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[Magic Lore] Chronicle of Rh'thoraen Necromancy


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“...And when the world shall listen
And when the world shall see
And when the world remembers
That world will cease to be.”

 

Chronicle of Rh’thoraen Necromancy

 

In a land far from Atlas or Arcas, bordering on the realm of maddened tales of half-drowned sailors, there exist rumors of a people of red garbs who speak a red tongue.  This land grew parallel to the Descendants, a smog-ridden place known to some as the land of East-Meets-West and upon it the city of Rh'thor, where dead men broke bread with the living. The Rh’thoraens, as they first became known, followed primal beliefs that worshipped the mortal form and the cycle of life who claim came to them out of the words of a burning tree.

 

 

The Land of East-Meets-West

None know when living men first took to the footholds of Rh’thor, only that it developed independently of the major populaces of the Descendants.  Once an interwoven continent that stretches from Yulthar in the reaches west to some unknown realm in the reaches east, the riverside land to the east was engulfed in calamity.  All that was ever recorded was that the once-river was drove into the far reaches of the earth, and the nearby land with it.  Where the ocean and seas once towered to the north and south of the land fated to never touch, this damned chasm filled with its own black waters anew.  This gulf became known as the False Sea, and by some miracle or cruel curse, the settlements of what would become Rh’thor was spared from being swallowed along with it.

 

From the False Sea, black rain and clouds wash over towards the west and plagued the earth with darkness that swallows the sun from the sky.  All who entered the city and all who were in it were choked by the black mists—all to fall within it and be damned to rise again. The city grew as stagnant as the land, as fathers ceased to be fathers and mothers ceased to be mothers, for the dead cannot sire children.

 

It became both bastion and prison for deadmen unwanted and the remnants of those who could not die. For years upon years, as long as the itself called itself Rh’thor, men of many creeds and tribes would come: warbands and crusaders, raiders and bandits, sorcerers and necrolytes—all would seek to claim the land in mortal folly and ambition, all to succumb to the mists. These risen men, forsaken with but a choice to join or falter alone to dust, gave cause to the history of warlessness across the land: “Pax Rh’thora, all who come to defeat Rh’thor become Rh’thoraen.”

 

A Fellowship in Red

The Red Priest’s canon tells of far a tribe due to the outskirts at the south of Rh’thor which was spared the touch of the mists. It was here a man known as Aelvarus came across a tree that burned but did not crumble.  And unto them it spoke its name once: Widukind. From this tree, the Aelvarus was granted command over stagnation and its curse and knowledge of the Redlord’s Path.  Preaching of a messianic figure who would come and save mankind from itself, for the Red Path the corruption of both Man and deity alike.  With their command over death and darkness, these men were spared the curse of Degradation that choked the denizens of the mists, though found themselves unable to propagate.  

 

And so these stagnant men fashioned cloaks of red to don for themselves, a symbol of bloodshed that had engulfed man and would engulf it time and time again.  These disciples of Widukind preached the stagnation that Rh’thoraens embraced from their heritage as a land without bloodshed due to the futility of deadmen never dying, and promoted the stagnancy that befell a city with no children as its future.  Among the red men, Rh’thoraens relished the ideal of mortal empowerment and expanding the limits of the mortal form, sanctioning the use of magic that many would condemn as dark, bar one forbidden practice.  These men named themselves the Red Priests, a faith militant protector of Rh’thor, and the Redlord’s faith became the dominant faith over the city Rh’thor. 

 

When Rh’thor was known for the darkness dwelling within its lands, it was the Red Priests who preached in places such as Yulthar about a land where wisemen could become wiser.  When the Sable Tower was erected in the city center, a symbol of their newfound clergy, Rh’thor became an exotic and mysterious land.  It was no longer feared in foreign lands, but seen as a place of foreign antiquity, where strange sorcery was practiced and the ancient tongues were spoken.  Goods from Rh’thor were prized across the land, from rivers west that spilled into the further lands west.

 

Heretics and Prophets

In the many years that followed until the year 1700 c.e., the land of Rh’thor flourished.  On occasion, heretics and blasphemers would rise out of the stagnant peace that Rh’thoraens embraced.  Among the few practices that Rh’thor embraced, necromancy was not one.  It was believed that the great sundering due of the river east was for such practices, and that the False Sea grew stagnant from those meddling in its lifebanks.  The mists and darkness that polluted the body of water believed to have been stained black and tainted with the darkness of the abyss itself.  

 

Of the many heretics, a small gathering of deadmen preached Darkening and the stealing of life so that one may achieve power and that the Redlord, the messiah, may be born from its people.  A cult scourged and burned from the names of Rh’thor’s history, all but one survived and fled across the lands.  The Red Priest known as Geitheros was tasked with finding the last propagator and his ideals, and erasing his legacy as a reminder that all men of Rh’thor are Rh’thoraen, and all Rh’thoraens practice the Redlord’s Path.

 

Geitheros and his band of warpriests arrived in the frozen scapes of the Yatl Wasteland in the continent known as Atlas.  He and his men broke bread and shared wisdom with the other stagnant men, a group of Godless folk who practiced Xionism in a temple barely living in the darkness.  Loss after loss, the Red Priests slain by the heretic prophet, bar Geitheros.  It is said that none know what Geitheros witnessed the day he slayed the prophet, only that some believe the man to have been changed forever—from the loss of his comrades or perhaps something said between dying men.

 

The Redman’s Exodus

Geitheros’ return began as a welcome one, his name sung among his colleagues and out of the mouths of all Rh’thoraens who revered him, though many say that even then he was a shadow of himself.  For within Geitheros, through his journeys, the loss of his men, or even perhaps through something said by the False Prophet before death was evident, a seed of doubt was planted.  

 

The changes that Geitheros had experienced grew ever evident when he challenged the clergy’s teachings, offering an alternative through Necromantic practices.  Such a blasphemy was dismissed, and Geitheros and a small group of loyalist Red Priests abdicated their ranks and titles to take to the streets and proselytize the undying among them with the faith of the Red Vigil, a necromantic revival through the curse gifted to him and those before him by the burning tree.

 

Geitheros’ belief was that Widukind’s words came as a metaphor, and that through experiencing true suffering was instrumental in the coming of the Redlord, not the life of stagnation and near-immortal peace that had washed over Rh’thor.  He and his followers took to baptizing themselves in the waters stolen from False Sea before the Sable Tower where the Red Priests languished.  Ordaining themselves the Red Vigil, necromancers of Rh’thor, these men were excommunicated and punished by being cast out into the False Sea where the drowned never rise.  

 

Captured by former colleague and compatriot alike, Geitheros and his necromancers were placed in prison.  Many of the necromancers were scourged and made examples of, he and but a shadow of his former number were spared.  The subject of what to do with such heretics was debated heavily by the clergy for just over three years, deemed the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Nine Days.  Eventually it was decreed that, for Geitheros’ long service to Rh’thor, he would be exiled and the rest of his followers crucified, wishing not to make a martyr for the Vigil.  And so, he traveled to a land that would break bread with him, and land that did not follow the Red Path, to the land of Atlas and then to the land of Arcas—bringing with him the faith of the Red Vigil and the teachings of of Rh’thor.

 

 

Citations

Sorrows and Sacriledge, detailing the fall of Necromancy in Atlas.

Swgrclan, for the original concept of Rh’thor.

Myself, adaptation of the concepts and writing.

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