The House of Ur

[Hephaestus 1317]

Spoiler

 

 

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PRINCELY HOUSE OF UR

NOT THE MEAT, BUT THE APPETITE

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“.𐤊 𐤀𐤉 𐤀𐤓𐤋𐤍 𐤊𐤎𐤐 𐤀𐤉 𐤀𐤓 𐤋𐤍 𐤇𐤓𐤑 𐤅𐤊𐤋 𐤌𐤍𐤌 𐤌𐤔𐤃"

“‘Not the meat, but the appetite that makes eating a delight.”

— WORDS OF HOUSE UR,

16XX.

 

INTRODUCTORY

 

The house of Ur traces its provenance to southern settlers on the banks of Yulthar, who joined to form the first stratum of Mihyaari men and women. This occurred when the resolute and temperate wunderkind, Ur-Mihyar, promised bread, shelter, and arms against the beast-men and boogeymen in the wastes of the Yultharan peninsula. In earlier, formative years, men of the house were jewellers and engravers who worked in fashioning ornaments and talismans from sticks and stones, among other fruitless trades and professions. Bannermen of Ur settled themselves in the cores and kernels of the four cities in Yulthar, if not having rotated between them, with intent to peddle and tout their wares, and rub shoulders with all from pirates and poets to puppets and paupers. Frugality was a given, to the splintered brothers and sisters of Ur who placed their beds in neither of the four cities, but rather on the fringes of the continent, be that in the surrounding strings of islands, or in the tempestuous mainland. These familial minorities usually dabbled in forging pearls in the waters adjoining the archipelago.

 

Small, discrete colonies of the Ur people of Mihyaar have not yet left the Yultharan isle; a dying, fragmentary breed, albeit. The bulk of the house’s bannermen made their flight from the peninsula in the years preceding the establishment of Mihyaar and its subsequent, empyrean city of Baal-Hazor. Naturally, the campaign was promoted between blood-relatives and extended families, spilt from one relative to the other. Brothers and sisters, cousins, uncles and aunts, and other relatives of increasingly tenuous connection. The better share of which followed the usurper-hegemon out of desperation for fortune; the other, fortitude against the elements in Yulthar. Hard-pressed to make route from the humid and strenuous peninsula, the bannermen fed Ur-Mihyar his praise, and when the time would come, he gave them beds and bulwarked them in his hospitality and goodwill.

 

Among the formidable Mihyaari citizenry, especially those who adopted serfdom — unpopular, even for the likes of most men in Mihyaar and Baal-Hazor, — the banner-brothers and sisters of the house of Ur were less than reputable. Hearsays and a far-from-thorough examination of their conventions and habits in the years settled in Rh’thor would earn the house and its attendees the reputation of being freeloaders. Toad-like barnacles who leached from the influence of their de facto head, Ur-Mihyar, and gained their alms from latching onto his teat.

 

Archivists represented the exile to Rh’thor as a time of economic boom, yet the days and troubles of the less fortunate Mihyaari were unsung, however.

 

Ur men and women practised usury, and strong-armed up the social hierarchy in Rh’thor through appointing themselves as the de jure loan-sharks, money-mongers, and bankrollers of Mihyaar. They were tycoons and moguls, lending charities for extortionate — and, often pyrrhic — prices. There was a proverb, in fact, elsewhere in the city of Mihyaar, marked by tall spires and narrow boulevards, that the Urs were saw-fish in the flesh, and found fortuity in the financial loss of others. Suffice it to say, the stigma surrounding the old patrician house was thorough, and those slighted by the loans peddled by its members have held hatred in their hearts, and their hearts on sleeves, to the present day. 

 

ATTRIBUTES

 

“My body and its captors are in one land,

my heart and its owners elsewhere.”

— UR-BELSHEZZAR,

170X.

 

Folklore and mythos runs deep and dank in the street-culture of Mihyaar, yet no local legend in the side-streets of Baal-Hazor is a larger moot-point than that of amber-eyes among the sisters and sons of Ur. Patricians of the house were long characterised especially by pallid and glassy eyes which adopted a dim gold. In Rh’thor, especially, wisemen postulated theories that, the gutsiness of the men of Ur, and eagerness for gold and silver and comestibles of all manners saturated their windows into the world with the greed they wore on their hearts. And, that the very colour holds as much friction and conduction to wrongdoing and wickedness, as it does reverence. The latter, of course, held little merit in the counterculture of Mihyaar, and is disputable even in more refined times.

 

There is a second suspicion of the nature of these eyes, however. In the passage to Rh’thor-by-the-Sea, the men and women of Ur coveted and carried on their backs the Ark of Ur, a sarcophagus fashioned from an oxidised wedge of brass and ivory. What the sepulchre had borne is disputed yet, but consensus will say that it was the cadaver of Ur-Shaaraim, a shepherd of Ur in the year eleven-hundred, reportedly thrusting the house into good favour, and achieved an unfathomable state of self-awareness. So the story goes that, exposure to the fumes expunged by the brass vault inspired rust to gloss over their eyes, and to henceforth bear the weight of gilding metal on their stone-hard faces.

 

Bannermen of Ur are on the darker side, with respect to skin tone, and are often identified as such rather than a dimmer bronze, as most Mihyaari might sport.

 

The house carries its own signets which its sons and daughters wear on their sleeve, as tattoos and markings. Notable are the lopsided scales, typically representing the capacity for greed and a taste for fineries, which are relished equally. The members of the house of Ur similarly revel in their piercings of all manners, hooks through the upper cartilage of the ear. The bearer of this practice typically sustains irreversible deterioration to the ear, another identifier of an Ur.

 

MANTLE

 

The approach of the Second Age has seen the dying-out of the old house. Still, its sons and daughters acknowledge their inheritance to dominion over Mihyaar — a claim very loosely latched onto, being that usurpers have tried, and succeeded, in stripping it from them. It is, admittedly, now a tenuous connection. Ur-Sahar-Maharaj sits at the head of the house presently (c. 1860s, First Age).

 

The state of the patrician house is lamentable. It is more akin to a house of cards, now.

 

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Written by Hephaestus @Hephaestus

Pertinent to the below lore:

 

 

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Spoiler

If you'd suspected I drew the name from Dagoth Ur, your suspicions were right.

 

http://pm1.narvii.com/6296/d738435b208a37c6ec1aaf13fff1dc9284ee9c95_00.jpg

 

[Bones 152]

Lovely writing as always Mr Hephaestus <3

 

[Radzig 546]

nicely written, looking forward to more

[Benjikhei 696]

so glad the expansion pack came out early, ty