Ashkar

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Palamon
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Ashkar

Post by Palamon » Tue Dec 07, 2004 1:38 am

Ashkar and the World Before Time
Several thousand years ago (yes, several thousand, even though Durnalia, the oldest surviving civilization is only 2500, including the age of city-states, and Rylos only predated it by 500 years or so) humanity had created a quasi-utopian society in Ashkar. Their pursuits of "greater knowledge" were to the point where they had learned how to expand human life to over 200 years, and they were master architects and builders. At first the Ashkaris began building cities throughout the world, but they were always being attacked by the other human tribes. The Ashkaris could have very easily subjected the humans to their domination, but they forebore, and were instead content to help these people. But the people didn't want help in most places. So the Ashkari withdrew, and left them to their own devices.

Ancient Ashkar was a vast land stretching east from the Middle Sea to the Great Ocean, but its capital was in a place analogous to Babylon.

Ashkaris saw the other humans of the world as inferior to themselves, and did not associate with them, shutting them out from their cities and lands through "magicks" which masked the Ashkari lands as a great desert, though often a "madman" would return to his homeland with outrageous stories of shining cities of stone.
Last edited by Palamon on Tue Dec 07, 2004 4:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

Palamon
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Ashkar: the fall

Post by Palamon » Tue Dec 07, 2004 2:48 am

The Rise of Ramacles the Defier

Ashkar lived in relative seclusion through the last centuries of its ancient existence. They were masters of their world in nearly every way imaginable to them, but one thing eluded them. Though they were capable of extending their lives for over two hundred years, they were still mortal. Mortality seemed to them a curse put on them by the gods, and though many sought to conquer death, none had succeeded. Until the fateful rule of Ramacles the Defier.

Ramacles decided that the truth to the problem was not understanding life: it was understanding death. The Ashkari had long considered the study of death to be a taboo, particularly attempting to raise the dead. Ramacles was of an entirely different opinion, and he was also one of the most powerful sorceror-kings that Ashkar had ever seen. And so he secretly took a small company of his most loyal men into the West, and brought back an entire village to be his slaves. The "lesser men" procreated much more quickly than the Ashkari, and soon he had a veritable city underground, made of slaves, who dug under the sacred Mount to find the River of the Dead. Ashkari religion held that the entrance to heaven was above this great solitary mountain, and the entrance to the underworld was below it. Ramacles managed to keep this mining project a complete secret. And one day, he did discover a great underground river, and he drank from it and bathed in it.

Believing himself to have conquered death, Ramacles decided it was time to challenge the Gods Above, and the Gods Below. And so he built a great tower in the high mountains. He sent armies into the West to kidnap entire villages into slavery. An entire city was built around the Tower of Ramacles, a city of slaves.

Many Ashkari saw the sacrifice of the "lesser men" as a necessary evil; a price worth paying. This Tower, they believed, would reach unto the skies, and higher, where the souls of the departed dwelt. Ramacles intended to challenge both the Gods on High, and the Gods Below, though he never mentioned this to anybody.

But Slavery was considered unconscionable to many Ashkari, and revolts began to occur in several of the provinces of the great kingdom. It had been centuries since the Ashkari had had a standing army of any great size; they had achieved peace in their kingdom for over a thousand years prior to the rule of Ramacles. Ramacles therefore increased the size of his army, and quashed the rebellions.

Unrest was a very common state of affairs in the last centuries of Ashkari rule. The Tower of Ramacles continued to grow higher and higher, the city of slaves grew larger and larger, and Ramacles did not die. Four hundred, now five hundred years passed. Ramacles seemed only ever more powerful. At last, the Tower was nearing completion. An astounding FIVE THOUSAND feet in the air, carved from and built atop the massive mountain, it could be seen even to those living outside the Veil of Ashkar.

The World Ends

Ramacles finished his tower in his six hundredth year. A great sorceror and a mighty king, he had absolute control of his kingdom. His most powerful priests, too, had lifespans well beyond that of their Ashkari bretheren. Bbrethreniest, his most trusted, one day betrayed his secret to a powerful general, a prince of a nearby province, one Palamon by name. This general commanded a great part of the Ashkari armies, and had won fame through the land as a peacekeeper and an honorable warrior whose loyalty to Ashkar was undoubted.

Great battles were pitched throughout the land of Ashkar, and occasionally spilling outside it. This was a War of a Hundred Years in truth, and Ashkar was all but destroyed. But such was the price, Palamon believed, that must be paid to stop a much greater horror from happening: that Ramacles would indeed challenge the Gods, and be destroyed.

The war between the forces of Ramacles and those allied under Palamon finally drew to a conclusion: the forces of Palamon were utterly ruined. Desperate, and fortunately believed dead, Palamon (you knew I had to include him somewhere!) quested throughout the world, and was given by the Oracle of the Mother Goddess a hammer which would defeat Ramacles, who had been proven to be invulnerable to all swords, arrows, and weapons that had ever hit him.

He returned from his secret quest with this hammer, and searched the broken realm of Ashkar for Ramacles.

In the end, Palamon and Ramacles faced off atop the pinnacle of the Tower, even as Ramacles raised it higher with his unparalleled command of magic. The battle between the two was legendary, with neither opponent landing a blow for long minutes. In the end, Ramacles was victorious, stabbing him through the belly with his infernal blade. But as the hero fell, the Hammer of the Earth struck the ground upon which Ramacles stood. And the Tower came crumbling down.

The very spirit of the realm had been taken by Ramacles as he had built his tower, and raised it to the skies. And when the tower fell, broken, the essence of Ashkar was sapped entirely: it became the desert that it is today, looking identical to the desert that outsiders always had seen when they had entered Ashkari lands. Great sand storms combined with thunderstorms. Earthquakes struck, and the sea overran the realm of Ashkar.

No remains of the cities of Ashkar today are any more than a broken pillar here, a crumbled wall there. The shifting sands sometimes reveal a crumbled tower or the foundation of an ancient manor, but the only evidence for the true greatness, the true grandeur that was Ashkar exists in Editia of Durnalia, but that was but a commonplace thing in the ancient realm. Legend does hold, however, that if one were to travel to the Mountain of the Gods, one would find strewn down its sides the ruins of the Tower of Ramacles. And perhaps ... a bit more as well.
Last edited by Palamon on Wed Jan 19, 2005 6:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Taliesin
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Post by Taliesin » Thu Dec 09, 2004 6:09 pm

I really like this. Josh, you've clearly put a great deal of thought into it (and had a great deal of fun doing so). I was starting to worry that the board was fading into the Ashkari Desert itself... glad to see it ain't so.

Anyhow, a couple minor suggestions from the Language Police that might make this even more authentic in appearance...

1. People of Ashkar, plural: You write "Ashkaris". I'd suggest just "Ashkari", like, "The Ashkari grew restless."

2. Ramacles the Defier... could be Ramacles the Defiant. Or maybe Ramacles the Defiler for an even more sinister feel.

3. Palamon! Did he have a wise-cracking twin and a conscience-stricken bastard son? ;)
Rich


Palamon
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Post by Palamon » Thu Dec 09, 2004 6:28 pm

The proper term should be Ashkari. Sometimes even I make mistakes.

I couldn't think of another name, so Palamon it is. :)

As for Ramacles' epithet, eh, whatever. Defier, Defiant, Defiler. I'm sure something will come to me soon.

Sorry I'd taken so long to post! Not to fear, I still have more ideas. I'm in the middle of a move to San Francisco for 2 months. (can't wait to get the hell out of Texas) Life's been busy in an irritating way.

Also, Rich, if you want to create a "modern myth" or two or three to spawn from this, with various different twists, that would be great. I think the "fall of Ashkar" myth should be pretty prevalent throughout the known world. But, of course, the full story would not be. How odd to be writing stories about stories, huh? I guess the tale grows in the telling.

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Brennor
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Re: Ashkar: the fall

Post by Brennor » Thu Dec 09, 2004 11:21 pm

I like the story of Ramacles.

Only thing I see that jumps right out at me is the following...
Palamon wrote:The Rise of Ramacles the Defier

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He returned from his secret quest with this hammer, and searched t
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That sentance just kinda ends at the 't'. Nothing after it. Looked like there'd be something interesting at that point in time though.
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