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INAUGURAL FESTIVAL AND TOURNEY OF CHALDEES

FUN FOR THE ‘WHOLE FAMILY’ C. SAHAR

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The regnal banner of the Pharaohate of Mihyaar

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INDEX

i. Introduction …

ii. Activities …

iii. Navigating Chaldees & Date …

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I - INTRODUCTION

After some years reporting to the greater senate of Mihyaar in the distant peninsula of Ramasar, the Pharaoh of Mihyaar and Prince of Chaldees is prepared to truly inaugurate his ascent to Pharaohood with a village-wide series of merriment, merchantry, and… mettle? Be that in search of gold or glory, the Pharaoh, Ur-Sahar, offers to host all and sundry in a festival held in his very hamlet of Chaldees in the southern wastes. For grocers and day-traders, he extends the offer to accommodate them to vend their goods for the duration of the day at a minimal and easily negotiable fee. For prize-fighters and scuffle-seekers, he declares a tourney that shall occur on the day of the festival and which will recur weekly with varying prizes and methods of combat week-by-week. And, for the average day-tripper, he presents a variety of carnival activities and amusements—in particular, beating the hardened desert terrain until water appears for a handsome prize.

II - ACTIVITIES

MERCHANTS AND COMMERCE

Goods from all corners of Almaris and all walks of society will be hosted and touted in Chaldees, a particular hotbed of commercial activity. These will occur through vendors both sourced in the village and outside of it, providing a menagerie of wares and merchandise both to be temporarily accommodated and marketed in the festival. To set up shop in the village and its surrounding land for the day, reach the Pharaoh, Ur-Sahar. Applicants to host their merchantry in Chaldees for the festival will be exempt from tax for the following two weeks if they are able to actively sell and maintain the shop.

TOURNAMENT

Hear all ye’ tough and mighty! A test of fortitude and martial prowess shall be held on the day of the festival as the centre of the occasion—a tournament. This occasion will occur weekly following the day of the festival. The chosen style of combat will be armoured fist-fighting. But, if the number of applicants for the tournament exceeds eight, weapons may be employed if agreed upon by both parties. The winner of the tourney will receive the honourable title of the Champion of Chaldees, and the two runner-ups—that is, the second and third best—will be compensated individually. A five mina fee will be deducted from all applicants to participate.

Prizes will include:

For the champion of the tournament, the individual will be awarded the above title of the Champion of Chaldees, alongside one-hundred mina.

For the second-best or runner-up for the champion of the tournament, the individual will be awarded with fifty mina, and the temporary alchemical services of the Pharaoh (one adept item, two novice items).

For the third-best, the individual will be awarded with tax exemption for the subsequent two weeks. If they are not a resident of Chaldees, they will receive a home of their choice with one week of tax exemption.

GAMES AND AMUSEMENT

A menagerie of traditional carnival games will be employed for the participation of all visitors of the inaugural festival. This includes, but is not limited to; a test of archery and bow coordination, which will leave participants with the satisfaction of dunking the Pharaoh of Mihyaar in a vat of water sourced from the infamous Chaldees Pool of Waste; a test of luck and lumbar power, which will require one to apply their absolute brute muscle into drilling the earth with a sword until water appears, awarding the individual with the coveted title and responsibilities of Minister of Waterworks of Mihyaar—a title which allows sizeable sway; and many more.

III - NAVIGATING CHALDEES AND DATE

This festival will occur in the ninetieth year of the Second Age, during the First Seed. In order to navigate to Chaldees, take the northern road from the Southern Travel Hub, and take the road to the former Sultanate, and go directly ahead at the intersection. A map has been provided below.

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MERCHANT APPLICATION:

* Minecraft Username:

* RP Name:

* Company/Goods You Will Be Selling:

* Discord:

TOURNAMENT APPLICATION:

* Minecraft Username:

* RP Name:

* Place of Origin:

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In witness hereof, I set my seal,

HIS SUPREMACY, the Pharaoh of Mihyaar,

Ur-Sahar.

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SANCTA LEX MIHYAAR

THE LAWS OF CHALDEES

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The regnal banner of the Pharaohate of Mihyaar

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THE DECREE OF CHALDEES

FROM THE DESK OF THE PHARAOH OF MIHYAAR, PRINCE OF CHALDEES

Recorded on Chaldees stationary, Kadarsi straw paper:

ALL CHALDESHI ORDINANCES ARE PRESIDED UPON BY THE PHARAOH AND THE BETH ES-SULTAN, THAT IS, THE SENATE OF THE VILLAGE.

THE PHARAOH OF MIHYAAR IS RESERVED THE RIGHT TO ADD, ALTER, OR ESCHEW ANY LAWS, RIGHTS, AND PRIVILEGES, AS WELL AS PUNISHMENTS AND PENALTIES TO THE VIOLATION THEREOF AS SEEN FIT.

THE LAWS AND PRIVILEGES OF THE PHARAOHATE OF MIHYAAR ARE ENFORCED IN THE LANDS SURROUNDING AND ADJOINING THE VILLAGE OF CHALDEES.

LOCAL LAWS PERTAINING TO ONE’S CULTURAL OR RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION MAY BE PRACTICED AND CONDUCTED IN THE LANDS OF CHALDEES AND MIHYAAR PROVIDED EXPLICIT PERMISSION IS PROVIDED BY THE PHARAOH AND/OR VIZIER.

IT BEHOOVES ANY AND ALL CITIZENS AND DAYTRIPPERS TO ENACT THE POLICIES AND APPROPRIATE PUNISHMENTS TO VIOLATORS OF THE BELOW LAWS AND ORDINANCES.

CITIZENS AND DAYTRIPPERS MAY MOBILIZE ORGANIZED MILITIA IN THE EFFORT AGAINST VIOLATORS OF THE POLICIES OF CHALDEES AND MIHYAAR.

THE BELOW LAWS AND POLICIES ARE INVIOLABLE. PENALTIES CAN AND WILL BE ENACTED IN THE EVENT OF VIOLATION, AT THE HANDS OF BOTH CITIZENS AND CITY OFFICIALS.

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THE LAWS OF CHALDEES

ORDINANCE ONE: One cannot hop on one leg within the palace. This behavior is penalized with a dunk in the Chaldeshi Pool of Waste.

ORDINANCE TWO: Those with red and/or fair hair are to be fined if entering the city. This fee can be avoided if they agree to shave their head.

ORDINANCE THREE: All “Rhenyari” must pay a five mina fee for forcing citizens of Mihyaar to endure their presence (see: Gorhen’s Folly). This fee is yearly, whereon it will increase in five mina increments each year,  but can be avoided if said “Rhenyari” attends approved treatment.

ORDINANCE FOUR: Qualifiers for the top one-percent of Chaldees-Mihyaari are characterized by possession of more than ten goats.

ORDINANCE FIVE: None can have more than three golden sheep. The spare are to be gifted to the Pharaoh of Mihyaar until the adequate number is reached.

ORDINANCE SIX: All men over the age of sixteen are entitled to duel another man over presumed slights to honor or misgivings. This duel may be settled through gambles, games, or steel. The terms must be mutually agreed. In the event of a draw, the disputants will engage in a goat auction. Whoever is able to offer the most goats is the triumphant of the dispute. These goats will cede to the possession of the Pharaohate after the custom is conducted.

ORDINANCE SEVEN: Violation of any divine laws will be penalized through a public shaming, or a dunking in the Chaldeshi Pool of Waste.

ORDINANCE EIGHT: Inability to report a thievery quota (i.e., one individual fooled in some way, shape, or form per year) will be penalized by a public shaming.

ORDINANCE NINE: It is a criminal offense to commit manslaughter, or the unintentional slaughtering of another individual. All acts of violence must be intentional.

ORDINANCE TEN: It is a criminal offense to organize a coup or mobilize a rebellion against the Pharaoh of Mihyaar without the explicit consent of the Pharaoh of Mihyaar.

ORDINANCE ELEVEN: In order to be eligible for citizenship in Mihyaar, you must be a citizen of Mihyaar.

ORDINANCE TWELVE: Any joke given without at least one source of laughter is penalized by a dunk in the Pool of Waste.

ORDINANCE THIRTEEN: Reaching the age of maturity is characterized by dueling another individual (see, ordinance six) who is also on the cusp of maturity. Failure to fulfill this duel or otherwise lose will disallow said individual to reach the age of eighteen. They will be considered seventeen no matter their true age until said duel is fulfilled.

ORDINANCE FOURTEEN: Upon a man’s reaching the age of maturity (i.e., eighteen years old), every year gone unmarried or without a goat will be penalized by a yearly dip in the Chaldeshi Pool of Despair.

ORDINANCE FIFTEEN: Dwarven visitors will be required to consent to a beard-check on entry, to ensure no contraband is being smuggled into the village.

ORDINANCE SIXTEEN: No object or property on its own, in Chaldees, will be considered contraband or illegal.

*The lord Pharaoh reserves the right at any given time to alter or eschew the above ordinances, policies, and privileges without explicit notice. Failure to act in accordance with these changes on  account of pure ignorance is inexcusable and will be penalized as necessary.

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In witness hereof, I set my seal,

HER SUPREMACY, the Grand Vizier of Mihyaar,

Ur-Zainab.

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The following was penned by a particularly biased little lady.

Within the time-gnawed alleys of Chaldees, a dinky shop known as The Witch & The Writer witnessed the crumbling of a marriage-to-be. A blackened creature festooned with ugly scales and a putrid flamey maw was wholly refused in a proposal of love by the Great Witch of Chaldees. Lo! The dastardly thing should know its place. Perturbed by its vicious rejection, the scale-face went on a violent tirade of smokey slander. Were it not for the benevolence of the ruler of Chaldees, Sahar, and the voluminous Monkey-god under the influence of the Great Witch, the thing would have surely seen to the destruction of my little store! 

Now I state here, my desire to find and reprimand this great monster. I offer all those brave binders of baleful beasts three whole bottles of honey for its capture!

[!]
Attached below was some silly sketch.

— ✠ —

Tucked away in a secluded alley between massings of colourful sandstone buildings, you may chance upon a little shop known simply as The Witch & The Writer. The owners, whose names have been omitted, provide an eclectic array of services that include: Psychic readings, alchemy, books, and knowledge of the occult. 

Almarian Lonely Planet, Vol. XIV
Chaldees
Blue Ventures

Cul De Sahar I
Chaldees

 

Index

I. Overview

II. History

III. Symbology

IV. Rituals & Traditions

I. Overview

The Banu Sayatin are a Mihyaari order of warrior monks dedicated to following the scripture of the Mahdic Texts and maintaining the existence of the Mihyaari peoples. They are trained and regimented to such degrees that the standard Fidai may be an alchemist, an omen-reader, a preparer of illicit substances, an assassin, a spy, a turncoat, a wiseman, and a ritual-leader all within one man. Their lives are tested daily through their adherence to the rites and guidance of Gaspar Mahdi’s Raumism, with which they are inspired to compel men toward the great destinies revealed in revelation.

These roguish monks descend from the first Yultharan beast-hunters that heeded the call of Ur-Mihyaar and Gaspar Mahdi, following them along and into Rh’thor and beyond to Arcas to endure the hardships of war, loss, and then eventually righteous adaptation. The duties and skills of each warrior were passed down by the sons and daughters of their bloodline, lasting through time until this very day in which they set foot upon the accursed land of the Four Descendants.

Their nature and culture is alien and hermetic compared to that of the typical Descendants, where they approach all situations in life like a ritual that must be conducted according to the rules of their doctrine. Cycles and omens are seen by them in many things, perhaps all things, especially that which is supernaturally distinguished from the rest of the world. To the Banu Sayatin, all things that disturb the mundane nature of the world may be considered a threat in some way, shape or form, to the smallest or largest degree.

II. History

    Since before there was bread, the Mihyaari lived amongst the Yultharans, yet undistinguished from their ancestral monster-hunting brethren in ethnic or cultural grounds. Their lives were as theirs were, born of rigorous training and regimental hunting. It was not men that proved their foe, always had it been beasts, and such formed the framework for their martial culture. The Yultharan continent acted as home to a great many microclimates, with civilization burgeoning there in patches spanning from stretches of dune-enwreathed sands to jungles with wide-hanging canopies and long-spanning brush. Within one of these townships, a small village known as Mahdret-Shur, there lived a middle-aged shepherd by the name of Gaspar Mahdi. While his trade was humble and his disposition amicable, Mahdi did not reserve himself simply to guide the sheep’s flock. His shrewd mind instead sent him on intermittent sojourns to the temples of the Hantā Sōryo, a caste of monks who were known to have trained the best beast-hunters among the Yultharan ilk. Here, Gaspar learned not the art of beast-felling, but instead the precepts of asceticism and much of the orthodox doctrine of Xionism. His dutiful efforts granted him the attention of the religious potentate of Yulthar, the High Vicar. With time, Mahdi became the High Vicar’s second, and a trusted confidant – though in irregular fashion when compared to others in similar occupancy, he refused the wealth and pamper of the role. He instead opted to live an ascetic and detached lifestyle, ever tending to his herd as a shepherd of the lesser lands, both literally and proverbially. Nonetheless, he continued to pursue his religious quests through the form of many journeys, intent on remaining tied to his disciplinary roots.

During one of these aforementioned spirit-finding journeys, directed by the Hantā Sōryo, Gaspar Mahdi was sent through a desert portion of the continent, southeast of the temples of the Sōryo. He traveled through the great hillocks and ridges of sand for some weeks, his minuscule supply of food and water running thin expeditiously, until all that remained were morsels. The horizon bore no sign of oasis or civilization, only more of the same cresting mounds that populated the trek before. The sun beat like a pulsating drum, slowing the shepherd with each taken step. It was then that fate seemed crueler than already known, as a tempest of sand descended upon the desert proper, assaulting the traveler with its pelting embrace, and liberating him of his vision. It endured for many hours, but once cleared, revealed a single form of life to populate the path ahead. Such was a great and towering cypress tree, solitary amongst the great stretches of granule desert. Gaspar was astonished, and as his approach was made, its boughs and bracts suddenly engulfed in robust flame. 

[A depiction of Mahdi set before the manifestation of the Widukind]

In time, the great tree of cypress, veiled in fire comparable in brightness to that of the sun’s own gleam, revealed itself to be none other than the Widukind. He lamented those of His truths who had forsaken mortality and the bounds of their directives. He enlightened Mahdi as to the beings of Raum, the Shurad, the Ashurat, and the dualities and true enemies of their endeavors, the Nemuritori, colloquially referred to as Palebeasts; the beings who forsake the mundane and mortal to give into to their baser and viler nature’s desire for power and the undying. In this revelation came the inception of a new faith, Raumism. The Demiurge was foretold to have exiled himself from the world long ago, his essence distributed into the forms of the Aengudaemons and into the descendants. The Demiurge’s foremost essence, however, was transferred upon his leave into Raum, or God, and the two aspects from which he manifests, the Shurad and the Ashurat, which are fated to battle one another. Widukind informed Mahdi that he had been chosen as vanguard, and thus was tasked with spreading word of this great truth.

Invigorated in zealous conviction, Mahdi swiftly returned to the temples of the Hantā Sōryo, spreading word of his divine divulgence to all that would lend an ear. It was not long before the Xionists of Yulthar began to convert in considerable numbers to this neo-Xionist faith, many of its precepts more wholly aligning with the warrior-culture that existed among the Yultharan peoples at the time of its inception. Unhappy with this perceived heresy, however, were the High Vicar and his personal clergymen, who proved quick to deem all converts as infidels and ‘Mahdists’. Gaspar Mahdi, once a friend to the then High Vicar, famously brought his followers to stand before the great Temple of Kurzanawi, seeking reconciliation and the ability to live in union with the Vicar’s flock.

[Emē-gir]

𐤁‬𐤓‬𐤏‬𐤕‬𐤇‬𐤄‬𐤓‬𐤔‬ 𐤀‬𐤓‬𐤄‬ w𐤄‬,

𐤁‬𐤏‬𐤕‬ 𐤄‬𐤍‬𐤄‬𐤌‬‬𐤉‬𐤄‬𐤔‬,

𐤄‬𐤌‬𐤁‬𐤓‬𐤀‬𐤂‬𐤄‬𐤔‬ 𐤂‬𐤏‬𐤌‬𐤄‬.

[Interpreted]

Why break bones when brotherhood endures?

We are bound in union, our faiths alike,

Shall blood spill from naught more than fear?

Despite the eloquence of Mahdi’s plea, the High Vicar, so enveloped in his fury with his once-disciple, hired one amongst his flock to disguise himself in the garbs of a lesser vicar. In the middle of Mahdi’s great speech, the assassin plunged from the shade of the perimeter, dagger in hand, primed to pierce the heart of the divinely chosen. Death would have suffocated Mahdi then, if not for one amongst his flock sending forth his blade to halt the attacker. This was none other than Gaspar’s cousin, Sayat-Mumtaz ‘the Ferocious’, a revered monster-slayer among the Yultharans and one of the first of the converts to Raumism. Mumtaz’s small retinue managed to hold off the attack that ensued and bring Mahdi to safety, but from that day forth, any prospect for tolerance seemed intangible.

[The attempted assassination of Gaspar Mahdi, depicted in wood engraving]

Exile and escape seemed the only path to freedom for the ‘Mahdists’, though they lacked the wealth and direction from which to move forth. This was until a man named Mihyaar, a member of clan Ur, one of the most powerful amongst the Yultharan families, converted to Raumism and declared himself the protector of their ilk. He unified the peoples and worked alongside Sayat-Mumtaz to form a sect of warriors to act as the elite amongst the warriors serving Mahdi’s Xionist schismatics. This guild came to take up the name Banu Sayatin, meaning the Sons of the Sayatin, or followers of Sayat, referring to Sayat-Mumtaz, and the clan he would soon come to form. With a united front, they were able to escape the lands of Yulthar by sea, though fated to the embrace of violent tempests, and left stranded upon the lands of East-Meets-West, in the mist-enshrouded city of Rh’thor.

While fear of further prosecution marked their initial bout into the smogged city, the Yultharan exiles soon discovered a synchronism and friendship with the Rh’thoreans, the latter finding their schismatic faith interesting and similar enough to inspire a shared tolerance. This tolerance soon forged a friendship, as the Rh’thoreans taught the practice of ward-drawing through the form of markings upon the flesh and ground, a famous form of which allowing the Mihyaari entry into the city of mist without succumbing to the suffocating effects of its miasmic mists. In return, the Mihyaari offered their aptitude for beast-slaying to assist the Rh’thoreans in killing the monsters that threatened their conurbation. The Mihyaari soon founded themselves a township on the outskirts of Rh’thor, naming it Baal-Hazor, and thus endowing themselves, at least to the Rh’thoreans who granted them stay, the name of Baal’hai.

[An engraving upon a wall in Baal-Hazor, depicting the friendship between Rh’thor and the proto-Mihyaari]

The Banu Sayatin, in particular, were deeply respected by the Rh’thoreans for sharing similar values of hunting as themselves. No less effective in spurring friendship was the fact that their union between beast-slaying and zealotry was viewed as meritable and righteous by the Rh’thoreans. A time of peace followed, in which many of the early traditions of the Banu Sayatin came into creation and codified practice. Soon, however, tumult would take rise once more when the theologists of both the eternal city, as well as Baal-Hazor congregated to make a firm proclamation - that Gaspar Mahdi was the first recorded incarnate of the Shurad. This came after a series of intensive omen readings and visions seen often enough by the most trusted clergy, until little question remained to be discerned. While Raumism at the time remained in proto-form, the conflict between a Shurad and Ashurat was still understood, with one existing to oppose the other. Likewise did they understand that the Shurad wished to envision a heaven upon the earth in which man is freed of sin, a prospect that, at face value, seemed most appealing. This spurred a great fervor among the Raumists, as questions of the true nature of prophecy began to rise in search of greater understanding. Nonetheless, many flocked once more behind Mahdi, hoping he might fulfill the prophecy of the Shurad to form a more perfect world.

As time has made known in endless repetition however, no great movement can proceed without some opposition. A nameless hunter-warrior, having risen amongst the flock of both Rh’thor and Mihyaar alike, built forth a reputation as the most capable slayer of Palebeasts in the realm. He spoke publicly in opposition of the Shurad’s world, believing its outcome too simple and forward to come without a great cost incurred by man. Some began to flock beside him in agreement, enough to prove a threat to the movement in the eyes of Gaspar Mahdi. In doing so, this nameless warrior unintentionally assumed the mantle of the Ashurat in the eyes of the Shuradists, though still only partly as a result of the incomplete vision of Raumism at the time. Sayat-Mumtaz, his Banu Sayatin, and Ur-Mihyaar all took the side of Mahdi, immediately untrusting of this nameless Ashurat. The Banu Sayatin, now most skillful in their capacity for subterfuge, infiltrated the walls of the Eternal City, as well as many secretive circles within Baal-Hazor, systematically killing the many leaders of the opposition movement. This did not come without joint-resistance from the Ashurat, whose warriors on several occasions proved capable of defending against and defeating attacks from those sympathetic solely to Mahdi. 

A conclusive end to the conflict came, however, when one Hasmi-Ahmull, a Banu Sayatin, infiltrated the personal circle of the nameless warrior himself and assassinated him during a parade through the streets. Hasmi-Ashmull escaped only barely, and news soon spread throughout the lands. This brought finality to the chasmic war that seemed near to eruption amongst the Raumists. The followers of Shurad, galvanized by their foe’s death, took his carcass and casted it into the Consuming Sea, damning the nameless warrior to a foreverial death, his mantle of Ashurat never to be met. 

[A depiction of the assassination of the nameless Ashurat, worn through the centuries]

Following this brutal reaction to supposed dissent, along the trek from the outskirts of Rh’thor to the settlement of Baal-Hazor, Gaspar Mahdi, somewhat worn with age, witnessed another vision of the burning Cypress tree; the final of the two unveiled to him. So deeply vivified was he by what he saw and was told by the second and final revelation of the Widukind that upon arrival to Baal-Hazor, he demanded all the clergymen and Baal’hai of the realm gather together for his final great sermon. Upon directing dozens of scribes to enshrine his coming words in parchment and stone alike, the prophet began. The strength of the episode that ensued was so severe and overwhelming that, almost against his own will and control, Mahdi uttered his recitations of divine inspiration across the span of five sleepless days and nights, never once overcome by hunger or thirst. Whence dusk fell upon the fifth day, the last words were spoken, and upon his precipice between two cypress trees, Gaspar Mahdi collapsed - never to rise again, and resetting the cycle forth anew. His words over the span of those five days constituted the Mahdic texts, the central scripture of the faith of Raumism, by and large expanding the breadth of the religious beliefs to their fullest elucidation.

The final words of Gaspar Mahdi:

[Emē-gir]

𐤋‬‬𐤉‬g𐤇‬𐤕‬ 𐤏‬𐤅‬ 𐤕‬𐤓‬u𐤕‬𐤇‬ 𐤅‬‬𐤉‬𐤍‬𐤃‬ 𐤇‬𐤏‬𐤍‬𐤏‬𐤓‬

‬𐤉‬g𐤍‬𐤏‬𐤓‬𐤀‬𐤍‬𐤂‬𐤄‬ ‬𐤉‬𐤔‬ 𐤍‬𐤏‬w g𐤏‬𐤍‬𐤄‬

w𐤇‬𐤀‬𐤕‬ ‬𐤉‬𐤔‬ 𐤋‬𐤄‬𐤅‬𐤕‬ ‬𐤉‬𐤔‬ g𐤏‬𐤏‬𐤃‬

𐤕‬𐤇‬𐤄‬ 𐤂‬y𐤂‬𐤋‬𐤄‬ 𐤄‬𐤍‬𐤃‬u𐤓‬𐤄‬𐤔‬ 𐤅‬𐤏‬𐤓‬𐤄‬v𐤄‬𐤓‬

𐤅‬𐤏‬𐤓‬g‬𐤉‬v𐤄‬ u𐤔‬ 𐤍‬𐤏‬𐤕‬ 𐤏‬𐤍‬𐤋‬y 𐤔‬𐤄‬𐤄‬𐤊‬ 𐤕‬𐤏‬ 𐤁‬𐤄‬𐤕‬𐤕‬𐤄‬𐤓

[Interpreted]

Verily, in the light of truth, are these words made inviolable.

Gone are the days of ignorance, whence we were embraced by hatred,

For what now remains is solidarity and a righteous path.

Ever shall the cycle endure, and ever must we seek its abolition.

We may not find absolution for our misdoings, but we may live to amend them.

What came to be revealed in the Mahdic Texts was the true purpose of the Shurad and Ashurat, and their roles in the defeat of the vile Nemuritorii. This was revealed through flame, which was once more discerned as the manifestation of matter that united all sides of mankind and reflected their truest nature; for flame illuminates brightly, but also casts a long shadow. Where in the times of the nameless warrior, the Ashurat was believed to be the quintessential opposite of the Shurad, an incarnate of the vile nature of man, this belief proved far from any truth. While the prophesied conflict between the Shurad and Ashurat was true, it was never born of an intrinsic dichotomy of intentions, for the two share a common enemy. Instead, their opposition manifests through separate means for an end. The Shurad’s quest is to sacrifice the Ashurat and his followers in order to fulfill an esoteric ritual that will rid the world of all Palebeasts, or Nemuritori, and in doing so, jointly remove man of his sinful nature, thus preventing them from ever again seeking to pursue the path of immortality. In doing so, the Shurad would effectively create an ideal world upon the earth, a heaven, or Rafkisi. 

The Ashurat, however, who is incarnated into man only following the incarnation of a Shurad, seeks to stop the Shurad from manifesting his plan of a world in which man’s vile nature is cleansed from them. To the Ashurat and his followers, man’s vile nature is an intrinsic part of descendant-kind, and it is in their ability to overcome it that they are able to be discerned as righteous and of good character. If man’s vile nature is removed completely, believes the Ashurat, it would be not only a sacrilege of Raum, for man is made in His image, but likewise would deprive man of his ability to overcome the strife of the self, and thus overcome their baser nature. If the Ashurat is able to defeat the Shurad in their strife, the Ashurat would seek to fulfill their prophecy by destroying the gift of Immortality, cleansing it from the palebasts and, in turn, starting a great war between descendant-kind and the Nemuritori, known as Felteri. With no pre-ordained victor, the Ashurat’s destiny does not share the guarantee of salvation characterized by the Shurad’s path, but it would preserve the true nature of descendant-kind. In this division is the core separation of beliefs among Raumists, who believe that once a victor is discovered, be it Shurad or Ashurat, the Fifth Lord will reveal themself, and manifest the world associated with the prophecy of the respective victor. Such were the revelations of the Mahdic Texts.

Soon thereafter were the Mihyaari people enraptured once more by the bouts of ambition, particularly instigated by the aging and now decrepit Ur-Mihyaar. His proclivity for expansion and avarice compounded his aptitude for rhetoric, and soon he convinced his flock the time for movement was nigh. Their sails set forth once more, and Ur-Mihyaar, succumbed to ailment, died upon the journey to a far-flung continent known as Ramasar. There the people resided for a considerable time, and the Banu Sayatin established their first citadel within the southern city of the realm, Mihyaar. The fortress was given the name; Al-Zadur, meaning the castle of the faithful. There the mantle of Grandmaster passed forth from Sayat-Mumtaz, to his son, Sayat-Soroush. The reign of Soroush was one that supported the Rh’thorian lord of Ramasar, even if their stay within those lands would be fugacious. He developed many of their ranks and customs, and invented the rank of Death-Seeker, to whom those who betrayed the principles of the order could seek penitence prior to their death. 

[Banu Sayatin slaying themselves on the orders of Sayat–Soroush in a display of public hecatomb]

In time did the act of sacrifice become a thing of Sacrament, with the term Fidai being levied to describe the warriors of the Banu Sayatin for their willingness to surrender their lives in service of their creed and master. Furthermore, upon Ramasar, the Banu Sayatin assumed a role of religious authority, particularly through their Grandmaster, as a result of their ascetic dedication to faith and the intensity of their practice. Many in that time, and beyond, looked to the Grandmaster of the Banu Sayatin, along with his Triad, the three most trusted of his subordinates, to make sense of religious questions and determine the presence of prophecies and incarnations alike. 

[Emē-gir]

𐤔‬𐤀‬𐤂‬𐤓‬‬𐤉‬𐤅‬‬𐤉‬𐤂‬𐤄‬ ‬𐤉‬𐤔‬ 𐤕‬𐤓‬u𐤄‬

𐤃‬u𐤕‬y 𐤍‬𐤄‬v𐤄‬𐤓‬ 𐤁‬𐤄‬𐤅‬𐤏‬𐤓‬𐤄‬ u𐤍‬v𐤄‬‬𐤉‬𐤋‬𐤄‬𐤃‬

w𐤄‬ 𐤀‬𐤓‬𐤄‬ 𐤅‬𐤓‬𐤄‬𐤄

[Interpreted]

There is great nobility in sacrifice,

For it is to give all that one has

In service of that which exceeds them.

Many decades passed in this era of stability, though as was nature for the Mihyaari, a land not wholly their own was not a land all could abide to reside within. With the passage of Grandmastership shifting from Soroush to Sayat-Hameesh, a man known for his love of illicit substances and bloodlust in battle, the Banu Sayatin rode alongside the regnant lord, Ur-Belshezzar, into the Korvassan deserts of the Arcasian deserts of the south. Poverty soon entrapped the Mihyaari people, the only recorded time in which the Banu Sayatin stooped to levels of decadence, utilizing their intimidation and coordination to secure food and wealth to sustain themselves. Penitence for their deeds found them, however, in the form of the war-bands of the Seyami people. A war ensued, violent and tumultuous in nature, but the Banu Sayatin then bore their great proclivities in the slaying of beasts, not men, and the superior skills of the Seyami proved overpowering, soon to force the Banu Sayatin alongside the other Mihyaari into servitude. The decisive battle of this subjugation was the Clash at Karnasi Hill, in which the Grandmaster, Sayat-Hameesh, deeply inebriated prior to the battle, was slain by the Seyami people.

[An artistic rendition of the Clash at Karnasi Hill]

Rather than face genocide or pogrom, the pragmatic Mihyaari were swift to accept their tributization beneath Seyami rule. With this servility came a molding of cultures, the Banu Sayatin, now led largely by Hameesh’s son, Lakhmu, began to adopt many of the man-fighting practices of the Seyami, particularly taking up use of the Shamshir as a primary weapon as opposed to solely carrying blades shaped and designed for combat against monsters. Alongside this shift in utility, they were taught superior equestrian training and stratagems of war between descendants, many Mihyaari rising swiftly through the hierarchies of the Seyami. Although the sun-kissed natives of Korvasa had won the battle, the sheer quantity of Mihyaari made their intermixing inevitable, both in culture and in genealogy. Unions, whether wed or not, often proved the cause of offspring of mixed descent, and after only a matter of decades did the Seyami people slowly become one with the Baal’hai, causing an ethnogenesis of what would come to resemble the modern Mihyaari. Likewise did the Seyami, even before their absorption into the Mihyaari, swiftly convert to Raumism and its doctrinal beliefs, finding the faith far more complex and convincing then their own primitive and largely self-contradicting animistic faith.

What rose from this union was an entirely novel Banu Sayatin, one bearing a peoples of mixed origins and eclectic faculty for battle, as well as well-developed religious beliefs and a long history of ritualistic practice and belief. From Yultharan roots conjoining with roguish tactics that soon converged into contemporary offensive tactics and frontier battle efficiency. This prepared the Mihyaari for the coming of the Inferi upon the continent of Arcas, viewing their arrival as a renewal of the Great Cycle of Nemuritori and mankind. They were among the vanguard in the south that met with the beasts, but as time came to flee the continent, the Mihyaari were all too ready to embark upon the dirts of Almaris.

The Banu Sayatin’s initial bouts upon the new continent were slow, the warrior monks spending apt time scouting the affairs of the lands, familiarizing themselves with the nations and cultures of interest, and likewise supporting the newly installed Pharoah, Sahaar, the Diamond Vehicle, in the construction of the village of Chaldees. Here, the Grandmastership has since passed onto the young member of the Dynasty of Sayat named Ardashir, following the premature death of his father Bahram. Word has spread amongst the ranks of the Banu Sayatin and their associated clergymen of his rumored status as a Saoshyant, a warrior monk divinely inspired by Raum, and thus destined to fulfill his wishes upon the earth, and prepare it for the coming of a Shurad and Ashurat. The veritability of these claims have yet to be discerned, with the omen-readers certain to maintain diligent watch, but many eyes seem planted upon the Banu Sayatin and its leaders in recent times. 

III. Symbology

Mahdicari

The Mahdicari is the most prominent symbol of the Banu Sayatin, as it expresses the nature of Gaspar Mahdi the clearest. In his hand lies the Cycle Precept, or the “Chi-Rahm”, of which is clasped tightly to imply mastery over the cycles that burden man’s creatorial nature. There are wings extending from him to similarly establish his role as a divine messenger, like a bird perched upon the branches of the Widu to closely hear his secrets. The Mahdicari is often seen in the temples of the Mihyaari and upon their garb and vestments, and their tabards and shields welded into the metal makings of their crowns. Places where the Mahdicari is risen up in grand display are believed to be pure and safeguarded by his wisdom and excellence, which is why the symbol can be found plentifully where-ever the Mihyaar have been in the world, from Yulthar to Arcas to Rh’thor and now Almaris.

The Cypress Tree

The Cypress Tree appears all throughout the imagery of the Mahdic Texts as well as the history of the Banu Sayatin. As the form foremostly taken by the Widukind in his appearances in both revelations, its importance has not been resigned to that alone. It is likewise from the Cypress tree that the natural growing Haoma-Yasna is harvested and used for many rituals of the Banu Sayatin. For this omnipresence in both the cultural practices and the stone-laced lores of the order, its imagery has found domicile in many forms. Whether adorning heraldry, architecture, religious manuscripts or even clothing, it is a universal sign of divine goodwill and warmth. Often, too, is it depicted in conjunction with other imagery, such as the Great Crescent and the Cycle Precept.

The Great Crescent

The crescent, often stylized to have manlike features, is a personification of the moon that is usually depicted bearing an ugly or intentionally disturbing or at the very least uncanny expression. The moon is not revered as a divine celestial body, but rather a cradle of ill omen and wicked fate, for it is upon the moon that the lasting souls of dead men are drawn to be assigned unjust fates by the Aengul Aeriel, corrupting the nature of death itself. The moon draws upon the souls of the dead, and therefore, it is wicked, and it will always be wicked for as long as those souls are not subjected to the rightful laws of the earth. The great crescent, both with and without its unpleasant facial designs, can be seen printed on armaments or trinkets meant to both torment and ward away the undying, who are destined to be moonbound if banished with enough strength. It is also used to signify the presence of everything cursed to be trapped upon the moon for harboring the essence of the Palebeasts, painted upon places like necromancer covens or upturned graveyards to convey this.

The Cycle Precept

Often seen depicted on banners, sacred embroideries or subtly depicted in architecture, the Cycle Precept, or the “Chi-Rahm”, is a simplistic interpretation of the esoteric concept of cycles. It is a kind of primitive Xionistic chart, which draws upon the different interpretations of what they call the Old Ones, who are beings that descended upon the earth to become like mankind but only became extreme expressions of mortal nature. In clockwise order, they begin from the bottom-left, near the serpent’s head: 

I - Dresdrasil the Mother

The ouroboros begins with Dresdrasil, whose own depiction is akin to the cycle of a wheel. Dresdrasil simultaneously represents the mortal loss of ego and self in the creation of new generations and multitudes of people, but also a recognition of the source, for Dresdrasil was the mother of all sea-life. It is through one man and one woman that countless others are compelled forth into being, and though their names and memory may be forgotten or blurred by time, it is their progeny that retains their old image and history. Dresdrasil’s symbol, because of its duality, is found reversed or true to the Chi-Rahm form depending on whether its use is positive or negative. It can be found in noble family embroideries and banner designs to signify the importance of their family, or drawn backwards upon places or people thought to have detached themselves completely from their forgotten source.

II - The Fell-Blood God

The Fell-Blood is said to be something that lives within the hearts of a race of men inhabiting an unknown edge of the world, allegedly untouched by Iblaeic curses but still doomed to a wretched fate nonetheless. The Fell-Blood may have saved them from the touch of Iblees, but it did not recognize the Palebeast instinct still alive within men in time to save itself from its wickedness. The Fell-Blood symbol depicts blood falling from a crescent moon, where the ancient souls of men are trapped and one day await their return to the earth to become Nemuritori themselves. It suggests men are inherently bound to their own nature, unless appropriately and righteously acted upon, and no matter how much the lineages are twisted or gifted by supernatural elements, nothing will save them except themselves. Those such as criminals found to be half-born of two Descendant races are often marked with the Fell-Blood symbol, as well as painted in areas associated with Aengudaemons to express the inhabitant’s unacceptable alliance or worship of them and their blessings.

III - Spiraling Feldamfir

Feldamfir is the mad rage and hunger of men, a prime example of what they are destined to become through immortal living. His depiction is a spiral, for to be something that is reduced to such a state must have spiraled downward and out of control, driven by impulses that could not be resisted. Those who show signs of the the Palebeast’s nature among the Mihyaari are given a brand or a tattoo somewhere on the skin, not so much to condemn them but to express that they are of a spirit that must be reigned in or else be abandoned to feral madness and evil. This mark can also be found on beasts caught in the wild to be subjugated, or even on the bones of enemies stripped of their flesh and carved like a ward to forbid their return. 

IV - The First Sword Dagnir

Like the Old One of blood, Dagnir is a fell-God trapped within the mortal makings of a blade, and it is said all who come to hold the first sword will be compelled to betray their own quicker than destroy their enemy. Dagnir is indeed symbolic of the mortal tendency to betray or turn traitor, even to oneself, and is depicted as a sword trapped within its own, smaller circle. The mark of Dagnir can be found branded upon the exiled traitors of the Mihyaar, or roughly carved upon weapons that Al-Auguri deem cursed for being used in acts of betrayal and kinslaying,

V - Calamitous Zhdun

Zhdun is believed to be mindless or insane like the other Old Ones, and is depicted in this manner to express his strange shape. Men who have survived the downfall of their enterprise and civilizations are said to recall his presence as a great horrible storm of dark poison, hanging over their ruins like a volcanic cloud. It is not Zhdun who delivers the doom of civilizations, but rather it is the one who cements the doom itself, allowing for no reproach or return of their makings. Zhdun’s symbol is more often than not used to curse physical places and other people than to warn of something, akin to salting the fields of a conquered enemy, to forever doom their homeland.

VI - The Ouroboros

The ouroboros is man himself, locked in his cycle. It is the master force of the Chi-Rahm, the central mechanism to the entire symbol, which the symbolic depiction of the Xionist Old Ones rely upon for full understanding. The ouroboros not only affects man, but all things that come unto and aspire to be like men. Simplistic or isolated depictions of the ouroboros are often carved into stone or painted near places where danger or evil things dwell, as above all the ouroboros represents the Nemuritori, or the Palebeast.

VII - Inner-Widukind

Separated from the rest of his fallen kindred, Widukind stands at the center of the ouroboros - he is witness to how mankind consumes himself, but he is rooted there and cannot extend himself to destroy the cycle, only grow upon it. He represents mankind’s divine mental capacity, clarity and ability to reflect on the self in order to achieve awareness and influence over causality. Al-Auguri and omen-reading Fidai favor the symbol of Widukind, who is said to be the greatest reader of omens of all time. Trees themselves are among the greatest omens on account of Widukind’s history with the gloried prophet Gaspar Mahdi, who heard his voice from burning cypress trees.

Flame Fundament

The Flame Fundament is a representation of the divine nature of fire, symbolized by the burning torch. It is both light and dark that stems from Raum, the flame, elevated by wings that carry it between the firmament and the earth. This suggests the nature of Raum, in that there are two halves to men that are sacred and shall decide the fate of their future. The fundament is more often depicted in glory than other symbols, alongside the Mahdicari, to emphasize the significance of fire and Raum to the entire movement of the Mihyaari dynasties and the Banu Sayatin.

Brand of the Traitor

The Brand of the Traitor is a mark of punishment burned into the flesh of allies and Sayatin who turncoat against the Mihyaari and do them harm, and draws inspiration from the Chi-Rahm symbol of the sword-demon Dagnir that inspires the desire to betray and kinslay within the hearts of all men who touch it. Furthermore is the blade seen piercing through the form of a dark moon, crested in representation of the Great Crescent, in significance of the blade being used to kill the entity which has the capacity to damn the Palebeasts and their ilk; thus inferring the bearer of the mark to have acted in their benefit in some way. Those who are branded as traitors are implanted with the brand upon the back of the neck or the palm, and are sent out into the world to live in constant fear of facing a Banu Sayatin, for if one is ever to find them, they will be hunted and killed on sight. 

IV. Rituals & Traditions

Embrace of the “Ashura-Hasmi”

Among the Banu Sayatin, death remains central to their perception of the self and its importance relative to the world. Not only in religious doctrine, but likewise in practice do they proffer upon death and the act of killing a considerable reverence and near sacrament. It is however, for this reason, that the act must be accompanied by a counter-balance; some manner of action that shall equilibrate the violence of the individual so as to ensure their role in the physical world is one that purveys balance and homeostasis. The most popular and widely accepted of these practices is referred to as the Embrace of Ashura-Hasmi. The ritual was formed when, during the era of Sayat-Mumtaz, a Mihyaari peasant youth inducted into the Banu Sayatin named Hasmi-Ahmull, assassinated the believed Ashurat as his followers rose in power. After learning of the truth of Raum from the illumination of the Mahdic texts however, he fell into great despair and contrition, believing he had acted in a manner that rejected the cycle of Raumism and the world’s ultimate truth. For the fact that his act of bloodshed was so great, he laid himself upon the great precipice of Malni-Itfin, the tomb for the unnamed warrior believed to have been the first Ashurat, and self-flagellated with lead-weighted thongs of ox-tail. 

[An artistic depiction of the flagellation of Hasmi-Ashmull]

He struck himself for a full day from noon until dusk before collapsing from the blood loss and abject pain. For this act he was revered as a righteous penitent, and the then Grandmaster Sayat-Mumtaz, moved by the display, wrote the ritual into credence and made it the standard act following the spilling of blood. For all those who shed blood in their service to the Banu Sayatin, so too would they pay back that blood with their own through the disciplinary practice of self-flagellation. Likewise was it ordained that in proportion to the number killed and their relative importance, the degree of flogging would increase, either in length or severity. Although it is righteous to be enacted following a killing, so too have dedicated Fidai practiced the Embrace of Ashura Hasmi simply as a practice of discipline and fortuity, seeking its indurative effects for purposes beyond those of metaphysical importance. 

The Induction of the “Kaaran”

In the days before there was bread, it was through the growth and preservation of lineages and clans in service to the Banu Sayatin that allowed the maintenance of their standing force. Each man, born and raised in their way and in the Mihyaari fashion, was compelled into service by their own will for it was the obligation of their fathers and their fathers before them. In the Descendant lands, where there are dangers teeming and emerging from all four corners of the realm, reliance on their traditionally small but skilled band of warrior-monks was recognized as a possible flaw that threatened the safety of the Sayatin and the Pharaorate.

So they began the tradition of binding the “Kaaran”, or “the owing”, to service as their first attempt to diversify recruitment methods and bolster their numbers. Those who came to mingle and join among the Mihyaari in their long journey, primarily comprised of the different races and clans of human-men, more often than not chose to defy the foreign ways of Ur-Mihyaar’s flock, and when they were caught in acts of sabotage, petty theft or even vocal defiance to authority, they were deemed Kaaran, a mantle little better than being named a criminal, and became apart of a caste that may only redeem themselves through death, exile, or service - the latter of which was mandatory or forced against their will, after the severity of their crimes was weighed.

[An inductee recently named Kaaran by their Sayatin recruiter, preparing for their spirit-journey across the dunes beyond Chaldees]

As they have come to establish the Pharaoate of Chaldees, these methods of forced conscription, which were always justified as “payback” from the owing, loosened, as the closer the Mihyaari came to settling near the nomadic Descendants, the more they realized they would be placed in hot water for being perceived as masters of a slave army. The nature and meaning of the name Kaaran changed in this; while they would persist in the conscription of actual criminals, the way one becomes Kaaran itself mutated into a much more tame and opportunistic process that still borrows the subject that the individual “owes” the Sayatin, and therefore must serve.

When a worthy Descendant reveals their interest in joining the Banu Sayatin, they are pursued by one of three hierarchical figures: the Triad, the Deathseekers, or the Grandmaster himself, and after careful deliberation between the two parties, the potential inductee is asked to “shed the blood or marrow” of the Sayatin who sought them, to cement that the Descendant has technically dealt a blow to a Sayatin that must be repaid. Thereon, the inductee becomes Kaaran, and they are given a task befitting of those of Descendant blood: they must breathe the smoke of the Haoma-Yasna, and then roam the desert for an entire day and night until they are found by the one who recruited them in the first place. In the midst of their spirit-journey, where the mind twists and bends and reveals all too much at once, they must fight the one that made them Kaaran for as long as possible before a draw is called. If they falter and fall to the sands, bloody and dying, they are not worth their induction into the Sayatin - and so repay their status in death. But if they stand their ground like a true struggler, then they will repay their debt in life.

They are given sparse supplies - filling, hard bread and water to keep them awake and sustained, and a sole camel who will help keep their feet from being scorched by the sun-touched sands. They must endure the intensity of the Haoma-Yasna and all of its self-revealing effects before they find themselves before their debtor, who is found only when the debtor witnesses them endure day and night of their odyssey.

Omen Reading & Divination

Inherently, the Mihyaari and their Banu Sayatin are an omen-reading people, tasked with the discernment and determinations of important prophecies and the meaning of strange phenomena. Those versed in the histories of the world, particularly those of ancient bloodlines among the Mihyaari, naturally develop a state of mind attuned to the symbology and patterns of the world. They regard ancient legends and contemporary events on the same level, for the Banu Sayatin especially, time is a spiraling cycle, and the past and present are compared jointly with that reflection in mind.

[Banu Sayatin omen-readers analyzing the stars to predict the length of the harvest]

There are Fidai among the Sayatin that are particularly versed in this state of mind, so much as to turn it into a nearly scientific and elaborate practice. They are known traditionally as Al-Auguri, or “those who witness waves”, and they conduct procedures meant to decipher both earthly and firmanental elements to gain the meanings of certain omens. What exactly an omen is to Al-Auguri is diverse and scaling; they may recognize horrible doom in the subtle glint of the eyes of other men, or determine the makings of a bountiful yield of grain from not more than the movement of a crow at dusk. Though despite the perceived randomness of such readings, the act is by no means arbitrary, and circumstances as those aforementioned are quite rare. Divination has, through the centuries, become a meticulous and mastered practice, with the interpretations of that which is seen often cross-referenced between scholars, clergy and the Al-Auguri alike to make true determinations of their implications.

One of the oldest of the omen-reading forms is ornithomancy, or the interpretations of the movements of birds. The exact details that encompass the readings are secretive in nature, but it is known that the location, type of birds, and manner of movement are all paramount in deciphering the connotations of such a sight. Another of such forms of divination, discovered a time more recently by the alchemist Abu-Waqar, brother of Grandmaster Sayat-Soroush, was haruspicy. On days of religious importance or rituals of sacrifice, the animals levied for such sacrifice are not only killed, but likewise gutted for the purpose of omen-reading. In days long past, even Banu Sayatin sacrificed to Raum as a result of their betrayals or actions had their organs dissected and read for the purposes of discovering some connotation or underlying premonition. The livers of poultry, in particular, have been examined in their coloration, shape, texture, and weight to determine the comings of war as well as in judging the character of one with whom the Mihyaari may have made dealings. A famous such case was when, following first contact with the Seyami, the liver of a sacrificial lamb was found to be so black in hue, its coloration was said to resemble the void itself.

Bestowal of Yurmal

Among the Banu Sayatin are those whose feats and actions speak beyond verbal praise and recognition alone. Few among the Banu Sayatin, whose vigor in battle or ritualistic aptitude is great enough to merit it, are granted the great honor of a ‘Yurmal’; or epithet. The Grandmaster alone is deemed the declarer of such epithets among the Fidai, unless the epithet is levied upon the Grandmaster himself, in which the three members of the Triad are directed to decide unanimously amongst themselves. Some famous examples are Sayat-Mumtaz ‘the Ferocious’, granted to him for his capacity in battle, or Hasmi-Ashmull ‘the Penitent’, who earned his moniker through his feverous display of zealous repentance. 

The Struggle of the Haoma-Yasna

The Struggle, as the ritual is known, is a trial that all Sayatin postulants must complete before they are recognized as true Fidai of the clans. They are tested by the effects of the sacred reagent, which is collected from the rare cypress species Haoma-Yasna that has been cultivated among the Mihyaari ever since their departure from Rh’thor. It is said the branches of the Haoma-Yasna, once burned, lend visions to the subject that force them to face their worst fears, whether old or new, as intense projections and hallucinations of the mind. They say Widukind keeps unique wisdom or advice for every man born in the world, and that these wisdoms are revealed when the branches are sheared in collection and then burned in ritual.

[The deliverance of Haoma-Yasna branches to one of the Triad]

The experiences witnessed in the sacred struggle must be preserved and understood by the new Fidai at all costs, as they are forbidden from partaking of the plant again in order to further discern their own mind. To forget or discard the understanding of the self gained through Widukind’s branches means the Fidai will be untempered and poor in practice, and that they will not read omens but create them. But for the Fidai to inhale the Haoma-Yasna’s smoke a second or even a third time means to invite certain doom upon their own sanity.

It is said reality begins to twist and curl at the edges of one’s vision, should they even survive a second experience with the Haoma-Yasna. All elements of the mind become detached from reality in the slightest way from just two times alone. But for a third and final time, from which there is no return, things are revealed to the person of themselves that they are better left never knowing at all, and the world unfolds around them in such horrible bareness that the will to live is quick to leave them. Fidai who are not compelled to the Fael-Alnadam for their own sake are corrupted and twisted by a new and inhuman madness which overtakes their mind, becoming mad demons inhabiting the forms of the Banu Sayatin’s old friends. These forsaken Fidai are called Al-Ashrar, who exhale the smoke of the sacred branches with each breath and cause the trees to pause in their sway in their wake.

[The first of those known as Al-Ashrar, Bahiman the Grinning, who is said to stalk the Haoma-Yasna burning sites for a week of moonless nights following a ritual]

Fael-Alnadam
&

The Mayt-Hai

Fidai who commit to shameful and detrimental actions against the Banu Sayatin, such as the unlawful murder of a fellow initiate or threatening the general wellbeing of the clan, as well as even disrupting the processes of witnessed prophetical events, are compelled or demanded by the Grandmaster and the Triad to commit Fael-Alnadam, or the Act of Penitence, in which the dishonored Fidai commits ritual suicide to preserve the balance of his corrupted soul.

[The ritual suicide of Hasmi-Ashmull’s comrade, the beasthunting spearmaster Zaydun al-Asra, who hamstrung the nameless Ashurat to subject him to a cruel and undignified defeat]

If they fail to gain the courage to submit to this personal destruction, the dishonored Fidai are cast out like a leper and intentionally placed at a disadvantage in the world; given a circular or ring-shaped brand upon the palm of their right hand. This mark forever acts as proof of their shame to the Banu Sayatin, who are driven to take every opportunity to ridicule, deride and harm them for the crime they were judged guilty for.

The Mayt-Hai, an ancient name which roughly translates to the seekers of death, are inhuman or accursed mortals who may forge a close alliance with the Sayatin and, in their cooperation and service to the cause, may undergo their own redemption to spare themselves from an eternal Act of Penitence. All accursed men who are not Mayt-Hai are subjects to the Fael-Alnadam, destined to be lashed and punished forever until the Banu Sayatin has made them living dust.

The seekers of death are true to their name, as in exchange for their alliance with the Banu Sayatin and the commitment to the divine cause, they repay for their ugly nature and unnatural existence by being given true death once their duty comes to a close. This is less of a servitude to the Banu Sayatin and more of an exchange or a sacred promise - for as long as the Deathseekers are assured their foreverial rest is at hand, they will be compelled to stay close friends to the Fidai and their masters. It is ultimately left to the individual Deathseekers to pursue the tools or secrets needed to destroy themselves completely, so such means may be delivered to the Grandmaster for the day of their proper passing.

In the event of a supernatural threat making itself known to the world, the Mayt-Hai are the first ones to pursue the wake of it in investigation without risk. Using deathlessness to their advantage, the Mayt-Hai brutally and mercilessly hunt down what does not belong in the world based on the Sayatin desires for a mundane existence for man.

The Exorcism of the Omen-Crucible

It is among the chief duties of the Deathseekers, for them to maintain and perpetuate the purpose of an alchemical artifact known as the “Omen-Crucible”, a massive cauldron that stands nearly as tall as a man, holding a certain effect in which things that bear a supernatural power may be melted down and together, irregardless of their nature, to form a strange and shifting cosmic soup. The things comprising this anomaly are rendered down from magical weapons and armor, both greater or lesser, magic trinkets, supernatural entity, beast or individual’s remains, and anything else supernaturally separated from mundanity. It forms a liquid-seeming mass of shifting essences and nonsensical designs and conflicting and volatile reactions, of which intensify the longer the crucible remains untended. The longer there is a union of such things burning together at the cauldron’s capacity, ill things may occur, as the combination results in an unstable and crude connection to the Interstice, residing within the firelit crucible’s primordial soup.

[The Omen-Crucible, kept in the lowest levels of the Sayatin citadel]

To both the Banu Sayatin and their Deathseeker allies, the creatorial madness that writhes within the Omen-Crucible is no kind of power they are capable of harnessing; as the act of spilling this liquid calamity outside the pot is expected to incur some kind of destructive and heinous reaction from just a drop, let alone a spill. There is only one purpose for the Omen-Crucible that the Deathseekers have identified.

Disposal. For the sake of worldly mundanity, all magical things and items cast into the crucible are destroyed once and for all in their breakdown with many other items. The chaotic molten essences left behind act as a rough passage into the layers of the Interstice, from which things may only emerge, not enter. So the Deathseekers must be joined in a ritual to draw a fell resident of the Interstice out from the cauldron, to be defeated and driven back through the passage by force as to trick the portal into becoming inverse. In doing so, the primordial soup consumes itself, and is banished beyond the realm of men.

The Departure of “Xindral-Moot”

Death is common-place amongst the Banu Sayatin. Whether through battle, sacrifice, or sickness, the Banu Sayatin ensure that their faith is upheld in ritual, even once their souls have fled from their body. Raumism declares that a body, once freed of its soul, is of no true value or importance. It is not more than a shell, consigned righteously to be returned to nature from whence it came. It is believed by the Banu Sayatin that before judgment is rendered by the chosen of Raum to dictate a soul’s path of reincarnation, it is dutiful to enact one final deed of goodness and charity by allowing the body to be made sustenance for some manner of creature, most often the buzzard or vulture of the desert. In doing so, not only does the body reunite with the nature that created it, but jointly enacts a moral good that might inspire Raum to look more fondly upon them as they face God’s acumen.

[A manuscript’s illustration of a Dokhma, upon which bodies are left for excarnation]

Excarnation is achieved through the construction of a dokhma, a cylindrical tower upon which bodies, after death, are delivered and layered beneath the sun’s illumination so as to be reached by carrion, vultures, and other scavenging birds. There atop the tower, where the bodies are largely separated from the elements and unable to be contaminated, is it deemed proper for the death of the vesel to come. Once all that remains of the bodies are bone, a death-seeker or grave tender ascends the dokhma and collects their skeletal remains, either for burial or burning, depending on the individual at hand.

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A DREAM CONTRIVED OF SAND

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  A depiction of the Grand Vizier of the Miyhaar, Ur-Zainab

A CURSE

A tranquil woman. Though, hardly did she rest- never did she dream. Ever since her youth within the warm lands of Ramasar, she felt comfort with this fate of hers. Cursed, the village children called her. 

Years pass, and she no longer found herself running through the busy streets of Miyhaar, but nestled within thin silk sheets in her personal quarters of Chaldees. Her nights usually consisted of drafting missives and letters, or peering out of her window- out towards the ruins of the Qalashi-folk. The young woman dazed, daydreaming of how the ruined village of yore once bustled with life. Watching the stagnant homes, withered by sand and storm, she would almost hear the Qalashi sing; she would almost see the Qalashi dance. 

“A mirage is but a slit between then, and now.

   Or, perhaps it is a fool’s folly to think so.”

— CHRONICLE OF BAAL-HAZOR,

1732.

Nevertheless, this one day, she felt incredibly weary. So, she appeased her spiraling mind and sought relax her form within her cushioned bed. The waves of red fabrics draped over her bed’s canopy, swaying as the warm air pushed in through her opened window.

“A storm. . . a war.” 

The thoughts within Zainab’s mind blared, bouncing off one wall of her skull to the other- wailing. Balls of sweat formed upon the nook of her brow, dripping down her warm features as she rolled within her silk sheets. She could not shake those visions she saw just hours before. For the woman did not dream, how could such an odd figure bestow something she had lost a decade before. 

Something so lucid, something so real.

Sooner than naught, the Grand Vizier fell beneath the veil of rest. She’d expect nothing of it, only for her to rise as soon as she had fallen.

When the Grand Vizier rested her head upon her pillow in the eve, she dreamed. Fabricated by the hands of dreamweavers and manipulators. Far from her knowledge. It contained no image. No smells. No physical stimuli. Simply the resounding collection of voices; male, female, undisclosed; all repeating the same phrase in common, elven, dwarven, blah, flexio, moon-speech, some utter gibberish to the ears of the matriarch. Any tongue she might decipher was spoken in the continuous word:

CURSED

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CHALDEES

THE VILLAGE OF THE MIHYAARI

______________________________________________

The regnal banner of the Pharaohate of Mihyaar

Bannermen of the Pharaohate in Chaldees float banners and banderoles of the Pharaoh throughout the lands stretching from the East to the West. The litters buzz with native Mihyaari balladry and singsong, droning with the indecipherable soundings of the Eme-gir tongue. They pass leaflets from hand to hand, pages fringed in gold frippery.

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INDEX

i. History of Chaldees …

ii. Mission …

iii. Reaching Chaldees …

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THE PHARAOHATE OF MIHYAAR

CHALDEES

Founded in MDCCCLXXXII, Year of the Cat

I - HISTORY OF CHALDEES

Chaldees was chartered by seaward Mihyaari in the discovery of Descendant lands from the distant realms of Ramasar and Rh’thor. In the decades preceding the establishment of the city, the people saw strife in the Descendant realms, first by the savagery and warmongering of the Seyami of Arcas, and once more at the hand of modern Almarican bureaucracies in the acquisition of land. Often in the people’s history have their cities and strongholds accommodated the outlandish, unsavoury likes of thieves and loan sharks on one hand, and the more cerebral type, including diviners, seers, and augurs, on account of a deep-embedded superstitious culture. The village of Chaldees is the culmination of their engineering expertise. It was, in its formative days, proposed to charter under the Sultanate of Kadarsi. Plighted by stagnancy, however, the crafty stock took matters into their own hands. For fifteen years, the glorious engineers of Ramasar toiled to fulfil the blueprints and machinations of the Pharaoh. And, in the year MDCCCLXXXIII, it was opened to the public.

Among the groups and bands which the portly Chaldees accommodates are the Banu Sayatin, a motley Mihyaari order of warrior monks dedicated to following the lores of the Mahdic Texts and maintaining the existence of the Mihyaari people in diligent service to Raum. And its subsidiary, the El-Auguri, a chapter of seers, spies, and scholars who toil for their agenda of realising and securing any omens of the messianic Shurad and his adversary, the Ashurat. Other pirates and brigands make their dwelling in Chaldees, but scant carry out their deeds on outsiders, preferring to keep their dirty-work to the village itself and its inhabitants. 

II - MISSION

The village of Chaldees not only intends to provide accommodation for the splintered Mihyaari which discovered Descendant lands, but also to open its dwelling to any guilds, groups, and companies which seek sanctioning to carry out their missions in our blessed village. Citizens and visitors alike are entitled to hold land, be they man, woman, or child, and fulfil their business, be that mercantile or personal. It behooves all who visit Mihyaar to follow the laws and ordinances of the Beth es-Sultan. These laws are inviolable, and must be deputised by settlers of the village.

III - ACTIVITIES

Offering both small-town comforts and expensive pleasures, Chaldees is a leisurely retreat for daytrippers—provided their pockets go unpicked—but firmly habituates its permanent residents. Often do merchants and ware-dealers peddle spices and goods in Chaldees unfound elsewhere, just as renowned for their exclusivity as they are for their quality. The trading season culminates especially in the harvest months, namely the last two months of the business year. Lazy in the morning, this deep-rooted commercial culture comes alive at night, much on par with the rest of the city.

But, Chaldees is similarly a popular destination for the thrill-seeking daytripper. The village is a hotbed of gambling activities, and frequently does the Pharaoh himself challenge newcomers to games of chance and venture. Come and observe Mihyaari customs of superstition and luck!

In the inclement temperature conditions of the southern Kadarsi wastes make travel to the pleasure-dome of Chaldees tenuous. Fret not, however. Take a dip in the Chaldeshi Pool of Waste at your convenience to cool off at the day’s end! A stew of manure, bluegrass, chum, and other waste products, this hallmark of Chaldees’ tourist culture is fun for the whole family.

IV - REACHING CHALDEES

Chaldees can be found by travelling to the Southern Travel Hub and from thereon out taking the southern road to what was previously the Sultanate. In the crossroads which fall between Cadmasra and the Sultanate, go directly ahead.

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MIHYAAR, THE CITY OF SKULLDUGGERY

______________________________________________

[Emē-gir]

“𐤀𐤍𐤊 𐤕𐤁𐤍𐤕 𐤊𐤄𐤍 𐤏𐤔𐤕𐤓𐤕 𐤌𐤋𐤊 𐤑𐤃𐤍𐤌 𐤁𐤍

𐤀𐤔𐤌𐤍𐤏𐤆𐤓 𐤊𐤄𐤍 𐤏𐤔𐤕𐤓𐤕 𐤌𐤋𐤊 𐤑𐤃𐤍𐤌 𐤔𐤊𐤁 𐤁𐤀𐤓𐤍 𐤆,

𐤌𐤉 𐤀𐤕 𐤊𐤋 𐤀𐤃𐤌 𐤀𐤔 𐤕𐤐𐤒

𐤀𐤋 𐤀𐤋 𐤕𐤐𐤕𐤇 𐤏𐤋𐤕𐤉 𐤅𐤀𐤋 𐤕𐤓𐤂𐤆𐤍

𐤊 𐤕𐤏𐤁𐤕 𐤏𐤔𐤕𐤓𐤕 𐤄𐤃𐤁𐤓 𐤄𐤀

𐤅𐤀𐤌 𐤐𐤕𐤇 𐤕𐤐𐤕𐤇 𐤏𐤋𐤕𐤉 𐤅𐤓𐤂𐤆 𐤕𐤓𐤂𐤆

𐤀𐤋 𐤉𐤊𐤍 𐤋𐤊 𐤆𐤓𐤏 𐤁𐤇𐤉𐤌 𐤕𐤇𐤕 𐤔𐤌𐤔”

[Interpreted]

“Before his toes touch the threshold of Baal-Hazor, in Mihyaar, he reads,

   The blood shed on Yultharan shores,

   Since its beginnings, has spelled a splintered history.

   Leaving the scene, Ur-Mihyar hums,

“In the beginning was the word.

In the beginning of the word was ‘blood.’ ”

— CHRONICLE OF BAAL-HAZOR,

1732.

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INDEX

I. History …

a. Compiled History …

II. Traditions & Rituals …

  a. Common Values …

b. Naming Conventions; Onomastics …

III. Distinctions & Attributes …

a. Mihyaari Appearance …

b. Lexicon …

IV. Civilisation & Society …

a. Caste System …

b. Military …

i. Ksathriya …

ii. Instruments of War …

c. Architecture …

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I - COMPILED HISTORY

“With the basest companions,

I walked the streets of Baal-Hazor,

in whose filth and wickedness I wallowed,

as if in a bed of spices and precious ointments.”

— BELSHEZZAAR OF MIHYAR,

1663.

In the far reaches of the west, crested by smog and haar, the peninsula of Yulthar settles itself — a realm parallel to that of the descendants. Jungle canopies mottle the forsaken stretch of land: bulwarking all in a shade and blackness which knows no breadth nor borders. For, there that land of beach and pier suits a secluded people — Yultharans — from which the first strata of Easterners is rumoured to have developed. Shantytowns and destitute wharfs littered the banks of that western archipelago, whose docks seemed adjacent those of the common descendant, wherefrom a caste of fief-owners and lordlings found their foothold — and at the summit of those ranks, was Ur-Mihyar.

i. He is a language glistening between the masts,

ii. he is the inquisitor of strange words.

These words were said of Ur-Mihyar: a pillar of Yultharan secularism, and martial fortitude. And, all leagues of common Man coalesced at the fief-lord’s beck and call; ranks which would stretch from seabound sailors to the likes of Aeldinic holymen and downcast courtesans. It was the destitution and carnage of Yulthar from which their desperation came, in terror of the fiends and bogeymen who besieged the fortress’ and battlements of the Yultharans, and lingered in the dankest precipices of the peninsula, when night settled.

Ur-Mihyar’s gospels vowed solidarity in that final bastion of Yultharans. For, preservation was the name of that enclave’s grave game — breeding the least shreds and vestiges of valour and will in the fellest of souls. The refugees stood the ranks of that caste, once so few, so many that their numbers tallied those of a nation; all cattle bound to one another, brother-by-brother, in the very same yoke. Baal-Hazor, it was known, this fraternity of theirs.

Splintered  by reason of those beasts which found solace in the embrace of night, however, the folk of Ur-Mihyar’s caste, which stacked stones so high that their spires were once fated never to be toppled, were cast and driven from the shantytowns of their comeuppance as exiles. Tempests from all four corners of the realm encroached the ships of Ur-Mihyar, their steepled sails sundered by the violent gales, sending the fellowship into the bowels of the sea — their ships subsumed by tossing tides and currents, doomed to see not a shred of day any longer. 

The riptide subsided, and stragglers from that motley Yultharan band escaped the watery below. And, from below their waists, they took sight of a shoal which churned with some ineffable blackness. Feared and revered in equal gravity, this wanton body of water was dubbed the False Sea, tapering to a narrow inlet which spanned all of Rh’thor’s exotic reaches in many an offshoot stream which foamed with that unnamable iniquity. For, situated within the dreaded moors of Rh’thor, the folk of Ur-Mihyar cobbled walkways which stretched into reaches yonder fro. And, they did stack their stones once more, two-by-two, their spires and minarets spangled with thatch and manure.

Though furtive they were, that band of exiles broke bread with the denizens of the sea-girt realm of Rh’thor, eclipsed by leaden fumes, and postulated like sons under the same sun. They shared bridechambers, and joined one another under the briars of marriage and familial covenants; so much so that these Yultharan lepers immersed their own skin with scar-borne seals and glyphs. They were mementos and signets of lineage, aspirations, and triumphs. Yultharan minstrels and bohemians said, of this newly-charted peninsula,

"Undeath has changed this city's shape—this stone

is a child's head—

and smoke is exhaled from Man's lungs.

Each thing recites its exile."

It was here from which the present Mihyaari covenants of Baal-Hazor were contrived, joining the Easterner and Rh’thoraen conventions and values under a single ethnos. A syncretism of cultural identities which prospered to constitute this doctrine.

Cast from the Rh’thoraen steppe, the, then decrepit, fief-lord, Ur-Mihyar, decreed a second exodus from the Xionist prairie. Consensus with regards to his declaration is undefined, however, and is interpreted as largely apocryphal. It is suggested, by wit of some chronicles, that the thane disparaged the catechumens and laymen of Geitheros, the Red Prophet. Others argue it was by reason of his nigh-failing grasp upon common logic — the early frameworks and pygmy of his later-developed mania.

The banks of that forsaken peninsula became rife once more with the sails of the exiles, thrashing before their vessels were launched into unknown vistas in the east. And, on the first fortnight of their trek eastward, Ur-Mihyar laid claim and dominion to the waters which the oars of their ships ploughed: sea to glistering sea.

“Let this strait, from its inlets in the east, 

to its banks in the west,

be known as Baal-Hazor. And her people,

let them be known Baal’hai.”

— UR-MIHYAR,

1693.

And, it was during the first of their sea-bound summers, that plague and malaise plundered Ur-Mihyar, sending him into his death’s throes. It was later written;

[Emē-gir]

𐤀𐤋 𐤉𐤊𐤍 𐤋𐤊 𐤆𐤓𐤏 𐤁𐤇𐤉𐤌 𐤕𐤇𐤕"

𐤀𐤋 𐤀𐤋 𐤕𐤐𐤕𐤇 𐤏𐤋𐤕𐤉 𐤅𐤀𐤋 𐤕𐤓𐤂𐤆𐤍 𐤊 𐤀𐤉 𐤀𐤓𐤋𐤍 𐤊𐤎𐤐 𐤀𐤉 𐤀𐤓 𐤋𐤍 𐤇𐤓𐤑 𐤅𐤊𐤋 𐤌𐤍𐤌 𐤌𐤔𐤃 𐤊 𐤀𐤉 𐤀𐤓𐤋𐤍 𐤊𐤎 𐤌𐤉 𐤀𐤕 𐤊𐤋 𐤀𐤃𐤌 𐤀𐤔 𐤕𐤐𐤒 𐤀𐤉𐤕 𐤄𐤀𐤓𐤍 𐤅𐤌𐤔𐤊𐤁 𐤀𐤕 𐤓𐤐𐤀𐤌 𐤀𐤋 𐤀𐤋 𐤕𐤐𐤕𐤇 𐤏𐤋𐤕𐤉 𐤅𐤀𐤋 𐤕𐤓𐤂𐤆𐤍 

 𐤀𐤃𐤌 𐤀𐤔 𐤕𐤐𐤒 𐤀𐤉𐤕 𐤄𐤀𐤓 𐤕𐤐𐤕𐤇 𐤏𐤋𐤕𐤉 𐤅 𐤔𐤕𐤓𐤕 𐤌𐤋𐤊 𐤑𐤃𐤍𐤌 𐤔𐤊𐤁 𐤁𐤀𐤓 𐤉 𐤀𐤓𐤋𐤍 𐤊𐤎𐤐 𐤀𐤉 𐤀𐤓 𐤋𐤍 𐤇𐤓𐤑 𐤅𐤊𐤋 𐤋 𐤕𐤓𐤂𐤆𐤍 𐤊 𐤀𐤉 𐤀𐤓𐤋𐤍 𐤊𐤎𐤐 𐤀𐤉 𐤀𐤓

"𐤌 𐤀𐤋 𐤀𐤋 𐤕𐤐𐤕𐤇 𐤏𐤋𐤕  𐤀𐤃𐤌 𐤀𐤔 𐤕𐤐𐤒 𐤀𐤉𐤕 𐤄𐤀𐤓𐤍 

[Interpreted]

“Given at the seventh of Yathrib, this year of 1696,

It was Ur-Mihyar, with whom I have not very much camaraderie nor chummery, wherefrom that noisome hacking in the night came. The thrumming which sent the bosom of my ear ringing with unease. The furtive mourning and gibbering which ululated for the remedies and ointments at his bedside.

I was called unto his bedchambers, at which I took sight of his apathetic state. He was as if a praying mantis, the ends of his hair burnt to a brittle straw; and, dank cavities with which his pallid eyes were carried. His pores were inflamed, ‘O Promised-Lord, with cysts which were like the citrus forage and fodder of Baal-Hazor, now many a sea away from me.

Now, Ur-Belshezzar dresses in his borrowed robes. The litany of burial and sepulture is due, in the coming month. I fear what havoc is afoot. Light the candles: this winter will be no easy one.”

— MEMOIR OF SHADRACH OF YULTHAR,

1696.

Those antiquated ships flanked ramshackle, descendant docks, ringing out with a discordant fanfare which trilled throughout the Arcas steppe. The tallow-skinned seamen of old Baal-Hazor charted that shoreside bearing the same fruit of their antiquity, on the shores of Yulthar: penury. Penniless and hapless in equal severity, those Yultharan paupers mounted wares astride their mules and mares, and horses and howdahs – from corner to corner, festooned and decorated with threads and wreaths, those proud mounts.

Their newly vested regnant lord, Ur-Belshezzar, rode in tow, settling himself within some gaudy palanquin at its forefront: charging the Baal-Hazor band into new vistas of discovery and civilization.

The diaspora sequestered themselves in caverns measureless to Man, charting the extremities of the earth. Beset by the winter clime of the hollow below, and driven to lunacy by reason of their isolation, however, the paupers stooped so low as to pillage the alms and arms of nearby hamlets and boroughs, though squalid and feckless they were. And then, the name of war was spilt from lip to lip, only hushed hearsay: crescendoing into some great concert and call to heed which thrummed throughout the subterranean depths and all the way to kingdom come.

On the solstice of that year, the straits and streams of a curious island babbled with the gore of Baal-Hazor, its people plundered and thrust into the throes of warfare with the fell marauders of Seyam. And, smoke ran like fine molasses in the near vista: invoking, for once, a fear which could not be quelled in the spirits of those penitent folk of Baal-Hazor. 

How the mighty had fallen, that, distressed by the strife of those sun-kissed Seyami, the diaspora acquiesced to their wishes and conventions — catapulted into the snares of indentured servitude, by the conniving warmongers and slave drivers.

Christened as Mihyaar, a bastardization of the people’s father, the term means to topple, in Seyami, torn from the lips of lamenting Mihyaari footmen, in mockery and debasement thereof. Having misheard the shamefaced weeping of the Mihyaari on the frontlines, the Seyami misinterpreted the namesake of the dirges, Ur-Mihyar, as a word of their own persuasion. The Mihyaari settled their palanquins in some dank stretch of saharan sands. And, they sang ballads amongst one another, hollering,

i. Everything under the sun is my adversary. One and all. All and sundry.

And, as if from the blue beyond, came a braying man in the borrowed robes of Ur-Mihyaar; his feet, like burnished bronze; and marred were the fringes of his beard; his rhinestone eyes were as if factories far away; and, when he spoke, the sound of his words was like the sound of multitude, almost as if the drumming of many peals of thunder at once, and his rhetoric was so sharp that it was like a double-sided sword. He hitched his foal to a vine, and his mare’s colt to another vine — and he spoke unto them. The rock striations and formations had become unwound, and in the dune he tore a gorge within whose rifts ran silver threads, often. This refuge — this port in the storm — was dubbed Baal-Hazor, in honour of the timeworn hamlet in Rh’thor: Baal, meaning Tabernacle, and Hazor denoting, in a rudimentary sense, a hamlet or dwelling.

This man bode well, refashioning the splintered pieces of Mihyaar into a hardier litter. Hearsay would tell that this man was Ur-Mihyaar brought from the living-dead: reincarnated, for all intents and purposes. He introduced himself as Shah-Almaz — the Diamond-Vehicle — and was vested the pharaoh thereafter. The oracles of Mihyaar postulated that, in times of strife, the tension in the state would aggravate the old bones and stones of Ur-Mihyaar, thrusting him to pick up the pieces anew.

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II - TRADITIONS & RITUALS

“The ruins Baal-Hazor left

on the mottled rockplains of Seyam

appear and fade like the traces of a tattoo

on the back of a hand.”

— BALLADS AND MINSTRELSY,

MĀT-DARIUS-AKKAD.

1818.

COMMON VALUES

CAROUSAL AND CELEBRATION

A tonic against the carnage and turbulence of their history, the folk of Baal-Hazor are merrymakers. The temporal, worldly pleasures and means for amusement are coveted — as devices to muddle and take what little power sits in the mutinies and entropy of their history. These people relish in earthly revelry, launching the basest of occasions and happenstances into garish festivities, and find resolve in the chimes and chords of pompous celebration.

Ergo, there is a certain helter-skelter and frenzy to the activities and conventions of the people of Baal-Hazor. Punctuality is not an absolute priority, and outside of their regard. There is always solace in the wildness of leisure — be that, cavendish and tobacco, or ballads and carols.

"[Those] who walked the streets of Baal-Hazor are dark and veiled.

Oft as not, they walk in troupes, or lounge in palanquins of ebony and ivory—

hidden behind dim curtains to fend against the elements,

and borne through cities upon the backs of slaves.

How they ring out with the chimes of bondage: clinking shackles and chains."

RITUAL DECEPTION

Desperation and beggary has fostered a new tongue which the bannermen of old Mihyaar have adopted as their native jargon: lies and deceit. By reason of their adversity, the Mihyaari of Baal-Hazor relished the base activities of guile and trickery, and debased themselves among one another if the vile act would bring riches and resources. Treachery, fraud, and subterfuge were excused in the pauperdom, in its antiquity, established as pillars of society, by which means they would turn their hovels to halls, and meadows to Moorish forts which cast a colossus shade that would ensheath the hamlet in a twilight only quelled by the lights and wicks of celebration and festivity. It was here that their haphazard games of poker and other fiendish wagers would crescendo into dynasties which inspired reverence and fear in equal gravity.

Mihyaari tall tales would later tell of a swindler whose lies would resound with such cadence that he could lay domain over snakes, serpents, and the likes, launching him into the fruits of strategic stardom.

ABLUTION IN ASH

Smut and cinder clings to the skin and rind of all Mihyaari. From the fringes of their fires, which danced throughout the night, they coveted ash and soot: instruments for cleansing. The ashes which foul their faces are mementos of the long-dead, and fire is the great lockbox of things — those sealed away, within which the char of firewood, and the spirits of those rendered lost to life and time, are able to travel between the corners of the world. On the dawn of each arrival, a Mihyaari will relieve the coke and soot of his forebear, and char his features with a mask of smut and fire-sediment — almost talismans to stave off ill-wishes and misfortune.

The Mihyaari have long held stock in this superstition, that it has crossed the threshold from cultural convention to religious covenant. Ash is a tool through which lords are consecrated, and thieves are cut down; through which sinners are chastised, and saints are immortalised. 

BRANDS AND SIGNETS

A rite bred from breaking bread with their brothers in Rh’thor, brands and tattoos streak across the frame of a Mihyaari from head to heels. To each seal is its own value, and purpose: be that, a mark of arms, lineage, or accolades. Cultic devotion and amuletic protection had its own hand in body art and the tattoos of the Mihyaari — inspiring forces of fortune and the powers that be to join paths with he or she who has accepted their Rh’thoraen forbearance.

So opposed to the traditional means for tattoo inscription, the Mihyaari exercised branding in a ritual which called for burnt candlenut oil. This solution was ordinarily practised through rending the skin, and saturating the tissue with motifs of all varieties and qualities. Memento Legatum was said of the Rh’thoraens.

It is for this reason that flaying is so lamented, among the likes of old Baal-Hazor’s folk. The rind has been pulled from the pulp: no traces nor mementos.

ALL THAT GLITTERS

When entombed in the shade of Baal-Hazor, that mausoleum-world of dark and dusk, only the torches of celebration were devoted to quelling that total lightlessness. And, from the bowels of the earth, the miners of Mihyaar procured diamond teardrops and loaves and wedges of gold, and relished the many beads and baubles, and gemstones and jewels. In that time so premature, when the people of Baal-Hazor had only just discovered the fruits of drunkenness and carousing, the last slivers of light in old Mihyaar were focused through gilded ornaments and curios.

Glassy chains, hooks, and encrusted threads  ensnare the folk of Baal-Hazor: and, vanity was their plight. To those who could afford it, at least.

To this very day, the approach of a Mihyari is, often as not, heralded by the ringing and clinking of glistering baubles and decorations — testaments to their decadence.

HOOKS GALORE

The dervishes of old Baal-Hazor developed all manner of interesting designs and sacraments. Their criminal enterprises led them to many a revelation, from which they became privy to the lamentable avenues of flagellation in self-condemnation and decoration. Often will the laymen of Mihyaar embed demented hooks and hewed points into their skin: the bulb suspended at one cleft of their ash-caked face, and the narrow prick of the hook jutting from the next. All fashions of briars and needles crest the clerics of this peninsula, sounding out in pangs of contrition and repentance.

From driving skewers behind the eye, to perforating and piercing the skin beneath the nails, survival is tenuous to those with the gall to engineer and contrive the most terrible, doleful of piercings and modifications. 

REINCARNATION

All men, be they rich or poor, return to their mantle in the land beyond death. The Mihyaari, much like other cultures of their time and region, long sought for dominion over death. Inhibition in the face of the Rh’thoraen practice of necromancy, however, would prove to hinder their mastery over eternal, primaeval rest. To warm their spirits and console themselves in their uncertainty, the men of Baal-Hazor spun tall tales of men brought to the world after their passing by the powers-that-be. Relivened, or reincarnated, to fulfil unkept vows and oaths. They put stock in a threefold-cycle, consistent with life, death, and rebirth.

Even then, however, undeath and evading death contribute in part to Nemurîtòri, the mantra of conflicting with mortal order — an inherently wrong machination. Thus, living-from-beyond is only on a spiritual level, so as not to vertically oppose the natural, threefold-order.

GORHEN’S FOLLY

Derived from the poor soul who served as the first recorded instance of this ailment, it is said that those who wander the vast expanse of sand for too long are struck by fallacy and fantasy, babbling about kingdoms and a mighty noble folk that never were. All manner of healers have proclaimed cures, but their authenticity always varies. What is certain, however, is a certain wariness when trekking the desert they call home, for it may just as soon devour their mind before their body.

PRACTICES

SKINTAKING

It was said by the Mihyaari that with time, all temporal, material things find their ways back to their earliest possessor. That was, without the skin. Being that the signets, and names, and covenants of homes were often borne on a person’s rind by way of tattoos and inscriptions, the skin was made, by designation, a person’s tapestry. Hence, in trial and tribulation, it is a Mihyaari man or woman’s ever-avowed oath to grow their tapestry. Merit and value of skin, for this reason, was particularly especial. On a more sacral level, the belief was held by the Mihyaari that the skin is what binds the soul or spirit to the material world; anchoring he or she to the realm.

On the frontlines attended by the Mihyaari, who had his skin was not yet dead. Thus, taking one’s skin — the wicked practice of flaying — was chief among the endeavours of the Ksathriya and Brahmin, the noble and oath-vested warmongers and warriors of Ramasar. It was the only way to ensure one had truly left the world: letting no trace of his or her being known to any soul save empty consciences. This came often at the cost of relative familial history being lost to the annals of time.

Traditionally, a Brahman or Ksathriy warrior would strip their foe of their skin and rinse it of impurities, enriching it with jewels in the stead of eyes, etcetera. Certain sources document that the noblest houses would cling to the skin of their viziers or pharaohs, hanging them here and there and about as curtains and draperies, so as to ensure the charms of those kings and governors would not leave the old homes. The practice is, however, for all intents and purposes, the greatest shame and taint to an individual or dynasty.

BULL-LEAPING

A cultural mainstay and an art in its own right, the ritual sport of bull-leaping was practised in the bulk of Ramasar’s regions and cantons. Much to its attributed name, the activity details an acrobat or Ksathriya and/or Brahmin warrior — male and female — literally vaulting to, over, or from a charging bull. This would often entail grasping or seizing the dual horns of a bull, through whose support the acrobats would somersault or practice all manner of agile, gymnastic feats over the bull. At the moment when the stunt-artist grasped the animal’s horns, the bull rabidly forced or jerked its head upward, providing the acrobat with the necessary momentum.

Variations of the sport are practised. Occasionally, the ringleader might release a bull into an assorted group of acrobats, sending it into a rabid frenzy as participants might attempt to bridle the animal and vault over to the other side. Or, the olympian might practice a more streamlined rendition of the sport, wherein they would pole-vault over the bull — the tamer of the sports.

The religious and cultural significance of the practice is disputed. In a broader sense, it portrays the Mihyaari people’s hubris and larger-than-life approaches to the harshest climates and most arduous feats. Ritual acrobats have attributed an allegorical meaning to the sport. That, the bull characterises/represents the sun or the elements, filtering the able-bodied from the weak, in the clergy. Similarly, bull-leaping is shared across coming-of-age rites and electing ministers and governors: a means for determining caste and value in society.

GREETINGS

When exchanging hellos, it is known good faith to spit at the opposite fellow’s feet. In a land and climate where water is pertinent to survival, offering such to a stranger tightens bonds and entails a generous, amicable kindness that is not often seen elsewhere.

BURIAL RITES

Men and women of Mihyaar hold stock in the belief that the dead need not be restricted nor consigned to the earth. Individual rites and practises are unnumbered, of course, but a rotation of means for burial are shared between the covens and families of Mihyaar and Baal-Hazor. The most streamlined and seminal of these services is cremation. Predictably, this practice discloses that the deceased be reduced to ash following a celebration of dimensions proportional to the life and death of the individual, hence merchants and kings are more often sent away in events of greater magnitude and pageantry. Thereafter, he or she is blazed by any convenient means, and resigned to a tub where their remains may be abluted/cleansed with.

Tantamount to cremation is mummification. Reserved for gentry and merchants, at least, the service is consistent with decorating the deceased in the most decadent and gaudy of designs, that is, amulets, talismans, and any monetary possessions or curios. The individual is thereafter sepulchred in a sarcophagus which was often made a display of in the deceased’s court, were they a king or landowner of sorts. However, this practice is largely impractical, being that death, as it stood, is believed as impermanent, at a grander scale, and the individual would have little to no use of any talismans or coin consigned to the sarcophagus.

Sky burial, the last of the burial services widely accepted, is penultimate to cremation. The observance details the newly deceased being posted or put to rest at a high elevation, often at sand dunes and hillocks. This ritual gives way for birds of prey, vultures, and larks to deliver the cadaver elsewhere, returning the deceased to another life and continuing the wheel of nature.

In the end, though, it is important to note that, given the spiritual impermanence of death, funerary practises in Mihyaar hold little to no sacred merit. They are only pleasantries.

RAS-VIDA

Ras-Vida is interpreted as a blanket term for any manner of divination or natural medicine. The word is homogeneous to alchemy, however, shared between the practises of tantric prophecy, witchery, and oracle-work.

A far-fetch from traditional scientific ‘alchemy’, the Mihyaar partake of spiritual methods in which the main goal is divination, but other considerable outcomes range from anything between healing and foresight. While Ras-Vida revolves around the concept of immortality of the heart and the earth, to attempt the elixir of life is looked down upon, as it is directly conducive to Nemurîtòri. This is because it promotes only immortality of the body, and the spirit is thought to be persistent in the land beyond death. Hence, mastery over the living is not the primary endeavour of Ras-Vida.

Ras-Vida is the tantric medicine of cycles and the doctrine of earthen elements. There lie different plants and metals that have an intrinsic connection to the metaphor of alchemy. The symbols, signs, mixtures: they all have meanings beneath their physical uses and processes. To practise alchemy is to practise divination. But beyond that, Ras-Vida remains all-encompassing. There are rituals in which the world is questioned and interpreted to learn more about the past, the future, or the now. One of which is an old practice where a handful of salts is thrown into the air and the fate of said salts is left to the elements, or otherwise cast into fire. Details about the aforementioned things can then be discerned through examining the pattern of the salts.

The intricacies of Ras-Vida are ultimately too vast to summarise in some few paragraphs, and the practises date back to long ages. There is much to be discovered.

NAMING CONVENTIONS

Not dissimilar to the Velians of Atlas, the names of these wizened Yultharans are composed of three individual parts, tethered to one another by hyphens. These names, disambiguated, are dubbed Kaṭanat [singular; Kaṭan]. Designation arrangements vary between castes far and wide, however, evidenced by some patricians’ tendency to affix a second ‘surname’ [e.g. Dzugi, Bihari, Maratha, Badzo] or a pauper’s inclination to eschew their familial designation altogether. Notwithstanding, these labels are, as in any matter, pertinent to the day-to-day activities of a Mihyaari.

The order in which these three names appear is typically: familial designation [gentilicum nomen], given name [praenomen], aver nav/talisman name/et. al [cognomen], and, among patrician houses, disambiguation and/or second surname (e.g. Doe-John-Jack [Everyman]).

FAMILIAL DESIGNATION; SURNAME

Borne by the Mihyaari as keepsakes of the houses and fathers from which they hail, this is the filiation which precedes the personal and/or given name of a Mihyaari individual. Mementos of the forebears of old, great honour is held in these designations – those typically scored upon tomes and scrawled across tablets. As such, these tokens of parentage are prefixed to the personal name, fixed before the given name, typically with a hyphen. Surname designations are spilt from father to son, and are tokens of covenants between bloodlines and dynasties.

Sample: Šar–, Ur–, Mât–, Shah–, Kali–, Yr–, Bhat–, Ram–

GIVEN DESIGNATION; GIVEN NAME

A Mihyaari given name is the name which he/she is, in most conventions, referred to by. It is, in all regards, a personal name fixed between the surname and the aver nav. Where the second designation is seemingly ever in flux, and is able to change on a whim nigh-always, the given name is writ in stone, and is not so often changed without reason. Mihyaari nomenclature calls for the given name to be assigned at birth, lest the child shall assume a bastard designation.

Sample: Shaddam–, Belshezzar–, Darius–, Arbaaz–, Vyasa–, Misra–, Shaj–, Kabir–, Raja–

AVER NAV; SECOND DESIGNATION

Designated through tireless, arduous trials and feats, as opposed to birthright, the aver nav, oft as not, suffixed to the given name,  functions in two distinct ways. Scarcity of names in the ranks of the Mihyaari bred a second means for designation – almost formal nicknames – which took the shape of aver nav. A layman’s take on aver nav nomenclature would liken them simply to informal ‘second’ affiliations: the actuality is more rigorous, and has more layers. Awarded by others, the first variation which an aver nav takes is that of a token of its bearer’s quirk(s) and feat(s) [e.g., club-footed, left-handed]. It was common for these ‘second names’ to be leveraged in other ways, however. Mothers would ascribe to their newborns ‘secretive names,’ or ‘talisman names’ to ward off illness and ill-fortune. In this manner of nomenclature, the second name, aver nav, remains unspoken, and unheard of, bar by the ascribed’s mother and/or father. Take, for instance, a child’s given name, or praenomen, is Jahan, and its aver nav is Sahar. It would often happen that an illness might occur, and vie to have power over the child: hence, they would seek the child out by their name. Lesser wretches and evils — as spirits — are privy to aver nav designations. Given that this aver nav is unuttered, at large, though, the wretch fails to accost the child — leaving him out of harm’s winding way. 

Contrarily, an aver nav is similarly used, on occasions, to distinguish the branch or cadet family from which one hails. Hence, this context is more akin to a disambiguation of one’s parentage, than a lesser name.

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III - DISTINCTIONS & ATTRIBUTES

“Dark were they also, diffusing the odour of musk as they moved,

like the soft gale bringing with it the stench of clove.

Here was their abode, on the edge of the sandy shore,

of the salty strait

between Yulthar and Rh’thor.

And, amid the acacia-shrubs were their eyes blinded with tears,

by the smart from the bursting pods of colocynth.”

– SONGS OF SHAH-NAMA,

SHAH-NAMA-KALI BHAGAVAT.

1733.

MIHYAARI APPEARANCE

The sun’s swelter and open sea clime has long laid a brand upon the once tallow-skinned and fair among Yultharans — Mihyaari. A lifetime’s ocean-bound exodus has since made their skin dark: red and russet, and unseasonably tanned. Ascribed to as brown, generally, these people sport a broader range of complexions, however, from the warmer olives to the more ruddy, leathery bronze. Prominent and jutting, the occasional atrophy of their facial profile, and somewhat disproportionate features can be attributed to the task of crossing the boundless False Sea. The Stygian waters have rent and bent the faces of those sullen Mihyaari who dared ferry themselves across Rh’thor’s strait, oftentimes rendered inordinate or asymmetrical: crooked. The grey, amber, and ruddy-brown scale of eye colours is shared between most to all Mihyaari, however colours as vivid as the lighter blues tend to slip between the cracks.

Ash clings to the leathery skin of the Mihyaari, made leaden and dusted very tangibly in a gloss of soot, from trials and rites of ablution. Anointed in cinder and lampblack powder, the presence of a Mihyaari is not often without the fleeting stench of asphalt sediment. In a similar vein, most recognisable are the brands and tattoos of candlenut wax and boar’s tallow which they wear, zealous glyphs and signets scrawled across them from head-to-toe. This rite was bred from making amends and sharing accolades with the Rh’thoraens.

A people rife with vanity, the Mihyaari are welcomed from place to place by the hooks and piercings which encase them in a sheen of gold and bronze. These suntanned Yultharans take to the wretched rites of making incisions and punctures on the surface of their skin, where baubles and beads are frequently fixed and secured. From tongues to brows, and noses and cartilages, the folk of Baal-Hazor are festooned with many a thread, bond, and pearls. This tradition shares suit with the tendency to wear tattoos and tells.

Those from Mihyaar take relish in their garb and vestments, often decked with stranger articles of clothing than is familiar. As is with most facets of their culture, the fashions of the Mihyaari are syncretisms of conventions from the east and west, though belonging to neither. From their forts and homes in Yulthar, were borrowed the eclectic, embroidered textiles and sensibilities, while their lodging in the reaches of the east had taught of more contemporary, rational values of fashion. These radically unfamiliar philosophies were intertwined to breed new ensembles of clothing which paid homage to both: long-fitting garments embellished with fewer motifs than was customary. The Mihyaari showed accolades to their banner-brothers in Rh’thor, by fashioning articles of red attire and finery into their ensembles.

LEXICON

“And now, my tongue’s use

is to me no more than an unstringed viol

or harp.

Or like a cunning instrument,

that knows no touch to tune up the harmony.”

— MIHYAARI BOHEMIAN,

1730.

Wrought from many curvilinear, topsy-turvy glyphs and characters, the Mihyaari script of Emē-gir is, by design, dependent on many suffixes and affixes and linguistic intricacies of far too many designs. For this reason, the language is not homogeneous with other eastern tongues and dialects of similar provenance. Between the tongue of the Qali, and that of the Oyashimans and Li-Wen, Emē-gir is not mutually intelligible, proving a strenuous feat for linguists and chroniclers of all persuasions. Archaeologists have long vied — and failed — to decipher the little licks of this script borne on clay tablets, left raving, braying, and puzzled at its convolution.

Much to the very name of the region, the tongue’s lexicon has been bastardised en masse. In furtive frustration, the archivists of Baal-Hazor adopted a fluid dialect and accent of common, through which they conversed and broke bread and made pacts of all proportions with the denizens and island-dwellers of Rh’thor. When they became splintered, however, individual strata and subcultures of Mihyaari loaned words from languages and tongues, leaving no single Mihyaari dialect nor accent reciprocally coherent and legible with the next. 

Emē-gir has since become consigned to only the archives of time. Its practitioners are far and few between, held in great regard and reverence for their scarcity and perseverance. There is a belief, in fact, that Emē-gir is rather multiple indeterminate languages in one script, than a single lexicon.

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IV - CIVILISATION & SOCIETY

“And Ur-Mihyaar’s spirit, raging and raving for retribution,

with Shurad at his flank come hot from high hell,

should that in these confines with a pharaoh’s voice becry:

‘Havoc,’ and let loose the dogs of war, that

this foul task shall smell up on the earth with carrion men,

groaning for burial.”

— CHRONICLE OF UR-MIHYAAR,

SHAH-NAMA-KALI BHAGAVAT,

1741.

CASTE SYSTEM

Social class is, admittedly, rather fluid in the societies of Mihyaar. There is a tangible rift between the paupers and burghers, the poverty-stricken and the landowners, however caste, as it is, is indeterminate and fluctuant. Incidentally, the class-hierarchy is consistent to merchants

 and moguls, second only to the king, pharaoh, or prince, and followed by — in order — layman and/or priests, and the impoverished. There is no de jure caste system per se, however, partly ascribed to the fact that there is a sort of praise and acclaim for those who work in ritual deceit, artifice, and thievery. The basis of Mihyaari society, in fact, is built upon the rudimentary idea of establishing oneself and taking root in wealth and veneration through the art of sham: duplicity, and deception. A prince-elect might have found resolve in his position through fraud and skullduggery — these happenstances are far ofterner met with acceptance and reverence than reproach.

Ordinarily, administration is conducted through a pharaoh, shah, or prince among greater throngs of collective Mihyaari. Liaison councils (e.g., king’s councils) were vested in the early epochs of Ramasar, but the flux in divination has since driven the idea into obscurity and out of the vox populi. Rather, a shah or pharaoh will instate an oracle or haruspex with whom he or she should navigate the waters of policy and diplomacy. These diviners were responsible for statecraft, in the stead of their lieges, and better equate to viziers or proconsuls than immediate councillors. The seat of Shah — or, Maharaja — is occupied by the old and learned tribe of Ur, whose bannermen and brothers trace blood and covenants to the cultural progenitor, Ur-Mihyaar, below whom are individual Rajas, the feudal lords who are mantled control and administration of their own domains and cantons.

In summation, caste systems hold little merit, in a society whose sway is provided to those who dabble in swindling and skullduggery primarily.

MILITARY

KSATHRIYA

A caste in their own right, the Ksathriya (singular; Ksathriy) and less martially-inclined Brahmin (clerics, relative to interpretation [singular; Brahman]) are oath-bound vanguards of old Baal-Hazor. The learned swordsmen metamorphosed from crab-fishers and longshoremen in Mihyaar’s sea-side exodus, making haste to fend the pauperdom from the extraterrestrial fiends in Yulthar-lands, and the horselord marauders who swore by sword and saddle in Ramasar. Historically, however, the ideal Ksathriy or Brahman is more spiritually, fundamentally involved and concerned with the world. They pertain to the principle of preserving and maintaining the unperturbed nature of the world — that is, life, death, and rebirth, and thwarting the pursuers and plotters of Nemurîtòri: primordial, Abyssal imbalance.

Likewise in esteem to the samurai of the Oyashiman isle, the Ksathriya and Brahmin are privy to a chief, certain privilege otherwise barred from the paupers of Mihyaar save for certain patricians far and few between. An established Ksathriy is afforded the right to kill without warrant, otherwise reserved for none bar the shah or pharaoh. Having given rise to the threat of mutinies and uprisings in the past, an air of unease follows the gaunt faces of the Ksathriya, bringing with them justice and turbulence in equal capacities. It is worth of note that the honour which was possessing the reputation of a Ksathriy was not a reflection of mastery over a certain martial ability, but rather encompasses a grasp at a range of concepts. These include, but are not limited to, forming bottlenecks or tackling guerilla battle formations, or Vyuhas, fairness of judgement, and tactical awareness. Ksathriya are among the patrician class, formally, and are thereon obligated to adopt a second surname succeeding their aver nav.

This reputation comes at the expense of peril, however. The vowed Ksathriya accrue a number of mantle-specific markings, tattoos, and signets, and their skin and rind is sought among the butchers of Ramasar. Hence it is often said, becoming bound by oath as a Ksathriy or Brahman seals one’s fate as predator and prey.

INSTRUMENTS OF WAR

Even in the blind art of war, Mihyaari footmen and Ksathriya vied to immortalise and distinguish their cultural identity. This was predominately exercised in the armour and accoutrement which the men and women of Mihyaar enjoyed, but liberties were practised similarly in the unpopular weaponcraft.

“… mailed, unmailed, e’vry foeman in the charge and rush of war.

Down-smitten with the strings of bows, the locking of mails, the charge!

The armourless, the armoured; the naked and bare, enemies clothed with coats of mail—

All struck down…”

Militaristic infrastructure became chief among the pursuits of the radically unpopular Ur-Belshezzar, as all varieties of mail and scale were taken priority by the welders and smiths of Baal-Hazor. Ordinarily, a footman’s varman — that is, his or her entire ensemble of arms and defensive garment — relished a composite armour of deerskin and mail. Renditions of the gambeson, unbeknownst to the Mihyaari, had resolved, albeit fashioned from a coat of leather and pangolin scales. They were traditionally lacquered and gilded to evoke fear in their adversaries. Plate armour and lamellar were less popular, but fixed and connected with wire. Metal or leather gauntlets, or arm guards were typically accoutred around the left arm/hand, so as to avoid any conflict or friction with the bowstring. Most uniquely, however, are the greaves, spurs, anklets, and various garlands which wreathed these mail-clad footmen, hallmarks of the Mihyaari identity.

Interestingly, Mihyaari welders fashioned their own adaptations of traditional weaponry from their green pastures in Yulthar. The Oyashiman tachi was crafted by Ksathriy and infantrymen all throughout the numbered trips and diaspora, only made more wicked. And therefrom, the talwar was made, which presented a curvature around the medial half of the sword. The lacquered hilt consisted of a flange which was typically disc-shaped, fixed with a cord or wire. 

ARCHITECTURE

The pride of Rh’thor and the early descendant realms was the old city of Baal-Hazor and the surrounding feudal townsteads. The entryway was a broad aperture of five-hundred cubits in height and one-hundred cubits in breadth, built and brick-laid with intent that caravans and chariots might pass to and from the cities’ battlements and bastions. Truthfully, however, the gates of Baal-Hazor in Mihyaar were as many as the landward ends of the streets, their fringes decorated with figures of elephants and beasts from stone not longer known to men. Tall tales told that the edifice of Mihyaar and their many homes were from lapis-lazuli, and carbuncle, and other choice materials, but rather they were of glazed bricks and rough-cast. There were likewise tall gardens from which hung fulgent greens, and streams ran from between the desert swathes in the interest of agriculture with a profusion of interconnected bridges. And, fountains from whom were cast scented waters in tall jets.

At least, that is what was vividly expressed through the frescoes of the city. The roads, in fact, were narrow, far and few between, its edifice and many homes like megalithic blocks of plaster or limestone, with elaborate motifs in the tilework. Complexes were far more prevalent throughout the architecture and stewardship than individual villas, attributed to the minimal effort that needed to be exerted. Articles of architecture from neighbouring cultures were adopted. Vegetal motifs of Kadaksleri architecture, for instance, were most considerable. In fact, Konchak verandas define the vast majority of the invariable architecture of Mihyaar, which is ever in flux. Individual battlements are often joined with minarets, slender spires which make for ease of broadcast and spreading word between people. Meanwhile, homes and stories are often integrated behind traditionally Qali facades and arches, many and various: horseshoe, and lambrequin, and so on.

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Written by Hephaestus @Hephaestus

Written by Kujo @Kujo

Annotations and consultation from Gaius Marius

Consultation from Tibertastic

Moral support from Publius @Olde_Publius

Consultation from MinasOrDie

Co-starring Nozoa

(I apologise, forums were faulty and I wasn't able to @ you fellas)