Glasrya
Ten thousand years ago, ancient Visitors from beyond the Abyss were cast down from the stars, for some long-forgotten sin. With dark sorcery and occult spells, they raised a great palace of meteoric glass in the burning basin they had fallen within, and quickly subdued the world around them.
Exiled from their abyssal kin, these first Glasryans (named after the molten shards of meteoric glass which had brought the Visitors to Arr'ath, which exploded and scattered across the realms) resented this new world they had been exiled into. They enslaved the people, binding them to serve and entertain in terrible ways, and to work the great furnaces and eldritch forges built deep under the obsidian city, and to craft trinkets and baubles to amuse their lords.
Thousands of years later, the Empire has decayed; through lethargy, boredom and drugs. Now the Imperial Houses waste their time feasting, musing, slumbering and wrangling for power.
The Glasryan population has dwindled. Their sorcery has waned and their reach has shortened. Glasryan ships - the formidable Fire Barges, which subjugated so many of the old nations - are few in number, and often wait months for crew or repairs. The slaving legions - once the pride of the empire - take months to muster, and lack the bite of their tyrannical forefathers.
Now the Glasryans wait out their exile, imprisoned on a world they have grown weary of, trying new entertainments to pass the slow centuries. The world around them grows bolder, more restless, and the disquiet of rebellion seems always closer.
The Imperial Houses recognise these changes, and have turned their struggles within, hoping to wait out their long return home before the old empire crumbles around them, or to unite the other Houses and re-assert their rule, punishing the world as a master must punish an unruly slave.
Comments