If We Exist

a short introduction

In the National Library, amongst all the referenced history books and articles, both those archived and displayed, not a single one tells this story. This is the conception of Dronesk—not from the mouths of the conquerors that have spun their own tales, but as it happened five generations ago while the rest of the nation was undergoing robust industrialisation.

For many of the nation's Arash, Dronesk was as mythical as the creatures in the stories they heard as children. It was said the ancient forest on the outskirts of Rujga Province was better suited for Vaboga, the deformed giant who ate children, than any man.

The sentiments at the time were that that area of the country, made up of steep terrain and dense woods, was uninhabited, which made it all the easier for the industrialists to claim the same. To them, the Brommian population who lived in the Pirmian Valleys of Rujga Province were no more than settlers, or as one prominent Arash wrote, "guests who had overstayed their welcome."

The Bikjaru were Arash of bourgeois lineage, who along with a handful of families quickly climbed the ranks after the Tsar was ousted from power. One such Bikjaru was Konstantin Ru (later Konstantin Ru of Ljerumlup), whose father had made a small fortune in the chain of production fuelling the industrialisation.

Spearheading the new government's plan to revitalise the countryside, he built a timber factory, attracting former serfs and other disadvantaged men ready to forfeit the toilsome city-life for the dream of one day becoming landowners.

In the blink of an eye, railways were built to streamline the transportation of timber to and fro the city. With proper infrastructure in place, the Arash soon followed, and as a result, Dronesk became a sprawling town with houses and shops that were rumoured to rival those in Rujga. The Brommian name it had once borne was erased, and in less than a decade, it had become a recognisable place on the map. One equally tied to the Bikjaru as timber refinery.

However, trees weren't the only thing in decline, so too were the Brommian and their livelihoods. With more and more businesses settling in Dronesk, the native Brommian were pushed to the flatlands, to an existence in the margins where their right to speak their language, to school their children, to own their houses was systematically stripped away. This became the norm wherever the Arash settled down in Rujga Province, and behind this oppression was the notion that the Brommian were illegal settlers on Arash territory.

If We Exist takes place about a century after the first Bikjaru settlers, in the period between social stability and violent ethnic clashes, as Ru Konstantin and Yuri Karamov grow up.