Qazi
Qāżī Saʿīd Qumī
PREMISE
As the travelers in the maps of the new world acknowledge it—freely and without constraint, beyond the death throes of those old beasts and their infernal pits (Aranvar, Ragnarsdrápa, Ozymandio, Calivan, the Viluvinum Straits and the various city-states and claims scattered all over the seas of the Songsvann) dying south at the end of the world—Ashkhar is infinitely better in its uniformity, congruence and the simple congress of species and culture that dominates the better part of the continent as compared to the rest of the other worlds in the sphere of Gloria Nostra. This element is displayed in history and retrospective vision by the consonance of the wayfarers of the nomadic Parerga who initially colonized the shores and the rivers of the Paralipomena, their descendants and the descendants of others who made claim to the pieces of the lands and crafted their own history and the morning reveil that sounded out the new age of magick and the sciences, yet the histories were not without their blots: the crusades of the accursed warlock Ixio, the djinn-blooded marauder from the eastern extremes of the continent, the Urn peninsula, and who was subsequently defeated by the combined forces of the humans, the blemmyea and their similar brethren of the fell and the dwarves—the travelers of the map from since the beginning, as time knew—, and banished to his haunt to brood in the forever darkness of his own creation. And the products of his species and magick (which is, to this end and the present time, debatable): the non-men of the Urtuku tribes that scavenge and murder around the Bronze Wastes of the west in servitude of the tyrant Cmarsa-Ka; and in parallelism of the macrocosm, their brothers the Gazal goblins of the southern rainforests of Uqbar; and on the north the terrors of the ice plains of Glazură where edged needles and rain fall without end and where creatures born from the cracked earth (the trolls, the manticores, the wild drakes and the other curious combination of creatures, distorted to a point of dim recognition only) threaten the safety of the Midlands—the centre of the continent, of the cities and the people; and the Royal Dragon Court of the legendary city of Pndapetzim nearby where all the non-men races banished in fear of Ixio commune and live together amicably in spite of their differences, and this play, the players, orchestrate their intents and purposes, diving ever so deeper into the depths of the trenches, labyrinths and the shadows of the mysterious, the arcane and the bizarre—teeming with monsters, furies from beyond the mortal renown with steel chains at hand, fallen heroes, naive princes and the plotting viziers by their sides. . . then the puppeteers, war criminals, bands of villains, tyrants, despots and the ones who fancy themselves gods, declaring themselves so with the power close by their hands and whether it be through the simple will of leadership and cunning or the brute force of magic, with which they torture, oppress and murder, or which they use to bring their libertine excesses into life, with grand, damascus celebrations and showings of the magicks of the Aether. This magick is an anamorphosis, unclear and off the linear ways of the common sciences, an arcane chao, entropy, a currency of the lands as true as the will of swords or the glitter of coins unacquainted with the velvet grasp of a deceiver; that which flows through the aether of the dimension, the invisible realm, intangible yet brimming with energy, pulsating with potential; but which is a reality only to those touched by the aether, belonging to one of the true bloodlines or simply coming into the forces and the powers that be by pure luck.
The knots in the history of this world are countless in number: in the magick of the sorcerers and the implosion of primeval kingdoms and the people of those kingdoms, scattered and laid to ruins in some instances, either remembered or tossed away to a fate of obscurity, or even surviving in some occasions to raise new castles and newer towers still and raise their swords once again to the glories of some uncertain future, and which is now, these imperial times, the humans and their brethren see, that are present and that celebrate with their busts and their equestrian monuments and their bread and circuses and their grand bridges embossed with inscriptions and tales of heroism and villainy; those bridges among the columns and the colonnades and the castles and the wagons trundling along from the villages in the weathered fields and farmlands in the dotted distances and the busts and herms and bas-reliefs that detail the grand adventures of the predecessors, with the intention to keep and maintain the consistent peace, in the face of evil, who emerge from the winding roads and the figures and horrors on the tinted glasses in the monasteries of the Monadh—the paladins of Ashkhar, dedicating their entire lives in defense of the people and the aether, against the likes of renegade wizards. The elves of the Sathra forests near the Uqbar, and of the high palisades of Blemmyea, and the dwarves of the Vulcan mountains, and the humans from Spire and Lonio and Thelion of the posterity of the Parerga thalassocrats, and those all in support of the greater harmony continue to make their peace and have done with the aggression of the extremes of the lands.
That is, until, the heretofore unfettered monarch of Spire, the city of the Golden Throne—the beacon of the lands, a kingdom that stretches out and beyond the Palingenes borders of the northern ice barrens of Glazură, just beside Pndapetzim, overseeing the doom of Ixio's crusades and the tides of his wars, the rolling gates of judgements passed betwixt the lives of men back and forth, and perhaps even dipping their hands in such exploits, taking care only to profit, only to better themselves, and in the pursuit of such greed resolving the problem of the present miserable reality but securing a grisly climax in the future—, reaches the sickly years of his life, that senility creeping like parasitic vines upon a withering tree, which gives birth to the issue of ascension amongst the families and the other nobles of the courts and their many varying motivations and drives and, of course, their ambitions, all to their own of course. All their own, their strings tangling, intermingling, sometimes with enough force to cut the frail one of their due courses. And perhaps with enough resonance as to attract the attention of other forces of the primal worlds, that of the goblin lord of Uqbar and beyond, of Cmarsa and the Urtuk, the dragons of Pndapetzim, the hidden beasts of Glazură or the hosts of the black wizard who are condemned in their own hell and seek to regain their paradise and to relive their purposes.
Exeunt, Spire, Ashkhar, and let arrive the main players of this theatre of the absurd and the tragic: the 186th Kaurdas Compainie, or the Kardas Company, from the ancient ashes of the southern worlds of Ozymandio and the Onyx Kingdom of Calivan, from empires gone to dust, only kept in records indecipherable and carried by—and from keeper to keeper passed down—the legions of the companies in their own pursuits of their purposes: wars and great violence, entering conflicts for coin and the likes, into contracts for warmongers and kings and whatever passes for leadership these days. The Kaurdas Compainie are some machines of war, notorious for their combat prowess and their deathly history, especially being of note the decade-long war of the Gnosis in Aranvar where the Kaurdas Compainie fought for the tyrant Spzulcher and his warlock legion, of which stands out the djinn-blooded Polluter and one-eyed Cyx, against the goodness of the greater citizens—terrorized!—and the rebel forces of knight Vathek seeking to liberate the lands of the foul grasps of Spzulcher with methods as less renowned, or moral, as those employed by the Kaurdas Compainie but with none of the skill. The daggers of the Kardas swept through the wizards of Vathek's employ, and even against the rebellious Polluter whose mutiny would prove the near-death of Cyx at the hands of the Company and the fall of Spzulcher at the misbegotten triumph of Vathek and the loss of the Company's greater forces.
Compelled by events and the threat of Vathek looming and the loss of the contract and the death of perhaps far too many individuals, the Company takes flight through the Songsvann seas, arriving at Ashkhar, weary, looking for another purpose, unaware of the vengeance of a grievously injured but alive Polluter and the foolish Vathek and the quivering of events that are about to shake the whole of Ashkhar and the denizens of Ashkhar.
APPENDIX
Aether & Magick The jury of spirits and forms coming into the corporeal through leaks and words and movements, through the manipulation of those with an attunement to the powers that be or with great knowledge sufficient enough to allow them to pursue such forces without any inherent talent.The Archon Psalter The fire-breathing magick used by the dragons and the non-men of Pndapetzim. The Archon ways draw out the raw fire and conflict of the Aether that are present within their entities.
Illusion & Mimicry The unnamed art of shadows and mirrors passed down the 186th Kaurdas Compainie, currently held by the few wizards of the Company.
The Gnosis A chaos art, which allows one to put to effect the manipulation and deconstruction of materials; albeit requiring a clear head, a strong attunement to the Aether, and some skill in words that make the magic corporeal. While powerful, it has its limitations which depend on the sort of person using the magick.
The Monadh The magick learned by followers of the Apocryphon, which draws out the passion of the soul into an art of defense against the creature-foes and the hosts of the black wizards who prowl about their infernal businesses.
Urtuk Magia The fury of the Urtuku tribes that color the fleshes bold and lend great strength to the people of the tribes.
Blemmyeagzar (Liber Null) The elvish magick. Similar to the chaos art of the Gnosis, the Liber Null requires an empty head and some knowledge of the systems to use effectively, but whereas the Gnosis is about the deconstruction of materials, the Blemmyeagzar is about the reconstruction or construction of such elements.
Glazur The strange ice magicks of the non-men and men of Glazură, the antithesis to the Archon Psalter that embraces the aeyher's connection to the environs, in this instance the freezing world of Glazură.
Txul Black magic from the southern rainforests, of blood and flesh and the dead. Practiced by Gazal shamans.
Throne The alchemy and mineral manipulation principles of the court magicians of Spire.
Vulcano The secret alchemy techniques of the Dwarves, similar to the magick of Throne.
Fell Magic The manipulation of trees and other plant forms used almost exclusively by the Fell elves.
Seiðr (Saedhr) Spirit magick from the faraway lands of Ragnarsdrápa.
Lothophagi The siphon magick of the Lotus Eaters who consume (and subsequently use) aether through digestion of flesh.
Otheth Magia Of the secretive school of the nomad sorcerer Oteth and his disciples, of a now-derelict cult. It boosts ones facets of one's physiological's capabilities. Mentally speaking, however, it is a tiring magick.
The Midlands The central mass of land that comprises the majority of Ashkhar. It is perhaps made up by the conjugation of four different “estates” which all subsequently serve as mirror reflections of each other save in terms of the key differences existent in each section, their similarity being that they're all essentially thematic, and save in that there's two of these “estates” of note in the west. The centre of this mass of conjugations, this conference of birds, is known as the Midlands, which by the conflict of all the other sections assumes the neutral voice, the mediation, the bridge; this fact—though less a fact and more a wandering thought—is referenced in part by the many obstacles that surround its regions (that of the Midlands), barring the South and the shores which lead to the endless oceans and the Songsvann currents, of note being the Palingenes Walls of the North, the Vulcan Walls of the East, the Fell Walls of the South-West and the vaguely temporary union of canyons and crags that separate Vial proper from the Bronze Wastes (and which as a whole serve as a refreshing breath separate from the repetition of walls, though one might perhaps prefer a sort of watery resolution too, like the Paralipomena, the system of rivers and water bodies that run throughout the lands, in particular the city of Spire and its neighbours far or otherwise, and its relationship to which is religiously studied due in part to the many engineering involved in directing its courses to the common civilizations, in a series of permutations, each lending their own hand to the business and serving to categorize this mixed nucleus of this continent more symbolically than I ever could) created by the magician Ixio, whose name might resonate meaningfully in the context of the history of this world and parts of this world, but not right now and not to the foreign reader certainly.
Parerga Delta Owing its denomination to the Parerga Empire, the Delta is what seperate the Midlands from the Uqbar forests and is also the root of the Paralipomena rivers. It is essentially connected to Thrive and Thelion and is also policed by their forces.
Paralipomena The many rivers, connected at the root by the Parerga, interspersed throughout the Midlands and the rest of Ashkhar.
Spire The largest city of the land, consisting of a walled border around the rural provinces and further walls to hold the city and the urban areas—whether it is merely an enlargement of the common city-states of the lands or a kingdom proper is up to the discretion of the reader. Of note is the Golden throne: the core of the city—the center of the center of the center, the third one in this instance being attributed to the fact that Ashkhar, in the context of this story, is in all probability the center of this world—that holds the eponymous throne and the towers and turrets and castles that hold that throne and the permutations (of rank) and sequences of that throne, mimicking in turn the Paralipomena. Other appellations include but are not limited to: The King's Castle, The Beacon, The Tower, The Golden Tower, The Golden Castle, The King's Tower, and other variations that seemingly extend on and on based on the specific dialect and mindset of the one observing this specific subject.
The Palingenes Walls Also known as the Throat, the Palingen is the hilly border that separates the rest of the mainland from Pndapetzim and Glazură, controlled and manned by soldiers of Spire and the Monadh.
Pndapetzim Home to the Royal Dragon Court, host to a wide variety of non-men species who were exiled to extreme outskirts of the lands and into the world of the dragons. While all the races have different beliefs—much like a ragged suit composed of different sorts of cloth not even of a similar sort of thread—, they still manage to mingle together amicably enough.
Glazură The freezing extremes beyond Pndapetzim, beyond the Throat, that holds the untamed wilderness of Glazu and the vicious, monstrous denizens of that wilderness. There are few sentient species who reside here and all of them share the same distinct quality of violence. The snow-people who live in these lands are known for their aptitude in the ice magic of Glazur.
Uqbar The rainforests where the Gazal hordes reside. A dangerous place, given the relative darkness created by the canopies, and which perfectly suits the skins of its denizens.
Bxulu Beyond the Uqbar forests, the stone fortress of the Goblin King.
Loth The hidden location of the Lotus Eaters' den, purportedly located somewhere within Uqbar.
Enta An isolated mountain village near the southwest depths of Uqbar, mostly composed of the primitivist people of Oreth, Orii, or the Orus. They're owl-like non-men who prefer (note: quite intensely) not to use magic at all, having been affected by the vile magic around them, conditioning them to think of it as a bad influence.
Sathra The wooden forests of Sathra that carry the weight of the elvish Fell, their walls, the cities of Glass and Hall wherein resides the mercenaries and troopers and reinforcements who fight against the Gazal hordes.
Glass A city based on the Mirror Lake, a former sinkhole covered by arcane residue from some ancient war, supposedly. The mirror lake for having a surface similar to mirrors, reflecting the skies and the people on the clearer days and during nighttime.
Hall A city born from the garrisons of Spire and mercenaries contracted to fight the Gazal and their bivouacs and encampment.
The Fell Walls Just past the forests and valleys of the Fell of Sathra, pushed up against the hills and looking out over into the Uqbar depths. The wall guards against the creatures that come out every now and then to terrorize the rural populations and the people of Midland proper. Manned by the Fell, the Blemmyea and mercenaries of Hall from Spire, Thelion and Lonio.
Blemmyea The high towers of Blemmyea, somewhere near Spire and Thelion, next to the gullet of the Parerga, home to the other Elvish breed who were responsible for the creation of the Blemmyeagzar.
Apocalypse The city of the Monadh worshippers, its main function being to house the monasteries of the paladins of the Monadh. The city accepts men and non-men without prejudice. It is located on the eastern side of the continent near Semonia and Lonio and the Vulcan mountains, close to Spire and on the opposite direction of Blemmyea.
Thrive The largest port in Ashkhar, connected to the waters of the Parerga (in extension the Paralipomena) and the capricious proclivities of the seas and the Songsvann currents. The majority of the city's prosperity stems from its merchant guilds and its connection to the sea, thusly the other trading worlds, and the influence of the mercer Bartolomeo, and of course the personal wealth of Horatio and Thelion that drives the greater economy and production of Thrive, though these concentrated figures remain only in the anticipation that they might be able to disguise a more complete narrative and corrupt the perceptions of people, in the service of a few conspiracies one may assume, though even those can be briefly enumerated within a short while.
Thelion Thrive exists almost singularly due to two distinct testimonials of two timelines with the more present supporting the past, as would the past support the present: that being its initial creation at the hands of the Thalassocracy of Parerga (which lent themselves later on to the delta of the same name) and Cartes; and then later on the support of the patrons of Thelion, one of the greatest and most notable city-states in all of the Midlands, though small and meagre in comparison to the excess of Spire. The current prince is Horatio the Sixteenth, of a feeble age similar to the monarch of Spire, and with enough wrinkles and physical ailments as to rival the twists and tugs of the Paralipomena, and with a city of such sickness and elongated convolution to match.
Lonio The shadowed city—frequented by smugglers, pirates and their ilk—, connected to the shores by way of a sea cavern. On the opposite side of Thrive, near the Vulcan mountains and Semonia.
Vulcan The range of mountains that separate the mainland from the Urn, on the extremes of the east. Held by the Dwarves.
Aziruth A small pocket town in the Vulcan regions.
Semonia A small hub for mercenaries and freelancers around the Vulcan regions.
Urn The fortresses of the banished magician Ixio, on the other side of the Vulcan mountains.
The Bronze Wastes The barren wastes around the west, brought forth by the destruction of Ixio's scorching crusades, where the Urtuku live. On the other side of Vial.
Vial A well-proportioned kingdom, of great territories but thin in population, near in proximity to the Bronze Wastes, serving as a border of defense against the hostile Urtuku.
Yiral The tundra and steppes that recede from the deserts and the barrens and the canyons and those eroded dunes, some ways near the mountain ranges under the Palingenes Walls.
Locwencyn Forged after the a separatist war from Vial some generations ago, this dominion is home to a large number of Urtuk migrants who live in surprising—albeit tenuous–harmony with humans from the Yiral ethnicity.
Theha Of the Thehal Hordes, the steppe riders of the northeast nearer the mountains. They mostly sell their swords and their forces to the likes of the men of Vial and Yiral and the canyon people.
Saga The common language of the land, originating mostly from the human speech and the languages of the Parerga.
Magia The predecessor to Saga, more directly related to language of the Parerga. Mostly spoken by nobles of Spire or the people of Thelion.
Venificus The language of the elves of both the Blemmyea and the Fell (although they have differing, noticeable dialects).
Osthanes An archaic non-men language mostly spoken by denizens of Pndapetzim and the dragons.
Xu The odd language of the Gazal.
Sacris The tongue of the Monadh worshippers, primarily used for worship and theological purposes.
Azul The language of the dwarves.
Humans One of the most common races of the whole of Gloria Nostra. In the instance of Ashkhar, they come primarily from the hosts of the Parerga. Humans are relatively weak, compared to the other races at least, but they adapt to their surroundings with speed that is perhaps unmatched by any sort else.
Blemmyea Elf The aether-strong elves of the city of Blemmyea.
Fell Elf The forest elves of Sathra with fell magic on their fingertips.
Gazal Goblin The creatures of the Uqbar. They're incredibly strong and fast—perhaps one of the more stronger races, in terms of physicality, only less so than the Urtuku and the Dragons—, but they're also quite sentient and intelligent, and would've been perhaps more peaceful if not for the violent and vicious culture. They're dangerous Beasts with an occasional attunement to aether that they put to use with their Txul magic
Urtuk The hard-headed trolls and orcs of the Bronze Wastes, supposedly a product of vile magic, in servitude to the despot Cmarsa. They're hostile toward all the other races and have a culture of war, though some are intelligent or different enough to pursue other opportunities.
Dragons The highly intelligent dragons of Pndapetzim. They least resemble humans out of all the other races and are the origin and creators of the Archon Psalter.
Hypatios Black-skinned elves—almost the color of the Gazal, though their relatively humanoid physique gives away their true race—of the land of Ozymandio.
Dwarves The shorter brethren of humans who live in the mountains of Vulcan.
Basilisks A sentient sort of creature from Ragnarsdrápa.
Harpies Bird-men from the island of Walküre which they've made their own.
Orus Owl-men of the isolated region of Enta near the Uqbar.
Djinn Beings of congested aether that come in many forms: as pure djinns of the corporeal world, rare and incredibly powerful; as djinn-blooded, products of humans and djinn copulation, quite powerful but deformed in their own ways too; as ghouls or ifrits, dead or living beings corrupted by a concentrate of aether.
OTHER NOTES & QUOTES
“Let's see. . . (also, you can make multiple characters fo sho) there's the Urtuk (orc, basically), Gazal (goblin), dragons (from Pndapetzim), the Fell Elves (basically, wood elves), Fathri or Blemmyea elves (high elves, basically), humans (just humans, nothing much special), dwarves (yes, dwarves, cause I got tired at the crucial moment) and the newly-added Orus (owl-people). Also Hypatios, Satyrs, Monopods. Dragons are sometimes called Draconi or Daegons.” “There's a lot of options for you: you can be a member of the Kaurdas Compainie (you can be a member of it regardless of your race and previous allegiances), you can follow the Apocryphon of the Monadh (sort of like a paladin religion, though it's mostly followed by deviant non-men such as exiles from the Urtuk and maybe a few goblins of the Gazal tribe and all the others) which has its own sort of magic, you can come from the frozen lands of Glazură (a barbarian land where a unique sort of magic is practiced), from Pndapetzim (where the royal dragon court holds the reins over citizen non-men, with the Archon Psalter at their hands [fire magic, basically]), you can be a foreigner to Ashkhar and know other magicks like the evil Gnosis, you can be of the elvish kind of Blemmyea and Sathra and know the Blemmyeagzar, you can be a dwarfish kind from the Vulcan and know basically what humans know (nothing special, avert your eyes), you can be an exile from the hosts of vile armies of the renegade wizards (Ixio, Malthus, Balthasar), you can be a curious Gazal goblin or a shaman even practicing the Txul magic, and you can also come around from Spire (they practice alchemy and mineral manipulation in a sort of magick called Throne) and the many human cities that I have yet to detail and their own unique magicks.”
“Aether is basically the intangible energy that exists in another dimension that is more or less inaccessible to people of this world, yet sometimes the aether leaks into the corporeal world and touches certain people, or maybe the certain people tried to touch the aether through artifical means—either way, they now have a piece of the aether inside them and it may pass down from blood to blood too. When I say aether proficiency, I mean how strong one's attunement is to the aether, or how the intense the piece of aether is within them. Aether determines the capacity and limits of one's magickal skills. For instance, some major magickal categories might require higher aether proficiency. Magickal knowledge and Magick is simply the application of the aether within you into a tangible form within the external world. Magickal knowledge determines how well you can control the aether within you and project it in different, more advanced ways.”
“I think the main thing I would consider is the character's race first—there's a lot of races in this game and there's also this sort of racism present: there's humans and there's the non-men. While some of the more human-like non-men are more widely accepted such as the elvish kind from Sathra and Blemmyea and the dwarves of Vulcan, quite a lot of the other races such as the Urtuk (sort of like orcs) and the Satyrs and Monopods and Daegons (sort of dragon-like creatures) are not readily accepted.”
“A djinn is very different from the other races mostly because they come, or they supposedly originate, from the aether. They're corporeal spirits, sort of. They're basically congested aether that gained awareness and what you might call a living state. Ghouls are the dead who've been exposed to congested aether. Ifrits are living people who've been exposed to congested aether. Djinn-blooded are the product of a djinn—that has enough energy of the aether to form a physical body, perhaps resembling a human—copulating with a human. The thing is, djinns are rare. They take a lot of time to form and gain awareness and a corporeal state. Most “djinns” are really only djinn-blooded, ifrits or ghouls.”
OTHER FACTIONS AND LOCATIONS
Factions All the other factions from overseas, unrelated (or perhaps only tangentially related) to the world of Ashkhar.Spzulcher's Host The djinn-blooded warlocks of Spzulcher of Aranvar, amongst them being Cyx and Polluter. Aside from Polluter, all of them are reportedly dead.
Hagmen A notorious group of assassins known for their eccentric rituals and systems, from the lands of Calivan.
Vathek's Armies The soldiers of Vathek, the rebel, from the world of Aranvar.
The Seekers Of some renowned, named after the Seeker of Ahros, who can supposedly detect the aether signatures of wizards.
Calivan A faraway land. Supposedly the origins of the Kaurdas Compainie.
Ozymandio A faraway land. Supposedly the origins of the Kaurdas Compainie.
Onyx Kingdom One of the largest dominions in Calivan—currently diminished in terms of power.
House of Viluvinum The former Queen Radhamynth's kingdom, almost destroyed by sorcerers Tartarus and Gouge.
Falian A city-state in the middle of the sea, an island, considered a trading hub.
Ragnarsdrápa A faraway land. Home of the Saedhr magicks.
Walküre An isle towards the southeastern stretches of Ashkhar, off the shores. Once home to an ancient kingdom, now home to the harpy outcasts of Ashkhar.
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