Fos rush
The fos rush, or fos boom, refers to a set of interrelated discoveries and movements relating to the discovery of fos in Ashnabis that began in the early 740s IE and continues to the present day. Officially the discovery of fos in the Sestapor swamp in western Ashnabis is reckoned to have occurred in 742 IE with the initial Choradani investigations into the region. Naturally, no one had forgotten about the Osnabi campaigns or the presence of the Aummesh west of the Filija Mountains, but any fos that was imagined to grow in the swamp was wrongly regarded as weak and too distant to be worth extracting. In reality, Umba Ruzru, a Taizian migrant who moved to the Kaskind area around 700 IE, had reported on the presence of high-quality fos as early as 720. The fos rush, such as it was, had as much to do with politics in Choradan and Daligash, and ongoing rivalries between the two countries, as it did with the actual discovery of fos in the early 740s.
Beyond the initial discovery of fos, the military coup in Choradan that installed Marshal Fuld Sartanish into power in 743 greatly accelerated the pace of westward expansion. Previous Choradani expansion into Ashnabis had been in the cold northern peninsulas near Kindi Nasku, but shifted southward to the fos-rich Sestapor via the mountains, through passes near the city of Kebulund. By 744, Basai banned the importation of foreign (i.e., Ashnabi) fos into its borders, a ban that remains in place officially, though hardly enforceable. By 745 or so, the Daligashi senate had taken note of Choradani activity and began planning its own expeditions to the south, heading along the Kaskos River westward to the sea. Mystics at all the great Academies had begun to seek access to the new wild fos, and plans rapidly began to congeal around the settlements along Nimneha Bay.
In 750, the establishment of the town of Kaskind as a Choradani military outpost led it to be feasible for the first time for farmers without military training to settle the area. By 753, Kaskind had nearly 1000 people, and by 765, nearly 5000 people. The droughts of 765 and the conflict with the Hith and the Academy at Zhardif hardly affected the flow of new settlers into the region at all. By that time, though, the fos rush can be said to be relatively mature, as the first generation of Ombesh-speaking settlers had begun to reach adulthood.
