Realms of Nekhara

[Kn'Trac]

TimetableImperial Calendar Event

IC — 500.000 The Nekharati become sentient on Nekhar.

IC — 250.000 The Nekharati form their first cities

IC — 247.000 The Nekharati Empires clash in their first World War

IC — 246.000 The Nekharati almost destroy themselves in their fifth World War.

IC — 246.000 to

IC - 232.000 The Nekharati have their first Dark Age. Their civilization slowly recovers from near destruction

IC — 231.000 First sentient life develops on Nekhara, Nekhar’s bigger sister planet, their “moon”.

IC — 232.000 Nekharati society develops Feudalism. Lords fight among themselves for territory and resources.

IC — 198.000 Nekharati discover how to manipulate the force known as Magickaa

IC — 196.000 to
IC-192.000 Nekharati mages take command of the Fiefs and Empires in a centuries-long and powermad grab for power.

IC — 179.000 Nekharati become innately Magickal creatures, due to inundation of their world by the use of Magicka

IC — 170.000 The Nekharati mages discover how to fuse technology with Magicka, eventually resulting in Magitech.

IC — 170.000 to
IC - 169.000 Nekharati Lord Ekido Mahota explores their sister planet Nekhara and moves his holdings to a newly founded colony Ekido.
The native species is completely annihilated from the surface of Nekhara.

IC — 151.000 House Ekido is wiped out. Nekhara abandoned in yet another World War on Nekhar.

IC — 150.517 Nekharati spread out over the Universe, conquering a vast Stellar Empire.

IC — 135.000 The Elven race is born on Nekhara and spreads over its vast woodlands.

IC — 120.000 The Dwarven race gazes on their mountains and start building Karadh’s, vast Dwarven Holds in the mountain ranges of the planet.

IC — 115.000 The Saurakh form their first communities in the southern half of an equatorial continent on Nekhara, where they clash regularly with the insectoid Tri-Kreen Hives.

IC — 114.000 The Nekharati specialize in genetics and recreate their society in superior mages and subservient warriors. Mainstream Nekharati are subsumed in the warrior class all over their Dominion.

IC — 112.000 Nekharati mages successfully clone themselves and their warriors, thereby ensuring immortality.

IC — 109.000 The feline Mir’r gain sentience on Nekhara’s northern continent, they remain in the tribal stage of civilization.

IC — 105.000 The original native species of Nekhara, the Orcs resurface, possibly as an experiment in genetics by a forgotten Nekharati mage Lord.

IC — 103.000 to
IC — 100.000 The Nekharati encounter a dreadful force in the Universe. They steadily lose ground against the forces of Asmodeus, Lord of Evi and his vast armies of devils. The Nekharati Dominion is driven back to their homeworld Nekhar and on the brink of eradication, they swear to serve and worship Asmodeus. It is discovered that the race is incapable of channeling divine power. A Magickaa-wielding priesthood develops.

IC- 99.000 The Will manifests from the collective consciousness of the Saurakh and the Tri-Kreen. It represents the insatiable desire for self-development and knowledge. It infuses the Saurakh and to a lesser degree the Tri-Kreen with Psionic abilities.

IC — 98.000 Humanity discovers the use of fire and spreads slowly throughout the world of Nekhara.

IC — 95.000 Humanity sparks the creation of divinities known as Immortals, most are anthropomorphic manifestations of certain aspects of reality.

IC — 90.000 The other races on Nekhara adopt the belief in Immortals. This causes religious and cultural clashes between the peoples that would resonate throughout the history of the world and almost leads to the mutual extinction of the Elven and Dwarven races.

IC — 87.000 A select number of Nekharati mages believe that conquering and service to Asmodeus is not the way to go and split from the main regime. This causes a civil war on Nekhar.

IC — 86.000 The Scholars among the Nekharati recolonize Nekhara with a newly build Star Fortress and found their capital on the Northern continent. Their capital serves as landing pylon for the Fortress to rest upon.

IC — 84.000 The Scholars are losing the battle on Nekhar and start fighting a guerilla war. Almost all the Scholars move to Nekhara, where they are content to remain aloof from the indigenous species and work tirelessly to overthrow the Asmodean Lords on their world and regain their freedom.

IC — 80.000 to
IC — 75.000 The Half-Fiend - Nekharati Lord Tetsushô Inaba discovers their location on Nekhara and instigates an invasion of that world. The other Nekharati Lords quickly follow his example. Under Lord Inaba’s leadership, they quickly conquer the Southern Hemisphere and subjugate all the races they encounter. All over the world, they build fortifications on places of power, the crossing points of Nekhara’s Ley Lines, called Nodes, either they are built around their Spaceships or are entirely new facilities. These will serve as the focal points of the individual Lords’ petty Fiefs. All fortresses have several features in common: a warpgate for fast travel between holdings, a Magicka circle to summon creatures or work group rituals, defensive capabilities of some kind (usually a force shield) and a casting circle on their apexes, reinforcing the casting power of the resident Lord to use in defense when under siege.

IC — 70.000 to
IC - 10.000 The Scholar battleship is all that stops the Asmodean Nekharati from defeating their rebellious brothers. Meanwhile the Asmodeans use the other races as slaves and raw material. They teach some gifted individuals in the use of Magickaa to assist them in their research, keeping them under very close scrutiny. Needless to say these Magickaally gifted slaves are regarded with distrust by everyone, both Nekharati and their own race.

IC - 15.000 Lord Inaba discovers how to cross genetics with innate Magickaa abilities. This sparks the creation of the Ch’onja race, an insectoid race with a hive mind for use in conquest.

tbc...

 

[Kn'Trac]

Part 2

IC – 13.000 to
IC – 8.000 Just as he is about to finish his experiment on the ultimate weapon, a dragon, Lord Inaba is betrayed by several of his lesser Lords and his cloning facilities damaged beyond repair. His vast holdings on the southern and northern continent are seized by his enemies and his House is forced to retreat on the eastern equatorial continent
As he, nor the others of his House have been barred from the use of clones, he refocuses on the art of Necromancy and brings his whole House into undeath, with himself at the top as a Lich. The research towards the ultimate weapon is abandoned and awaits reactivation in a stasis tube. Inaba renames himself the Necrarch and founds a religion centered on Undeath and the End of Everything. Through an artifact he finds, he is able to extract the souls of his subjects and propel himself into demi-lichdom and beyond into divinity. His Disciples start receiving divine spells. He develops a severe hatred for all things living, especially for those who betrayed him, his fellow Nekharati Lords. He eventually conquers the whole continent and brings it under the reign of the Necrarchy.

IC – 789 The leader of the Scholar insurrection, a Nekharati known as Tsuraq Narai, bonds with a minor Divinity of Justice and becomes something more than a Nekharati and less than a Divinity. The new being is bent on bringing Justice and stability to the world and is the only Nekharati who can wield divine power. In the following centuries, the being which is later called the God- Emperor liberates a sizable stretch of land from the Nekharati Lords.

IC –500 to
IC – 275 The Dwarves of Karadh Kiladh, a Hold in the Spine Mountains, are somehow able to steal the plans for building an outpost and start working on turning their Hold into a simulacrum of the mighty, impenetrable Nekharati Fortresses. Although their ingenuity and engineering skills were great, they failed to understand the importance of the Ley Lines and Nodes. As their Hold was but miles off a Node, but still on a Ley Line, they continued working on their greatest achievement. When they activated the void sphere that powers the glyphs they painstakingly crafted all around their Hold’s perimeter, the lack of a Thought Matrix to regulate the flow and their location just shy off a Node destabilized the whole fabric of Magicka and overloaded the other Nekharati Fortresses causing the Cataclysm.

IC – 274 The Cataclysm. As Karadh Kiladh activates its power core and its new “features” activate, it pulls the Ley Line network out of balance and creates a cascade effect throughout the Nekharati fortress network, overloading their power matrices and killing off most Nekharati. Their entire Hold’s population phases into another realm, leaving an empty, inactive Hold. As the cascade hits Nekharati strongholds, it causes all their Magitech to shut down, including their clone stasis pods. The clones will remain dormant for centuries. Meanwhile, the slave races suffered greatly in the Magickal onslaught. In some area’s the use of Magicka is totally forbidden and practitioners are prosecuted. The God-Emperor’s soul is protected from the onslaught by his semi-divine status, but he dies in the carnage only to be reborn in one of his half-Nekharati/ half Human offspring he had with one of his concubines. Henceforth, he would reincarnate in one of his offspring’s children after he dies. This helped him getting a grip on a vast area of land on the northern continent and creates the Tsuraqi Empire, assigning local leaders as Lords of their Houses, causing five of them to rise to prominence and gain the title of Great House to rule the Empire along the Narai Dynasty. This is the start of a long lived human Empire that dominates the eastern half of the northern continent. Some of the Houses subjugate the other resident species like the Mi’rr and make deals with the now independent mercenary Ch’onja Hives.

IC – 273 to
IC – 1 The Age of Trouble. The western half of the northern continent is dominated by close to a hundred tribes. Some of those rise to power and become kingdoms in their own right. Others, like the barbarian tribes in the NW are driven towards the cold Spine Mountains to exist in meager conditions. On the other side of the Spine Mountains, the Orcs flourish and have ever changing alliances with other monstrous races. Their cold, unforgiving climate forces them to look for greener pastures beyond the Spines and causes them to invade the Kingdoms through the few passes that cross the mountain range. The Kingdoms along the Tsuraqi border and those hugging the Spines adopt a military society, while those further away from the warzones are able to lead more agrarian lifestyles. Naval activity is largely confined to coastal waters as the former slave races’ knowledge of their world is severely limited by their age long indenture to secretive and power hungry masters. The lands of the northern continent is roamed by large quantities of undead, most are animated by the forces released by the Cataclysm, others have their own agenda’s or act under orders of a higher power. Five Kingdoms emerge during this time, ruled by 5 powerful families. The Wolff’s have celestial ancestry and hold steadfast against the Tsuraqi Empire in the SE. The Selagis family defends the rest of the border with the Tsuraqi Empire and bears the brunt of the Orc attacks as all passes lead to their land. While certainly being the largest of the Kingdoms, their huge military force is completely deadlocked, making it largely dependent on trade with its neighbours. The von Dänickens, their family ancestry’s roots found in the Shadow realm, hold sway in the south. Being surrounded by other Kingdoms and only having to cope with the occasional pirate attack, their military force is small, but well trained and their rulers are powerful necromancers thanks to an artifact found in the ruins of a largely destroyed Nekharati outpost around which their capital grew. Goldfield, as they call their realm is rich in natural resources, especially large gold deposits which gives the land its name. The Starks, who’s lands occupy the whole western coast of the continent are brutal rulers who dominate their earls and barons into submission. Few consider them trustworthy, but all are wary of their spies and military force. In the middle of these border kingdoms sits the Kingdom of the Neraks, decadent, of fiendish descent and filthy rich, they thrive on the trade between the other kingdoms that passes through their land. They are the financial power behind the independence of the 5 Kingdoms. Lord Julian Wolff succeeds in rallying the other Kingdoms into a union, in which the rulers would keep most of their sovereignty, but work together on the future and stability of the realm. The Kingdoms would become duchy’s and they would elect an Emperor amongst them to serve for life.

IC 0 Julian Wolff is crowned Emperor, he is able to consolidate the borders with the Tsuraqi and change the ever shifting battle lines in a defensive war along largely stable borders and organize their internal security enough to stamp out most hordes of undead. Due to his celestial ancestry, Julian has a long lifespan, which he almost completely devotes to the safety of his Empire and its structural stability.

IC 457 To
IC 468 The Neraks, largely due to their megalomania and their unfair treatment by Julian Wolff gather support from the von Dänickens and the Starks to rebel against the rule of the Wolff. Due to the fact that both Wolff and Selagis had the main bulk of their considerable military might bound along their eastern and northern borders to keep the invaders at bay. This left them relatively powerless to bring the other dukes in line and sparked the decade of Twin Empires. In IC 467 Julian Wolff was assassinated by the Imperial Eye, upon which Günther Wolff took up reign of his realm.The Nerak and Wolff Empires stopped trading early on in the rebellion, which brought famine to the Wolff empire. Rather than weaken their forces and succumb to Tsuraqi rule, Günther decided to submit to Nerak rule with the backing of House Selagis.

 

[Gurkhal]

Now I haven't read it all as it was a bit to much for me to get on at this time, but I would actually recommend against having a House Stark in the story. Any House Stark will be considered bad taste after the success of GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire with its signature "House Stark".

 

[Kn'Trac]

Forgive me Gurkhal, but I think that people focus too much on Song of Ice and Fire lately, as the name stark was used before that in Marvel (Iron Man) and is among others: a place in Kansas, a German physician(Johannes Stark),an attorney at law (Stark and Stark), a specialist in production systems (Stark), a wine company (Stark Wine Company), an old furniture manufacturer, a pianist (Paul Stark), a technology analist (José Ignatio Stark), a county (Stark County in Ohio), a consultancy bureau (Stark Solutions), a marketing firm (Stark Solutions), a painter (Elias Stark), a magazine (Stark Insider), a women's clothing manufacturer (Stark), a theologist (Ciska Stark), a tools manufacturer (Stark Tools), etc etc ad infinitum.

While I understand the sentiment of your comment, it is hardly owned by GRRM or his literary work. Moreover , our House Stark is totally different in nature and demeanor than GRRM's house Stark and doesn't play any role in the later timeline of the story anymore as the House is defunct. It is no more than a footnote in the history of Nekhara. In the timeline of the setting, the House has been declared extinct for almost a millenium.

 

[Gurkhal]

Didn't mean to come off as offensive but I thought that I should mention it because of how strongly associated with Asoiaf that name is in fantasy circles.

 

[GeekDavid]

I'm not a fan of Song of Ice and Fire, but I agree with Gurkhal. People reading that are going to think of GRRM.

You wouldn't name a family House Bilbo, would you?

How about House Spock?

Would you have a House Eragon?

You want to be original, not use a name strongly associated with a work that's already famous.

 

[Sanctified]

Stark is a hereditary surname with German and English roots, and it's fairly common. Whether you ant to incorporate it into some Rift mash up with Egyptian magi tech is your call, but I don't see anything wrong with using it.

 

[GeekDavid]

Spock, as in famous doctor Benjamin Spock, is an old Dutch name, also sometimes spelled Spaak. Why not use it?

 

[Nihal]

The question is not why not use "House Stark", is why use "House Stark"? Does the plot revolve around the "Stark" name? Will changing it break the story?

Does it justify the trouble of using a name that will instantly get associated to something present in a notorious work of the same genre? Because it doesn't matter how badly you insist and explain that's a name used for other things, etc, the readers don't care. It's like using a swastika and getting pissed off every time someone associates it to Hitler instead of Hinduism.

It'll likely turn off some people as soon this house is mentioned, they'll think it's simply a rip off; they might also keep reading and be pulled out of the immersion every single time they read the name because they associate it to something else.

 

[wordwalker]

Distractions: the more unfair they are, the more they hurt the story anyway. Of course it's a legitimate name, but...

It's all a matter of degrees (there are probably people who think "HBO ripped off the Stark name from that cool new movie character", but only a few), and it is your call. But I think keeping the name gives you a lot to lose, and very little to gain. Especially if the world needs this family to be "House __", just like the other Starks are billed.

 

[Kn'Trac]

All good points.

I'll think about it.

Thank you all for the input, I appreciate it.

Kn'Trac