Zambistan
25-02-2007, 22:19
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Hyperborea
Map (http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/travel/dg/maps/4c/750x750_greenland_m.gif)
History
History is one of the most important things to the Hyperboreans. Few people's have been on this earth as long as they, and they believe even if one fragment of the past is lost, the Hyperborean peoples could "devolve" into the apemen that cover the earth. Historians are held in higher regard then preists, and since the time before time the King has always been a historian.
BEGINNING
The initial history is unclear, which is strange for the Hyperboreans. Before the antediluvian age, before perhaps Pangea, before perhaps even life itself existed, the Hyperboreans have a fraction of a long lost legend about where they came from. Before they ever write down or tell the tale of thier beinning they always start the same: "From a time beyond time, we come.
We, who once crested the waves of the great astral sea...
and who now must strive again for the domination of the stars." All that is known is their ancestors were “mysterious travelers” who reputedly “came down from the stars in great silvern chariots drawn by steeds of flame.” They are described as having "possessed power unparalleled...ageless, remorseless. Without pity or conscience.Manipulators of evolution on countless worlds. Gods of the stars... the Celestial Host!" These beings stayed for an unknown amount of time, until other “travelers” came, whom the records call the “servants of Yig.” There was a war for an unknown reason, in which a great and horrible weapon was used.
"...(the weapon was) a single projectile
charged with all the power of the Universe.
An incandescent column of smoke and flame
As bright as the thousand suns rose in all its splendor...
An iron thunderbolt,
A gigantic messenger of death,
Which reduced to ashes
The entire race of the servants of Yig
... the corpses were so burned
As to be unrecognizable.
The hair and nails fell out;
Pottery broke without apparent cause,
And the birds turned white.
... After a few hours
All foodstuffs were infected...
... to escape from this fire
The soldiers threw themselves in streams
To wash themselves and their equipment..."
The whole world was destroyed and the remaining survivors of the victors traveled to Hyperborea. For hundreds of years no civilization existed, until finally the antediluvian age came about, and with it the rise of the Hyperboreans (possibly due to the “rediscovering” of ancient technology?).
ANTEDILUVIAN
Long ago, before the Third Great Cataclysm reshaped the face of creation, the world was full of life and civilization. Atlantis, Hyperborea, Mu, Lemuria, and Ultima Thule were the greatest of nations. They had discovered flight, landed on the moon and had learned the secrets of other dimensions. Hyperborea constructed an empire of 64 million stretching far and wide, and a period of such glory has never be known again to the Hyperboeans. Still, with all of Hyperborea’s great accomplishments, one nation rose above all others in the antediluvian world... Atlantis. It was a time of change. The descendants of the Atlantean mages had fallen before the New Praesidium, and the wolves were baying at the Empire's door. An oppressive new faith was encroaching from the east, and the sylvan liege had locked tight the gates of his arboreal realm. And so it was that towards the end of the Age of Mystery, Atlantis sought to re-invigorate it’s empire…by conquering the Hyperborean Empire.
The war was epic, dragging all the other empires into it. First Lemuria and her tentacled people fell, then Mu, soon the immortals of Ultima Thule departed this world and sunk their island, leaving only Atlantis and Hyperborea. The war finally came down to one battle, on the plain of Caylen-Tor. The numbers of soldiers were epic, and the King of Hyperborea crafted a prayer so powerful it is still spoken in Hyperborea today:
“O' grim gods of battle, empower us this night...
Anoint us with the crimson rain, feed our steel with slaughter...
Let every blow be a killing blow, grant us victory, or a warrior's death.
Come, moon-fogs, Descend to cloak our numbers, the heady scent of battlebeckons,
My ash-hafted spear feels good in my hands, girt 'round with spells our flesh gloriously anointed,
Ravens awaiting slaughter soar high above, blood-worms bloat on red carnage,
I'll carve the moon-wheel in their flesh, as havoc churns the heather!
And the thirst of the earth shall be slaked with blood at the fields of
carnage...
A staggering sea of crimson, a towering mountain of ravaged flesh,
All enraptured by the searing kiss of steel,
All surfeit from supping deep of the grim chalice of battle...
Brooding gods of the north, display to these outlander thralls thine ire,
Envenom our blades with the death-kiss of a thousand serpents,
Unfetter the dread war-voors within us,
That their claws may rend, and their jaws may be reddened.
Voors of the north, raise thine steel to the skies, revel in the pride of your wounds,
Let our victory-song ride the winds of this blood-gorged eve,
For on this night of red swords will have wrought a legend,
Forged in the fires of our rage, and tempered with the spilled blood of the slain.”
The battle lasted for a month straight, devastating the world around it. No one knows the final outcome of the battle. Even the Great Eye of the Universe and the Mists of the Oracle are unable to ascertain
the fate of the King and his army on that fate-steeped dawn. So much
unparalleled and polarized arcane power was unleashed upon the Field of Blood at that instant that it has forever obscured the oracular vista and shielded the truth from the eyes of even the most talented and presentient master of the Praxeum. All that is known is Atlantis disappeared and the ice age took hold.
THE FALL
Hyperborea was dying, as the ice slowly grew over their homeland. Depopulated, and having fallen into another dark age the Hyperboreans could only watch as everything they knew froze around them. Gone was the capital, Commoriom; The mighty vale of Uzuldaroum; The Eiglophian Mountains, including the skyscraping Mount Voormithadreth; even Y’quaa and its Cavern of Archetypes all dissappeared under the ice. As the jungles and forests of Hyperborea dissappered, the people even lost their god, Tsathoggua. Almost all of the land bound creatures died as well, creating a huge famine which decimated the population even further. The Hyperboreans wrote of thier lost utopian cities in thier epic poem "In search of the lost cities"
Beneath the ice, the endless ice of Pangaea's now axial
eternally frozen frontier, entombed for countless millions of years... the
lost cities of Hyperborea!
Secrets locked within the ice, the endless ice of Hyperborea,
'Neath the peak of Erebus the First Ones sleep, Lords of the Stars,
Cities lost within the night, the frozen night of Hyperborea,
Pre-Cambrian, the Voyagers, beyond the stars, Lords of the Stars.
Once, the coruscating spires of ours here offered their splendour to the
heavens. Now, those spires gleam no more, save in dreams of verdant plains,
save in dreams of time-lost citadels.
Legacy of a utopia lost, forever enshrined 'neath the ice...
Sail across Panthalassa to Gondwanaland,
Three moons to guide us on this voyage across the sea, they cried
Sail across Panthalassa to Gondwanaland,
New lands to conquer and claim for our progeny.
Before the Third Moon fell from orbit, before the
Nine Continents were formed from Pangaea's shattered surface...
Hewn from the Pre-Cambrian rock, behold our primordial metropolis'!
And the First Ones shall awaken on that day, when we will return to the stars!
We, who were before Man, are destined to be the architects of his future!
And we shall one day rediscover the secrets long-frozen within the lost cities of Hyperborea!
There will come a day when the ingenuity of our kind shall pierce that impenetrable
shield of ice which keeps our founder's wonders from our inquisitive gaze, and
I truly believe that day shall herald a glorious new era of enlightenment for
us all.
Centuries passed, and Hyperborea sat a frozen and dead realm, ignorant of the world around it. The Hyperboreans still survived however, and even wiped out the viking explorers who dared to set foot upon their island. Still, survival was all they strived for. Suicide was high as they watched the ice creep closer and closer to them. An entire race had seemed to lose it's will to live.
THE REWAKENING
For some reason the Hyperboreans left their hidden cities and began to repopulate their island. They fashioned weapons, raised new cities, and seemed once again a proud people. Behind this seems to be a strange leader, known only as King Yith, who seems intent on reawakening his people’s forgotten god, and re-establishing their long forgotten empire.
Geography
Hyperborea is the largest island in the world. Its northerly location, at the point where the Atlantic meets the Arctic Ocean, means that Hyperborea is surrounded principally by cold ocean currents, so the coasts are constantly being cooled. This, combined with the radiation of cold from the inland ice, gives Hyperborea its arctic climate. The ice cap or inland ice covers 1,833,900 square km, equivalent to 85 percent of Hyperborea's total area, and extends 2,500 km (1,553 miles) from north to south and up to 1,000 km from east to west. At its center, the ice can be up to 3 km thick, representing 10 percent of the world's total fresh water reserves. If all the ice were to melt, the world's oceans would rise seven meters. Hyperborea is often associated with cold and darkness and it can, of course, get very cold. However, there is also plenty of light and, although the polar darkness often reigns (in Qaanaaq, the sun doesn't rise for a whole three months!), it is never totally dark. Hyperborea enjoys more hours of summer than anywhere down south, but the weather is nowhere near as warm, even though the light is much more intense. Hyperborean summers won't give you an all-over tan, but your face and neck will turn a beautiful shade of brown. The climate of Hyperborea is generally dry, and this means that the same temperature feels very different in Hyperborea from what it does in Europe. 10 - 15 C (50 - 60F) seems very warm, while -10C (-50F) seems a very pleasant temperature.
Life In Hyperborea
Life in Hyperborea is pleasant…for Hyperboreans. Since they consider the island sacred, they can think of no better place in the world. 76% of the population lives in the cities, while 23% live out in the wild by themselves or in small villages. Most cities are on the coast, but some are farther inland, usually those built on ancient city sites. The individual cities and villages are generally left to manage themselves, but the King’s word is law. Life is generally stoic and simple, their attitudes towards everything seemingly influenced by the ice around them.
The King is the supreme leader of the land, and of all the kings of Hyperborea only 3 were not historians: one was a warrior, the other an engineer, the other a dark and powerful wizard. The King is not hereditary, but his selection is kept a highly disclosed secret. There is no "Royal Family" and if a king dies in an untimely manner, which has happeaned only twice in thier long and storied history, another is selected.
Religion
Tsathoggua is the chief god of Hyperborea, those others are permitted. He is described as a amorphous, toad-like god-creature who is served by formless spawn, polymorphic entities made of black goo. His temple is said to have risen from the ice recently. The Book of Truth describes the temple as thus: "A squat, plain temple of basalt blocks without a single carving, and containing only a vacant onyx pedestal. . . It has been built in imitation of certain temples depicted in the vaults of Zin, to house the very terrible black toad-idol found in the red-litten world who was named Tsathoggua in the Yothic manuscripts. It is a potent and widely worshipped god, and after its adoption by the people of K'n-yan had lent its name to the city which was later to become dominant in that region. Yothic legend said that it had come from a mysterious inner realm beneath the red-litten world — a black realm of peculiar-sensed beings which had no light at all, but which had had great civilisations and mighty gods before ever the reptilian quadrupeds of Yoth had come into being."
There is a faction in Hyperborea which take their worship of Tsathoggua to the extreme. Known as the “Tsathoggua's Witnesses” who believe Tsathoggua wishes them to only do 3 things: Sleep, Eat, and Breed. They believe Tsathoggua also set down 7 laws for Hyperboreans to follow, and if not followed, will result in the sinking of Hyperborea:
1.If you cannot sleep on it, breed with it, or eat it, it isa waste of time.
2.If you read or write you are not a true spawn of Tsathoggua and you deserve to be devoured.
3.If you are thinking in complete sentences you are doing wrong.
4.If you use utensils to eat you are eating the wrong way.
5.If you want recognition of your religion you are wasting precious sleeping and eating time.
6.Cooking is an abomination upon the eyes of Tsathoggua, and you should enslave or marry someone else to do it for you.
7.Don't ever visit Tsathoggua, he doesn't care.
Military
The military of Hyperborea was only recently reformed. That is not to say the Hyperboreans were not fighting and killing, but Hyperboria as a kingdom simply did not exist. Service is mandatory for 5 years at a Hyperborean’s 18th birthday. The military is loosley organized into many different armies, only unified for specific periods of time.
10 Ships
Hyperborea
Map (http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/travel/dg/maps/4c/750x750_greenland_m.gif)
History
History is one of the most important things to the Hyperboreans. Few people's have been on this earth as long as they, and they believe even if one fragment of the past is lost, the Hyperborean peoples could "devolve" into the apemen that cover the earth. Historians are held in higher regard then preists, and since the time before time the King has always been a historian.
BEGINNING
The initial history is unclear, which is strange for the Hyperboreans. Before the antediluvian age, before perhaps Pangea, before perhaps even life itself existed, the Hyperboreans have a fraction of a long lost legend about where they came from. Before they ever write down or tell the tale of thier beinning they always start the same: "From a time beyond time, we come.
We, who once crested the waves of the great astral sea...
and who now must strive again for the domination of the stars." All that is known is their ancestors were “mysterious travelers” who reputedly “came down from the stars in great silvern chariots drawn by steeds of flame.” They are described as having "possessed power unparalleled...ageless, remorseless. Without pity or conscience.Manipulators of evolution on countless worlds. Gods of the stars... the Celestial Host!" These beings stayed for an unknown amount of time, until other “travelers” came, whom the records call the “servants of Yig.” There was a war for an unknown reason, in which a great and horrible weapon was used.
"...(the weapon was) a single projectile
charged with all the power of the Universe.
An incandescent column of smoke and flame
As bright as the thousand suns rose in all its splendor...
An iron thunderbolt,
A gigantic messenger of death,
Which reduced to ashes
The entire race of the servants of Yig
... the corpses were so burned
As to be unrecognizable.
The hair and nails fell out;
Pottery broke without apparent cause,
And the birds turned white.
... After a few hours
All foodstuffs were infected...
... to escape from this fire
The soldiers threw themselves in streams
To wash themselves and their equipment..."
The whole world was destroyed and the remaining survivors of the victors traveled to Hyperborea. For hundreds of years no civilization existed, until finally the antediluvian age came about, and with it the rise of the Hyperboreans (possibly due to the “rediscovering” of ancient technology?).
ANTEDILUVIAN
Long ago, before the Third Great Cataclysm reshaped the face of creation, the world was full of life and civilization. Atlantis, Hyperborea, Mu, Lemuria, and Ultima Thule were the greatest of nations. They had discovered flight, landed on the moon and had learned the secrets of other dimensions. Hyperborea constructed an empire of 64 million stretching far and wide, and a period of such glory has never be known again to the Hyperboeans. Still, with all of Hyperborea’s great accomplishments, one nation rose above all others in the antediluvian world... Atlantis. It was a time of change. The descendants of the Atlantean mages had fallen before the New Praesidium, and the wolves were baying at the Empire's door. An oppressive new faith was encroaching from the east, and the sylvan liege had locked tight the gates of his arboreal realm. And so it was that towards the end of the Age of Mystery, Atlantis sought to re-invigorate it’s empire…by conquering the Hyperborean Empire.
The war was epic, dragging all the other empires into it. First Lemuria and her tentacled people fell, then Mu, soon the immortals of Ultima Thule departed this world and sunk their island, leaving only Atlantis and Hyperborea. The war finally came down to one battle, on the plain of Caylen-Tor. The numbers of soldiers were epic, and the King of Hyperborea crafted a prayer so powerful it is still spoken in Hyperborea today:
“O' grim gods of battle, empower us this night...
Anoint us with the crimson rain, feed our steel with slaughter...
Let every blow be a killing blow, grant us victory, or a warrior's death.
Come, moon-fogs, Descend to cloak our numbers, the heady scent of battlebeckons,
My ash-hafted spear feels good in my hands, girt 'round with spells our flesh gloriously anointed,
Ravens awaiting slaughter soar high above, blood-worms bloat on red carnage,
I'll carve the moon-wheel in their flesh, as havoc churns the heather!
And the thirst of the earth shall be slaked with blood at the fields of
carnage...
A staggering sea of crimson, a towering mountain of ravaged flesh,
All enraptured by the searing kiss of steel,
All surfeit from supping deep of the grim chalice of battle...
Brooding gods of the north, display to these outlander thralls thine ire,
Envenom our blades with the death-kiss of a thousand serpents,
Unfetter the dread war-voors within us,
That their claws may rend, and their jaws may be reddened.
Voors of the north, raise thine steel to the skies, revel in the pride of your wounds,
Let our victory-song ride the winds of this blood-gorged eve,
For on this night of red swords will have wrought a legend,
Forged in the fires of our rage, and tempered with the spilled blood of the slain.”
The battle lasted for a month straight, devastating the world around it. No one knows the final outcome of the battle. Even the Great Eye of the Universe and the Mists of the Oracle are unable to ascertain
the fate of the King and his army on that fate-steeped dawn. So much
unparalleled and polarized arcane power was unleashed upon the Field of Blood at that instant that it has forever obscured the oracular vista and shielded the truth from the eyes of even the most talented and presentient master of the Praxeum. All that is known is Atlantis disappeared and the ice age took hold.
THE FALL
Hyperborea was dying, as the ice slowly grew over their homeland. Depopulated, and having fallen into another dark age the Hyperboreans could only watch as everything they knew froze around them. Gone was the capital, Commoriom; The mighty vale of Uzuldaroum; The Eiglophian Mountains, including the skyscraping Mount Voormithadreth; even Y’quaa and its Cavern of Archetypes all dissappeared under the ice. As the jungles and forests of Hyperborea dissappered, the people even lost their god, Tsathoggua. Almost all of the land bound creatures died as well, creating a huge famine which decimated the population even further. The Hyperboreans wrote of thier lost utopian cities in thier epic poem "In search of the lost cities"
Beneath the ice, the endless ice of Pangaea's now axial
eternally frozen frontier, entombed for countless millions of years... the
lost cities of Hyperborea!
Secrets locked within the ice, the endless ice of Hyperborea,
'Neath the peak of Erebus the First Ones sleep, Lords of the Stars,
Cities lost within the night, the frozen night of Hyperborea,
Pre-Cambrian, the Voyagers, beyond the stars, Lords of the Stars.
Once, the coruscating spires of ours here offered their splendour to the
heavens. Now, those spires gleam no more, save in dreams of verdant plains,
save in dreams of time-lost citadels.
Legacy of a utopia lost, forever enshrined 'neath the ice...
Sail across Panthalassa to Gondwanaland,
Three moons to guide us on this voyage across the sea, they cried
Sail across Panthalassa to Gondwanaland,
New lands to conquer and claim for our progeny.
Before the Third Moon fell from orbit, before the
Nine Continents were formed from Pangaea's shattered surface...
Hewn from the Pre-Cambrian rock, behold our primordial metropolis'!
And the First Ones shall awaken on that day, when we will return to the stars!
We, who were before Man, are destined to be the architects of his future!
And we shall one day rediscover the secrets long-frozen within the lost cities of Hyperborea!
There will come a day when the ingenuity of our kind shall pierce that impenetrable
shield of ice which keeps our founder's wonders from our inquisitive gaze, and
I truly believe that day shall herald a glorious new era of enlightenment for
us all.
Centuries passed, and Hyperborea sat a frozen and dead realm, ignorant of the world around it. The Hyperboreans still survived however, and even wiped out the viking explorers who dared to set foot upon their island. Still, survival was all they strived for. Suicide was high as they watched the ice creep closer and closer to them. An entire race had seemed to lose it's will to live.
THE REWAKENING
For some reason the Hyperboreans left their hidden cities and began to repopulate their island. They fashioned weapons, raised new cities, and seemed once again a proud people. Behind this seems to be a strange leader, known only as King Yith, who seems intent on reawakening his people’s forgotten god, and re-establishing their long forgotten empire.
Geography
Hyperborea is the largest island in the world. Its northerly location, at the point where the Atlantic meets the Arctic Ocean, means that Hyperborea is surrounded principally by cold ocean currents, so the coasts are constantly being cooled. This, combined with the radiation of cold from the inland ice, gives Hyperborea its arctic climate. The ice cap or inland ice covers 1,833,900 square km, equivalent to 85 percent of Hyperborea's total area, and extends 2,500 km (1,553 miles) from north to south and up to 1,000 km from east to west. At its center, the ice can be up to 3 km thick, representing 10 percent of the world's total fresh water reserves. If all the ice were to melt, the world's oceans would rise seven meters. Hyperborea is often associated with cold and darkness and it can, of course, get very cold. However, there is also plenty of light and, although the polar darkness often reigns (in Qaanaaq, the sun doesn't rise for a whole three months!), it is never totally dark. Hyperborea enjoys more hours of summer than anywhere down south, but the weather is nowhere near as warm, even though the light is much more intense. Hyperborean summers won't give you an all-over tan, but your face and neck will turn a beautiful shade of brown. The climate of Hyperborea is generally dry, and this means that the same temperature feels very different in Hyperborea from what it does in Europe. 10 - 15 C (50 - 60F) seems very warm, while -10C (-50F) seems a very pleasant temperature.
Life In Hyperborea
Life in Hyperborea is pleasant…for Hyperboreans. Since they consider the island sacred, they can think of no better place in the world. 76% of the population lives in the cities, while 23% live out in the wild by themselves or in small villages. Most cities are on the coast, but some are farther inland, usually those built on ancient city sites. The individual cities and villages are generally left to manage themselves, but the King’s word is law. Life is generally stoic and simple, their attitudes towards everything seemingly influenced by the ice around them.
The King is the supreme leader of the land, and of all the kings of Hyperborea only 3 were not historians: one was a warrior, the other an engineer, the other a dark and powerful wizard. The King is not hereditary, but his selection is kept a highly disclosed secret. There is no "Royal Family" and if a king dies in an untimely manner, which has happeaned only twice in thier long and storied history, another is selected.
Religion
Tsathoggua is the chief god of Hyperborea, those others are permitted. He is described as a amorphous, toad-like god-creature who is served by formless spawn, polymorphic entities made of black goo. His temple is said to have risen from the ice recently. The Book of Truth describes the temple as thus: "A squat, plain temple of basalt blocks without a single carving, and containing only a vacant onyx pedestal. . . It has been built in imitation of certain temples depicted in the vaults of Zin, to house the very terrible black toad-idol found in the red-litten world who was named Tsathoggua in the Yothic manuscripts. It is a potent and widely worshipped god, and after its adoption by the people of K'n-yan had lent its name to the city which was later to become dominant in that region. Yothic legend said that it had come from a mysterious inner realm beneath the red-litten world — a black realm of peculiar-sensed beings which had no light at all, but which had had great civilisations and mighty gods before ever the reptilian quadrupeds of Yoth had come into being."
There is a faction in Hyperborea which take their worship of Tsathoggua to the extreme. Known as the “Tsathoggua's Witnesses” who believe Tsathoggua wishes them to only do 3 things: Sleep, Eat, and Breed. They believe Tsathoggua also set down 7 laws for Hyperboreans to follow, and if not followed, will result in the sinking of Hyperborea:
1.If you cannot sleep on it, breed with it, or eat it, it isa waste of time.
2.If you read or write you are not a true spawn of Tsathoggua and you deserve to be devoured.
3.If you are thinking in complete sentences you are doing wrong.
4.If you use utensils to eat you are eating the wrong way.
5.If you want recognition of your religion you are wasting precious sleeping and eating time.
6.Cooking is an abomination upon the eyes of Tsathoggua, and you should enslave or marry someone else to do it for you.
7.Don't ever visit Tsathoggua, he doesn't care.
Military
The military of Hyperborea was only recently reformed. That is not to say the Hyperboreans were not fighting and killing, but Hyperboria as a kingdom simply did not exist. Service is mandatory for 5 years at a Hyperborean’s 18th birthday. The military is loosley organized into many different armies, only unified for specific periods of time.
10 Ships