Toor (political entity)

A toor /tʊər/ was a nomadic political entity in the second revolution in Tarnaria. The name originates from a Jabi word "toor" which means "warrant granted through vision". One of the Five Kings, Gened, referred to the nomadic kingdom he founded as "the true toor", after he and others upended Toor, an early Tarnarian civilization that put high emphasis on the religious justification of power. After the establishment of Stogen in the 2nd CSR, with its strong basis in the Mōroh philosophy, nomadic kingdoms of Tarnaria began to refer to their kingdoms as toors, each claiming a warrant to lead through vision or being able to read the right path (Xaewoon) in the skies.

A common misconception of toors is to view all of them as nomadic peoples, with all the economic and political implications of that. However, in some sense it is more accurate to view them as traveling kingdoms or non-sedentary kingdoms. For instance, many toors had encampments and even cities established. Toor's population would be constantly moving between these cities. Such cities forbade owning a house and instead operated as inns of sorts, but inns that would be open only to the citizens of a given toor. A foreigner would require an invitation or a document to stay or pass through. Usually, a citizen of toor would be allowed to live in a city permanently if they are part of a given Murdoh's court. Murdon generally would be permitted to lead a sedentary life in order to run cities and camps. The Gole's army and court would also periodically stay in a city, but Mōroh principles would not allow the court to stay in the city for too long. It was customary for the court to simply establish a pattern and travel between cities of the kingdom all year round.

Economies of many of the toors thus relied on these packets of sedentary population. Slavery was also a more prominent part of toors' economies, because a slave was considered to be on their right path and was thus permitted to live in cities and camps permanently. This partially explains why slavery was more prominent in toors and less so in city states.

Adherents of the Mōroh philosophy are following the Xaewoon Green. Xaewoon Blue followers tend to lead a sedentary lifestyle. Thus, the majority of city states of the second revolution were Xaewoon Blue cities and were in a state of constant conflict with toors. This partially prevented large Xaewoon Blue states, since establishing an infrastructure would be difficult. Qep and Mantar were the first regions that managed some sort of autonomy in the second half of the second revolution, with Mantareia becoming the first state proper in Tarnaria after Stogen's destruction of Barud.

Toors tended to claim large territories, although exact borders were vague and usually unenforceable, so travel through toors was largely unrestricted and even relatively safe, especially for smaller parties. A border might be watched with more rigor if there was an ongoing dispute or conflict with a neighboring toor. For example, Darfe Goldoor concentrated a lot of his forces at his northern border due to the feud with Kievan.