching this nation and the cultural background of it's people and found that though it historically discouraged emigration from non-Vulpur peoples, it was one of the most culturally, literary, and financially rich nations of the south poised to take even greater glory on the world's stage. With her mind set, even though the risks of her citizenship being rejected were high, she boarded a ship south to the lands of Serrona where lay the Vulperium's glittering new capital of Aroforn.

After months of travel through the seas of Onthukhan, Akko arrived in a port on the west Vulpinia coast where lay the largest wheat fields and granaries she had ever yet seen. As she disembarked and set foot into the satellite port town of New BroWnwich, she donned a hood to obscure her face so as to not garner suspicion, as her research of the Vulpur nation had led her to believe immigration from those not of that fox-kin species was heavily discouraged. As the Vulpur were a short race with long ears like herself, anyone might have took her to be from there if not for the green hue and lack of fur on her skin. Her presence certainly brought strange looks in her direction, but it was all well and good as by that time the people of the capital region of Aroforn were preparing for the coronation of the “Grand Valar” of their new nation and she appeared to be just one of the many invited foreign nationals that were appearing in preparation. Continuing to keep her low profile, she would in the period of the next few weeks explore more of the settlements located on the western side of Serrona, building up an itinerary on the general history of the region and possibly suitable places for her to settle down. The decision in her mind seemed clear from the start though: As she had once unwittingly stumbled into the capital city of one empire in the north, she would instead now firmly march in to establish herself in the great imperial capital of the southern world. She would have everything planned out from now on.

By the next time she arrived in the capital of Aroforn from her whirlwind tour of West Serrona, a lull seemed to hang over the city. She had been late and missed the events of the Grand Valar’s coronation by a few weeks and the nation seemed to be just in the beginning of fitting into its new shoes. Banners proudly flew from the high stone ramparts of the old-city quarter Tildivul as Akko wandered past into the centerpiece of the city, looking to find an authority with which to process her immigration into the city of her desire. Coming up to the largest and busiest building in the middle of everything there, she was suddenly faced with a heavy detachment of guards who proceeded to question her. It seemed the building she had wandered up to was one in which the royal court of the nation was holding it’s first meeting and deliberating over matters of military and state. A foreign national being in that place at that moment was definitely a matter of suspicion and so she was escorted away from the premises, shaken up by the experience.

Her situation probably would have become even more tenuous if not for the discussion she was able to have with the Grand Valar Brock Yolcotl-Durradayne after the meeting had let out. While her Uraki citizenship was something of a matter of contention, her papers and background was for the most part in order and her citizenship in the capital would likely be accepted on his authority after processing. There was one issue as to the matter of housing though. Akko, plans in hand, sought to use the wealth she accrued in Urak and had brought with her to build an estate for herself larger and grander than the old one she had within the vast amounts of empty city territory, but the Grand Architect Blake Yolcotl-Durradayne who that request would have to go through had died drowning weeks earlier in the V.S.S. BeastlyBrock steamship disaster.

After days of negotiation being passed around from the Grand Valar to the Duke Westeros and going down through a list of acceptable locations, Akko had come across the perfect spot on the map that called out to her. Celestial county, named after the connecting sea, it was a bay close to the Tildivul neighborhood and with lots of uninhabited land asides from what was an old water mill. She would later see it in-person for herself, the sun cresting over the waves and the ice floes breaking against the rocky shoreline, this view inspired within her once more a vision. One of an interconnected future converging on that spot, upon which she would be the axle of a great wheel.

Settling into Aroforn
In her schematics for her new estate home, like how she had helped to build a new small canal shopping district in Grisa, she hoped to go larger in scope this time in building an entirely new port district for the empire. “Port Celestial” it would be called after the county and sea name, for it would be across this sea that the burgeoning nation would build better trade and travel connections with its eastern kingdom vassals of Eros, Vulthalla, Pastel, and Zerdea. This would be the start of her APSIS company, and she would waste no time in building out the estate headquarters which would come to be part shipping warehouse and part home, hosting many amenities from crafting chambers, extensive storage rooms, personal libraries, and an orrery-inspired bedroom within the domed roof of the building. Later renovations would add a hall for hosting state dinners as she increased in notoriety. The docks connected to this house would also be rented out and used by many local Vuls for fishing and trade with partners across the Celestial sea. In her early days of surveying work, she would also donate to the government many maps based on all the information she had collected of the continent including one of possible exploitable spice farm regions in the nation and an early draft at a city plan for Aroforn.

At the beginning when the scaffolding on this estate was still fresh, she had also met with a vulpur neighbor who was engaging in a similarly grand construction project of a Cathedral for the capital. This vul went by the name Jovin Blackleaf, and was one of the leading clerics in the nation of the ethnic Vulpur Nabu religion, which held in reverence the ancestor gods of their people. In awe at Blackleaf’s grand construction force at work, Akko saw in their proximity to eachother a business opportunity, and so it was that she would through her supply line provide quarried stone materials for the high-vaulted walls, windows, and gardens to what would become one of the largest and most iconic buildings in the city. Akko would remember this early partnership with fondness and would count the vulpur Blackleaf as a dear friend and ally within the nation.

After their meeting, Akko Soleth would also be nominally accepted into the Vulpur Nabu faith as a result of her scholarly interest in their culture and the possibility for more close business with those who practiced it. It was considered a religion closed off to any other practitioners though, and so Akko took great care to hiding her personal effects of her true faith within her home, solar cult altars adorned with candles cleverly blending into the furniture or behind secret chambers within her estate.

While spared from a rapid onset of cash burdens from this early business relationship, Akko Soleth as a newcomer still struggled to make waves and break into the Serronan markets with her startup company. Trying to find more niches that she might fill, she continued building up her profile on being able to obtain and supply building materials to those that needed it. Eventually, she got her big break as news came out of a ball that was to be held in the nation in recognition of some war she hadn’t been paying close attention to. High-profile figures from across the Vulperium and beyond would be attending this ball and so she saw it as the perfect opportunity to make her first grand introduction to the people of the nation she had not yet met with. When the day finally arrived though, she had gotten the times mixed up and arrived half an hour before the event was to be concluded. Frantic and floundering, she was only able to get in a single introduction with another person just on their way out from the ball, this person was the leading businessman in Aroforn city, J. Vesparich, whose ship-building ventures in V.O.S.C. were in need of heavy investment and resources which she said that her company would provide, leaving the offer of future business partnerships on the table in a move that saved Akko from feeling entirely gloomy over that day. One lesson Akko internalized for sure, flashy discussion was not the most important element in building notoriety for herself, rather, her actions would speak louder than her words.