Lore and Legends of the Dezzyverse

Author: Dezzy Parrish

  • The City of Vohrkohz

    The City of Vohrkohz

    Sea Cities of the Marakhor; Part 1

    Vohrkohz was founded on at a hill inside a sharp bend on the Tyrqohz river almost 500 years ago. The settlement was fortunate in it’s position between the mouth where the Tyrqohz emptied into the Marakhor Sea and the rich ore-fields on the face of Mount Ghaul. The flood plain on the low bank of the river bend offered exceptionally rich soil for crops, the river herself was bountiful and her lower branch was wide and easily navigable to the sea. Vohrkohz was well suited to grow and support her people.

    For most of it’s history Vohrkohz grew from a town on the riverbank to a modest city-state renowned for it’s artisans. They crafted beautiful and precious objects using the aurixom ore mined from the face of Mount Ghaul. When Vohrkohz joined the early Xjinn Empire, the fortunes of the city grew exceptionally fast. The markets of the expanding empire for luxury made Vohrkohz very wealthy. After the Old Xjinn Empire declined and Vohrkohz claimed its independence as a city-state and joined the Sea Cities league, their reputation and markets had been long established, and their wealth continued to grow. This was Vohrkohz’ golden age.

    However, every golden age comes to an end. Vohrkohz began her decline as the Aruixom mines began to demand more and more destructive techniques to yeild enough ore to satisfy demand. The fisheries pulled more fish from the sea and the Tyrqohz became polluted with the industrial mining and forging industries.

    Then, the Old Xjinn Empire, under the guidance of the Nea’Archi Doctrine religion, began to reclaim all it’s former lands. Vohrkhoz was reabsorbed into the Empire twelve years ago. The returned Empire was different than the one that Vohrkohz was first a part of. This Empire was martial, expansive, authoritarian. The Nea’Archi Doctrine was a strict and agressive religion, spreading the worship of Lords of the Higher Worlds, a pantheon of deities aligned with Cosmic Law. While in the dozen years of imperial rule have not purged the variety of faiths practiced in the city. Still, the Nea’Archi Doctrine did grow among the ranks of Vohrkohz’ aristocracy.

    The Old Xjinn Empire has rejected sorcery and adopted the rational disciplines of industry and science. This influence had affected Vohrkohz with the discovered industrial properties of aurixom. The forges of Vohrkohz had long known of how aurixom, when alloyed with steel created a metal of exceptional strength and durability. the Old Xjinn Empire has rebuilt and expanded Vohrkohz’s forging district to produce industrial quantities of refined aurixom and alloyed aurixom steel. The artisan districts were also turned into factories that used the refined metals to create tools, weapons, and machined parts for clockwork engines. These processes were both labor and resource intensive. The furnaces for forges and factories burned tons of coal day and night, filled the skies above Vohrkohz with clouds of brown-black smoke and filled the air with harsh fumes that could be smelled and tasted from anywhere in the city. When close to or inside the buildings the foul air even burned the eyes and skin after two or three hours.

    The Tyrqohz River was extremely polluted due to the industrialization by the Old Xjinn Empire. It had been growing more polluted due to aurixom mining operations for decades prior to industrialization. Afterwards, both the industrialized mining processes polluted the upper river, and the refining and forging districts heavily polluted the lower river. This destroyed the fishing on the Tyrqohz and affects the mouth emptying into the Marakhor Sea at Port Tir. The fishing fleets from Port Tir needed to sail further out from Tirgohro Bay into the Marakhor Sea to find fishing waters that were not corrupt.

    The banks of the Tyrqohz that served as floodplains and supported the agriculture of Vohrkohz have been polluted and corrupted into a toxic, unfertile scar. The region, called the Befoulment became a deadly, poisonous wasteland choked with mutated flora and fauna hostile to the natural environment. Within the Befoulment can be found the ruins of grand, once palatial estates, and ghost towns where the populations were driven out by the encroaching poison.

    All of these factors combined to make Vohrkohz an industrial Hell. The aristocracy embraced the Nea’Archi Doctrine had made the city opressively authoritarian. The traditional religoins that had been practiced among the artisans and farmers and fisherfolk were slowly but methotically driven out of the public. The merchant class was split, driven either into the aristocracy or out of business all together. The laborer classes were pushed into indentured servitude in the factories, forges, and workhouses of the city. All under the authority and dominance of the Old Xjinn Empire.

  • The Tralfolk of Fahr Ryasc

    The Tralfolk of Fahr Ryasc

    Tribes of the North part 1

    The Tralfolk were a barbarian people who lived in the northern lands of Fahr Ryasc; the Kharian Basin, the Kælic Highlands and the Kymric Mountains. In an earlier age, long before the rise of the Old Xjinn Empire, the lands now claimed by the Tralfolk and their rivals the Bryndffolk were all part of a Sorcerous Realm known as Vakra. The Tralfolk began as thralls of the Vakran people, giants who called themselves Vazdeg.

    When Vakra fell to a magical catastrophe brought on by their sorcerers and hubris, the pre-Tralfolk thralls were changed into the varied peoples of the Tralfolk. The Tralfolk share common, though divergent ancestry with most other peoples of Fahr Ryasc, the Xjinn, the Hsaahn, the Bryndffolk, even the Ra’akhen and the Síoraí are cousins to all of the Tralfolk ancestries.

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    Even before the Fall of Vakra, the Tralfolk had already been changed by their Sorcerous masters. Through a combination of sorcery and cultivation, the thralls of the Vakra were developed to serve the needs and desires of their Vazdeg patricians. The Fall of Vakra exaggerated the traits that were bred into the thralls, mutating them into Tralfolk.

    The principal social unit Tralfolk community organization were formed around the klaarg, groups in which descent was reckoned through common parental lineages. Klaarg (both singular and plural), were named often for the founding families and the oldest such stretch back for centuries. Communities were commonly referred to by the klaarg of their Verkovgi (Tralspek for “chief” or “lord”).

    Ethnicities of the Tralfolk

    Beihtral: The Beihtral were companions for Vazdeg sporting hunts. They were cultivated for their feral instincts and sharpened senses. After the Fall of Vakra, they developed into beast-headed humanoids of two different clans, the wolf-headed Tier, and boar-headed Tohr.

    Fyhrtral: Vakra used the ancestors of the Fyhrtral to assist with the cultivation and husbandry of the native flora and fauna in their realm. They were exposed to the most powerful wells of natural magic discovered by the sorcerers of Vakra for generations. The catastrophe of the Fall of Vakra changed the Fyhrtral, the powerful magics of the deep wild places took them and remade them. They were tall and graceful, Fyhrtral men grow proud horns from their heads like stags, their legs were jointed like deer, ending in cloven hooves and made them swift runners and strong leapers. Their bodies were covered in a pelt of short, soft fur, and they grew short, furry tails at the base of their spines.

    Glaztral: The Glaztral were robust thralls, cultivated to thrive in high and cold altitudes found in the Kymric Mountains. After the fall, the developed to large people, covered in a thick pelt of white or pale fur across their shoulders, arms and legs.

    Gundtral: Gundtral were among the most privileged thralls, serving as assistants to the Vakran sorcerers. The Gundtral were selected for their natural talents with magic and intellect, but not might or strength. They suffered most during the Fall, emerging from the devastation only half the size of most other peoples and cursed with an impish seeming. Without the privilege of their masters’ favor, the Gundtral have dropped to nearly the bottom of Tralfolk society. Still, they have retained their inherent magic and high intelligence, traits which help them to survive despite their physical frailties.

    Orgtral: Physically largest of the Tralfolk, Orgtral are larger than even their Glaztral cousins. Their thick limbs and broad trunks affoard them all the physical advantages that the Gundtral lack. Their ancestors were cultivated by the Vazdeg for physical labor and service as soldiers and bodyguards. This heritage, and their size has made the Orgtral phenomonally strong when compared to other peoples.

    Rukhtral: The Tralfolk people were capable of producing multiethnic offspring, both with other Tralfolk, and wih other humanoid peoples. The result of these mixed lineages had stabilized into the youngest of Tralfolk peoples, the Rukhtral. The Rukhtral carried many of the best traits from their parentage, though to a lesser degree. They were strong, but not as strong as the Orgtral, they were clever, but not as clever as the Gundtral, they felt a deep connection to the land, but not to the same extent as the Fyhrtral. Rukhtral were of average height and build of most humanoid peoples of Fahr Ryasc, with pointed ears and small horns growing from their foreheads.

    Svakktral: The Svakktral when they were thralls of Vakra were used as miners and workers of stone and metal. They explored the Underworld of Fahr Ryasc and sought its treasures for their Vakran masters. After the Fall of Vakra, the thralls who retreated into their vast underground strongholds became Svakktral. The Svakktral were short and broad, thick limbed and strong as the mountains they lived beneath

    Vaktral: The Vaktral as thralls, were born of a Vashdeg parent and a thrall. This did require sorcery as the Vashdeg were giants, and in the case of a thrall mother, that sorcery needed to be applied until birth. The children of this mixed parentage enjoyed an elevated status in Vakran socity, above the other thralls, but below Vakran citizens. They also were able to produce a stable ancestry of hybrid children among themselves. They, like the Gundtral, were highly intelligent and magically powerful. They were, by most cultural definitions, beautiful to look upon. Even after the Fall of Vakra, the Vaktral only became moreso. Their sorcerous prowess, inherited from their Vashdeg ancestery made them mighty sorcerers, but their numbers were very few, and they isolated themselves, preferring solitude to the harsh realities of life among others.

    Language

    The Tralfolk communities spoke Tralspek, a derivative form of Vakran. Over the long centuries following the Fall of Vakra, the Tralfolk continued to use their own casual dialect of Vakran until it became a distinct language of its own. Tralspek did not have a written form, most Tralfolk were illiterate, but the few who have kept written records over the centuries used the Vakran alphabet and symbology to preserve their histories, stories and culture. But, the writings made were unique to each author. No single written interpretation of Tralspek has emerged, and none was widely adopted.

    Relations

    The Old Xjinn Empire: The Empire considered the Tralfolk to be uncultured barbarians at best, and at worst, more beasts than people. From how the Tralfolk live to their language, worship, even their art and culture were all deemed inferior to the Old Xjinn Empire.

    Bryndffolk: The Bryndffolk have been competitors for land in the north with Tralfolk since the Fall of Vakra. Longer if one considers the Bryndffolk’s struggle with Vakra pre-Fall. While the two peoples have been intermixed for centuries, and minorities of each people lived amongst the communities of the other, there was always competition for land, rescources, and survival.

    The Sea Cities: The rise of the Sea Cities held many of the same prejudices that the Old Xjinn Empire had. Influenced by the Bryndffolk when their trading ships sailed north, they held the view of the Tralfolk as barbarian pirates looking for plunder rather than commerce.

  • The triumph of Law in the Old Xjinn Empire

    The triumph of Law in the Old Xjinn Empire

    In Fahr Ryasc, the Lords of the Higher Worlds overthrew the Princes of Ruin, imprisoning Chaos and establishing the dominance of Law.

    One thousand years ago, Law triumphed over Chaos in Fahr Ryasc. Nikkarn, one of the Archons of the Nea’Archi Doctrine wielded the Ebonrune Scepter to bind each Prince of Ruin into it’s prison in the Underworld. With the Princes entombed, The Lords of the Higher Worlds were freed to elevate Law among the mortal peoples of Fahr Ryasc, starting with the Old Xjinn Empire.

    The Old Xjinn Empire had already adopted the Nea’Archi Doctrine as it’s religion and creed almost since it’s founding. After the triumph, the empire withdrew back into it’s irex (“throne-cities”) and spent centuries consolidating and transforming into the instrument the Lords of the Higher Worlds would use to subjugate all of Fahr Ryasc.

    Through Nea’Archi Doctrine dogma, the Old Xjinn Empire forbade sorcery, and adopted science and rationality to replace it with Alchemy ,Artifice and Clockwork. This led to the discovery of the element Aurixom as a catalyst for industry. This revolution in the empire has reinvigorated the declining, fading realm. Purges of sorcerers and practice of religions other than the Nea’Archi Doctrine has reshaped imperial culture and returned the Old Xjinn Empire to a position of supremacy in Fahr Ryasc.

    The Old Xjinn Empire had reclaimed most of its former territory over the past century. With the absorbtion of the city-state of Vohrkohz on the Tyrqohz River, the empire has secured the richest source of Aurixom ore known in Fahr Ryasc. As the campaign opens, the empire is expanding and beginning it’s effort to conquer the entire continent.

    As a background option in Black Sword Hack, the Old Xjinn Empire is considered decadent.