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 Uncharted
Land. Rimmed by civilization, the interior
of Terèthor is believed to be among the
wildest of lands in the World of Teréth
End. From
northeastern Arduwu
where the Nekrule struggle to maintain an ancient alliance,
to the eastern coast dominated by kingdoms formed
from a fractured empire, to the jungle principalities
of the unknowable Sharm and the roaming Naskarans,
to the warring coastal states of the Kirydian
Sea, to the remote western lands where men claim
descendancy from Emereni
kings, the continent is vast and varied.
The Jyar. Terèthor
is believed to the last continent to be inhabited by
civilized races. The first civilized race to make
Terèthor home is commonly contested by the Dwürden
and Elve, but even
they credit the Jyar
(JZHIGH-ahr) when the old
name is mentioned. The Jyar have not walked the
lands of Teréth End since the days of the Bloodlings
but their marks on the land remain. The Jyar are
not included among the lists of Teréth End's
people because they no longer exist. A giant race
from which all current giants are thought to descend,
the Jyar are believed to have been born from the mountains
of Terèthor and walked the lands for many years.
Stories vary on whether the great Sharak
was one of the Jyar, or a progenitor of the ancient
race, out-living his progeny until the time of Sulyel.
The Dwürden tell tales of how the Jyar (mountain-lords)
were once very numerous, but how over time they became
more scarce. Dwürden legends of the giants
come from the telling of Gur-Undrü
who reportedly sat with one of the last Jyar and talked
at length about the doom that had come to the race.
It was explained in one telling of the hero's
tale that with their dwindling numbers maddened Sharak
so that he stomped all that he found. Because
of this, Sulyel's defeating of Sharak was viewed by
some Dwürden as the Great Healing, though others
have attributed it to the beginning of the end for the
Dwürden, who like the Jyar are "of" the
land.
Perhaps the most direct
and noticeable marks left by the Jyar are the basins
of the Grey Wastes
and the mountain throne of Sul-Terèthor.
Jyar magics are mentioned in the Dwürden
re-tellings as having raised the Fiery
Isthmus in an attempt to see the Jyar king, for
the giants could not step from the land or be dissolved
by the sea. Other tales claim that it was customary
to lower land-bridges after they were raised but that
when the death of the last Jyar king stripped the giants
of this magic, so the Fiery Isthmus remained. A
similar land-bridge connecting to Lyrast
is believed by the elder races to have been used by
Uren to migrate to Terèthor in the very early
days of their expansions but others find discrepancy
with these timelines.
The most detailed (and possibly
the only first hand) account of the Jyar is the tale
of Gur-Undrü.
It should be noted that his accounting of the
Jyar and the other more popular myths conflict on many
points.
The New Battleground.
The Dwürden claim that in early times, they
tunneled to the great continent from their strongholds
in western Vulmura.
The Elve claim to have sailed to present Nazhalyr,
a city of great antiquity and made in-roads deep into
the verdant lands and high mountains where they constructed
many great cities throughout Terèthor before
the first sighting of Dwürden in that land. The
Dwürden agree that the Elve built many cities,
but claim that they watched all of this from strongholds
of their own, deep within the mountains.
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