Cause
The Nhaga are cold-blooded reptilian beings who depend on warm, forested environments. As their population grew, they needed more forest territory for hunting. The northern peoples (Humans, Rekon, Tokkebi) needed open farmland for grain cultivation. These two needs were incompatible, and the conflict was territorial.
The Nhaga initiated a campaign of expansion northward approximately 1,500 years before the events of the novels. This was not a single battle but a prolonged, multi-front war that reshaped the continent.
The Northern Response
Before the war, the northern races were fragmented. Humans, Rekon, and Tokkebi had their own territories and their own problems with each other. The Nhaga advance forced cooperation. The Hero King, a Rekon warrior of extraordinary ability, emerged as the figure who united these fractured factions into a fighting force capable of resisting the Nhaga.
This unification is what led to the founding of the Arajit Kingdom. The kingdom was not planned; it grew out of the alliances forged during wartime.
The Line of Limit
The war eventually reached a geographic stalemate. The Nhaga's cold-blooded physiology meant they could not survive in the colder northern climates. A natural boundary formed, known as the Line of Limit. South of this line, the Nhaga planted dense forests, creating the labyrinthine region called Kiboren (also romanized as Koboren). North of it, the land belonged to the Arajit Kingdom.
In The Source Novels' Later Eras
In the source novels, the boundary between the Arajit Kingdom and the Nhaga continued to shift for centuries after the founding era depicted in Project Windless. Under King Geugyeon, the 21st monarch ("Bridge of Extremes"), the Nhaga were definitively pushed south of the Line of Limit, securing the northern lands. The boundary remained contested in smaller border conflicts for generations. None of these later events are depicted in Project Windless, which is set during the war's opening era, but they explain the geographic and political map that the novels later describe.
In Project Windless
The game is set during this war. Players experience the early stages of the conflict as the Hero King, fighting in large-scale battles powered by Mass Technology and forging the alliances that will eventually become the Arajit Kingdom. The war provides both the narrative framework and the gameplay context for the continent-spanning conflict.