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CollectorOfMyst
Nightbringer
It is said that history, not truth, is written by the victor and that the fond memory, not truth, is cherished by the defeated. This is the history and the truth of the Omestri people.
Varyan histories of the Omestri culture and people are well known throughout the length and breadth of the Empire. All of the loyal Varyan people know of the inescapable debauchery and hedonistic nature of all Omestri people, each patriotic Varyan child is taught about the decay and degradation of the soul that the Omestri people represent, and the enslavement of these people is tolerated by the Varyan people because the Omestri people have been reduced to nothing but ungovernable, wicked, wretched husks of what it means to be human. That is the Varyan history though and far from the truth. If an Omestri soothsayer, elder story and myth teller of the Omestri people, was permitted to tell the story of their people it would be dramatically different. Omestri stories laud the art, the literature, and the poetry of their people. The soothsayers sing uplifting stories of how the Omestri conquered their wicked ways through devotion and discipline, through control and culture. Omestri, according to their stories, reached a height of ether manipulation and control so lofty that it became the core of their identity, even more so than the peoples around them who marveled at their achievements. In the end the Omestri people claim it was their benevolent but impressive use of power that enticed the Varyan Empire to invade it, slaughter its people, destroy the pinnacle of culture and civilization, and enslave the people into squalor, servitude, and ether harvesting. It was the deplorable influence of the Varyan Empire that lead to the highest paragon of Omestri culture, a vaunted spiritual leader, to become the Great Betrayer… the cursed Omestri that handed the keys to the Omestri Empire to the invading Varyans. This however is the fond memory of the defeated and not the total truth.
The reality, as it tends to be, is far more complex. The Omestri people began, as the other peoples of the world did, as a race of created humans dedicated to the service of one of the Broken Pantheon fragments, Omestris. Omestris was the fragment born from the Ice Titan’s left hand that came crashing down to the world on what is now the far eastern coast of the main Varyan continent. The Ice Titan’s left hand was unique among all the pieces of the Broken Pantheon and this difference would be the defining feature of the Omestri people. In the great battle that raged in a time before knowledge it is said that the Ice Titan's shield was cut from its arm and lost when the Fire Titan struck a furious blow against the preternatural frost bulwark. From that moment onward the Ice Titan, possessed of unimaginable power and skill, used its trident in the right hand, raining down blow after blow upon its nemesis all while casting devastatingly powerful ethereal and elemental power from its left hand, battering the Fire Titan with physical force and ethereal force. As the fight raged on the Fire Titan began to falter against the ether cast from the Ice Titan’s left hand and in a skillful and desperate attack aimed to sever the hand from the Ice Titan. With unsurpassed bravado the Ice Titan did not parry the Fire Titan’s strike but instead caught the blade of the Fire Titan in its left hand to avoid the greater severing blow. This wounded the Ice Titan's left hand, the flaming sword bit into the Ice Titan’s hand with a great explosion of force and steam. This dreadful blow had an unforeseen effect on the Ice Titan, smoky tendrils of power and essence infected the Ice Titan through the wound on its left hand. Despite this wound and the poisoning of the Ice Titan with a segment of the Fire Titan’s essence the battle raged on to its fateful and well known conclusion. The Fire Titan lay vanquished but with what power it had left struck a final shattering blow to the Ice Titan, breaking the Titan apart and creating the Broken Pantheon. The powerful left hand of the Ice Titan fell to the earth and gave genesis to Omestris and like the other Gods, Omestris gave birth to a race of humans to serve the God. Being created from Omestris who was the wounded left hand of the Ice Titan that was the focus of all the Titans ethereal power, had lasting effects for the Omestri people. First of all the Omestri were and are extremely talented and powerful ether manipulators, this power and talent being the legacy of the power contained in the Ice Titan’s left hand. The force of the Titan’s ether infused the Omestri bodies with the natural ability to focus, control, store, and manipulate ether on levels no other race could. Part of this was due to the Ice Titan’s power but there is a darker force that created the unique power of the Omestri, the wound delivered to the left hand of the Ice Titan by the Fire Titan’s sword left a glimmer of the Fire Titan’s essence and power in that infected wound. This power, diametrically opposed to the power of the Ice Titan, wars within every Omestri psyche, driving not only the increased ether powers but also defining the character of their culture. The other lasting effect was also a result of the Fire Titan’s fateful strike to the Ice Titans left hand, an effect on their very being and culture. The two powers of the Titans resonate within the Omestri people, effecting their minds, souls, and very being. The opposing powers swirl in the souls of the Omestri to this day, driving them to the extremes of all things. Omestri are subject to emotional highs that would be sheer undefinable bliss and pleasure to others, fiery unquenchable passions, blazing inferno like rages, and boiling seething hate are all feelings heightened to such a level as to be almost incomprehensible to any other race of human. The people born of Omestris also fall into the deepest darkest depressions imaginable, impossibly crushing pathos, bone crippling sadness, and bleak cold… nigh unescapable emotional pits that would drive others to insanity and death. The legacy of the Omestri, born of the duality of both Titans due to a single stroke of fate, remain part of the Omestri culture and defined their history.
In the beginning the God Omestris came into being on the far eastern mountains of the main continent. This place, like all of the world to come, was a brutal, cold, and incredibly bleak area of the main continent, devoid of heat, fire, or life. Majestic mountains rose high into the clouds and created breathtaking vistas, plateaus, and peaks slick with ice and snow and bitingly cold. The lowlands below these mountains were cut with deep valleys, gorges, and ravines filled with forests of crystalline gem and ice formations, petrified ice covered trees, and frozen solid rivers ending in breathtaking frozen sheets of icicles that were once waterfalls. When Omestris fell to this place and woke, the power of the God brought a modicum of that life giving heat to this region, infusing the ecosystems with the power of ether and extending the power of an aegis to cover this eastern land. Cold and winter still dominated the land, despite the power of Omestris, or perhaps because of it, freezing winds still howled between the mountains whipping the cold thin, oxygen deprived mountain air into furious storms. Forests of great pines the size of ancient towering redwoods stood petrified by the bitter cold and weighed down heavily by the constant snow remain the only place the few hardy mammals that can exist here may shelter from the deadly winds. Frozen rivers, lakes, and wetlands deep in the valley never truly break free from the frozen grip of winter, though with the coming of Omestris the ice thinned allowing precious few places where water could be obtained after digging and breaking through layers of ice. The majestic mountain range violently exploded, sulfuric and acidic hot springs steaming up on the mountainsides the toxic liquid being propelled into the air where it freezes and rains down in jagged poisonous shards. Frozen crystalline structures became exposed as the God’s power expanded. These formations were great quartz fields growing out from the mountains, razor like edges crusted with snow and capable of flaying flesh at the slightest pressure were now exposed and glittering in the brilliant bluish light of the Aegis.
Into this deadly cold but enchanting region Omestris brought the Omestri people to life. Physically human, like all other creations of the Gods, these people were distinguished by their relatively small stature, slightly amber skin, deep metallic gold eyes that glow with ethereal power, and inky black hair that was often kept extremely long, straight, and wrapped up in elaborate knots. Apart from these small physical differences the Omestri people were different than most other humans in two key areas, their ether talent and the dueling emotional struggle of both Ice and Fire Titan within them. These two traits lead to the four defining ages of the Omestri people. During the First Age, the Age of Blood, the Omestri were driven by the euphoric highs of their emotions, the terrible lows of their depressions, and the frightening fire of their rage. In this age the corruption of the Fire Titan’s wound was evident. Coupled with their natural and instinctual mastery of ether, the zeniths and abysses of their emotions led to generations of ethereal conflict and war on a scale unseen anywhere else in history. On a smaller scale it seemed like sadness and pleasure, happiness and rage, Ice and Fire battled again in an echo of the epic Titan battle.
The violence of the Age of Blood eventually gave way to the more controlled Age of Reason. Omestri people began to shun the extremes of their emotions on both ends of the scale, driven to end the fighting amongst each other and serve Omestris more faithfully. The Omestri people, led by the reclusive monks of legend called the “Five Tusks” began to mitigate their unfathomable rage and tantalizing happiness with exercises in fervent spirituality, unerring logic, extreme discipline, and focused devotion to a single skill to the exclusion of all other pursuits. During this time the Omestri would devote themselves to the mastery of a single point of knowledge or a single definable skill until they mastered it completely before moving on to another endeavor. Wars ended as the Omestri created a culture that exemplified art and refinement in even the simplest of things. The Omestri became obsessed with this kind of single minded devotion to mastering a task before moving on to anything else and this also developed the paramount importance of logical and emotional control over their feelings. A deep and rigid cultural stratification and caste system developed in the Omestri culture during the Age of Reason, based on the mastery of an individual’s emotions and skills. Omestri would spend whatever time it took, no matter the cost, to master a task, be it making tea or a dish of food, writing the characters of their language, studying a subject to mastery, making a perfect blade, crafting the perfect item, or using a blade perfectly in battle. Every waking moment was spent on the mastery of a task to the exclusion of all else, to the point that simply writing a character or building a home became an unimaginable work of art. This age was considered the high point of Omestri culture, the greatest works of art, culture, and faith in all the known world were created during this age, by the Omestri. Great crystalline cities, powered by the Omestri mastery of ether rose along the face of the mountains, the deep and pristine valleys preserved in their cold and deadly natural wonder so that Omestri could study the perfection of the natural world. The Omestri reached the pinnacle of refined culture, art, logic, philosophy, theology, and ether manipulation and this mastery would eventually lead to the next age, called the Age of Schism.
The Age of Schism had its roots in the Age of Reason. As the Omestri created their heavenly crystal cities they dug the foundations deep into the mountains of the east. As the dug deeper and deeper into the mountains, using the ether to manipulate the rock around them, the Omestri discovered something from the past that no other peoples had come across. Far underground the Omestri stumbled upon arcane machinery and relics from the deep far flung history of the world and as Omestri were prone to do they began to study the machinery intently to the exclusion of all else. The evidence of another culture fascinated the Omestri and soon they begin to covet these discovers found deep in the eastern mountains, establishing a caste of men and women to study and zealous guard the machinery. These men and women begin to understand and manipulate this new found technology, turning the devices towards channeling, harvesting, and amplifying their own ether. Unbeknownst to modern day Omestri and all but the most high ranking Varyan Empire officials, the same arcane machinery that was found by the Omestri so many long generations ago is the same machinery that has been used in the foundations of the Red Seminary, the same ancient machinery that is now draining the captured Gods in the Empire capital, the same secretive mechanisms that are used in the Ravenous Trial for Inquisitorial Initiates, and the same complex components that led to the creation of the arcs. Eventually, the Omestri of the past, using these long lost historical machines, created the primogenitors of the machines that are fueled by ether and run the Empire today and these machines would be the very things that helped to bring around the fall of their culture.
Because the Omestri had risen so high during the Age of Reason and developed the use of their ether so well, it had become unnecessary for the people to work on anything deemed as hard labor. Even mining, the manipulation of the historical arcane machines, and complex construction projects all become effortless due to the power of their ether. The Omestri became obsessed with the development and focus of their knowledge and skill, free from the burdens of everyday life they were permitted to explore ever more esoteric pursuits. Before long there were groups in Omestri culture that began to slip the bonds of logic and emotional control in order to plumb the deepest depths of pathos, the most tantalizing pleasures of the flesh, the most hedonistic indulgences of the body, and the zeniths of happiness in the mind. These cults dedicated to the pursuits of emotional perfection became known as Kurai Kanjo cults and began to use their ether to focus, manipulate, and channel their already vast emotional spectrum to even further frontiers, achieving ever greater emotional and sensational highs and lows than ever thought possible. Soon the Omestri that still held to the principles of logic and discipline saw the danger that the Kurai Kanjo cults represented and banded together forming the Keji Arashi cults. Soon the Keji Arashi cults and the Kurai Kanjo cults fell into open conflict and thus the Age of Schism began.
The final age began in the middle of the Cult Wars between the logic of the Keji Arashi cults and the wild abandon of the Kurai Kanjo cults. This next age was the Varyan Age and began with the coming of the Varyan Imperial forces into the eastern mountains. The cults of Omestri peoples were embroiled in an ether war that had no rival when the Varyan military came. As the Omestri were already divided and at each other’s throats The Varyan military had little trouble in attacking the Omestri Empire but dispatching them was another story. The storm of ethereal fire that was unleashed on the plains of battle by the Omestri against the Varyan armies was nigh unbelievable when witnessed by the Varyan Generals. Ether was a force known to the Varyans but the scale that the Omestri used it was mind boggling. The forces of the Keji Arashi cults focused brilliant and deadly powers, unleashed in disciplined volleys at every tactical weak point of the invading Varyan army cutting deep wounds into the enemy ranks while the Kurai Kanjo cults sprang wildly into the midst of the Varyan armies. The horror of the Kurai Kanjo cult’s depravity was unparalleled; barbarities and cruelties the likes of which have never again been experienced were sown across the battlefield when the Kurai Kanjo Omestri attacked. It was this malice and all out abandon that gave rise to the myths, all of which were partially true, that Omestri people were debauched sadists. After the first battles of the Varyan Age the propaganda that all Omestri people were wild and psychopathic killers that drank the blood of their enemies and defiled the corpses of the fallen spread like wildfire. The Keji Arashi cults tried to reach a peace with the Varyan forces but all was lost, the Keji Arashi cults were too small a force and the Kurai Kanjo cults were too disorganized and soon the Omestri people and lands were invaded and all but destroyed. Despite this invasion the Omestri people of both cults fought on tenaciously even facing their separation and isolation but even as they carried on all could see that the Omestri would eventually be wiped out. One Omestri mystic, a woman of great wisdom and possessed of many unique abilities could not stand to see her people wiped from the face of the earth even if it would lead to her being dubbed the Great Betrayer by her own people and so she acted, reshaping the future of the Omestri.
Onna Bugeisha was an Omestri woman of unparalleled talent and ability and though her name would become lost to history she would become known as the Great Betrayer to all Omestri. Little is known about her early life, just that she was of a noble caste and was supremely skilled. Her discipline was unshakable and at a young age she was introduced to the Lore Masters that guarded the ancient technologies found deep in the eastern mountains. Here she became the exemplar of logic, academia, and all scholarly virtue. Not only did her mind outstrip all her peers and even her elders but her physical grace and prowess was unmatched in all disciplines, she was all the Keji Arashi cults ever aspired to be and early in her life she became a Grand Master of a Keji Arashi cult and though she had many years to live she had no more frontiers of controlled Omestri culture to explore. Soon her sharp mind turned to unraveling the Omestri people’s emotional specter and she began to delve into the depths of the Omestri psyche. This path led her down a dark road and before long she fell from the lofty ranks of the Keji Arashi and became subsumed in the cults of Kurai Kanjo. The same type of vigor and natural skill that saw this woman rise to the peaks of the Keji Arashi culture also allowed her to plumb the deepest darkest depths of the Kurai Kanjo culture. It is probably for the better that the sorts of acts that Onna Bugeisha took part in are forgotten to all but the Gods, for while it can be said with certainty that some where the very pinnacle of pleasure and happiness it is also known that others were the most sadistic and soul wrenching acts ever to be committed on this earth. Much like her meteoric rise to the ranks of Keji Arashi Grand Master, the woman that would become the Great Betrayer soon ruled many Kurai Kanjo cults with equal ease. Unlike the other Omestri that had fallen to this path though the Great Betrayer was able to rise from the pit of wanton gluttony that she had fallen into and meld the logical control of her former Kenji Arashi self with the emotional span and understanding of the darker side of the Kurai Kanjo culture. In effect she did what no Omestri had ever done before or since and achieved mastery of both ends of the spectrum of Omestri culture and personality, breaking free from the confines of both and escaping the pitfalls of both simultaneously. Shortly before the Varyan invasion she became the paragon of Omestri culture and when the Varyan Empire invaded she foresaw the discordant and deadly chaos that the Kurai Kanjo would visit upon the Varyan forces and she also had visions of the ordered and tactical battle of the more controlled Keji Arashi Omestri and before long she realized that though both were powerful, a house divided will always fall. As the war raged on Onna Bugeisha retreated for months to the highest mountain in the eastern range and cut off all contact from both the Keji Arashi and the Kurai Kanjo who continued to fight on amongst themselves and against the Varyan armies. Upon this mountain top she was granted a vision from Omestris that is thought to be the only way to save the Omestri people from extinction. Coming down from the mountain knowing she will be the Great Betrayer, Onna Bugeisha hands the Varyan Empire the keys to defeating the Omestri in one fell blow thus sealing their fate and becoming vilified by her own people. To this day no Omestri or Varyan knows the Great Betrayer’s name but every Omestri slave knows that it was this woman, the Great Betrayer, which condemned them to a life of slavery and much worse.
After the defeat of the Omestri people the Varyan Empire found that their natural gifts with ether coupled with the machinery secreted away in their mountain strongholds could potentially provide a fuel source for the Empires war engines and vastly growing cities to no end. Soon the Omestri people were relegated to slavery, Empire propaganda portraying the Kurai Kanjo cults as every Omestri and justifying the brutalization and objectification of an entire race into nothing more than a fuel source for the Empire. Even as the slavery of Varyans and other nations prisoners becomes more and more taboo the Omestri are still happily enslaved and used for their ether as all believe to be wicked creatures that are hardly worth more than insects.
As can be seen, the truth is neither the history of the Varyan Empire, nor the cherished story of the Omestri people but an interwoven tale with bits of truth and bits of lies throughout.
Varyan histories of the Omestri culture and people are well known throughout the length and breadth of the Empire. All of the loyal Varyan people know of the inescapable debauchery and hedonistic nature of all Omestri people, each patriotic Varyan child is taught about the decay and degradation of the soul that the Omestri people represent, and the enslavement of these people is tolerated by the Varyan people because the Omestri people have been reduced to nothing but ungovernable, wicked, wretched husks of what it means to be human. That is the Varyan history though and far from the truth. If an Omestri soothsayer, elder story and myth teller of the Omestri people, was permitted to tell the story of their people it would be dramatically different. Omestri stories laud the art, the literature, and the poetry of their people. The soothsayers sing uplifting stories of how the Omestri conquered their wicked ways through devotion and discipline, through control and culture. Omestri, according to their stories, reached a height of ether manipulation and control so lofty that it became the core of their identity, even more so than the peoples around them who marveled at their achievements. In the end the Omestri people claim it was their benevolent but impressive use of power that enticed the Varyan Empire to invade it, slaughter its people, destroy the pinnacle of culture and civilization, and enslave the people into squalor, servitude, and ether harvesting. It was the deplorable influence of the Varyan Empire that lead to the highest paragon of Omestri culture, a vaunted spiritual leader, to become the Great Betrayer… the cursed Omestri that handed the keys to the Omestri Empire to the invading Varyans. This however is the fond memory of the defeated and not the total truth.
The reality, as it tends to be, is far more complex. The Omestri people began, as the other peoples of the world did, as a race of created humans dedicated to the service of one of the Broken Pantheon fragments, Omestris. Omestris was the fragment born from the Ice Titan’s left hand that came crashing down to the world on what is now the far eastern coast of the main Varyan continent. The Ice Titan’s left hand was unique among all the pieces of the Broken Pantheon and this difference would be the defining feature of the Omestri people. In the great battle that raged in a time before knowledge it is said that the Ice Titan's shield was cut from its arm and lost when the Fire Titan struck a furious blow against the preternatural frost bulwark. From that moment onward the Ice Titan, possessed of unimaginable power and skill, used its trident in the right hand, raining down blow after blow upon its nemesis all while casting devastatingly powerful ethereal and elemental power from its left hand, battering the Fire Titan with physical force and ethereal force. As the fight raged on the Fire Titan began to falter against the ether cast from the Ice Titan’s left hand and in a skillful and desperate attack aimed to sever the hand from the Ice Titan. With unsurpassed bravado the Ice Titan did not parry the Fire Titan’s strike but instead caught the blade of the Fire Titan in its left hand to avoid the greater severing blow. This wounded the Ice Titan's left hand, the flaming sword bit into the Ice Titan’s hand with a great explosion of force and steam. This dreadful blow had an unforeseen effect on the Ice Titan, smoky tendrils of power and essence infected the Ice Titan through the wound on its left hand. Despite this wound and the poisoning of the Ice Titan with a segment of the Fire Titan’s essence the battle raged on to its fateful and well known conclusion. The Fire Titan lay vanquished but with what power it had left struck a final shattering blow to the Ice Titan, breaking the Titan apart and creating the Broken Pantheon. The powerful left hand of the Ice Titan fell to the earth and gave genesis to Omestris and like the other Gods, Omestris gave birth to a race of humans to serve the God. Being created from Omestris who was the wounded left hand of the Ice Titan that was the focus of all the Titans ethereal power, had lasting effects for the Omestri people. First of all the Omestri were and are extremely talented and powerful ether manipulators, this power and talent being the legacy of the power contained in the Ice Titan’s left hand. The force of the Titan’s ether infused the Omestri bodies with the natural ability to focus, control, store, and manipulate ether on levels no other race could. Part of this was due to the Ice Titan’s power but there is a darker force that created the unique power of the Omestri, the wound delivered to the left hand of the Ice Titan by the Fire Titan’s sword left a glimmer of the Fire Titan’s essence and power in that infected wound. This power, diametrically opposed to the power of the Ice Titan, wars within every Omestri psyche, driving not only the increased ether powers but also defining the character of their culture. The other lasting effect was also a result of the Fire Titan’s fateful strike to the Ice Titans left hand, an effect on their very being and culture. The two powers of the Titans resonate within the Omestri people, effecting their minds, souls, and very being. The opposing powers swirl in the souls of the Omestri to this day, driving them to the extremes of all things. Omestri are subject to emotional highs that would be sheer undefinable bliss and pleasure to others, fiery unquenchable passions, blazing inferno like rages, and boiling seething hate are all feelings heightened to such a level as to be almost incomprehensible to any other race of human. The people born of Omestris also fall into the deepest darkest depressions imaginable, impossibly crushing pathos, bone crippling sadness, and bleak cold… nigh unescapable emotional pits that would drive others to insanity and death. The legacy of the Omestri, born of the duality of both Titans due to a single stroke of fate, remain part of the Omestri culture and defined their history.
In the beginning the God Omestris came into being on the far eastern mountains of the main continent. This place, like all of the world to come, was a brutal, cold, and incredibly bleak area of the main continent, devoid of heat, fire, or life. Majestic mountains rose high into the clouds and created breathtaking vistas, plateaus, and peaks slick with ice and snow and bitingly cold. The lowlands below these mountains were cut with deep valleys, gorges, and ravines filled with forests of crystalline gem and ice formations, petrified ice covered trees, and frozen solid rivers ending in breathtaking frozen sheets of icicles that were once waterfalls. When Omestris fell to this place and woke, the power of the God brought a modicum of that life giving heat to this region, infusing the ecosystems with the power of ether and extending the power of an aegis to cover this eastern land. Cold and winter still dominated the land, despite the power of Omestris, or perhaps because of it, freezing winds still howled between the mountains whipping the cold thin, oxygen deprived mountain air into furious storms. Forests of great pines the size of ancient towering redwoods stood petrified by the bitter cold and weighed down heavily by the constant snow remain the only place the few hardy mammals that can exist here may shelter from the deadly winds. Frozen rivers, lakes, and wetlands deep in the valley never truly break free from the frozen grip of winter, though with the coming of Omestris the ice thinned allowing precious few places where water could be obtained after digging and breaking through layers of ice. The majestic mountain range violently exploded, sulfuric and acidic hot springs steaming up on the mountainsides the toxic liquid being propelled into the air where it freezes and rains down in jagged poisonous shards. Frozen crystalline structures became exposed as the God’s power expanded. These formations were great quartz fields growing out from the mountains, razor like edges crusted with snow and capable of flaying flesh at the slightest pressure were now exposed and glittering in the brilliant bluish light of the Aegis.
Into this deadly cold but enchanting region Omestris brought the Omestri people to life. Physically human, like all other creations of the Gods, these people were distinguished by their relatively small stature, slightly amber skin, deep metallic gold eyes that glow with ethereal power, and inky black hair that was often kept extremely long, straight, and wrapped up in elaborate knots. Apart from these small physical differences the Omestri people were different than most other humans in two key areas, their ether talent and the dueling emotional struggle of both Ice and Fire Titan within them. These two traits lead to the four defining ages of the Omestri people. During the First Age, the Age of Blood, the Omestri were driven by the euphoric highs of their emotions, the terrible lows of their depressions, and the frightening fire of their rage. In this age the corruption of the Fire Titan’s wound was evident. Coupled with their natural and instinctual mastery of ether, the zeniths and abysses of their emotions led to generations of ethereal conflict and war on a scale unseen anywhere else in history. On a smaller scale it seemed like sadness and pleasure, happiness and rage, Ice and Fire battled again in an echo of the epic Titan battle.
The violence of the Age of Blood eventually gave way to the more controlled Age of Reason. Omestri people began to shun the extremes of their emotions on both ends of the scale, driven to end the fighting amongst each other and serve Omestris more faithfully. The Omestri people, led by the reclusive monks of legend called the “Five Tusks” began to mitigate their unfathomable rage and tantalizing happiness with exercises in fervent spirituality, unerring logic, extreme discipline, and focused devotion to a single skill to the exclusion of all other pursuits. During this time the Omestri would devote themselves to the mastery of a single point of knowledge or a single definable skill until they mastered it completely before moving on to another endeavor. Wars ended as the Omestri created a culture that exemplified art and refinement in even the simplest of things. The Omestri became obsessed with this kind of single minded devotion to mastering a task before moving on to anything else and this also developed the paramount importance of logical and emotional control over their feelings. A deep and rigid cultural stratification and caste system developed in the Omestri culture during the Age of Reason, based on the mastery of an individual’s emotions and skills. Omestri would spend whatever time it took, no matter the cost, to master a task, be it making tea or a dish of food, writing the characters of their language, studying a subject to mastery, making a perfect blade, crafting the perfect item, or using a blade perfectly in battle. Every waking moment was spent on the mastery of a task to the exclusion of all else, to the point that simply writing a character or building a home became an unimaginable work of art. This age was considered the high point of Omestri culture, the greatest works of art, culture, and faith in all the known world were created during this age, by the Omestri. Great crystalline cities, powered by the Omestri mastery of ether rose along the face of the mountains, the deep and pristine valleys preserved in their cold and deadly natural wonder so that Omestri could study the perfection of the natural world. The Omestri reached the pinnacle of refined culture, art, logic, philosophy, theology, and ether manipulation and this mastery would eventually lead to the next age, called the Age of Schism.
The Age of Schism had its roots in the Age of Reason. As the Omestri created their heavenly crystal cities they dug the foundations deep into the mountains of the east. As the dug deeper and deeper into the mountains, using the ether to manipulate the rock around them, the Omestri discovered something from the past that no other peoples had come across. Far underground the Omestri stumbled upon arcane machinery and relics from the deep far flung history of the world and as Omestri were prone to do they began to study the machinery intently to the exclusion of all else. The evidence of another culture fascinated the Omestri and soon they begin to covet these discovers found deep in the eastern mountains, establishing a caste of men and women to study and zealous guard the machinery. These men and women begin to understand and manipulate this new found technology, turning the devices towards channeling, harvesting, and amplifying their own ether. Unbeknownst to modern day Omestri and all but the most high ranking Varyan Empire officials, the same arcane machinery that was found by the Omestri so many long generations ago is the same machinery that has been used in the foundations of the Red Seminary, the same ancient machinery that is now draining the captured Gods in the Empire capital, the same secretive mechanisms that are used in the Ravenous Trial for Inquisitorial Initiates, and the same complex components that led to the creation of the arcs. Eventually, the Omestri of the past, using these long lost historical machines, created the primogenitors of the machines that are fueled by ether and run the Empire today and these machines would be the very things that helped to bring around the fall of their culture.
Because the Omestri had risen so high during the Age of Reason and developed the use of their ether so well, it had become unnecessary for the people to work on anything deemed as hard labor. Even mining, the manipulation of the historical arcane machines, and complex construction projects all become effortless due to the power of their ether. The Omestri became obsessed with the development and focus of their knowledge and skill, free from the burdens of everyday life they were permitted to explore ever more esoteric pursuits. Before long there were groups in Omestri culture that began to slip the bonds of logic and emotional control in order to plumb the deepest depths of pathos, the most tantalizing pleasures of the flesh, the most hedonistic indulgences of the body, and the zeniths of happiness in the mind. These cults dedicated to the pursuits of emotional perfection became known as Kurai Kanjo cults and began to use their ether to focus, manipulate, and channel their already vast emotional spectrum to even further frontiers, achieving ever greater emotional and sensational highs and lows than ever thought possible. Soon the Omestri that still held to the principles of logic and discipline saw the danger that the Kurai Kanjo cults represented and banded together forming the Keji Arashi cults. Soon the Keji Arashi cults and the Kurai Kanjo cults fell into open conflict and thus the Age of Schism began.
The final age began in the middle of the Cult Wars between the logic of the Keji Arashi cults and the wild abandon of the Kurai Kanjo cults. This next age was the Varyan Age and began with the coming of the Varyan Imperial forces into the eastern mountains. The cults of Omestri peoples were embroiled in an ether war that had no rival when the Varyan military came. As the Omestri were already divided and at each other’s throats The Varyan military had little trouble in attacking the Omestri Empire but dispatching them was another story. The storm of ethereal fire that was unleashed on the plains of battle by the Omestri against the Varyan armies was nigh unbelievable when witnessed by the Varyan Generals. Ether was a force known to the Varyans but the scale that the Omestri used it was mind boggling. The forces of the Keji Arashi cults focused brilliant and deadly powers, unleashed in disciplined volleys at every tactical weak point of the invading Varyan army cutting deep wounds into the enemy ranks while the Kurai Kanjo cults sprang wildly into the midst of the Varyan armies. The horror of the Kurai Kanjo cult’s depravity was unparalleled; barbarities and cruelties the likes of which have never again been experienced were sown across the battlefield when the Kurai Kanjo Omestri attacked. It was this malice and all out abandon that gave rise to the myths, all of which were partially true, that Omestri people were debauched sadists. After the first battles of the Varyan Age the propaganda that all Omestri people were wild and psychopathic killers that drank the blood of their enemies and defiled the corpses of the fallen spread like wildfire. The Keji Arashi cults tried to reach a peace with the Varyan forces but all was lost, the Keji Arashi cults were too small a force and the Kurai Kanjo cults were too disorganized and soon the Omestri people and lands were invaded and all but destroyed. Despite this invasion the Omestri people of both cults fought on tenaciously even facing their separation and isolation but even as they carried on all could see that the Omestri would eventually be wiped out. One Omestri mystic, a woman of great wisdom and possessed of many unique abilities could not stand to see her people wiped from the face of the earth even if it would lead to her being dubbed the Great Betrayer by her own people and so she acted, reshaping the future of the Omestri.
Onna Bugeisha was an Omestri woman of unparalleled talent and ability and though her name would become lost to history she would become known as the Great Betrayer to all Omestri. Little is known about her early life, just that she was of a noble caste and was supremely skilled. Her discipline was unshakable and at a young age she was introduced to the Lore Masters that guarded the ancient technologies found deep in the eastern mountains. Here she became the exemplar of logic, academia, and all scholarly virtue. Not only did her mind outstrip all her peers and even her elders but her physical grace and prowess was unmatched in all disciplines, she was all the Keji Arashi cults ever aspired to be and early in her life she became a Grand Master of a Keji Arashi cult and though she had many years to live she had no more frontiers of controlled Omestri culture to explore. Soon her sharp mind turned to unraveling the Omestri people’s emotional specter and she began to delve into the depths of the Omestri psyche. This path led her down a dark road and before long she fell from the lofty ranks of the Keji Arashi and became subsumed in the cults of Kurai Kanjo. The same type of vigor and natural skill that saw this woman rise to the peaks of the Keji Arashi culture also allowed her to plumb the deepest darkest depths of the Kurai Kanjo culture. It is probably for the better that the sorts of acts that Onna Bugeisha took part in are forgotten to all but the Gods, for while it can be said with certainty that some where the very pinnacle of pleasure and happiness it is also known that others were the most sadistic and soul wrenching acts ever to be committed on this earth. Much like her meteoric rise to the ranks of Keji Arashi Grand Master, the woman that would become the Great Betrayer soon ruled many Kurai Kanjo cults with equal ease. Unlike the other Omestri that had fallen to this path though the Great Betrayer was able to rise from the pit of wanton gluttony that she had fallen into and meld the logical control of her former Kenji Arashi self with the emotional span and understanding of the darker side of the Kurai Kanjo culture. In effect she did what no Omestri had ever done before or since and achieved mastery of both ends of the spectrum of Omestri culture and personality, breaking free from the confines of both and escaping the pitfalls of both simultaneously. Shortly before the Varyan invasion she became the paragon of Omestri culture and when the Varyan Empire invaded she foresaw the discordant and deadly chaos that the Kurai Kanjo would visit upon the Varyan forces and she also had visions of the ordered and tactical battle of the more controlled Keji Arashi Omestri and before long she realized that though both were powerful, a house divided will always fall. As the war raged on Onna Bugeisha retreated for months to the highest mountain in the eastern range and cut off all contact from both the Keji Arashi and the Kurai Kanjo who continued to fight on amongst themselves and against the Varyan armies. Upon this mountain top she was granted a vision from Omestris that is thought to be the only way to save the Omestri people from extinction. Coming down from the mountain knowing she will be the Great Betrayer, Onna Bugeisha hands the Varyan Empire the keys to defeating the Omestri in one fell blow thus sealing their fate and becoming vilified by her own people. To this day no Omestri or Varyan knows the Great Betrayer’s name but every Omestri slave knows that it was this woman, the Great Betrayer, which condemned them to a life of slavery and much worse.
After the defeat of the Omestri people the Varyan Empire found that their natural gifts with ether coupled with the machinery secreted away in their mountain strongholds could potentially provide a fuel source for the Empires war engines and vastly growing cities to no end. Soon the Omestri people were relegated to slavery, Empire propaganda portraying the Kurai Kanjo cults as every Omestri and justifying the brutalization and objectification of an entire race into nothing more than a fuel source for the Empire. Even as the slavery of Varyans and other nations prisoners becomes more and more taboo the Omestri are still happily enslaved and used for their ether as all believe to be wicked creatures that are hardly worth more than insects.
As can be seen, the truth is neither the history of the Varyan Empire, nor the cherished story of the Omestri people but an interwoven tale with bits of truth and bits of lies throughout.
