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The Amber Sea and the Cult of Rhami

After the fall of the Akarian empire with the death of the God-King Akar, the legendary former slave turned king Mufias managed to seize much of Akar’s lands as his own backed by the people embittered by Akar’s cruelty, forming the Moofian dynasty which would dominate the south of Aeophora for more than a thousand years.


However, aside from the fertile and lush lands of the south, Akar’s reach had been long and his devoted followers and acolytes still inhabited the fringe corners and frontiers of his old empire.


This is most notably displayed in the people of the Akramari valley, who inhabited the region as seeming specters haunting the area between the Prijia moutains that straddled the east coast of the continent.


For ages these people deterred incursion the potentially valuable land trade route between Halasphora and Sanjuf with tales that Akars remnants and the dense jungle would swallow any wayward merchants or fortune seekers that dared tread there.


In reality, these specters were just men, men who had established a culture that had developed to center around an enduring reverence to Akar and the dark God he served, involving the regular capture and ritual sacrifice of any that encroached on their sacred lands.


The Akramari were made well known and finally drawn out of obscurity however during the coming of the Boundlord’s, seeing as they had been instrumental in their ascension, and their years of devotion not in vain.


It had turned out that the Akramari sacrifices had been the beings whose souls now made up the ranks of the seemingly endless legion of Wraiths, and for their enduring faith and dedication that culminated in their arrival, the Boundlord Rothis offered many of the Akramari nobility positions of great power in his new global Empire.


All of this being said, there was another group outside of the Akramari who remained loyal to the will of Akar long after his passing, namely the mysterious cult of the Rahmi people.


This strange order of prophets lived within the caves and ruins that surrounded the lonely mount Amb in the center of the vast expansive desert known as the Amber sea, supposedly birthed by the ascension of Akar to godhood.


The Rhami were unusual, being some of the few outside of the southern Halasphorans of Oscia brave enough to endure the harsh and unforgiving ocean of ashen sand.


Their order followed the tenets of Akar and of his dark God, but these Rahmi believed that Akar was destined to be born again from amongst their order, and to found from their an empire that would come to expand beyond even the first Akarian Empire, covering the whole of Aph in the dark flame.


The founder of the Rahmi was a direct lieutenant to Akar himself named Tamur Hijar, a man gifted in the rare Akian art of truthsaying magics and foretelling prophecies, he often served as Akar’s chiefest advisor on his many campaigns of conquest.


Upon the death of his beloved god king, loyal Tamur fled to mount Amb with many retainers who seeked to recreate the God-Kings path to ascension.


For it was well known to Akar’s Acolyes that after Akar’s city of Ak was attacked by the Jalafi when he was but a man, he fled into the amber sea, traveling for eight days and nights before arriving at the mountain, emerging from it as a God.


Tamur and his entourage hoped to perhaps do the same, and did eventually reach the mountain, but no divine blessings awaited them as had their King, all except for a supposedly divine vision that came to Tamur.


When Tamur entered the deep caverns and descended to the sacred dark pools that Akar himself had supposedly bathed in, he heard whispers of his dead King, and soon saw a fiery prophetic vision manifest before him, one of Akar reborn from the very mountain from which he had lead this loyal group, and of the whole of Aph covered in this new messiah’s dark flame.


With this Tamur told his congregation, and they vowed that they would remain in the mountain for as long as was needed to see this new prophecy come to fruition, knowing with faith in Akar that he would one day be born amongst their generations to come.


So the Rhami would live in eternal devotion and anticipation, trading for food in some cases with both the Oscians and the Akramari, they lived otherwise in seclusion awaiting for their new god to be born in fire from their stock.


Of course, their ancient prophecy would eventually come to pass hundreds of years onward, but perhaps not in the way they had anticipated, for when the Boundlord Rothis arrived the continent of Aeophora with his legion of wraiths, he did so riding a great black comet which impacted mount Amb, destroying the mountain and unleashing its wellspring to begin to saturate the long dead desert.


A new Akar had been born in the mountains, born in fire, and he would come to exceed even Akars influence, coming to dominate most of Aph during his unholy reign, but the Rhami had been completely destroyed in the process, consumed in the chaotic fires that were the harbinger of their new savior.


Such was the faith of the Rhami rewarded, their prophecy fulfilled, decidedly worse than their Akramari brothers, their people destroyed and buried beneath the foundation of what would become the new capital of Rothis’s grand new order, fading into an obscurity they never escaped as they awaited their gods return in the sands.
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Author
Centinuus
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