That evening, the wind was blowing from the east. Zenre, the locals called it, the black wind, for it was the ash that flew and lay down to smother the snow. It was unusual for the season, and usually a sign that the weather would be good the day after. As good as it could be in Koresta, that was. Even in the milder months, these lands, nested in an ungainly corner between the ever icy fangs of northern Naraksh and the dark plains at the heart of the Empire, were torn between the white shroud that crept down from the nearby hills, refusing to melt even when it grew to cover the edges of the ever-scalding wastes, and the choking plumes of cinder that rose in gusts from luridly lit crevices. The malice of the elder horrors that lurked in dread myths remembered when night fell seemed to live still in what they were fabled to have wrought, animating the wretched elements themselves to mock and torment those who would brave their domain. It would take, it appeared, incredibly stubborn or just as incredibly desperate folk to make their home here.
Yet those who dwelt in Torkhane and the few other villages scattered throughout the Demesne were no more desperate than any who walked the earth, and no more stubborn than any of their compatriots. Whatever cruel will might once have driven their forebears to settle that ravaged soil, they had chosen well in laying its foundations. It stood near the all-too-clear boundary between the two realms, yet not quite upon it, where it would have been torn even as the land itself. Rather, it crouched by the edge of the black expanse, at the mouth of a descending ravine, split just near the divide and running further up into the hills beyond it. The gulch's ridges loomed darkly over the huts in their midst, steeping them into a gloom deeper even than what was usual for Naraksh, but they were as good as walls to hold out frigid winds and swirling ashes alike.
At the very edge of the village was a wooden building larger, and, for an eye who had known only the coarsely sturdy shacks that were its ilk, comelier than most. Before its door there stood a bench just as rough and unpolished, and on the bench there sat an old man with a weather-beaten, leathery face and a crude smoking pipe between his parched lips. Now and then, he took it out of his mouth, blew out small clouds of foul-smelling smoke, eerily similar to the ash plumes that could even then be seen rising over the plains in the distance, and took a swig from one of the two tankards that stood near him. With a smoothly practised motion, perfected over years of sitting before the tavern with a pipe in one hand and ale in another, he swung his fingers to blow the smoke over the second keg. It didn't help the ale's taste, of course, but it kept the waste gnats away. Awful things, those. You let one touch your drink, and next thing you knew 'uns maggots were eating you from the inside. That's the way it was.
But it seemed the old man would not have to keep the gnats at bay for much longer. A loose troop of dark figures was approaching from eastwards, where the ash fields lay. Some carried tools over their shoulders, while a few others led along sickly mottled donkeys with sagging sides. Behind them hurried children with empty sacks, at times stumbling in their oversized bast shoes or over the rags wrapped around their feet. Most did not so much as look up as they passed by. A few nodded or raised a hand, and the elder nodded back.
One of the men turned from the path into the village and came towards the bench. As he approached, sideways to the setting sun, more and more details about him became visible. His grimy, patched clothes, woven for a larger frame, hung somewhat loosely over his body, though it was not thinner than was healthy. His hands were dirty with soot, and his face was covered up to the eyes with a cloth held in place by his hat. These rags could become furnaces on hot days, especially if the fabric was not loose enough, but most people could not afford a proper mask, and no one wanted to keel over at twenty years with blackened lungs.
The newcomer reached the tavern's doorstep, flexed his right arm, waving the gnats away as he did, and sank onto the bench with a grunt. He took the tankard the old man held up to him in his left hand, and raised the right to sweep hat and rag away from his head. The face beneath the cloth was only slightly younger than that of the old man, and even more wrinkled around the eyes. His grey-streaked beard was, despite the protection, stained with ash, and he wiped it with the hat before laying it down to his side. While those signs could, in the eyes of some, have marked him as no longer fit for the fields in the eyes of some, they had far less meaning in Naraksh than in most other place. It was a common jest that the hair of people here was grey as soon as it grew, and there was just enough truth in that for it to sometimes still raise a chuckle despite being older than the Blood Lords.
The younger man raised the keg to his mouth and drank. The dark liquor was bitter, as most things were around there, and tasted of burned cheap smoking herbs more than it did of mead, but this was the one best moment of the entire day. His friend stared pensively into the distance, mulling over the last dregs of his own beverage and absently rapping his pipe against the bench to dislodge the ash from it. Ash, more ash. It was everywhere, here.
He set down the keg, spat out a lump he had caught in the brew, and reached under his coat, producing his own gnarled pipe, a fire striker and something wrapped in a dirty cloth. Holding up a corner of the rag, he deftly gathered up some of its contents with two fingers, rolled them together and stuffed them into the pipe's mouth. He then held up the wrap and half-turned towards the elder. The latter took a pinch, smelled it and looked up curiously. "What's this one?"
"New. Trader came round while we were working." The other replied. "Looked like an easterner. 'en said this comes from Ultevrer. Also said it's pure, but ya know how's that."
The old man picked some more of the dried herb and filled his pipe. His companion, who was already puffing at his share, struck a spark into it, and for a while both sat smoking in silence.
"'s't good." The elder was the first to speak up. "Bit sweet, and has this strange taste tha' lingers, but good."
"Uhurm." A nod. "Nezhden also got few other things off him. Some of 'erm dried spiny fruit, nukre, pot of barkback for next month. An' a skin of nukre root brew." He winked, though that could have been just some smoke from the pipe going into his eye. "We'll have some this evening if ya come over."
"Always for it, ya know." The old man briefly flashed a smile of sparse yellow teeth. Suddenly, he sat up from his slouching posture and frowned, turning his squinted eyes to the horizon.
"What's that? Wurm?" There almost never were any about at that time of year, even in zenre weather, but one could never be sure with the wretched beasts.
"Don't look like it. But..."
Both men stood up and moved a few steps towards the mouth of the ravine. There was something moving over the plains, not too far away - no, several things. Some could not have been much larger than a human, but others were clearly imposing despite the distance, and their forms were something out of the savage wilderness. They moved ahead slowly, yet steadily. One could almost swear the creaking of fleshless limbs could be heard from the tavern.
"Woodkin." The younger of the two bit on his pipe, mild bewilderment written over his face. "What're 'urn doing here? Now?"
"I'en'no. Never see 'erm here, that's for sure." His fellow blew out smoke, blinking when the wind carried it back into his eyes. "Weren't they goin' to war with them of Mat'thran?"
"Heard so. If they's goin' to war, this's wrong way. This way, ya go..." In spite of himself, he felt his heart sink as his words trailed away. He could barely bring himself to finish the sentence. "...ya go to the Throne."
"Mrm." The old man was about to add something, but stopped. It was clear what the other's lapse meant. If they had gone to war, and now were going to the Throne, it wouldn't be to share the spoils. They would ask the Emperor for help. And the Emperor would not refuse. The Blood Lords always wanted more of everything. "We don't know erm's goin' that way yet."
"Na, we don't." The other did not seem convinced. "But I can't think of no other. If we get called to go... We're behind on'na tillin', and us old folk inn' enough. And..." He wiped the ash that had gathered around his mouth with his sleeve. "Dragna's expectin' her third, and Nezhden's as fit as ya can have 'erm. 'en gets taken, and it'll be the four o' us left. 'un'd be easier to just sell ourselves to the master." He forced a smile, not very convincingly.
"Me and Zlaibna i'll help, ya know that." The amicable blow to the shoulder that followed must have betrayed just what that help could possibly amount to, because he added, in a laughingly apologetic tone, "Not like we used to."
"'sa never gets worse." A spell of silence, as the last of the pipe-herbs smouldered in the quickly falling darkness. It was already impossible to distinguish ash from sky. The distant figures had faded into the dusk. "But ya'rs right, we don't know that yet. And it's night already. Let's, or they won't warm the nukre brew."
The two, themselves little more than gaunt, spectral shapes between the ridges, turned back and vanished into the shadows of the gulch. Ahead of them, the village was already opening its many narrow, glimmering eyes of fire. Yet not as many as there would have been had the snow lain over the ash. Tomorrow would be a good day.
"Now, careful with the lever there. Like on a murena hunt. Try to push it, lightly, very. Only try."
A low, smooth whirring, like that of an escalator band.
"It can go down. Do I push more?"
"Push, slowly. Like you're trying, to halfway. How far is halfway?"
"Twenty centimetres, maybe. A bit less."
"Push it to twenty. Steadily."
The whirring again. This time it lasted longer, with some brief interruptions, until it was cut off by a loud, metallic click. There was a thudding sound, as though something heavy had fallen on a soft surface not far away, then all was quiet again.
"Did anything happen?"
"It sounds like we have access. You can come up."
A bright-blue, shapeless limb slid over the edge of the well and clung to it with its rows of suckers. Its tip flattened itself against the metallic floor and pulled; several more tentacles emerged from under the rim and followed suit, until a wobbly, almost gelatinous sphere rose up behind them - a sphere with round yellow eyes protruding from its sides. E-33-B almost flowed over the corner for the last bit of the way, before slumping to the ground and blossoming into relieved rusty brown stains over its body. Its partner, F-FB-35, was already standing upright in the form most Blurs took when on dry, even soil: four of its lower tentacles, extended at right angles from each other around the beak, were broadened and twisted into thick, sturdy legs resting on semi-circular footpads. Two thinner limbs sprouted from just below its right eye, waving and intertwining idly as they held a scorcher rifle. The local maintenance automata were usually innocuous, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. One never knew when a security drone might appear after the accident at the control central last week.
Or, even worse, an emergency response unit. At least that should now have been taken care of.
Signing for E-33-B to follow, the larger Blur slithered back down the corridor they had come from, around the bend and into the small hallway beyond. Its limbs did not seem to rise from the ground as it moved, but undulated in short waves, pushing themselves forward with a strength impressive for such small motions. It was not very comfortable, truth be told - had F-FB-35 been in a position to choose, it would have used much longer and ampler waves - but it was the quietest and least abrupt way of going about places with such smooth floors, and being quiet was preferable when venturing into the further districts of the massive toroidal habitat. Everything here had been designed with comfort in mind, but this comfort was clearly intended for beings very different from those that made up the Concord. There was little water, and in fact none of the control panels, access terminals or even flow switches were submerged, the air ventilation blew in unpleasant drafts from the most unlikely of angles, and grids emitting wafts of warm, dry air were in every place where one's leg or tentacle could become stuck in them, something Scalders found particularly annoying.
But the worst were the security checks. Whoever had built this place had valued its inhabitants' safety, or else had taken some obscure instinctive phobia to an extreme: almost every major passage, be it between districts, from a conveyor hub to a forum, into a medical bay or even a holo-recreation center, was fitted with more or less obvious scanners; this was doubly true for maintenance facilities. These devices were programmed to monitor the passing of visitors, raising an alarm when unauthorised intruders tried to slip past them. Unfortunately, anyone the Concord could send here apparently looked like a sort of figure the sensors had been installed to deter. Some of the more daring and flexible Blurs had attempted to find out, by trial and error, what shapes would not trigger a reaction, but all they had succeeded at was putting the habitat custodians into a heightened danger regime. A joke popular among the reclamation crews had it that the people who built Omonoi must have had had non-Euclidean bodies, and sometimes F-FB-35, who had seen E-33-B try all sorts of contortionisms to get past a detector safely, came close to seriously believing it.
However, the mechanism they had now finally managed to dislodge seemed to be working, and the electronic eye that had previously blocked the pair's access to the chambers beyond the hall was now covered by an old hazard protective sheen. Why someone would have cared so much about a simple detector as to install a failsafe so elaborate was beyond them, but, as long as they could make it work, they weren't going to twist their heads about it. What they might still find in the maintenance vaults was more than enough of a worrying matter.
F-FB-35 was the first to slip through the doorway, holding the scorcher at the ready. There had already been at least three cases of malfunctioning alarms going off quietly, leading to unsuspecting reclaimers stumbling into squads of the heavy arachnoid drones. There was no sign of the mechanical sentries here, but for at least ten more minutes they could not be fully sure they were safe. It briefly sprouted a small arm from near its rear eye to gesture for E-33-B to follow, but the smaller Blur was already there, having slid next to it by flattening itself against the doorframe. It wouldn't have helped if the sensor was still active, but many of those who had experimented with disguising their form to the machines had been left with quirks like this for their troubles. This wasn't even the worst of it: F-FB-35 had heard of much more extravagant acrobatics among its colleagues.
The maintenance chambers were vast, quiet and mostly empty. The walls were lined with screens, displays and occasional projector, and the bulky steel boxes of assorted machinery stood along them here and there, silent but still blinking with red and yellow lights. There was no waste or debris cluttering the floor, no disjoined cables hanging loosely from the ceiling, no condensed brine dripping over the monitors on the walls. Everything was so clean and pristine that, had it been not for the dry air and the alien shapes of the equipment around them, they could have believed they were back home on Twenty Eight. The differences from the semi-submerged habitat's own generator centers, however small, were everywhere to remind them this place was much more dangerous than anything in the depths of their more organic environment; and still, everything was familiar and calm enough they were at a bit of a loss for what to do while they slithered through the many almost identical vaults of the district.
So, of course, they turned to the small talk of the day.
"C8-FF3 and the others kept insisting that we are doing it wrong, yesterday." E-33-B signed on its right flank, spinning ochre spirals into pulsing faded green fractal shapes. "This is not the segment's main generator control hub, they say. We can't redirect the main current flow to the docking bays from here."
"And you?" asked F-FB-35.
"I pointed them through the blueprints again. They were still sceptical. Said the loose conduits near Tha-1-34 show there's a whole secondary circuit layer down there. They're probably not wrong."
"But that doesn't mean this won't work." F-FB-35 seemed to already know where its partner was headed for.
"Right. Secondary circuits can't just divert power like that. And there aren't any other facilities around 34 that we know of."
"We still don't know nearly enough about this place."
"No. But that's not our fault."
For a moment, both reverted to a neutral dark blue. Then F-FB-35 signed again.
"There are voices spreading. I don't know if you've heard. It's the Domain."
"What about the Domain?"
"Some say we're doing all this for nothing. That, when we're finished with Omonoi, the Domain will just come in and take it. It's no secret we couldn't stop them if they wanted to."
"That's Drifter talk, isn't it?" E-33-B's reply began tinted with surprise, then quickly shifted to disbelief. "It doesn't make sense. Omonoi would be much better suited for the Domain's people as it is now. If they had wanted to, they would already have been here before us."
"Whoever is saying these things knows this." Now F-FB-35's own colours were doubtful, but not as much as those of its companion. "But that is their point. They say the Domain will annex the place with everyone who is inside. Expand their base, so they say."
"Nonsense. They are too civilised to do something like this."
"They did it on Lurs, though."
"Lurs wasn't a sovereign territory."
"Technically, neither are we. Nothing in the system is nowadays, you know this."
"Omonoi isn't anything like Lurs. We are no danger to the Domain, like those Splinters. Besides, if they occupy us for no reason, everyone in the inner system will know they are a danger. They wouldn't risk it even if they wanted to."
"I don't agree with them any more than you do. But Drifters will be Drifters."
E-33-B was about to sign a joke about the inhabitants of Iural, but F-FB-35 gestured at a doorway in the wall to their right side, and the Blurs swerved together, diving into the passage. Beyond was a small room like many others in the habitat, crammed with machinery if compared to the expansive halls they had come from, but still offering a surprising amount of space to turn about in. Experienced reclaimers could not be mistaken here: this was Tha-1 distribution manual control station. No wonder it should be so small - everything here was automated, and this place had likely been used in special cases no more than once every few decades. But it was just what the Blurs needed.
As E-33-B set to work with what should have been the central panel and F-FB-35 remained watching by the door, there was no more time for idle talk. Handling devices meant for limbs utterly unlike theirs was hard enough as it was, without the added threat of drone patrols happening by at the worst of times. But, as both of the Blurs believed, it would all be worth it in the end. Some switches flicked here, and the main docking bays could be repurposed for the distribution of water, enough for everyone and everything. Then Omonoi would flourish.
Inheritor of Lynnde, Bastion of the Old Gods, the Three Eyes
Government
Despite being nominally a monarchical state, Lynn-Naraksh resembles a feudal oligarchy (with strong theocratic undertones) more than a true imperial order. Its lands are divided into Demesnes, regions of roughly comparable size, each of which is under the rule of a member of the aristocracy, known as a Blood Lord. The Lords hold almost unlimited authority within their domains, being capable of creating and altering laws, issuing decrees and levying militias on a whim, as well as wielding immense power in individual fields of administration. They are free to command the imprisonment, execution and conscription of whomsoever they wish, as well as to pass judgment over any dispute, whether called to do so or not, levy armies and command the undertaking of grandiose projects such as building a castle or dam. All that is formally required of them is that they pledge their loyalty and obedience to the imperial throne, observe the tenets of the Order of the Divines, which are few and liberal, and bolster the armies of the suzerain with their own forces in the event of a war.
In practice, however, all is not so simple. While the Emperor is indeed the highest authority over all matters temporal and spiritual, being, by virtue of position, the head of the Order, they rarely act directly or even pronounce themselves on any subject short of those affecting the entire nation. Instead, all necessities below this threshold are administered to by the Imperial Court, a gathering of the most disparate figures in the realm. Advisers, commanders, high cenobites, members of the imperial bloodline, envoys from the Kuraxxi bog-folk and the Vurogg tribes, executioners, kennel-masters, magisters of the militant orders, even some influential (and high-blooded) guild council members form complex but rigid hierarchies bound together by even more complex webs of codes and statutes. The Imperial Demesne, vastly larger than any other, is virtually a small empire within an empire, with various court dignitaries presiding over sections of it even as the Blood Lords do over their feuds. Knowing who of them can issue commands, who can give "advice" that is more or less worth heeding, and who can be disregarded altogether is vital for a Lord, lest they incur the displeasure of the Emperor or the scorn of their peers.
Emperor and Lords alike generally come into their position by succession. As the Blood Lords' title indicates, for one to be admitted into the rank they must be of sufficiently "high" blood, that is, with strong enough traces of Primordial lineage. Prospective heirs are placed through gruelling ritual trials by priests of the Order, in the course of which their blood is sampled and their force of will, desire for power and mastery of the magical craft are put to the test. Should any of them fail, they are quietly done away with, and a suitable replacement is drawn from the ranks of the Deathless Guard. The procedure for heirs to the throne is similar, though the trials are harsher and carry heavier symbolic connotations. Candidates for substitution are numbered among the more prominent Lords, though to this day there are no records of it ever having been needed to call upon them.
While, as far as most people in Naraksh are concerned, the power of the Blood Lords is absolute, there are nevertheless certain forces in the realm that are exempt from their rule and answer to the Emperor alone. The most notable of them is the Order of the Divines, the clergy of the state-mandated Primordial-worshipping religion, along with its affiliates, the Deathless Guard and the Scourge Knights. Tasked with upholding the old faith in the lands of the Empire and the minds of its subjects, the adherents of the Order can be spiritual guides, inquisitors and enforcers as the situation requires.
The other parties not subordinate to the Lords are the Kuraxxi and the Vurogg, who exist as semi-independent polities within territories allotted to them by the imperial administration. Their only duty, aside from the universal pledge of obedience, are to offer a regular, yet not greatly onerous tribute to the throne. However, it is a tacit assumption that they are to support the Empire with force of arms should they be unofficially called to do it, and so far they have never disappointed. Internally, the two races are loosely organised into, respectively, a cult-like structure and a confederacy of minor tribes; owing to their small populations, such simple systems can exist in relative stability.
Geography
"What usurpers of dirt can claim what is fit only for gods to rule?" - Krovris Naaher, Exarch of the Order
Even as its name is a dissonant amalgam of reverend speech from the east and the harsh accents of the region, the lands of Lynn-Naraksh are a patchwork of stridently unnatural contrasts. From the north, covered in cold, barren tundra and icy hills rising, here and there, into strange isolated mountains capped with glaciers, long and narrow stripes of frozen ground stretch like talons to clash with dry, scorched barrens. In the south, the soil is dry and smothered in ash perpetually rising from innumerable calderas and pits of restless magma which irregularly surge up and withdraw with no apparent rhyme or reason. These fiery regions have their own mountains - monoliths of bare rock, rich in valuable ores, yet perilous and volcanically unstable. Deep beneath the earth are vast chambers, once the abode of a Primordial, and now little more than glorified catacombs. Only the inhuman Lords of the land, the fanatical Order of the Divines, and hardy and ferocious beasts willingly make their home at these two unforgiving extremes. However, many fertile patches of volcanic ash in the more temperate central regions are inhabited and cultivated, and most of the subjects of the southern Blood Lords have little choice but toil in the mines to make a living.
The west is an anomaly all unto itself. There, swamps, marshes and damp moors intersect and mingle with perfectly flat salten wastes, pitted with bitter lakes and veined with torbid rivers. They are no more welcoming than the tundra: the swamps crawl with all manner of pestilential vermin and venomous foulness, the lakes are tainted with divine blood, and miasma chokes the skies, too heavy for any wind to disperse. In sparse and unlikely places, thickets and small forests of twisted trees rise from the white desert, and they are replete with perils of their own. None but Kuraxxi and Vurogg lives here, for the land is too wretched even for the Lords to scavenge; yet those monstrous beings seem to thrive here, festering in the traces of their fallen progenitor like the parasites to which they have a strange affinity.
Of the four corners of Naraksh, the east is beyond a doubt the least harsh for mortals to inhabit. While it is, notwithstanding, far less welcoming than many a place in Askor, being shrouded in ashlands as the south, bursting cauldrons and treacherous crevices are far less common here, and the terrain is altogether more even. Of note are the small, yet thick forests of strange dark-wooded trees scattered at relatively brief intervals throughout the region, and the few yet imposing extinguished volcanoes that tower over them in places. Perhaps due to their past activity, the ash fields of the east are among the most fertile in the Empire, leading to most of its population gathering between the central wastes and the mountains that mark the border of Vlaanburg. Yet the common folk are not the only ones who reap the bounty of the land; given the ease of procuring the vast amounts of nutrition required by the imperial warbeasts, Kennels and Stables have been built among the fields in great quantity, flanked by the barracks of handlers and other soldiery.
Culture
While Lynn-Naraksh's population has always been divided since the days of the Great Beasts and their hybrid spawn's cruel rule over the resentful masses of their subjects, the passing of centuries and the weakening of the Empire's rule have greatly aggravated this. The two formerly monolithic strata have fragmented into numerous splinters, sects and factions; while the dominant class remains mostly united by its enduring common cause (with the notable exception of the heresy of the Charnel Prophet), the larger populace has become divided by discordant faiths and causes. This separation notably only extends to the Empire's human population, since the Kuraxxi and Vurogg minorities have, as far as anyone can recall, always been cohesive not only internally and with the Lords, but, curiously, between themselves as well.
Superior to all in the imperial hierarchy are the Blood Lords, direct descendants of the Primordials that once held sway over the lands of Naraksh. Their efforts to maintain their bloodlines as pure as possible have led to virtually all of them being related to some extent, and generations of inbreeding, along with the strength of their elder lineage, make many doubt whether they are truly human at all. None has ever seen a Lord's face; all of them invariably appear clad in more or less ornate suits of armour. This is as much a tool of intimidation as it is a natural consequence of their abilities: the invariably high magic potential of the Blood Lords allows them to exert particular mastery over metal, ash and magma, which they are adept at conjuring and manipulating for their purposes. This enables them to wear their armour as nothing short of a second skin, reshaping it at a whim and not suffering any apparent ill effects from remaining encased in it for most of their lives. Due to the impossibility of discerning what is beneath their helmets and their own silence on this matter, the terms "Lord" and "Emperor" carry no connotations of gender in Narakshi, a peculiarity which has gradually spread to include most other titles and ranks in the Empire.
The staunchest supporters of the Blood Lords' regime are the clerics of the Order of the Divines, recruited for the most part from offspring of the aristocracy not in line for succession and those portions of the people who, through either cultural inertia or misguided loyalty, remain genuinely faithful to the Old Gods and their descendants. Though politically united, the Order, as well as its militant offshoots, is doctrinally split into two main currents. The Successionists maintain that the demise of the Great Beasts is final and irrevocable, and that the sacred duty of Lynn-Naraksh is to produce worthy inheritors of their legacy, who will eventually become deities themselves. They are ideologically opposed by the Resurgentists who hold that the absence of their Primordial lords is only temporary, with them having disappeared to face threats unknowable to mortals and fated to rise again when the time shall come. While the latter sect is somewhat influenced by Tranquilist doctrine, the latter is clearly heavily distorted, as some of its core tenets - animism and personal closeness to the divine - are fundamentally incompatible with the centralised and rigidly hierarchical religion of the Three Eyes. It is worth noting that the two currents do not violently clash with each other, and several syncretic teachings exist.
The colossus of the Empire's ruling faith is contrasted by the haphazard collection of what most of its subjects turn to for hope and support. While the worship of any entities, or even ideals, other than the Great Beasts is forbidden, the masters of Lynn-Naraksh have long since lost the power to effectively control the private lives of their citizens, and can only attempt to maintain appearances through terror and the occasional string of inquisitional trials. In the comparative safety of their homes, many revere the unnamed Primordials who struck down the Great Beasts and crippled the Empire's iron fist. For many, their number has been joined by the Prophetess, who is seen as a bringer of hope; tales of her being of humble origins are popular, as is the belief that the Silver Legion would have dethroned the Blood Lords, who scorned it, had it triumphed over the darkness in the east.
Strangely, the Serene faith has failed to obtain much of a hold in Naraksh, despite having been at the roots of the rebellion against the masters of Lynnde. Its support of a strong aristocracy is regarded negatively by the land's inhabitants, who have long grown weary of the uncontested excesses of tyrannical rulers and firmly believe that power will corrupt any who holds it, regardless of any codes they might try and impose upon themselves. Nonetheless, those remains of the ancient bonfires of rebellion the Blood Lords failed to stamp out have not fully abandoned their erstwhile religion. Most of them have come to embrace Protestant Serenists doctrines, which continue to slowly gain support at somewhat irregular rates as their proponents conduct clandestine evangelism.
Outside religious matters, life in the harsh environment of Naraksh, under the enfeebled but still vicious dominion of demigod-like figures who scorn them and treat them little better than slaves, has left many of its common folk hardened, if a little cynical. Though it will rarely find truly hostile manifestations, a distrustful, somewhat secretive and at times irreverent "us-against-them" mentality is a common sight among them, as are pragmatism and a strong attachment to family or small community ties. The Narakshi folk work hard when they must, rest when they can, preferably without being noticed, and celebrate quietly. Given the dismalness of the public order enforced by the Empire, the ability to find reasons for hidden joy in small things is valued and almost necessary.
Far removed from most of this, the monstrous races of Naraksh are for the most part culturally insular. The Kuraxxi, creatures combining insectoid, reptilian and a number of other, not better identified traits are the less human-like of the two. Little is known about these hideous, agile beings, said to be the offspring of the Bogwraith, the Primordial of the west. They live in moderately large clades in some of the most perilous places of the swamps and gnarled woods, refusing to speak or even show themselves to anyone other than the Lords and the Order; anyone else attempting to discover more about them inevitably fails to return from their expeditions. Among the few things they are noted for are their skills with poisons, pestilential curses and the taming of many of Naraksh's terrifying beasts. The latter makes it so that they are often sought after as handlers for the imperial army.
The Vurogg are believed to be descended from men touched by the vile blood that spilled from the Bogwraith when it fell. Large and strong beyond what most humans could hope to achieve, yet clumsy, feral and freakishly deformed, these brutish horrors are barely intelligent enough to congregate into tribal communities and follow the commands of the Blood Lords. Like the Kuraxxi, with whom they seem to understand each other quite well, much about them remains unclear, including how they reproduce - given that they are difficult to distinguish from each other in any way, and no one has ever seen anything that could be recognised as a Vurogg child.
Military
The bulk of Narakshi forces in times of war is made up of troops, or more accurately militias, levied by individual Lords from their Demesnes. Their rank and file are far from an impressive force: they are sparsely armed, as each is required to assemble their own equipment and weapons (mostly consisting of pikes and the occasional crossbow), poorly trained, and their morale leaves much to be desired, seeing as they know full well they are fighting for interests far from their own and they will be fortunate to make it out of it alive at all. And yet, it would be dangerous to deny that the armies of the Empire are capable of tremendous destruction and bloodshed.
The truth is that the strength of the hosts of Lynn-Naraksh does not reside in their bulk. The imperial armies are infamous for their use of monstrous beasts of war and of small units of individually tremendously potent combatants. Their tactics are invariably of the aggressive sort, regardless of their position; while this would be suicidal for a more conventional force, the sheer brute strength they can bring to bear is such that no obstacle seems too great. This might, however, comes at a price. Terrifying though the Narakshi forces might be in direct combat, many of them are unwieldy and difficult to control, and collateral damage tends to be significant whenever they take the field.
At the core of the imperial hosts are horrifying creatures of the accursed lands of the Blood Lords, tamed and trained by the arts of the Kuraxxi. From the immense bonejaw terrorbeasts of the northern tundra and the cinderhide wurms of the south to the less describablemonstrosities of the swamps, the most lethal and horrifying dwellers of Naraksh are fielded against the enemy, some even clad in plates of armour to add to their already fearsome resilience. Their handlers are often close by, with envenomed spears and plague-enchanted claws at the ready.
Next into the fray are the troops proper. The Blood Lords themselves are seldom far from the heat of battle, either tirelessly marching on foot or, depending on how close their Demesne is to the tundra, charging astride monstrous armoured boars who have little to envy to the creatures unleashed by the Kuraxxi. Those without such a mount are typically accompanied by small, heavily armoured retinues, who, while they might lack the magical potency of their lieges, are for the most part well-trained and superbly equipped. Reinforcing them are the forces of the Order. For the most part, they are comprised of Scourge Knights, skilful and zealous warriors sworn to the Old Gods. Despite not having exceptional numbers of magic wielders among their ranks, the Knights are redoubtable foes, capable of combining hefty armaments with dangerous mobility on the field of battle. More rarely, they will be joined by Deathless Guards. This cryptic order, largely made up of Blood Lord offspring, is usually tasked with the defense of sacred sites in Naraksh; however, its members have been known to march to war when summoned by an Emperor. Completing the Narakshi ranks are Vurogg auxiliaries, poorly disciplined yet savagely effective if employed by a skilful commander.
Heroes
“Quiet, or the Iron Giant will come.” - Rare warning to disobedient children in Naraksh
Iron Giant, High Executioner, Blade of the Empire, Stillborn God, Landbreaker. Having little in the way of a name of its own, Svorchok collects titles and sobriquets almost as a matter of pride, seemingly unconcerned by whether they might be marks of commendation or brands of infamy. And perhaps it is right to do so, for the terror and awe it inspires are such that any appellations given to it are, for good or ill, charged with a force nowadays found only in legend, and would seem a laughable exaggeration if they rested on the shoulders of any but the colossal warrior.
Nor is its origin any less surrounded by threads of myth. Forty years ago, the Successionist priests of the Order, not content of waiting for their gods to return as preached by their doctrinal opponents, set about to devising schemes to bring new divine terrors into the world to lead the reconquest of Lynnde. Before even some of them turned their gaze to the northward lands and began to whisper in the Emperor’s ear, others delved into the tombs of the Great Beasts, seeking the divine essence that had granted the dead Primordials their incredible power. Whatever they might have found, it was something they were pleased with, for they did not return empty-handed. Through secret alchemical processes, mixing rare and fabled ingredients and using open caldera as furnaces and ice from the highest northern glaciers to preserve their concoctions, the clerics refined their discoveries into an amalgamation the likes of which are remembered in the inscriptions of the tombs of the eldest Blood Lords. Rumour has it they even had recourse to the obscure and forgotten art of blood-weaving, though how this would have happened is unclear. When the elixir, if such it was, was believed to be ready, the Order selected a magister of the Deathless Guard, said to have been second in line to the throne, to be infused with it.
In a manner, the ritual that should have elevated the chosen one to godhood succeeded. What emerged from it was a fearsome being whose steps shook the earth, whose strength was unrivalled in all Naraksh and perhaps beyond, and whose mastery over the mystical disciplines of the elder blood reached peaks unheard of since the end of the Age of Legends. Yet, for all its stupendous might, it was clearly not a Primordial. Worse yet, its mind had been irreparably damaged, transforming what had once been a brilliant, in some respects, scholar and tactician into little more than a dull golem with an exceptional head for combat and alchemical formulae. Nevertheless, it was deemed fit that its talents should not go to waste, and Svorchok – all that remained of the creature’s former name – was placed under the Emperor’s own tutelage. There, it did not hesitate to make itself renowned in what simple ways it knew. While at first its position of High Executioner was mostly honorary, its brutal skill and ability to make its work into an effective public spectacle quickly gained it the favour of the court and the dread of the populace. Its notoriety further grow after the disorders that followed the upheavals in Matathran, when it was dispatched to suppress uprisings over the Empire and did so with ruthless efficiency. Tales persist to this day of Svorchok cleaving hills in twain with a blow of its sword, and routing a host of insurgents merely by walking over them; how exaggerated they truly are remains a matter of doubt.
Despite its reputation as a bogeyman across the land and its terrible mien, Svorchok has remained the simple being it was reborn as. Its appalling cruelty stems from no more than placid indifference, the, all things considered, clear depths of which would amaze many a seeker of inner tranquillity. It has no aspirations other than a slight vainglory, and no great ambitions to trouble it. The one oddity about its character is its closeness to the Emperor. Were even the voices about its prior life true, Blood Lords usually care little about the bonds of fraternity. It might be this favour is invoked by reverence for Svorchok’s semidivine nature, or the usefulness of its abilities; or perhaps by mere sympathy for the stunted, yet blindly loyal giant.
”The law of blood is about not what you have, but what you take.” - The Charnel Prophet on Blood Lord tradition
The Charnel Prophet is, embarrassingly enough for the Order of the Divines, both a bloody stain on its records and one of its greatest assets. While he has been formally excommunicated and branded as a heresiarch and dispenser of false teachings, both the Order’s prelates and the Blood Lords recognise that his unique skills and knowledge would be too great a price to pay for putting a stop to the comparatively minor nuisance that he currently represents, and a tacit understanding exists that he is to be left to his own devices for as long as he does not become an overt threat. Whether and when this will happen remains as yet uncomfortably uncertain.
For someone so infamous, remarkably little is actually known about the Prophet’s person. Most of his notoriety arises from the clandestine sect that has gathered around him, drawn by the divine revelations he claims to possess. This Sanguine Brotherhood, as it names itself, professes that the world was created by a not better defined omnipotent entity, identified only as the “Sanguinary One”, for no other purpose than its own cruel amusement. As such, all beings, mortal and Primordial alike, have as their only true goal to cause as much destruction and bloodshed as possible, and will be rewarded after death proportionally to how much their ravages entertained their creator. While there are clear Serene influences in this canon, they have largely been twisted far beyond their original intent, transfiguring the peaceful eastern religion into a savage nihilistic cult whose adepts practice nefarious rites of cannibalism and blood sacrifice.
The central figure of this bloodthirsty circle, despite being shrouded by a mystique largely of his own making, is widely known to have some exceptional traits, though this knowledge is often distorted and exaggerated by rumour. Most famously, the Prophet is a powerful practitioner of blood-weaving, a mystical discipline believed to have been lost since the Era of Legends. While the true extent of his abilities is unclear, it has been reported that he once killed someone merely by looking at them, and that he is capable of conjuring living creatures made of nothing but blood to do his bidding. Aside from this, he is renowned for being knowledgeable enough about the Great Beasts to rival some of the Order’s foremost authorities on the subject, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, for his martial skill; both elements that lend credence to the theory that he is a rogue member of the Deathless Guard. Yet, for all this, theories are all there is about the Prophet’s past. None can even truly say how long he has been alive; or perhaps none will.
”Fear what lives in the dark, and fear what isn’t afraid of leaving it more." - Narakshi proverb
While Svorchok was the first and best-known attempt to forge a successor to the Great Beasts out of their remains, it was certainly not the last. Since its birth over a century ago, multiple other experiments have been performed to that purpose by the Successionist cabals. Due both to the failure of the Stillborn God and a number of other, mostly occult reasons, far greater caution and parsimony of resources was exercised on successive occasions, with several trials being performed on expendable subjects before a ritual was fully enacted; yet, in spite of this, most of the preliminary attempts were failures, resulting in either the death or unintended transformations of the victims. As such, a second perfected incantation was not achieved for years.
Since the few records that exist of these experiments are hidden deep in the Order’s vaults, it is difficult to identify the moment when the Western Peoples were made part of them. It could not have been later than fifty years ago, for that was when the creature known as Nugrark was first sighted, but the span between its appearance and that of the Iron Giant remains a mystery. Whatever might have happened then, though, the former event is proof enough that the pestilent arts of the Kuraxxi and the blighted blood of the Vurogg bore fruit under the Order’s guidance, albeit one as stunted as Svorchok, if not more.
The being which, it is universally agreed, could have arisen only from under the Successionists’ spells and scalpels, is somewhat similar to a Vurogg, and was most likely one in the past. Now, however, it towers over even the greatest of that race, and is immeasurably stronger. Even more peculiar than its abnormal bulk is the armour of stone-like chitinous plates that covers its body, resembling the shells of some of the western swamps’ more dangerous monsters. Despite its carapace being seemingly intact, Nugrark wields a blade obtained from the same material, itself a testament to a dexterity beyond all but the deftest of its kin. Yet all these traits, however redoubtable, are often forgotten in favour of the mimetic ability and uncharacteristic cunning that has made the roving beast into a household bogeyman almost rivalling the Iron Giant itself. Nugrark, it is said, can be anywhere and accomplish anything it wants, and only the Emperor’s binding command and its own primitive mind prevent it from rampaging through all of Naraksh and beyond.
”Let yourself be carried by the river of my blood.” - Inscription in the Ashen Crypt
For most of Lynn-Naraksh’s subjects, the position of Emperor is an identity in its own right. Besides being shrouded by the same law that forbids any of lesser lineage to lay eyes upon the visage of a Blood Lord, those that sit upon the Throne of the Ashlands may have no name, personal or of Demesne, of their own, being known instead by their titles alone. Heirs to it are born and raised in shadow, in places known only to the high cenobites of the Order, and death and succession are likewise kept hidden from all but the closest of courtiers. These secretive practices, along with the rarity of public appearances by the regnants and the deliberately nondescript nature of their armour, makes it so that very few know where the life of one Emperor ends and that of the next one begins, both in terms of life and habits. As far as the general populace, and indeed most of the blood nobility, is concerned, an Emperor is a faceless figure defined solely by its role.
The truth is, of course, never quite so simple. Though often little is known of any given ruler’s character even among the higher circles of the Empire – whatever the trials of their youth might be, they tend, as a rule, to breed reclusiveness – words of favour or censure are not rare to filter through, and are often a reliable indication to what machinations, if any, they are engaged in. Naturally, the mere fact that such machinations exist at all, subtle or private though they might be, is enough to show that an Emperor is, after all, not a mere hollow suit and mouthpiece.
While the current holder of the throne is little less cryptic than his predecessors, he is likewise no exception to the sounding of indirect knowledge. Words of his ambitions stretching beyond the consolidation of internal dominion to which most past Emperors limited themselves, and that the fabled designs of the reconquest of Lynnde might, after all, have ceased being a never-embodied myth under his rule are not uncommon in the halls of the Throne. Somewhat more substantial is the general opinion than, in spite of the traditional neutrality of his rank, he favours the Successionist side of the Order’s doctrinal debate. Some tentatively attribute this to his supposed relation with what became Svorchok. If true, this would place his age at well beyond a century at the least, a point where even a Blood Lord would begin to show signs of age. It is then either the case that this supposition is false, or that the imperial bloodline runs still far purer than any other, for the Emperor’s eye is as bright and his martial prowess as renowned as ever.
History
In the long-gone Age of Legends, Naraksh was part of the sprawling Lynnde Empire that covered most of eastern Askor. It might have been one of many unremarkable provinces, had it not been for its vicinity to the Empire of Huayuan, which time and again repelled the invading armies from the north. Perhaps curious about the force that could withstand the advance of the mightiest dominion in the known world, or perhaps simply drawn by the smell of battle and bloodshed, three of the Primordials that ruled Lynnde, known as the Great Beasts, came to join the fray in person. They are remembered as the Ashen God, the Bogwraith and the Iron Maw, their names either lost to the ages or never having existed. The Great Beasts reshaped Naraksh to suit their unfathomable tastes, and begat monstrous spawn to serve as their lieutenants. At their command, legions were marched off to the south every day, accompanied by unnatural creatures of magic and ferocity, yet still they could not overcome Huayuan's defences. The war dragged on, amid the torments and vexations with which the Primordials prodded their more reluctant subjects, until rebellion struck. Over all of Lynnde, mortals rose up against their divine masters, seeking to break their brutal rule, and so it was in Naraksh.
Yet the Narakshi rebels did not possess the secrets that allowed their fellows in the east to overthrow the Emperor, and the blood-spawn of the Beasts, loyal to their progenitors, stood against them with their own forces. The uprising would have been crushed had it not been for the unexpected intervention of five other Primordial beings. Of those, much less is remembered than of the masters of Lynn-Naraksh; only their number remains in myth and chronicle, and it is said that they came from the sea. The five fought and slew the Great Beasts, supposedly due to taking pity on the plight of their thralls. They did not, however, take up arms against the Blood Lords, either deeming it dishonourable to battle such badly outmatched foes or hoping that even they might be brought to embrace freedom, and withdrew, leaving nary a trace of their passage.
From that point, the tide of the war had turned in favour of the rebellion. The Blood Lords of old were said to wield each the might of an army, but they were few, and their enemies were many. But, once again, a force from outside Naraksh stepped in to alter the course of the conflict. The Empire of Huayuan would have rather aided its old foes than seen the Serene faith triumph, and so it happened. With its support, the Blood Lords were able to rally and soundly defeat the rebels, shattering the resistance, it seemed, once and for all, and bringing Naraksh under their sway once more. After the Huayuan withdrew into its borders, they spent years consolidating their rule and stamping out the last vestiges of the rebellion. Though the Empire of Lynn-Naraksh is but a shadow of its former self, the ambition of its rulers has not changed over the generations, and, now that war and chaos are stirring through Askor once more, they prepare to reclaim what is rightfully theirs.
It's been another busy period, but things should be picking up between this week and he next. I've had a post of Osveril doing things, and hopefully fleshing that region north of Pictaralka out a little, planned for a while now.
Inheritor of Lynnde, Bastion of the Old Gods, the Three Eyes
Government
Despite being nominally a monarchical state, Lynn-Naraksh resembles a feudal oligarchy (with strong theocratic undertones) more than a true imperial order. Its lands are divided into Demesnes, regions of roughly comparable size, each of which is under the rule of a member of the aristocracy, known as a Blood Lord. The Lords hold almost unlimited authority within their domains, being capable of creating and altering laws, issuing decrees and levying militias on a whim, as well as wielding immense power in individual fields of administration. They are free to command the imprisonment, execution and conscription of whomsoever they wish, as well as to pass judgment over any dispute, whether called to do so or not, levy armies and command the undertaking of grandiose projects such as building a castle or dam. All that is formally required of them is that they pledge their loyalty and obedience to the imperial throne, observe the tenets of the Order of the Divines, which are few and liberal, and bolster the armies of the suzerain with their own forces in the event of a war.
In practice, however, all is not so simple. While the Emperor is indeed the highest authority over all matters temporal and spiritual, being, by virtue of position, the head of the Order, they rarely act directly or even pronounce themselves on any subject short of those affecting the entire nation. Instead, all necessities below this threshold are administered to by the Imperial Court, a gathering of the most disparate figures in the realm. Advisers, commanders, high cenobites, members of the imperial bloodline, envoys from the Kuraxxi bog-folk and the Vurogg tribes, executioners, kennel-masters, magisters of the militant orders, even some influential (and high-blooded) guild council members form complex but rigid hierarchies bound together by even more complex webs of codes and statutes. The Imperial Demesne, vastly larger than any other, is virtually a small empire within an empire, with various court dignitaries presiding over sections of it even as the Blood Lords do over their feuds. Knowing who of them can issue commands, who can give "advice" that is more or less worth heeding, and who can be disregarded altogether is vital for a Lord, lest they incur the displeasure of the Emperor or the scorn of their peers.
Emperor and Lords alike generally come into their position by succession. As the Blood Lords' title indicates, for one to be admitted into the rank they must be of sufficiently "high" blood, that is, with strong enough traces of Primordial lineage. Prospective heirs are placed through gruelling ritual trials by priests of the Order, in the course of which their blood is sampled and their force of will, desire for power and mastery of the magical craft are put to the test. Should any of them fail, they are quietly done away with, and a suitable replacement is drawn from the ranks of the Deathless Guard. The procedure for heirs to the throne is similar, though the trials are harsher and carry heavier symbolic connotations. Candidates for substitution are numbered among the more prominent Lords, though to this day there are no records of it ever having been needed to call upon them.
While, as far as most people in Naraksh are concerned, the power of the Blood Lords is absolute, there are nevertheless certain forces in the realm that are exempt from their rule and answer to the Emperor alone. The most notable of them is the Order of the Divines, the clergy of the state-mandated Primordial-worshipping religion, along with its affiliates, the Deathless Guard and the Scourge Knights. Tasked with upholding the old faith in the lands of the Empire and the minds of its subjects, the adherents of the Order can be spiritual guides, inquisitors and enforcers as the situation requires.
The other parties not subordinate to the Lords are the Kuraxxi and the Vurogg, who exist as semi-independent polities within territories allotted to them by the imperial administration. Their only duty, aside from the universal pledge of obedience, are to offer a regular, yet not greatly onerous tribute to the throne. However, it is a tacit assumption that they are to support the Empire with force of arms should they be unofficially called to do it, and so far they have never disappointed. Internally, the two races are loosely organised into, respectively, a cult-like structure and a confederacy of minor tribes; owing to their small populations, such simple systems can exist in relative stability.
Geography
"What usurpers of dirt can claim what is fit only for gods to rule?" - Krovris Naaher, Exarch of the Order
Even as its name is a dissonant amalgam of reverend speech from the east and the harsh accents of the region, the lands of Lynn-Naraksh are a patchwork of stridently unnatural contrasts. From the north, covered in cold, barren tundra and icy hills rising, here and there, into strange isolated mountains capped with glaciers, long and narrow stripes of frozen ground stretch like talons to clash with dry, scorched barrens. In the south, the soil is dry and smothered in ash perpetually rising from innumerable calderas and pits of restless magma which irregularly surge up and withdraw with no apparent rhyme or reason. These fiery regions have their own mountains - monoliths of bare rock, rich in valuable ores, yet perilous and volcanically unstable. Deep beneath the earth are vast chambers, once the abode of a Primordial, and now little more than glorified catacombs. Only the inhuman Lords of the land, the fanatical Order of the Divines, and hardy and ferocious beasts willingly make their home at these two unforgiving extremes. However, many fertile patches of volcanic ash in the more temperate central regions are inhabited and cultivated, and most of the subjects of the southern Blood Lords have little choice but toil in the mines to make a living.
The west is an anomaly all unto itself. There, swamps, marshes and damp moors intersect and mingle with perfectly flat salten wastes, pitted with bitter lakes and veined with torbid rivers. They are no more welcoming than the tundra: the swamps crawl with all manner of pestilential vermin and venomous foulness, the lakes are tainted with divine blood, and miasma chokes the skies, too heavy for any wind to disperse. In sparse and unlikely places, thickets and small forests of twisted trees rise from the white desert, and they are replete with perils of their own. None but Kuraxxi and Vurogg lives here, for the land is too wretched even for the Lords to scavenge; yet those monstrous beings seem to thrive here, festering in the traces of their fallen progenitor like the parasites to which they have a strange affinity.
Of the four corners of Naraksh, the east is beyond a doubt the least harsh for mortals to inhabit. While it is not without its oddities, for rocky plains cluttered with strange growths are common there, its soil is rich and well suited for tilling, and far fewer horrors plague it than the rest of the land. It is thus little wonder that most of the Empire's human population should be gathered here, both spread over fields and assembled in towns and cities. Several forests, less forbidding than those in the west, provide for many of the population's needs. Yet every blessing has a counterbalance: the fertile nature of the region is such that the Empire has deemed it ideal to sustain its war-beasts, and what the east lacked in monstrosity is amply compensated by the many kennels and stables that have grown across it over the years.
Culture
While Lynn-Naraksh's population has always been divided since the days of the Great Beasts and their hybrid spawn's cruel rule over the resentful masses of their subjects, the passing of centuries and the weakening of the Empire's rule have greatly aggravated this. The two formerly monolithic strata have fragmented into numerous splinters, sects and factions; while the dominant class remains mostly united by its enduring common cause (with the notable exception of the heresy of the Charnel Prophet), the larger populace has become divided by discordant faiths and causes. This separation notably only extends to the Empire's human population, since the Kuraxxi and Vurogg minorities have, as far as anyone can recall, always been cohesive not only internally and with the Lords, but, curiously, between themselves as well.
Superior to all in the imperial hierarchy are the Blood Lords, direct descendants of the Primordials that once held sway over the lands of Naraksh. Their efforts to maintain their bloodlines as pure as possible have led to virtually all of them being related to some extent, and generations of inbreeding, along with the strength of their elder lineage, make many doubt whether they are truly human at all. None has ever seen a Lord's face; all of them invariably appear clad in more or less ornate suits of armour. This is as much a tool of intimidation as it is a natural consequence of their abilities: the invariably high magic potential of the Blood Lords allows them to exert particular mastery over metal, ash and magma, which they are adept at conjuring and manipulating for their purposes. This enables them to wear their armour as nothing short of a second skin, reshaping it at a whim and not suffering any apparent ill effects from remaining encased in it for most of their lives. Due to the impossibility of discerning what is beneath their helmets and their own silence on this matter, the terms "Lord" and "Emperor" carry no connotations of gender in Narakshi, a peculiarity which has gradually spread to include most other titles and ranks in the Empire.
The staunchest supporters of the Blood Lords' regime are the clerics of the Order of the Divines, recruited for the most part from offspring of the aristocracy not in line for succession and those portions of the people who, through either cultural inertia or misguided loyalty, remain genuinely faithful to the Old Gods and their descendants. Though politically united, the Order, as well as its militant offshoots, is doctrinally split into two main currents. The Successionists maintain that the demise of the Great Beasts is final and irrevocable, and that the sacred duty of Lynn-Naraksh is to produce worthy inheritors of their legacy, who will eventually become deities themselves. They are ideologically opposed by the Resurgentists who hold that the absence of their Primordial lords is only temporary, with them having disappeared to face threats unknowable to mortals and fated to rise again when the time shall come. While the latter sect is somewhat influenced by Tranquilist doctrine, the latter is clearly heavily distorted, as some of its core tenets - animism and personal closeness to the divine - are fundamentally incompatible with the centralised and rigidly hierarchical religion of the Three Eyes. It is worth noting that the two currents do not violently clash with each other, and several syncretic teachings exist.
The colossus of the Empire's ruling faith is contrasted by the haphazard collection of what most of its subjects turn to for hope and support. While the worship of any entities, or even ideals, other than the Great Beasts is forbidden, the masters of Lynn-Naraksh have long since lost the power to effectively control the private lives of their citizens, and can only attempt to maintain appearances through terror and the occasional string of inquisitional trials. In the comparative safety of their homes, many revere the unnamed Primordials who struck down the Great Beasts and crippled the Empire's iron fist. For many, their number has been joined by the Prophetess, who is seen as a bringer of hope; tales of her being of humble origins are popular, as is the belief that the Silver Legion would have dethroned the Blood Lords, who scorned it, had it triumphed over the darkness in the east.
Strangely, the Serene faith has failed to obtain much of a hold in Naraksh, despite having been at the roots of the rebellion against the masters of Lynnde. Its support of a strong aristocracy is regarded negatively by the land's inhabitants, who have long grown weary of the uncontested excesses of tyrannical rulers and firmly believe that power will corrupt any who holds it, regardless of any codes they might try and impose upon themselves. Nonetheless, those remains of the ancient bonfires of rebellion the Blood Lords failed to stamp out have not fully abandoned their erstwhile religion. Most of them have come to embrace Protestant Serenists doctrines, which continue to slowly gain support at somewhat irregular rates as their proponents conduct clandestine evangelism.
Outside religious matters, life in the harsh environment of Naraksh, under the enfeebled but still vicious dominion of demigod-like figures who scorn them and treat them little better than slaves, has left many of its common folk hardened, if a little cynical. Though it will rarely find truly hostile manifestations, a distrustful, somewhat secretive and at times irreverent "us-against-them" mentality is a common sight among them, as are pragmatism and a strong attachment to family or small community ties. The Narakshi folk work hard when they must, rest when they can, preferably without being noticed, and celebrate quietly. Given the dismalness of the public order enforced by the Empire, the ability to find reasons for hidden joy in small things is valued and almost necessary.
Far removed from most of this, the monstrous races of Naraksh are for the most part culturally insular. The Kuraxxi, creatures combining insectoid, reptilian and a number of other, not better identified traits are the less human-like of the two. Little is known about these hideous, agile beings, said to be the offspring of the Bogwraith, the Primordial of the west. They live in moderately large clades in some of the most perilous places of the swamps and gnarled woods, refusing to speak or even show themselves to anyone other than the Lords and the Order; anyone else attempting to discover more about them inevitably fails to return from their expeditions. Among the few things they are noted for are their skills with poisons, pestilential curses and the taming of many of Naraksh's terrifying beasts. The latter makes it so that they are often sought after as handlers for the imperial army.
The Vurogg are believed to be descended from men touched by the vile blood that spilled from the Bogwraith when it fell. Large and strong beyond what most humans could hope to achieve, yet clumsy, feral and freakishly deformed, these brutish horrors are barely intelligent enough to congregate into tribal communities and follow the commands of the Blood Lords. Like the Kuraxxi, with whom they seem to understand each other quite well, much about them remains unclear, including how they reproduce - given that they are difficult to distinguish from each other in any way, and no one has ever seen anything that could be recognised as a Vurogg child.
Military
The bulk of Narakshi forces in times of war is made up of troops, or more accurately militias, levied by individual Lords from their Demesnes. Their rank and file are far from an impressive force: they are sparsely armed, as each is required to assemble their own equipment and weapons (mostly consisting of pikes and the occasional crossbow), poorly trained, and their morale leaves much to be desired, seeing as they know full well they are fighting for interests far from their own and they will be fortunate to make it out of it alive at all. And yet, it would be dangerous to deny that the armies of the Empire are capable of tremendous destruction and bloodshed.
The truth is that the strength of the hosts of Lynn-Naraksh does not reside in their bulk. The imperial armies are infamous for their use of monstrous beasts of war and of small units of individually tremendously potent combatants. Their tactics are invariably of the aggressive sort, regardless of their position; while this would be suicidal for a more conventional force, the sheer brute strength they can bring to bear is such that no obstacle seems too great. This might, however, comes at a price. Terrifying though the Narakshi forces might be in direct combat, many of them are unwieldy and difficult to control, and collateral damage tends to be significant whenever they take the field.
At the core of the imperial hosts are horrifying creatures of the accursed lands of the Blood Lords, tamed and trained by the arts of the Kuraxxi. From the immense bonejaw terrors of the northern tundra and the cinderhide wurms of the south to the less describablemonstrosities of the swamps, the most lethal and horrifying dwellers of Naraksh are fielded against the enemy, some even clad in plates of armour to add to their already fearsome resilience. Their handlers are often close by, with envenomed spears and plague-enchanted claws at the ready.
Next into the fray are the troops proper. The Blood Lords themselves are seldom far from the heat of battle, either tirelessly marching on foot or, depending on how close their Demesne is to the tundra, charging astride monstrous armoured boars who have little to envy to the creatures unleashed by the Kuraxxi. Those without such a mount are typically accompanied by small, heavily armoured retinues, who, while they might lack the magical potency of their lieges, are for the most part well-trained and superbly equipped. Reinforcing them are the forces of the Order. For the most part, they are comprised of Scourge Knights, skilful and zealous warriors sworn to the Old Gods. Despite not having exceptional numbers of magic wielders among their ranks, the Knights are redoubtable foes, capable of combining hefty armaments with dangerous mobility on the field of battle. More rarely, they will be joined by Deathless Guards. This cryptic order, largely made up of Blood Lord offspring, is usually tasked with the defense of sacred sites in Naraksh; however, its members have been known to march to war when summoned by an Emperor. Completing the Narakshi ranks are Vurogg auxiliaries, poorly disciplined yet savagely effective if employed by a skilful commander.
Heroes
History
In the long-gone Age of Legends, Naraksh was part of the sprawling Lynnde Empire that covered most of eastern Askor. It might have been one of many unremarkable provinces, had it not been for its vicinity to the Empire of Huayuan, which time and again repelled the invading armies from the north. Perhaps curious about the force that could withstand the advance of the mightiest dominion in the known world, or perhaps simply drawn by the smell of battle and bloodshed, three of the Primordials that ruled Lynnde, known as the Great Beasts, came to join the fray in person. They are remembered as the Ashen God, the Bogwraith and the Iron Maw, their names either lost to the ages or never having existed. The Great Beasts reshaped Naraksh to suit their unfathomable tastes, and begat monstrous spawn to serve as their lieutenants. At their command, legions were marched off to the south every day, accompanied by unnatural creatures of magic and ferocity, yet still they could not overcome Huayuan's defences. The war dragged on, amid the torments and vexations with which the Primordials prodded their more reluctant subjects, until rebellion struck. Over all of Lynnde, mortals rose up against their divine masters, seeking to break their brutal rule, and so it was in Naraksh.
Yet the Narakshi rebels did not possess the secrets that allowed their fellows in the east to overthrow the Emperor, and the blood-spawn of the Beasts, loyal to their progenitors, stood against them with their own forces. The uprising would have been crushed had it not been for the unexpected intervention of five other Primordial beings. Of those, much less is remembered than of the masters of Lynn-Naraksh; only their number remains in myth and chronicle, and it is said that they came from the sea. The five fought and slew the Great Beasts, supposedly due to taking pity on the plight of their thralls. They did not, however, take up arms against the Blood Lords, either deeming it dishonourable to battle such badly outmatched foes or hoping that even they might be brought to embrace freedom, and withdrew, leaving nary a trace of their passage.
From that point, the tide of the war had turned in favour of the rebellion. The Blood Lords of old were said to wield each the might of an army, but they were few, and their enemies were many. But, once again, a force from outside Naraksh stepped in to alter the course of the conflict. The Empire of Huayuan would have rather aided its old foes than seen the Serene faith triumph, and so it happened. With its support, the Blood Lords were able to rally and soundly defeat the rebels, shattering the resistance, it seemed, once and for all, and bringing Naraksh under their sway once more. After the Huayuan withdrew into its borders, they spent years consolidating their rule and stamping out the last vestiges of the rebellion. Though the Empire of Lynn-Naraksh is but a shadow of its former self, the ambition of its rulers has not changed over the generations, and, now that war and chaos are stirring through Askor once more, they prepare to reclaim what is rightfully theirs.
Inheritor of Lynnde, Bastion of the Old Gods, the Three Eyes
Government
Despite being nominally a monarchical state, Lynn-Naraksh resembles a feudal oligarchy (with strong theocratic undertones) more than a true imperial order. Its lands are divided into Demesnes, regions of roughly comparable size, each of which is under the rule of a member of the aristocracy, known as a Blood Lord. The Lords hold almost unlimited authority within their domains, being capable of creating and altering laws, issuing decrees and levying militias on a whim, as well as wielding immense power in individual fields of administration. They are free to command the imprisonment, execution and conscription of whomsoever they wish, as well as to pass judgment over any dispute, whether called to do so or not, levy armies and command the undertaking of grandiose projects such as building a castle or dam. All that is formally required of them is that they pledge their loyalty and obedience to the imperial throne, observe the tenets of the Order of the Divines, which are few and liberal, and bolster the armies of the suzerain with their own forces in the event of a war.
In practice, however, all is not so simple. While the Emperor is indeed the highest authority over all matters temporal and spiritual, being, by virtue of position, the head of the Order, they rarely act directly or even pronounce themselves on any subject short of those affecting the entire nation. Instead, all necessities below this threshold are administered to by the Imperial Court, a gathering of the most disparate figures in the realm. Advisers, commanders, high cenobites, members of the imperial bloodline, envoys from the Kuraxxi bog-folk and the Vurogg tribes, executioners, kennel-masters, magisters of the militant orders, even some influential (and high-blooded) guild council members form complex but rigid hierarchies bound together by even more complex webs of codes and statutes. The Imperial Demesne, vastly larger than any other, is virtually a small empire within an empire, with various court dignitaries presiding over sections of it even as the Blood Lords do over their feuds. Knowing who of them can issue commands, who can give "advice" that is more or less worth heeding, and who can be disregarded altogether is vital for a Lord, lest they incur the displeasure of the Emperor or the scorn of their peers.
Emperor and Lords alike generally come into their position by succession. As the Blood Lords' title indicates, for one to be admitted into the rank they must be of sufficiently "high" blood, that is, with strong enough traces of Primordial lineage. Prospective heirs are placed through gruelling ritual trials by priests of the Order, in the course of which their blood is sampled and their force of will, desire for power and mastery of the magical craft are put to the test. Should any of them fail, they are quietly done away with, and a suitable replacement is drawn from the ranks of the Deathless Guard. The procedure for heirs to the throne is similar, though the trials are harsher and carry heavier symbolic connotations. Candidates for substitution are numbered among the more prominent Lords, though to this day there are no records of it ever having been needed to call upon them.
While, as far as most people in Naraksh are concerned, the power of the Blood Lords is absolute, there are nevertheless certain forces in the realm that are exempt from their rule and answer to the Emperor alone. The most notable of them is the Order of the Divines, the clergy of the state-mandated Primordial-worshipping religion, along with its affiliates, the Deathless Guard and the Scourge Knights. Tasked with upholding the old faith in the lands of the Empire and the minds of its subjects, the adherents of the Order can be spiritual guides, inquisitors and enforcers as the situation requires.
The other parties not subordinate to the Lords are the Kuraxxi and the Vurogg, who exist as semi-independent polities within territories allotted to them by the imperial administration. Their only duty, aside from the universal pledge of obedience, are to offer a regular, yet not greatly onerous tribute to the throne. However, it is a tacit assumption that they are to support the Empire with force of arms should they be unofficially called to do it, and so far they have never disappointed. Internally, the two races are loosely organised into, respectively, a cult-like structure and a confederacy of minor tribes; owing to their small populations, such simple systems can exist in relative stability.
Geography
"What usurpers of dirt can claim what is fit only for gods to rule?" - Krovris Naaher, Exarch of the Order
Even as its name is a dissonant amalgam of reverend speech from the east and the harsh accents of the region, the lands of Lynn-Naraksh are a patchwork of stridently unnatural contrasts. From the north, covered in cold, barren tundra and icy hills rising, here and there, into strange isolated mountains capped with glaciers, long and narrow stripes of frozen ground stretch like talons to clash with dry, scorched barrens. In the south, the soil is dry and smothered in ash perpetually rising from innumerable calderas and pits of restless magma which irregularly surge up and withdraw with no apparent rhyme or reason. These fiery regions have their own mountains - monoliths of bare rock, rich in valuable ores, yet perilous and volcanically unstable. Deep beneath the earth are vast chambers, once the abode of a Primordial, and now little more than glorified catacombs. Only the inhuman Lords of the land, the fanatical Order of the Divines, and hardy and ferocious beasts willingly make their home at these two unforgiving extremes. However, many fertile patches of volcanic ash in the more temperate central regions are inhabited and cultivated, and most of the subjects of the southern Blood Lords have little choice but toil in the mines to make a living.
The west is an anomaly all unto itself. There, swamps, marshes and damp moors intersect and mingle with perfectly flat salten wastes, pitted with bitter lakes and veined with torbid rivers. They are no more welcoming than the tundra: the swamps crawl with all manner of pestilential vermin and venomous foulness, the lakes are tainted with divine blood, and miasma chokes the skies, too heavy for any wind to disperse. In sparse and unlikely places, thickets and small forests of twisted trees rise from the white desert, and they are replete with perils of their own. None but Kuraxxi and Vurogg lives here, for the land is too wretched even for the Lords to scavenge; yet those monstrous beings seem to thrive here, festering in the traces of their fallen progenitor like the parasites to which they have a strange affinity.
Of the four corners of Naraksh, the east is beyond a doubt the least harsh for mortals to inhabit. While it is not without its oddities, for rocky plains cluttered with strange growths are common there, its soil is rich and well suited for tilling, and far fewer horrors plague it than the rest of the land. It is thus little wonder that most of the Empire's human population should be gathered here, both spread over fields and assembled in towns and cities. Several forests, less forbidding than those in the west, provide for many of the population's needs. Yet every blessing has a counterbalance: the fertile nature of the region is such that the Empire has deemed it ideal to sustain its war-beasts, and what the east lacked in monstrosity is amply compensated by the many kennels and stables that have grown across it over the years.
Culture
While Lynn-Naraksh's population has always been divided since the days of the Great Beasts and their hybrid spawn's cruel rule over the resentful masses of their subjects, the passing of centuries and the weakening of the Empire's rule have greatly aggravated this. The two formerly monolithic strata have fragmented into numerous splinters, sects and factions; while the dominant class remains mostly united by its enduring common cause (with the notable exception of the heresy of the Charnel Prophet), the larger populace has become divided by discordant faiths and causes. This separation notably only extends to the Empire's human population, since the Kuraxxi and Vurogg minorities have, as far as anyone can recall, always been cohesive not only internally and with the Lords, but, curiously, between themselves as well.
Superior to all in the imperial hierarchy are the Blood Lords, direct descendants of the Primordials that once held sway over the lands of Naraksh. Their efforts to maintain their bloodlines as pure as possible have led to virtually all of them being related to some extent, and generations of inbreeding, along with the strength of their elder lineage, make many doubt whether they are truly human at all. None has ever seen a Lord's face; all of them invariably appear clad in more or less ornate suits of armour. This is as much a tool of intimidation as it is a natural consequence of their abilities: the invariably high magic potential of the Blood Lords allows them to exert particular mastery over metal, ash and magma, which they are adept at conjuring and manipulating for their purposes. This enables them to wear their armour as nothing short of a second skin, reshaping it at a whim and not suffering any apparent ill effects from remaining encased in it for most of their lives. Due to the impossibility of discerning what is beneath their helmets and their own silence on this matter, the terms "Lord" and "Emperor" carry no connotations of gender in Narakshi, a peculiarity which has gradually spread to include most other titles and ranks in the Empire.
The staunchest supporters of the Blood Lords' regime are the clerics of the Order of the Divines, recruited for the most part from offspring of the aristocracy not in line for succession and those portions of the people who, through either cultural inertia or misguided loyalty, remain genuinely faithful to the Old Gods and their descendants. Though politically united, the Order, as well as its militant offshoots, is doctrinally split into two main currents. The Successionists maintain that the demise of the Great Beasts is final and irrevocable, and that the sacred duty of Lynn-Naraksh is to produce worthy inheritors of their legacy, who will eventually become deities themselves. They are ideologically opposed by the Resurgentists who hold that the absence of their Primordial lords is only temporary, with them having disappeared to face threats unknowable to mortals and fated to rise again when the time shall come. While the latter sect is somewhat influenced by Tranquilist doctrine, the latter is clearly heavily distorted, as some of its core tenets - animism and personal closeness to the divine - are fundamentally incompatible with the centralised and rigidly hierarchical religion of the Three Eyes. It is worth noting that the two currents do not violently clash with each other, and several syncretic teachings exist.
The colossus of the Empire's ruling faith is contrasted by the haphazard collection of what most of its subjects turn to for hope and support. While the worship of any entities, or even ideals, other than the Great Beasts is forbidden, the masters of Lynn-Naraksh have long since lost the power to effectively control the private lives of their citizens, and can only attempt to maintain appearances through terror and the occasional string of inquisitional trials. In the comparative safety of their homes, many revere the unnamed Primordials who struck down the Great Beasts and crippled the Empire's iron fist. For many, their number has been joined by the Prophetess, who is seen as a bringer of hope; tales of her being of humble origins are popular, as is the belief that the Silver Legion would have dethroned the Blood Lords, who scorned it, had it triumphed over the darkness in the east.
Strangely, the Serene faith has failed to obtain much of a hold in Naraksh, despite having been at the roots of the rebellion against the masters of Lynnde. Its support of a strong aristocracy is regarded negatively by the land's inhabitants, who have long grown weary of the uncontested excesses of tyrannical rulers and firmly believe that power will corrupt any who holds it, regardless of any codes they might try and impose upon themselves. Nonetheless, those remains of the ancient bonfires of rebellion the Blood Lords failed to stamp out have not fully abandoned their erstwhile religion. Most of them have come to embrace Protestant Serenists doctrines, which continue to slowly gain support at somewhat irregular rates as their proponents conduct clandestine evangelism.
Outside religious matters, life in the harsh environment of Naraksh, under the enfeebled but still vicious dominion of demigod-like figures who scorn them and treat them little better than slaves, has left many of its common folk hardened, if a little cynical. Though it will rarely find truly hostile manifestations, a distrustful, somewhat secretive and at times irreverent "us-against-them" mentality is a common sight among them, as are pragmatism and a strong attachment to family or small community ties. The Narakshi folk work hard when they must, rest when they can, preferably without being noticed, and celebrate quietly. Given the dismalness of the public order enforced by the Empire, the ability to find reasons for hidden joy in small things is valued and almost necessary.
Far removed from most of this, the monstrous races of Naraksh are for the most part culturally insular. The Kuraxxi, creatures combining insectoid, reptilian and a number of other, not better identified traits are the less human-like of the two. Little is known about these hideous, agile beings, said to be the offspring of the Bogwraith, the Primordial of the west. They live in moderately large clades in some of the most perilous places of the swamps and gnarled woods, refusing to speak or even show themselves to anyone other than the Lords and the Order; anyone else attempting to discover more about them inevitably fails to return from their expeditions. Among the few things they are noted for are their skills with poisons, pestilential curses and the taming of many of Naraksh's terrifying beasts. The latter makes it so that they are often sought after as handlers for the imperial army.
The Vurogg are believed to be descended from men touched by the vile blood that spilled from the Bogwraith when it fell. Large and strong beyond what most humans could hope to achieve, yet clumsy, feral and freakishly deformed, these brutish horrors are barely intelligent enough to congregate into tribal communities and follow the commands of the Blood Lords. Like the Kuraxxi, with whom they seem to understand each other quite well, much about them remains unclear, including how they reproduce - given that they are difficult to distinguish from each other in any way, and no one has ever seen anything that could be recognised as a Vurogg child.
Military
The bulk of Narakshi forces in times of war is made up of troops, or more accurately militias, levied by individual Lords from their Demesnes. Their rank and file are far from an impressive force: they are sparsely armed, as each is required to assemble their own equipment and weapons (mostly consisting of pikes and the occasional crossbow), poorly trained, and their morale leaves much to be desired, seeing as they know full well they are fighting for interests far from their own and they will be fortunate to make it out of it alive at all. And yet, it would be dangerous to deny that the armies of the Empire are capable of tremendous destruction and bloodshed.
The truth is that the strength of the hosts of Lynn-Naraksh does not reside in their bulk. The imperial armies are infamous for their use of monstrous beasts of war and of small units of individually tremendously potent combatants. Their tactics are invariably of the aggressive sort, regardless of their position; while this would be suicidal for a more conventional force, the sheer brute strength they can bring to bear is such that no obstacle seems too great. This might, however, comes at a price. Terrifying though the Narakshi forces might be in direct combat, many of them are unwieldy and difficult to control, and collateral damage tends to be significant whenever they take the field.
At the core of the imperial hosts are horrifying creatures of the accursed lands of the Blood Lords, tamed and trained by the arts of the Kuraxxi. From the immense bonejaw terrors of the northern tundra and the cinderhide wurms of the south to the less describablemonstrosities of the swamps, the most lethal and horrifying dwellers of Naraksh are fielded against the enemy, some even clad in plates of armour to add to their already fearsome resilience. Their handlers are often close by, with envenomed spears and plague-enchanted claws at the ready.
Next into the fray are the troops proper. The Blood Lords themselves are seldom far from the heat of battle, either tirelessly marching on foot or, depending on how close their Demesne is to the tundra, charging astride monstrous armoured boars who have little to envy to the creatures unleashed by the Kuraxxi. Those without such a mount are typically accompanied by small, heavily armoured retinues, who, while they might lack the magical potency of their lieges, are for the most part well-trained and superbly equipped. Reinforcing them are the forces of the Order. For the most part, they are comprised of Scourge Knights, skilful and zealous warriors sworn to the Old Gods. Despite not having exceptional numbers of magic wielders among their ranks, the Knights are redoubtable foes, capable of combining hefty armaments with dangerous mobility on the field of battle. More rarely, they will be joined by Deathless Guards. This cryptic order, largely made up of Blood Lord offspring, is usually tasked with the defense of sacred sites in Naraksh; however, its members have been known to march to war when summoned by an Emperor. Completing the Narakshi ranks are Vurogg auxiliaries, poorly disciplined yet savagely effective if employed by a skilful commander.
Heroes
History
In the long-gone Age of Legends, Naraksh was part of the sprawling Lynnde Empire that covered most of eastern Askor. It might have been one of many unremarkable provinces, had it not been for its vicinity to the Empire of Huayuan, which time and again repelled the invading armies from the north. Perhaps curious about the force that could withstand the advance of the mightiest dominion in the known world, or perhaps simply drawn by the smell of battle and bloodshed, three of the Primordials that ruled Lynnde, known as the Great Beasts, came to join the fray in person. They are remembered as the Ashen God, the Bogwraith and the Iron Maw, their names either lost to the ages or never having existed. The Great Beasts reshaped Naraksh to suit their unfathomable tastes, and begat monstrous spawn to serve as their lieutenants. At their command, legions were marched off to the south every day, accompanied by unnatural creatures of magic and ferocity, yet still they could not overcome Huayuan's defences. The war dragged on, amid the torments and vexations with which the Primordials prodded their more reluctant subjects, until rebellion struck. Over all of Lynnde, mortals rose up against their divine masters, seeking to break their brutal rule, and so it was in Naraksh.
Yet the Narakshi rebels did not possess the secrets that allowed their fellows in the east to overthrow the Emperor, and the blood-spawn of the Beasts, loyal to their progenitors, stood against them with their own forces. The uprising would have been crushed had it not been for the unexpected intervention of five other Primordial beings. Of those, much less is remembered than of the masters of Lynn-Naraksh; only their number remains in myth and chronicle, and it is said that they came from the sea. The five fought and slew the Great Beasts, supposedly due to taking pity on the plight of their thralls. They did not, however, take up arms against the Blood Lords, either deeming it dishonourable to battle such badly outmatched foes or hoping that even they might be brought to embrace freedom, and withdrew, leaving nary a trace of their passage.
From that point, the tide of the war had turned in favour of the rebellion. The Blood Lords of old were said to wield each the might of an army, but they were few, and their enemies were many. But, once again, a force from outside Naraksh stepped in to alter the course of the conflict. The Empire of Huayuan would have rather aided its old foes than seen the Serene faith triumph, and so it happened. With its support, the Blood Lords were able to rally and soundly defeat the rebels, shattering the resistance, it seemed, once and for all, and bringing Naraksh under their sway once more. After the Huayuan withdrew into its borders, they spent years consolidating their rule and stamping out the last vestiges of the rebellion. Though the Empire of Lynn-Naraksh is but a shadow of its former self, the ambition of its rulers has not changed over the generations, and, now that war and chaos are stirring through Askor once more, they prepare to reclaim what is rightfully theirs.
The blade-wielding contents of the third tank the party had opened (Ulor did not have much else in the way of references for her, and, having been looking another way during most of the latest battle, could not even say what she had struck down) had somehow seen the occasion as an opportunity to rebuke his mending methods. Ulor scowled, or rather half-scowled by contorting his face in a slightly concerning way, so that only the one side of it that was partly turned towards the girl was frowning. For all he was concerned, the spattered makeshift bandage was enough for the elf not to die from bleeding within the hour, and therefore all he needed to do there. Sanitary? For all he knew, this prisoner might have come from warrens churning with maggots and dipping with slime. He was quite certain he had once read of elves that lived in just such a place. Or was it goblins? Regardless-
It is astounding how many mortals see the food matter the wrong way around.
"Food doesn't heal wounds, but drink does?" was all Ulor had the time to reply between the octopus's commentary and the feline calling out from further down the chamber. With a grunt, he rose from his crouch, propping himself up with his staff, and began to hobble towards the throne the fiend had been sitting on. While the prospect of a "tithe" had sparked his curiosity, seeing as these people were likely to toss all sorts of this under such a name, whether they belonged there or not, he could not but stop to throw a glance at the altar and the pillars surrounding it. What he saw was apparently notable enough for him to turn as he walked, approaching to peer at the constructions more closely, scratching and rapping on the stone. The mouth of a god... There was an odd, unnatural tension in the air between the columns. For some odd trick of the magical weave, he could almost picture a thread running from the altar to its twin on the other side of the sewer channel. No, that one was the mouth. This was the hand that brought the meals to it. He could feel that the unholy maw hungered still, calling silently for the life of hundreds to be fed into it. And yet...
No one has been sacrificed here yet.
Not that we can see, at least. There might have been others before.
As satisfied as he could have been with his brief survey, Ulor put an end to the detour and joined the pair near the throne. Bending over the seat, he began to rather unceremoniously rustle through its contents. The gold would certainly be useful, if everyone in this city was as averse to haggling as that one man who sold... What was he trying to buy then? Well, not that it mattered any longer.
There were also scrolls inscribed with what seemed to be arcane symbols. He lifted them one by one, running a finger over the lines of the signs and muttering something that did not appear to belong to any language under the stars. As he set each parchment aside, he briefly turned up his head and called out in hollow tones: "There are an incantation of insight... One of elemental chaos... One of mire- No, of treacherous soil." He doubted anyone else in the group would have much use for the spells, or even understand what he was speaking of, but it was safer to inform them of his findings in the event he should forget them later. Indeed, maybe there already was something the scrolls would be needed for? All the better to announce them properly.
"That might become necessary for one of them" he added, without looking up, while the octopus pointed one of its tentacles at a glinting pearl held in the brawler's paw. Who knew, they might have been capable of selling the things.
Last in the receptacle were two flasks, filled with unusual-looking fluids. One of them, red and glimmering, he recognised as similar to what had been forcibly administered to the unconscious elf. A drop of it on the tongue brought a fleeting, but potent sensation of vigour coursing through his body. Well. Perhaps drink can heal after all. Not wounds, maybe, but... The other was dull and layered like a crystalline tower. Its taste was likewise one of strength, but of a far more focused sort, echoing through hands and feet.
"Life and power held in glass." Those were simpler, likely accessible to the rest, and he had little need of reinforcing his toes. Nonetheless, if none would take them - as he dimly hoped in choosing mystifying words - he would not pass the opportunity of performing some alchemical experiments. Small, of course, and perfectly manageable. As circumstances would allow.
A 19 on a Religion check gives some information about the altar, and with a 16 on Arcana Ulor identifies the scrolls.
The Blurs are the descendants of once-uplifted coleoid cephalopods, though centuries of self-modification through gene splicing and cybernetic augmentation have left it difficult to determine what species or even order their forebears might have belonged to. Their bodies are highly flexible, often shifting between spherical and cylindrical forms, and the number, length and shape of their tentacles can be changed on a whim, to the point that they can form pseudopods that allow them to easily move outside water. The only parts of them that remain stable are their beaks and four eyes, disposed at right angles from each other to allow for all-round vision. Unlike their ancestors, the Blurs are not asocial by nature, and live in small packs of five to ten individuals, which in turn are part of habitat-spanning communities. Combining their collective tendencies with an almost stereotypical curiosity, it was them who originally established contacts between the members of the Concord, and they remain to this day the main force holding the loose confederation together, as well as its most populous members. The Blurs owe their moniker to their method of communication, which consists of shifting their body's hue through instinctive control of their mimetic abilities in rapid and sometimes intricate patterns. Other species have sometimes described the display as enthralling, and edited versions of the Blurs' analogue of literature have been known to be used as hypnotic visual drugs.
Scalders
The Scalders are the result of an attempt to produce partially organic life capable of surviving in, and eventually colonising, Europa and potentially Titan. However, these projects were aborted when disaster struck, and the prototype creature were left to their own devices in their testing habitat. Over time, they adapted to the use of the machinery left behind by their vanished creators, and, having the potential for intellectual development despite the lack of starting instruction, established a functional accord among themselves to unify their now growing population. The Scalder genome has much in common with that of tubeworms and some deep-water crustaceans, though, unlike these animals, they do not need to rely on geothermal activity to survive in cold oceanic depths. Instead, they are each equipped with a miniaturised internal furnace, which safely spreads its heat through their bodies by the means of a biomechanical network of hollow tubes. Outwardly, Scalders look like large, barrel-like worms with segmented chitinous shells, rows of segmented legs and two pairs of limbs, one large and powerful and the other minute, suited for fine manipulation. While they are amphibious and can control the activity of their internal furnaces to an extent, they find warm environments disagreeable, and often use external cooling apparati when not in their native element.
Drifters
Drifters are the product of an even more ambitious sister project of the Scalders' creation: the colonisation of gas giants themselves. Unlike the Scalders, however, they had the fortune of coming to fruition somewhat ahead of schedule, and their first generations were trained in the use of the instruments needed to establish a hold in the treacherous swirling skyscapes of the gaseous worlds. While much of this knowledge was invalidated by the shattering, which wreaked havoc on vital infrastructure (not to mention the means of ferrying the necessary equipment to Jupiter, let alone beyond), the Drifters were able to reverse-engineer what they salvaged from the fall, and repurposed the nearest habitats to make them viable for themselves. Thanks to this timely expansion, they are now one of the Concord's most powerful and influential parties, second only to the Blurs; unlike the latter, many of them are suspicious of the alliance, fearing that it might threaten their autonomy. The Drifters appear as brown-greyish bell-shaped figures, about half as large as an unmodified human, with several broad, thin fins, or wings, extending radially to all sides. Outside their habitats, they usually move in special spherical modules which can roll without trouble over any magnetic surface, no matter how inclined. The Drifters are sometimes referred to as Floaters, after hypothetical gas giant-dwelling lifeforms imagined in the distant past; however, they see the word as a misnomer, seeing as any similarities are superficial at best, and many consider it derogatory.
Transcendants
Before the great immaterial intelligences collapsed, a number of beings, including both humanoids, uplifts and simpler synthetic constructs, attempted to reach a similar, fully digital state of being, believing it to be the ultimate form of development a sapient entity could reach. To that end, they converted their consciousnesses into code and fused them with specially built programs. For a while, it seemed to work: they found themselves capable of existing on a virtual plane, and gained incredible memory and mental agility, as well as seemingly unlimited potential for even further growth, as a result. But, when the authorities disappeared along with the systems that had allowed them to exist, these Transcendants discovered that they were the most vulnerable. Those that survived the first network failures scrambled wildly to download themselves into anything that could hold them in the last few nanoseconds left to them; as luck would have it, the vast majority of those who were not hopelessly damaged by the experience found themselves in the orbital factory of Usnis, where a stock of experimental mainframes had been abandoned after having been activated for testing. From these bulky machines, the Transcended were eventually able to transfer themselves into more or less improvised mechanical bodies, but they were shadows of their former selves. Their immense minds had been forcibly compressed and fragmented, leaving them mangled and often not entirely stable. Nevertheless, many of them retain useful skills and knowledge, making them a valuable resource. It is not uncommon to see bizarre metallic figures of all shapes and sizes throughout Concord habitats, either alone or in small groups, minding their usually incomprehensible business in remote nooks and corners.
Shepherds
The research network that produced the Scalders and Drifters did not limit itself to sapient life. Several subsidiary worlds were devoted to cultures and ecosystems of simpler creatures, speculated to have been designed to be used in terraforming efforts. To ensure that the small biospheres would not be damaged by accidents or unexpected internal imbalances, they were put under the watch of a special body of advanced custodians, known as Shepherds. Since then, decades passed, and still the dutiful machines continued to look after their charges. When supplies began to run low, the custodians, who had been left with rather sweeping commands, began to raid passing ships and nearby habitats, drawing the attention of the Concord. It was not without difficulty that the Blurs eventually persuaded them to abandon this crude approach in favour of trade (strangely, the Shepherds are not opposed to selling what they cultivate, as long as the losses are easily replaceable). Their current status respective to the Concord is problematic, as there are doubts on whether they are fully sentient, and thus qualify as possible members at all. The Shepherds' bodies are almost flat, rectangular stripes of flexible metal, capable of movement by slithering and interfacing with various devices by contact with their controls.
Points of Interest:
2866E0-45147B (Twenty Eight)
A large, partially aquatic cylindrical habitat, Twenty Eight is where the Blurs originated from, and remains the main hub of their communities to date. Additionally, having a central position in Concord territory, it serves as a provisional common ground for the alliance's members, with sections allotted for the needs of delegations and makeshift embassies from the entire sparse network. Much of the world's internal surface is submerged in saline water to suit the Blurs' (and in some parts the Scalders') preferences, though, considering the versatility of the Concord species, the dry segments are only there for the sake of diversification. Twenty Eight is often cited as a symbol of unity and cooperation, though it is obvious it is less suited for the role than the as yet incomplete Omonoi and its position in it is provisory at best.
Iural
Though the Drifters have spread to five worlds to this day, Iural remains the core of their small dominion. The interior of this cylinder, somewhat smaller than Twenty Eight, has been fitted to simulate the helium-rich upper atmosphere of Jupiter, with a series of stabiliser mechanisms simulating reduced gravity and the violent winds that rage over the swirling surface of the giant. Here resides the leadership of the most cohesive society in the Concord, conferring in tightly bound clusters suspended at the core of this landless habitat's baffling geography, or rather lack thereof. Unlike their allies, few of whom have any real government at all, let alone a centralised one, the Drifters are heavily dependent on their administrative class; Iural is therefore the most heavily defended world in the entire Concord, regarded as the beating heart of Drifter society - an analogy more applicable to their politics than their anatomy.
Usnis
While most of the Transcendants have scattered across Concord space and continue to roam it without a stable abode, the industrial complex where they returned into the corporeal dimension is nonetheless an important location for them, and some other parties besides. Some of the formerly virtual entities still dwell in the factory's computers, preferring to remain in a comparatively more intact state over mobility. More importantly, the facilities of Usnis are the only ones in Concord space capable of producing the exceptionally efficient circuits a Transcendant needs to enter a synthetic body, and the assembly line is much too complex and expensive to replicate elsewhere. Thus, the machinery there is necessary to provide replacement forms; as well, the quality of its products makes them highly prized on the common market for other, less specific purposes.
Omonoi
It would seem that, in the new age, any great ideal worth its salt needs an impressive enough symbol to endure. The unity of the Concord is no exception, and its symbol is Omonoi - or it would be, were it not still, more fittingly that the Blurs would care to appreciate, in construction. This imposing toroid is without a doubt the largest of the Concord's artificial worlds, and appears to have once been a luxurious residence centre, though it has since been abandoned to its blind, tireless caretakers. For some years, it has been a pet project of the Blurs to transform it into a fitting core for the alliance, with ample diplomatic and trading grounds far beyond what the cramped conditions on Twenty Eight can provide. While the enterprise has so far encountered little real opposition, the greatest obstacle to it is the sheer scale of the restructuring involved, as well as the difficulties of designing an environment where starkly diverging ambient conditions would be properly balanced. While work has officially started on the refitting, it remains unclear when it will be completed, or even if it might not after all prove beyond the Concord's capabilities.
Society:
The Sidereal Concord is a loose alliance of beings and communities based in a web of former experimental trial habitats and orbital industrial facilities. Its formation is comparatively recent, only reaching roughly half a century into the past. As a result, its members, most of whom were already insular on their own, are as yet far from fully integrated, and are still held together more by the mutual protection and trading agreements that first motivated its founding than any other factors. While the Blurs, and with them most Transcendants, continue to push for stronger and closer relations between the Concord's components, other fractions, such as the Drifter leaders and some Scalders (who, it is presumed, are largely under the former's influence, given their usual lack of political initiative), resist this to varyingly direct extents. The unification efforts are made yet more difficult by the fact that the Concord still has very little in the way of global policies or even a proper definition of a more than strictly geographic sort, which leaves many who could otherwise have been favourable to the undertaking puzzled as to what exactly they would be joining.
The alliance, such as it is, has its roots in the Blurs' exploration of habitats outside their own. As the shattering left many artificially grown creatures unattended before they were fully inducted into their purposes, it took centuries for many of them to develop socially and scientifically to the point where leaving their purpose-built environments became possible, and years more to learn to operate the machinery their creators had left behind, which was besides only partially intact and often in need of repairs more sophisticated than the custodians could administer. The Blurs, being an adaptable and inquisitive people, were the fastest in restoring the spacecraft they found docked on their world, and it was not long before they could navigate their way from module to module. The Transcendentals and Scalders were discovered soon afterwars, and persuaded to band together for greater safety and the sharing of knowledge and resources - an exchange that was, at the time, distinctly beneficial for all parties involved.
The early years were, however, not without complications. The Blurs might have been the fastest in the region when it came to crossing space, but they were not the first. The discovery of the Iural Cluster, the six habitats controlled by the Drifters, was a shock for both sides - the Blurs and their allies feared they might have found one of the forces they had joined for protection against, while the Drifters initially mistook the explorers for invaders. While armed conflict was narrowly averted despite some casualties during first contact, relations remained uneasy for some time, and some years had passed before the Cluster formally became part of the growing Concord. The timing was on that occasion almost providential, for it was around that time that the Drifters finally readied a punitive expedition against the unidentified ships that had begun attacking and plundering some of their convoys. Concord members followed the avenging fleet, and it was owing to their mediation that yet another potential war was averted - this time against the Shepherds, whose appearance has placed new problems before the nascent coalition. While even some of the Concord's detractors admit that it has great potential for growth and prosperity, the shaky accord is yet in its infancy, and thus still dangerously fragile.
The Concord seems to be balanced and very thought out, accepted since it's complete enough.
I like how different our approaches are. I made a surreal society while you did a more sci-fi one. Will be interesting to see how future potential players approach this.
Anyhow, it will be interesting how the Domain will deal with such peculiar society. Much harder to infiltrate for the humanoid formless, that much is certain. I would expect for the hallucinogenics to spread into the Domain though.
I did go for something that fully embraced the rebuilding theme. Eventually, the Concord might yet evolve into something different, but for the moment it is still very much in the consolidating phase.
Transcendentals could be a good guise for Shapeless infiltrators to take. Some of them are humanoid, though still clearly synthetic, and one acting strangely is nothing out of the norm. The downside is that they are not very influential, and as a cover might only be useful to gather information. Still, it's something that could be interesting to see in action.
Lord Zee
Cyclone
