| “ | No shadow without light. Ever day follows night. Between black and white, there is gray. | ” |
—Ancient Ashkahi Proverb. | ||
The Empire of Ashkah, now commonly known as Ashkah or Yiisir, ruled the known world for approximately seven centuries - a period considered by learned scholars as a peerless age in the fields of science and the arts arcane. Ashkah was a society of sorcerers, known as sorcerii, whose bold ventures into the realms of magika - or werking, of whichever term you please - not only dwarfed the weaker thaumaturgical rites of the Liisian Magus Kings who followed them, but also changed the shape of reality itself.
The Fall of Ashkah[]
Sadly, as if often the case when mortals go fiddling with fabrics woven by the gods, someone, or something, things are bound to end in catastrophe. No mortal scholar is quite sure about the exact nature of Ashkah's fall. Many say their empire was scrubbed by the world by Aa himself. Other claims the werking of the Ashkah sorcerii caught the attentions of beings older than the gods - nameless monstrosities beyond the edge of the universe and sanity, who gobbled the empire down like an inkfiend on a three-turn bender.
And then, there are other who say someone among the sorcerii simply fucked up. Very, VERY badly.
The truth was they worshipped Anais, who taught them their magic. When Aa killed him, magic died with him. When his body hit the earth, his head landed on their capital city of Yiisir, destroying it and rendering the region a barren wasteland. The impact caused many sorcerii to mutate into the various monstrosities that now populate the region.
Modern Ashkah[]
The fallen empire of Ashkah was eventually conquered by the Kingdom of Itreya, and is now a vassal state of the Republic. It is considered a generally undesirable destination, an uneventful backwater on the edge of the known world. It has very few urban villages, being primarily constituted of vast deserts and ancient ruins.
Ashkah is also almost entirely inhabited by foreigners, particularly Itreyans. The Ashkahi race is all but extinct, and their dialect is now considered an ancient tongue.
The land is also said to be cursed, magikally polluted by the remnants of the Ashkahi Empire. This pollution is said to have caused the mutations found in the majority of Ashkah creatures and in Ashkah's lands. The creatures of the wastes were once the citizens of Ashkah mutated by the death of Anais, they are drawn by Darkin, because they sense Anais's soul in them and a part of them remembers his fall for their mutations.
Trivia[]
- Ashkah is clearly modelled after ancient civilizations that predated the Romans: Egypt, Carthage, and Mesopotamia