Yulthar

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Godless Yulthar

The Homeland of the Demonhunters

In the beginning,

Man was spawned, and their tumultuous nature scattered them across the ordinary. First, the center was occupied; Malin, Horen, Urguan and Krug were born within Aegis. Then, they split, seeking four homelands beyond the crest of their true place of birth. And finally, the descendents roamed from these four homelands to carve paths of their own, scouring the uncharted world in conquest for sovereignty and land-claim. To scholars of the elder-age, this event was known as a great disunification, for when Man broke apart it made strayed communities isolated and their cultures differing. Such was the nature of old Yulthar.

Yulthar was the product of a binding of ancient Men descended from Malin and Horen, whom both had initially deviated a time before its formation to become those known as “Easterners”; Farfolk of foreign visage with fair skin and almond eyes. Though these two eastern-contorted races allied together for the prospect of Yulthar, they did not converge upon each other in fear of the coalesce of two curses -- a fate they foresaw as dismal and dishonorable, and a blight upon future generations. It was in a vast, gloaming expanse of land in the east that Yulthar was established by these primordial peoples, carrying with them the legacy of a foreign culture borne of nameless nations.

What did they not carry with them was the traditions of theism, and the coveted scriptures of gods; the Men of Yulthar proclaimed themselves great, for they were “unshackled” by their ways, and free from the tyrannies and fears of deific covenants. Their godless beliefs derived from the occult of the Old Lords, whom in an archaic nameless time apparently visited the unknown east to speak of their hatred of the Immortals. The progenitors of the Yultharans took to these doctrines, and though they did so in small numbers, their efforts to forge a haven of mankind had been successful with their fervent efforts to gain followers. In the east, this ancestor-ideology to Xionism was easily beheld as honorable and just to those uncaring for the Old Lords’ glorification of dark magics. Thus, Yultharans were seduced into godlessness, and built a cityscape upon its basis.

There, a culture of eldritch wisdom and mortal prowess was formed. Yulthar was like an amalgam of the east and west, where the gothic, stoney visages of the centerland’s four kingdoms and the graceful, foreign stylizations of eastern villages were sewn together in both body and spirit. The city was split into two racial districts - not out of disunity of Yultharan elves and humans, but as a show of mass self-restraint and consideration for the moral, spiritual and order from which Yulthar was built upon. Racial purity was coveted in the godless realm not out of xenophobic tradition, but because they feared the accursed darkness which dwelt their blood, like all mortals: the curses of Iblees. Those whom succumbed to interracial desires had been known in the annals of Yulthar to commit honorable suicide with an age-old blade known as a katana, one of the vestiges of the east preserved by the Yultharan people.

For centuries, Yulthar persevered. When barbarians brought war to them, they met their enemy with dark visages and grim stratagems, encroaching upon the opposition with a means of combat that both compounded upon western reckless abandon and eastern calm and patience. When pestilence came to them, they honed in upon its source like reapers, and snuffed it out with violent, flameborne purging. When the winters became harsh and the skies became too dark, Yulthar became a shining beacon in the east, fabled for its spires which burned with nigh-everlasting fires. They were masters of the dark, stormy skies in that region, and cloaked their city in the warm light of fire when the sun refused to part from the stubborn, omnipresent clouds.

So numerous and fearsome were the beasts amid Yulthar’s land that its denizens were practically forced to adopt a huntsman’s culture; men and women took up the black garb and departed from the walls to cull the savage, animalistic masses that threatened their borders. The imagery of Yultharan warriors and war-crafts had been focused on the design of wolves, for they were abundant in the lands amidst Yulthar, and were as ravenous as they were untameable. There was no domestication of beasts here - only the hunt, where either man or creature was slain. This was regarded as an honorable tradition, in due time.

The anomalies of magic were not common in Yulthar. Whenever it bore a presence, it took the form of Dark Arts, for their very beliefs were based on the glorification of “mortal” powers borne of their revered Old Lords’ meddlings. Whatever greater antitheist position that existed likely held a form of their four-numbered prophets’ powers, for proto-Necromancy was venerated in the ancient times amid people lulled by the Old Lords, and the Yultharans respected the wisdom of the dead as much as they respected their occultist forefathers themselves, and thus raised the passed in respectable rituals in which those who embraced death would impart sagacity to the living so as to prevent errors in future generations.

A time before the modern ages arrived (1300-present), the Fallen One had risen again, and sought to scorch the mortal world with the Undead working in his malevolent shadow. It was old Aegis that received such a terrible blight firsthand, but after the calamity of the Abyss transpired, the profane flames of Iblees scattered, and malformed beings of netherious matter absconded into the beyond where societies far from the centerland laid. Yulthar, as a cityscape wedged between the foreign vastness of the Far-East and the closer western lands that now exist as a gelid, ashen pit, was subject to the wroth of these creatures -- the mindless minions of the Daemon of Ruin converged upon Yulthar, and brought to the hardy eastern peoples an unwelcomed war. It was in the divergence of the Undead and the exodus of the descendents into the next world that caused the lesser, mortal flock of Iblees’ loyalists to become greater in position, using what shambled power and authority they held to take control of the remnants of their forsaken god’s foul spawn.

Thus, the dark deific waged war against the dark godless. The accursed cultist who enshackled Iblees’ demons in forced servitude, akin to how one may chain a blooddrunk wolf, converged upon Yulthar with a most terrible ire. The men and women of Yulthar, knowing only the way of the hunt, responded as they have for generations - meeting the threat that clambered at their walls. Though the Yultharans were not a people experienced in warfare, their savage means to combat beasts that prowled their sullen land were employed effectively, matching the remnants of Iblees’ minions with skill where they could not in number. Eventually, the mortal few that led their Fallen One’s masterless demons were slain by the Yultharans, leaving their dark spawn to wreck havoc with no guidance; this proved to be an incline in the bedlam that met Yulthar, for with no chains to contain the demons, their collective forces were free to scour the lands of Yulthar and overwhelm its denizens.

Year after year, the war against demons became less of a war and more of a hunt; the Yultharan people were scarred, desensitized, their peace broken and their progress shattered. The masterless demons brought them pain and suffering and stained the honor of their name, thus the enemy they once regarded as “equal” became little more than animals for them - for that was what they were, these old demons of Iblees. Animals. Savages. The men of Yulthar would not allow animals to shatter the city they built with their bare hands, and thus devised a means to eradicate them -- they would make rise of the Demonhunters.

Those gifted such a mantle were selected from the greatest of Yultharan warriors, led by one known as Unmei-no-Dāku, which in his tongue meant “destined dark”. The Demonhunters, bound by oath, were gifted rings enchanted by a curse woven by the head of Yulthar’s godless occult, Highvicar Mezame. The Highvicar’s rings, ensnared with his dark magics, denied the Demonhunters the right to die - condemning them to rise almost immediately after death as half-sentient ghouls so that their duties may be ever-pursued. Unmei fought to the (un)death alongside his fellow compatriots, and was written as a legend among his people as the “one-armed swordsman”, for in his last moments he wielded his blade with one unbroken arm and one eye, fighting like a wolf backed into a corner.

The sacrifices of the Demonhunters of legend are said to preserve Yulthar when it neared total desolation by the hands of the demonic incursion. In the end, Yulthar was left drenched in blood and half-ruined, its peoples lessened and its legacy contained by those whom had no perished in the war. Known as the Lodge of Yulthar, these dark-cloaked hunters sought to slowly rebuild their fallen society with what is left of it. Never again would the deific converge upon their homeland; their hatred would act as their vigor behind every stacked stone.

The majority of Yultharan culture was preserved by the Lodge, which in its current state is equivalent to a large village with enough people to keep their traditions alive. Though they have come to adopt grim aspects into their ways, Yultharan customs of yore are still practiced; even racial segregation still strives, showing that these men of the east still practiced wisdom and self-restraint. Since the formation of the Abyss, the godless nature of their culture had been compounded upon in many ways from reverence to the act of execution.

The formation of the Abyss was discovered by the men of old Yulthar while the remnants of Iblees’ followers still led their demonic slaves against the godless state, and acted as a means to rouse the occultist spirit of Yulthar’s warriors and heighten their desire for retribution; this godless ire is cited as fearsome in Yultharan tales of the war against demonkind, and said to have caused the final push that both killed off the invading followers of Iblees and, as a result, released the demons from slavery. Wisemen and scholars of the Lodge recall such a thing bitterly, for it shows even the godless may be pious, and therefore reflect the rash nature which their doctrine sought to oppose. This philosophy is known as “machigae-mokuteki”, or mistaken purpose.

The discovery of the Abyss made rise to two prominent traditions: a form of execution, and the adoption of the Way of Embers, which is known as a denomination of Xionism. The remnants of Yulthar’s occult say that the Lord of Embers himself came to old Yulthar after the formation of the Abyss, sharing with them his dark philosophies and expanding their godless views before receding back into the centerland, apparently to descend into the Abyss itself. It is not known where this alleged Lord of Embers truly went or what his fate was.

For those whom would disrespect the honor of the Lodge, the Abyss was utilized as a means of execution. Traitors and heathens were brought to the Abyss in guarded pilgrimage to say final respects to the Old Lords before being covered in pitch, set alite, and then kicked into the bottomless depths. This brutality was seen as justified, for the Lodge could not afford the presence of traitors and the godless-turned-godly. The use of the eastern katana as an executioner’s tool for Xionist judges could be linked to the migration of Yultharan scouts who would make passage into Athera pre-occupation and leaves bits of information and tribute behind to mark their presence.

The Lodge of Yulthar continues to persevere to this day; and at the beck of distant peoples, the men of Yulthar come and go to visit lands afar to spread their godless doctrine, or to seek recompense for the sins and dishonor the godly brought to the doorstep.