???????? Chapter v : The Folk Beyond ????????
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Freyja Red-Blood,
Her tresses akin to a sanguine cascade, billowed ethereally.
A titan, surpassing thrice the stature of mortal men.
She exuded an aura of lethal capability.
One frequently ponders the origins of her lineage.
Yet, denizens of the desert east.
Notably Aridia and Rajakhan are privy to the chronicles of her lineage.
They were the barbarians.
Far beyond The World's Edge Mountains.
The genesis of the World's Edge Mountains is likewise enshrouded in enigma and venerable folklore.
To truly grasp the saga of these barbarians.
We are compelled to traverse the mountains.
Surviving accounts pertinent to their genesis are gleaned from the venerable records of the Farafnir's scholarly pursuits.
Distilled through Cadagonian utterances.
Legend dictates that an ancient deity, Techtontaclia.
Who smote the earth, thereby forging a boundary against the Great Old Ones.
It stretches limitlessly east to west.
Their vestiges The World's Edge Mountains.
But alas, Techtontaclia's worshippers, the Farafnirs, proved treacherous.
They aligned themselves with The Great Old Ones, resulting in his tragedy at the hands of Yguth.
They seized him, subjecting him to unfathomable torments until their ennui was sated.
Whereupon they liberated him through dismemberment, consigning his remains to primordial jars.
They then casted them across the Red River, to subsist eternally as sentient flesh at its depths.
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The World's Edge Mountains, an enduring bastion of the world.
It provided a natural safeguard.
It shields the northern civilizations from the terrors originating in the far north.
Beyond these mountains, to the north of Verdesainte.
Once lay the dense, mythical jungles of Feidelm.
A jungle whispered to be rife with prophetic demons of yore whose names have been forgotten.
Wherein ancient Farafnirs sought wizened seers for their divinations.
Yet, its denizens, a barbaric folk styled the Findchoem.
They perpetually waged war amongst themselves.
All to garner divine favour of their goddess Morea.
Alas, it transpired that prophetic demons beguiled Coblaith, a Findchoemian king.
Into the murder of a man dearly loved by Morea.
Morea, angered beyond measure.
Cursed him with an eternal confinement as a tree.
From this grew the Haunted Canopies of Lorecentaril.
There, a tribe of Findchoem settled, metamorphosing into the Beastmen.
Mortals corrupted by the Vex, a pernicious magic born of Morea's wrath.
Morea's ire extended beyond Coblaith.
Thereafter, did she pursue the soothsaying demons.
She consigns them all to a singular ornate urn.
Thereupon, she exhales her glacial breath upon it and shatters the urn upon the jungles of Feidelm.
Behold, an unending glacial tempest then did enshroud the lands of Feidelm.
Leaving naught but a frigid wasteland, save for Lorecentaril.
Thus commenced the migration of the Findchoem tribe across the Frozen North.
Findchoem, deeming their newfound tribulations an injustice, ceased worshipping Morea.
Instead branding her an ice witch and the icy tempest, Morea's Cries.
The cries of Morea achieved its zenith at the westernmost extent of Feidelm.
A terminus that once functioned as the nexus between Feidelm and the Hyperborean Steppes.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Now known as the Lacrima Mortis Waste is traversable solely from midnight until dawn.
The exclusive interval wherein Morea's Cries ceased.
The Findchoem folktales tell that a sibling of Morea's departed love asked her for safe passage unto Hyperborea.
That he might procure a better life beyond these blighted, glacial expanses.
Morea, thereafter, deigned to grant passage.
When the moon was at its highest.
She would permit the soothsaying demons to materialize at Lacrima.
Per Findchoem's hearthside chronicles, travellers through Lacrima often witness colossal specters adrift on glacial expanses.
They were wailing at their reflections mirrored on the ice.
Ere daybreak, letting out a final teardrop.
They dissipated back into the icy tempest.
Thus the name Lacrima Mortis, the final tear.
Amongst the myriad Findchoem tribes, the Barbarians of the Thousand Blades were of particular distinction and note.
They settled themselves nigh the Lacrima waste.
Where an uncounted host of blades were thrust into the glacial snows.
Venerating the heroes and giant-kin who aided them in combating the demons of Khuresh.
The chieftain of the tribe, Ragnvaldr.
He lured the Khureshii horde onto the Lacrima waste before dawn.
Upon the ascendency of the nascent sun, a tempestuous squall rent and cleaved the demonic swarm.
They were then dusted into icy fragments blown away into the frigid gales.
Thus in its aftermath, the Thousand Blade's legend was seeded as a saviour of the icy waste of Feidelm.
The Thousand Blade's epithet heralded into southern realms when Yzetergurd, then chieftain.
He unleashed a warband upon Aridia, Rajakhan, and Verdesainte.
They would thunder across the lands with treasure filled to the brim.
Returning to Feidelm, enriched beyond imaginings.
Subsequent to this triumphant incursion, the remaining Findchoem tribes were inspired by Yzetergurd.
They wanted to emulate the Thousand Blades' success.
Eventually, the rapacious barbarity of these marauders garnered the attention of Grazendaire, an Aridian deity.
This god of bloodlust deigned to bestow his divine gifts upon them.
Consequently, the cities were no longer besieged merely for avarice.
But rather for the satiation of their bloodlust and to tender gifts to their newfound god.
Yet, not all Findchoem elected to prostrate themselves before Grazendaire.
Many staunchly still believed in the will of mankind and the potency of mortal strength.
They particularly recalled Morea's atrocities as remembrance against the fickleness and predation of the gods.
The unfolding events all culminated into a fever pitch post-The Dying Age.
When civilizations had barely survived the global cataclysm.
Were at their nadir.
The Warhosts of Grazendaire and Order of Cadagon arose.
Like a second coming of the cataclysm from which the world had scarcely recovered.
Grazendaire and Pargelock, both Aridian gods.
Perceived the world's condition as a propitious moment to enthrone themselves as the paramount figures of worship throughout the realms.
However, the fervor of these crusades met its staunch rebuke in the valorous hearts of men.
Grazendaire's bloodlust at Aridia's Old Sameera.
Pargelock's pyromania at Verdesainte's Merry Maiden Lakes.
Subsequent to this, the Grazendaire devotees dispersed across the continents, erstwhile farmers and peasants relinquishing their bloodlust.
The less fortunate were subjected to enslavement, cast into the Aridian Colosseums.
For the Findchoem possessed renowned martial prowess and considerable stature.
Like the Cadagons, Findchoem possesses strength enough to cut through plate armor with a mere log.
Freyja Red-Blood, hailed from the lineage of such enslaved individuals.
Whose maternal grandmother secured her liberty through innumerable triumphs, choosing to reside in the Verdesainte countryside.
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