#239. History of Khazovia, Part 1
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#239 *
May 4, 2025
- Zia: "Hello, I'm Zia Mendez, and I'm going to be your guide to the world of Day Two!" "I've studied your history books carefully, and I've found a few notable differences between your world and ours." "And I know Chloe's the history major, but this is my bit! Mine!" "Over the next few weeks, I'm going to teach a few short lessons on it, and you're going to sit there and listen!" "And you're going to take notes!" "Or else!" "This will all be on the test!"
- "We begin here, at the Kura River." "In your world, this river starts in Turkey in the Lesser Caucasus Mountains and empties into the Caspian Sea."
- "You might be thinking, 'So what, who cares about some dumb river?' You're thinking it, aren't you? Aren't you!? Yeah, well, this part is important, stupid, so listen up!"
- "Our world has a gap in the Lesser Caucasus Mountains. Our Kura River drains the Black Sea into the Caspian Sea." "The seas are connected together, like they were when they were still part of the Paratethys Ocean."
- "So why's that significant? It means that in our world, you can get a boat from the Caspian Sea to anywhere in the world." "Including from this little fishing village named Bagavan in the 1st century BCE."
- "In your world, not a lot happened here: The Khazars and the Rus and the Albanians and the Khans and the Persians each conquered it, so it didn't grow much." "Everybody owned it, but nobody owned it for long." "This little hunk of land wasn't strategically important until airplanes were invented."
- "But in our world? This little fishing village grew into a huge trading hub." "They built ships. They got wealthy. They held their land, and they grew, and instead of being conquered, they conquered others." "Then called Baku, it grew to become the capital of a vast trading empire stretching from Greece halfway to China."
- "Feared and strong, it ruled central Asia for over a thousand years with power both hard and soft." "Its list of allies and enemies stretched across the world." "The First Khazovian Empire was one of the richest nations in our world's history." "And one of the most decadent."
- "And on July 1, 1801, the First Khazovian Empire collapsed."
Character: Zia
This one's a little different.
I realized some time ago that there'd be no real opportunity to talk about Khazovia and its history in the story properly. But Khazovia is very important to the story, in ways that will grow increasingly important as time goes on. So it's time to talk about Khazovia's history: Where Khazovia came from, who they were, and who they are now.
So this is the first page of a three-part story where Zia will teach you about Khazovia and its people. Today is the rise of Ancient Khazovia and the Khazovian First Empire, ~500 BCE to 1800 CE. Next week, you'll see part 2 and learn about the wars that collapsed the Khazovian First Empire in the 1800s; and in two weeks, you'll see the conclusion, with the birth of Modern Khazovia in the 20th century. Trust me, it's going to be worth it.
The images on this page were carefully rendered using Stable Diffusion locally on my computer, with several different Loras applied to a few different checkpoints to make a result that looks like landscapes and old ink-block illustrations, and there was significant rework and post-work to edit the images to come out just right. I normally don't use AI artwork in Day Two, but I had a very specific look I wanted for telling this story, and my choices were either to find and hire somebody who's really excellent at pencil landscape illustrations, or to make an AI draw it to my specs. I chose the latter, because I really didn't want to spend a year trying to make just three pages. Zia, of course, is still hand-drawn, as always, and the script is 100% human-written — not in the least because AIs, IMO, absolutely suck at storytelling. (Still, if you're violently anti-AI, just do your best to look past the backgrounds, or maybe skip this week altogether.)
Even though Chloe's the history major, this story really worked better with Zia speaking it. Don't worry: There'll be plenty of Chloe in the next chapter to balance it out!
Also note: This is not meant to be an affront to anyone living in these parts of our world: Chloe's and Zia's world is not ours. Any similarity to real countries, or to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Anyway I hope you all enjoy this. Usually, the worldbuilding in Day Two is hidden in the background, or it's just an offhand side comment, but this week it's going to be solidly front-and-center. It's not quite the same as the usual Day Two comedy, but it's some long-overdue backstory, and for those of you who love worldbuilding, this week you're going to get it in spades.
— Inker
