Khrythar
| Khrythar | |
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| (Nation) | |
| Pronunciation | KRĪ-thär
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| Titles |
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| Alignment | Lawful Neutral
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| Capital | The Red Cliffs
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| Ruler |
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| Government | Syndicalism
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| Demonym |
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| Adjective | Khrythi / Dwarven
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| Languages | Dwarven, Common
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| Religions | Glaurat
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About 2000 years ago, the Rhenthar dwarves suffered a schism between two equally valid claimants to the throne. The immediate royal family had perished due to a cave-in caused by a cult of delvers, leaving Urist Whitebeard and Gevalt of Caturhn II as equally valid claimants, being the grandchildren of two dead princes. Urist claimed that, as his father was eldest, the royal line passed first to his father and then to him, making him the rightful kind. Gevalt, meanwhile, claimed that since all had died in the same disaster, that the line of succession was not followed in any order. He, being eldest of the two claimants, was therefore right to rule. A civil war broke out from this dispute.
Although the exact nature of the defeat remains a topic of serious discussion, Urist lost the conflict. Dwarven traditions had laws demanding the execution of traitors, but there was an intense argument among the Rhenthar legal critics regarding whether contesting an uncrowned king could be called "treason" by the classical definition. A century passed with Urist on death row before it was decreed that the execution would have to be stayed indefinitely under dwarven law.
Gevalt, humiliated and understandably concerned about being forced to leave his greatest rival alive, took the unprecedented step of condemning him and his followers to exile on the surface, hoping that the harsh life of a surface dweller, in what the dwarves saw as the greatest unguarded cavern that could possibly exist, would destroy his enemies for them.
Fully a quarter of the dwarven population never truly accepted this decision, and the debate over whether it was just raged on for centuries. Eventually, a faction within the dwarven people who called themselves "Khrythar," or Red People after the blood they perceived as being on their hands. The March to the Surface was at once their most triumphant and sorrowful event, being the day that a quarter of the dwarven population - nearly 10 times those who had been banished - voluntarily left for the surface to rejoin their Sjobar brothers.
The Khrythar, however, did not understand the mentality of the surface. The betrayal they were seeking to join with solidarity in had happened several generations ago, by human reckoning, which had come more and more to guide the reasoning and timelines of the Sjobar. As such, the Khrythar's March was seen as a slap in the face - a "too little, too late" affair that had a great mass of Dwarven lives senselessly complicated for a lost cause.
The Khrythar, wholly unprepared for the new life on the surface, thoroughly dejected at the rejection by the Sjobar trail blazers, and unable to immediately find a place for themselves, faced a dire situation, resulting in starvation, enslavement and mass tragedies, until the Khrytahr did what came naturally to dwarves - they dug. Where they once constructed great caverns deep under the earth in regal splendor, now they dug hasty networks of tunnels and shafts in cliff faces.
Now safely holed within cliff faces, the dwarves took on a stronger solidarity than that taken by either the Sjobar or the Rhenthar. The teamwork necessary to survive and thrive on the surface took on a religious fervor. Their faith and government became one and, rejecting the old gods, they forged a new order they called "Glaurat," the Red Faith, a group adherence so powerful that it became a god unto itself as the very concept of deep cooperation and communal love and respect.
Real-World Comparison
The Khyrthar's inspiration comes from early New World communes and socialist satellite communities; late 1800's or early 1900's White Russian socialist dissenters. Basically, communism before communism fell apart.
Campaign Role
The Khrythar life cycle is one of maximum utility. They transition from birth into education into vocation and on to perfection until death. Of course, this makes for a dull, albeit potentially satisfying existence. For some, this is not enough, and the Khrythar community does not hold any animosity toward those who seek to discover more within the world. Indeed, if they can return with something of value to the community, truly this was their purpose.