Zaar Anathema
Zaar Anathema, The Shackled King, the King in Gold, was the Thane of Kalas Mithral and Lord of House Q'or. He ruled over the empire of steel dwarves. He waged war against the god Cyn[1] and sought one of Ord's great banes, placed deep within Orden - the Tellac Oranic - to assist his campaign. While it initially helped to drive away Cyn's army, it came at the cost of his fellow dwarves and himself. Ignoring his people's pleas to surrender the stone, he brought about the destruction of his people and empire. The gods bound him to the Tellac Oranic and cast down into the Unthinking Depths, where he wandered the Last City, serving on the Court of Decay.
History
Rule over Kalas Mithral
Zaar Q'or served as the Thane of Kalas Mithral, the empire of the steel dwarves. He was the Lord of House Q'or and was seen as a wise and just king. He personally arbitrated disputes between the Terran Empires of Orden and the Celestial domains.[2]
War against Cyn
War broke out, waged against the god Cyn. The first Army of Night, the warriors of the astral celestials, laid siege to the walls of Kalas Mithral for six months, six, weeks, and six days. Zaar led the Legion of Adamant, called the Legion Unyeilding, the might army of the steel dwarves. They were impervious to sword and sorcery, but the treachery and corruption of the astral celestials caused the army to falter.
Zaar foresaw the ruin of his empire and swore a vow that Kalas Mithral would not fall so long as he lived. An answer from deep within Orden howled in response, a bane placed deep within the earth at its creation by the god Ord. The dwarves of Orden had known that buried deep within their world were hidden blights, entombed by their god. Sages at the fringes of their society believed Orden to be a prison for something poisonous to all the Timescape.[2]
War-Ender and the Tellac Oranic
Zaar summoned his empire's best mechanists, the Order of Fabrication, to the deepest chamber in all of Kalas Mithral. He pointed to the floor and uttered a single command: "To the heart of the world."[3] They built their emperor a mighty engine, called War-ender, to drill down to the depths of Orden. The machine had a corkscrew tip sharp enough to pierce the earth with a hull clad in a metal not seen before or since. War-ender was built to withstand the pressures and temperatures of their expedition, and could hold a total of thirty elementals - engineers to man the controls, and Zaar's elite wardens to battle whatever they may encounter guarding the bane at the heart of the world.
Zaar led the expedition into the depths of Orden, and he and his crew disappeared for days. When it finally re-emerged on the surface, only Zaar remained, manning the controls alone. None of the crew survived, but the mission was a success - in his hands, he gripped a green stone. He had found Tellac Oranic, a stone that radiated death and turned the living into shadows.
Turning the tide of war
Upon his return, the lords of the other houses of Kallas Mithral believed Zaar had unearthed their salvation. Zaar led the Legion of Adamant against the celestial's Army of Night for three days, their enemies melting away before them. The other houses began to notice the cost of this artifact as the dwarves of Kalas Mithral died, turned into dark umbras by the stone. Their perceived victory quickly grew into a devastating defeat as the Army of Night simply withdrew while the Zaar's artifact continued to feast on the legions of dwarves in his empire. The noble court of the steel dwarves pleaded with Zaar to surrender the stone, but he turned his back on them. They declared his house Anathema and stripped him of his rank and title, but he did not notice the shame his people set onto him.
The souls of the entire Legion of Adamant were eventually consumed by the stone, and Zaar stood alone on the battlefield. It was only when the Army of Night returned, an oncoming flood of death, that Zaar realized his folly. He cried out to the gods - to Ord, Aan, Myr, and Kul, the makers of earth, air, water, and fire - and the four gods heard him. They answered with condemnation rather than the mercy he sought. Ord shackled the King in Gold, binding the Tellac Oranic to him for the rest of eternity. The stone decayed his flesh and mind, and he died howling as he watched Kalas Mithral, an empire which had never known tarnish nor blemish, fall to the Army of Night. The astral celestials slaughtered the steel dwarves, sparing none, and pulled their city down around their corpses.
Court of Decay
Zaar, the Shackled King, fell into the Unthinking Depths of the Abyssal Waste to serve as a Deathless Lord in the Court of Decay. Unable to rid himself of the stone, he dragged it through the Last City, remembering nothing of his glory days, plagued only with memories of the death of his people and his failure as their king.
- ↑ Matt Colville (2022-05-23). "Inkblot Reveal". MCDM Discord (Discord).
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Matthew Colville, et al. Kingdoms & Warfare. (MCDM Productions), pp. 148.
- ↑ Matthew Colville, et al. Kingdoms & Warfare. (MCDM Productions), pp. 149.