nutranurse
Unlikeliest of Slash Fics
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2009
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Spoiler :
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The Telmar
Amoal heard of and encountered the primative Telric humans during his short time spent among the northern Narados clans. Like most humans, the Telric were foreigners to the Kor-Fiol region, having migrated from the mysterious north due to the rise of a terrible, flying, monstrous race. During that migration many of the Telric men were either killed or taken off by the strange, winged demons that hounded the Telric. This created a gender imbalance that empowered the Telric females, thus allowing for the matriarchal Terlan culture to develop.
In every aspect of Terlan live, save for the most degrading and most menial labors, women dominated. Even after the genders reached some level of balance women remained the prime-movers of all religious, economic, and political spheres. Religion, of course, played a key role in maintaining this imbalance. To explain their fortune, the Terlan women made their sex utterly divine. Two goddesses ruled over El-Or, alternating who would preside over the world in a mortal form while the other was the incorporeal defender against the hell above. The Terlan's high shamaness thus became the living embodiment of their god and the ultimate leader of her peoples. Conversely men were reduced to sub-human beings who lacked souls due to the preference the sky-demons seemed to show for males.
This relationship between El-Or and sky, woman and man became crucial to Terlan thought. Men were associated with the sky and subsequently were seen as beings bound by nothing good or earthly. Women, on the other hand, were as fertile as El-Or, the bearers of life and the producers of souls. Understandably these empowered women did not know what to make of Amoal, who they called Amil—meaning 'Unjustly Powerful Man'—to reflect this confusion.
Prior to Amil's arrival the only outside contact the Terlan had was with the two elven species near to them, the horse-riding Narados Rochir and the avian Malachim. Of the two the Terlan preferred the Narados; quite frankly the winged Malachim elves terrified the Terlan and reminded them too much of the sky-demons that had harried their ancestors out of their northern home. Relations between the northern early Narados and Terlan were largely peaceful, mostly due to the small size, relative poverty, and ferocity of the tribal Terlan and the general lack of commercial ambition among the northern horselords. Over the centuries between the Terlan's migration to Kor-Fiol and the arrival of Amil, the contact between the humans and plains-elves was so frequent that the Terlan females came to adopt the more graceful elven tongue and customs. Occasionally a Terlan female would take a Narados male as a sort of transient consort as a demonstration of her extraordinary wealth, education, and attractiveness. The children of these unions were only special if they were female—male half-elves were treated the same as all males and cast into the sad masses of slaves. Half-elf females, on the other hand, were coveted and rapidly rose in all stations save for religious ones, from which they were barred.
A Terlan Half-Elf Captain;
Many Terlan Half-Elves find themselves thrust in mid-level command positions in the Terlan army, having both elven agility and human strength enabling them to serve as very capable field commanders.
The Plains-Strider's Horror pt.II
When Amil arrived among the Terlan they were utterly taken up by him. His magick put him well above even the Terlan Goddess-Queen, Rosore. Her ferocity was well known to those of the region, and when Amil greeted her she purposefully wore the feathered headdress made from feathers she personally plucked from a Malachim's wings. Immediately she desire Amil, but more importantly she desired his magick. Rosore was the first student Amil took among the Terlan, and she fiercely warded away many of the other hopeful women. She jealously guarded the great elven magician even though she would not prove to be his most brightest or powerful student. To date, however, Rosore was his most ambitious apprentice.
Convinced of her own divinity, Rosore did not heed Amil's warnings against the dangers certain applications of magick posed to not just the user, but the whole fabric of reality. She always pushed the great teacher's patience by experimenting on her male slaves, doing horrible things to their minds when he left her by herself. His kind heart, however, blinded him to the worst of these atrocities till it was too late.
Though Rosore counted Amil as one of her consorts, she held many more and among them was a powerful northern Narados horseman, Hicron. Hicron's brutality was well known among the northern clans, and his lust for the human women was equally represented by the numerous half-elf half-sisters he sired upon the most powerful Terlan women. He was one of Rosore's favorite consorts and had fathered two children—both daughters—by her already, and when he returned to the goddess-queen's nest once again he brought with him powerful magick.
Hicron was no great vivificationist, but he was utterly ruthless in its more harmful applications. During the War of Reclaimation Hicron and his honor-band were the first to fight and last to leave, often straying behind the main army for days at a time to toy with the failing life forces of dying halflings. Though his behavior earned him the utter derision of his more nobler brothers, the more magickally inclined Narados saw Hicron's experiments as a grim necessity for fully grasping the terrible new power that the Narados wielded. When his lord abandoned the war, Hicron briefly abandoned him to meet his divine human mistress, and she was all too happy to receive him once she caught wind of the potent arts he grasped.
Rosore proved a malleable student, mostly due to the direct training she had received from magick's great teacher himself. Within weeks she was slaughtering male slaves with a wave, putting them through excruciating pain at a glance, and, most impressive of all, raising them so that she might do it all over again. These first undead were utter abominations. Though Rosore could rekindle their failing sparks of life, she could not stave off the rot that naturally gripped corpses. Shambling masses of decaying flesh, mind, and souls were nightly created by the goddess-queen and those few other women she trusted with these dark arts.
Control over the zombies was hard to establish. Rosore correctly reasoned that the thaumaturgic magick Amil had taught her could easily be extended to controlling the feeble minds of the undead, but she had not the skill to do so and no Terlan truly would till the years leading up to the Silver Age.
A Silver Age Terlan 'Spitting' Undead;
The first zombies raised by Rosore were undoubtedly simple affairs, and their use was relatively short-lived.
Upon the 212th reincarnation of Cliavin as the young priestess Asophe, however, the necromantic arts underwent a theoretical revolution.
Rather than try and stave off a zombie's rot Asophe sought to utilize it. This resulted in a zombie's lifespan increasing dramatically, while also allowing for Terlan vivificationists to even work rot into a zombie's arsenal.
Once most of the flesh of a zombie has rotted off, its skeleton is revived and its intestines coiled about it so that the creature may use the former organ and its bile as weapons during battle.
Due in part to his soft-heart, and more so to the fact that Rosore allowed him to teach other students than her while she flirted with oblivion, Amil did not catch onto the darker workings of his first human student. He would not, in fact, until she appeared in his chambers one night in an attempt to seduce the great mage in the hopes that their children would be even more powerful. When Amil would have none of this—something that Rosore had never experienced in all her life—Rosore rose up in a terrible fury and attempted to strike down her former master.
She succeeded, though only partially.
When Amil had been Amos upon Eyr so many years ago the red rock he had summoned and the terrible fire that care with it altered him somehow. Few would have known that Amos/Amoal/Amil was over a thousand years old because his appearance was kept eternally youthful by the magick that coursed through his veins. By the time he was teaching the Terlan humans he was more magick than man. When Rosore destroyed the thin life force he had left, but at that moment he became a higher being.
The Amos-that-was-not-Amos reached out and touched the Goddess-Queen as she tried to summon up another spell, turning her to stone—specifically into mana. She died right at that moment and Amos-not proceeded to wander about her palace, turning everyone and thing into mana till he seemingly disappeared.
►Mana Well discovered, Glasrock Palace of Salatasi
Glasrock Palace;
The palace's name stems from the glass-like appearance of mana. Since its creation, Glasrock Palace has only grew upwards towards the sky, causing many of the more religious Terlan to see it more so as an abomination than a boon.
The sudden creation of a mana well so large and so potent utterly warped the surrounding city of Salatasi. Angry, red clouds swirled around the palace, while the rest of the city was swathed in a blue fog. The palace itself came to take on a rotted appearance, as did the buildings around it. The Terlan priestesses were at first fearful to enter the palace until the next goddess-queen ventured into its unknown depths and returned with the Rosore's crown, now turned into a crown made from mana.
~+~
Summary: The Telric humans are strangers to Kor-Fiol, though the Terlan culture that developed in the Sûllos Plains has been influenced by the plains-dwelling Narados elves. The distinct mark of the Terlan culture, however, is its complete and utter degradation of its male populace, which stems from the dark days of the Telric Migration that saw the Telric males picked off by the winged-demons who caused the exodus in the first place. Partially out of fear, partially out of hate, the Terlan women associated themselves with El-Or and their men with the nameless sky. The Terlan high-priestesses were seen as the mortal reincarnation of the Terlan goddesses, Cliavin the Goddess of Wisdom & Nieleve the Goddess of Strength. Women were the creators of life, the producers of souls, and the ultimate manifestation of all that was right. Conversely, being one with the sky and not the earth meant that the men were beings devoid of higher-thought, skills, and most importantly a soul. Their slavery and subjugation was simply a righteous act.
However, these views did not seem to entirely extend to the males of other races, and the history of Narados-Terlan relations is peppered with numerous unions that resulted in the birth of even more half-elves. It was due to this affinity for elven males that the Goddess-Queen Rosore became enamored with the Great Teacher Amos/Amoal, who they called Amil. Rosore became the first magician of her kind, though her lust for power quickly lead applying vivification magick to raising dead male slaves, and eventually she attempted to kill Amil after he rejected her. She did in fact kill the mortal elf that was Amos/Amoal/Amil, but since the very first days after the red rock crashed into Eyr he was more than a man. When Rosore killed Amil she allowed for the birth of something more, something alien, something that was magick itself.
Rosore was killed by this thing and her whole palace turned into a growing monstrosity made of precious mana. The Terlan since that day have lived in its terrible shadow, meekly drawing upon its power to cast their foul spells.
~+~
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The Angels of Ilonmol
Not all the elves of Kor-Fiol came from the cold forests, or roamed its bitter plains, but lived atop the perilous peaks of the region's many mountains. The western Ilonmol Range was home to such a race, and they called themselves Malachim. Meaning 'angel' in their tongue, the Malachim were a race of winged elves whose elven gift for magic manifested itself physically as well as mentally.
A Female Malachim Wind-Keeper;
The Wind-Keepers are among the most prestigious members of Malachim society for their control over the very winds themselves.
Where most geomancers see the ley lines only on the ground, the Wind-Keepers trace them through the air.
Like their Dohtel cousins, the Malachim developed in relative isolation due to their surroundings. The jagged Ilonmol mountains were full of numerous pockmarks upon their faces, and it was in these caves that the early Malachim made their homes. Their semi-subterranean lives was not a choice entirely of their own—the caves seemed to call out to them. Unbeknownst to the Malachim these 'voices' were the result of the mana-rich veins that were buried in nearly all the Ilonmol caves. The 'voice' of each cave was different, though all spoke of the same things: the ley lines of the world.
►Mana Well discovered, Caves of Many Voices
Over many centuries the Malachim recorded the words of these voices through song and eventually through writing. Upon writing the first words down the first spells were cast and since then the Malachim form of magick relied upon the careful tracing of these ancient words upon scrolls or, more rarely, in the air.
Only two ley lines traced through the mountains where the Malachim made their homes, which they named Farie and Firason. Farie, which went through the western mountains, was a ley line of the earth and those clans who dwelt near it were able to shape the very mountains to their whim. Firason was the thinner line of the two and encompassed only a sliver of the eastern peaks, though the potent magick it manifested was pertained to the air. Like the Dohtel, the Malachim quickly became separated into two distinct cultures, Malachim-Farie and Malachim-Firason.
Of the two the Malachim-Farie were far more numerous. With control of the earth at their deft hands they carved their cave-homes into ornate halls that went deep into the mountains. So extensive were these tunnels that the first Malachim city of Tol-Farie was a sprawling, magical metropolis of its time. The Malachim-Farie, however, never united under any one leader or council and remained divided by tribal familial divisions while other peoples were coalescing under monarchs, tyrants, and councilmen. Furthermore, the potential of Tol-Farie was strangled by its hard to reach position and the inclusive nature of the Malachim-Farie, who shunned outsiders as lesser beings—and this xenophobia very much extended to their Malachim-Firason brothers, who they simply regarded as incredibly pitiful.
Part of the Malachim-Farie's derisive view of their eastern brothers was not without merit. Compared to the Malachim-Farie, the homes of the Malachim-Firason were ugly affairs adorned with a great number of trinkets from other races. Where the geomanery of the Malachim-Farie caused them to be rooted in their mountain homes, the Malachim-Firason soared the skies with favorable winds always at their backs. The Malachim-Firason quickly came to be traders and crossed the skies to trade with peoples as far away as the Star Goblins of the Cavern of Stars. They were among the first peoples to truly immerse themselves in other nations, dwelling for years at a time in foreign cities as exotic merchants. To this day most races use the Malachim word for commerce, Ashrayi.
As generations were born away from the caves the Malachim-Firason were unshackled from their traditional homes and began to settle the in the southern Hills of Eyolmol. Here the Firason made the first Malachim kingdom, also called Eyolmol, though it was ultimately short-lived due to successive orcish raids from the Forests of Gir and opportunistic attacks by the Terlan and their undead hordes. Battered, but not broken, the Firason debated among themselves for some time before a young Malachim called Uriel.
The Sword of Uriel & The Kingdom of Malash
Even among the stranger Firason, Uriel was not a typical Malachim. Uriel had never seen his people's great caves of voices, though he heard them shout. He was born to two typical Firason traders who based themselves mostly in the petty Sheol river-states. There he came into contact with numerous other races, ranging from the fierce Narados horselords, to the opulent Sheol merchant-nobles, and the strange, quiet Rial-Dothel traders. It would be the contact he had with the Rial-Dothel which would prove one of the most important moments in his life, for it was a Rial-Dohtel merchant-captain who taught him the rudiments of artification. Not long after, his parents journeyed to and died in the Kingdom of Eyolmol.
Why no Malachim before Uriel had never made the leap to attempt try and contain their geomancery into a material form was a wonder made wondrous still due to Uriel's poor grasp of the magic itself. Though all Malachim counted themselves to be mages, Uriel's talent was minimal and largely restricted to his scattered recollection of the names belonging to a few ley lines. He did not, however, lack in curiosity. According to Uriel's own words he later would write in the Book of Uriel
Though remember this is all noncannon. Some of it will make its way into the real update. It also does not include Seon's, General Olaf's, Merciary's, Northen Wolf's, or Devercia's races because those parts of the updates are all written in my notes.
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