Ikanian People (Total War)

Ikanians were a now-extinct people that originated south of Hyrule, whom migrated north into the Ikana Canyons and founded one of the oldest known civilizations in history. The Ikanian people and their civilization thrived for millennia during the Ancient Age, until their destruction circa 2993 BG.

Physical Appearance
The Ikanians were tall humanoid beings reminiscent of Alpacas or Guanacos, with snoutlike heads with sunken eyes, a flat sunken nose, a broad, square jaw, prominent brow ridge, and large tapered ears inset in their skulls. Both males and females were covered in dark grey or brown fur, which turned white with age, with males being able to grow long beards. Eye colors ranged from jet black to blue schlera with a black iris.

In Termina and their mortal undeath, the Ikanians appear as hellish Stalfos, skeletons covered in glowing cracks and eyeless skulls blazing with eldritch yellow light.

History
The Ikanians were among the Firstborn, emerging alongside the Garo in the lands south of Hyrule, and flourished with the onset of the Ancient Age, during which the First Sages and Oracles brought them civilization and worship of the Goddesses. The Ikanians and Garo of the south held a long suspicion of one another, and eventually the Ikanians migrated north, into the Ison Valley and Ikana Canyons, settled along the Ison and Ikana Rivers before 8000 BG, and later colonized the Plains of Ordona and Faron Woods, which they knew as the colony of Zonai. Here they established a glorious and proud civilization, founding great monuments such as Ikana Castle and the Stone Tower Temple, as well as irrigation networks to turn their desert home into a paradise and military innovations such as cannons and crossbows. Ikana was amongst the most pious peoples in their worship of the Goddesses, but much as in the ancient Hyruleans, this led them to see themselves as the chosen of the Goddesses.

The Ikanians clashed with both the Blins and Darknut Legion in ancient times, but maintained amicable relations with other Goddess worshiping peoples such as the Akkalans and Minish. They allowed Akkalan refugees fleeing the Gohma to cross their lands in 3003 BG and allied with King Rhoaban Gustaf I against the Darknut Legion in 2997 BG, during their Crusade against the Wind Tribe.

Yet after millenia of stability and dominance, the Ikanians had grown proud, with no external foe able to challenge them, leading their suspicions to turn inward. Their ancient rivals, the Garo, now offered their clandestine services to King Igos du Ikana to eliminate his political enemies and dissidents, yet truly served the mysterious plots of the Garo Nation to the south. Meanwhile, Captain Keeta, a champion of the people, had become Igos' favored military leader, while Igos' daughter, the Princess Gomess, used her famed architectural genius to design the grandest temple to the Goddesses on the face of Hyrule, the Stone Tower Temple. The Ikanians increasingly turned worship of the Goddesses to worship of themselves, reveling in their power and turning to idol worship, while mistrust and ambition festered. The arrival of a mysterious cloaked figure served as the match to the tinder, for this figure gained audience with Igos and warned him of sedition by his favored general and daughter. The King initially dismissed the stranger, but doubt began to creep into his mind, while the stranger also poisoned Keeta to believe that Igos was a tyrant, and fostered Gomess' ambition by promising her power over the forces of nature. Keeta aligned with the Garo against the King, plotting a rebellion, while Gomess, now with the power to control animals, amassed a horde to overthrow her father and perverted the Stone Tower Temple to idolatry.

Igos became more and more tyrannical and murderous in his rule, while the Ikanian people began to desecrate monuments of the Goddesses into idols and monuments of their ego. The spark of Civil War ignited one fateful day in 2993 BG, when Igos ordered charioteers run down civilians in the capital, hoping to force Keetas rebels to come out of hiding. The plan worked, but Gomess took advantage of the conflict to make her move, resulting in a three way battle that devastated the capital. At the same time, cultists of Majora poisoned the Ikana and Ison Rivers, leading to mass death and famine, as the Civil War spread across the Kingdom. A three day orgy of violence and blasphemy ensued, and at the end of the third day, only ruins and corpses remained, and the land was so poisoned it became an ashen waste, with the very weapons used to fight the civil war tainted into a poisonous blue steel. The entire people would awaken in Termina as skeletal mockeries of their living selves, cursed to relive their three day civil war for eternity,