(The following article is old and no longer fully compliant with current lore. It will eventually be reworked to fit with present canon.)
Present Day
In the current age, the Ofirar are hardly seen throughout Pretheya. The only significant settlement of their people left on the continent is the city of Refuge, located within the dead land of Grestvyt. There, refugees from the Moss Hold live out the rest of their days in peace, alongside a handful of humans who have trickled in to join them over the years. The denizens of Refuge have a reputation for being producers of the most valuable histories and technical manuals throughout Pretheya, as well as expertly crafted articles of jewellery that fetch enormous prices in the courts of kings and queens.
The Ofirar who had fought on the side of the Grannrormrlen during the Landamaeri War were forced to flee west yet again after the conflict's disastrous conclusion. Then, when the Riverlands rose up in rebellion some years later, they fled Landamar entirely along with the last of the Fyrstbairn. It is said that some of them still live on in the west, in Ostokive and beyond, but no one in Pretheya knows for sure.
Cultural Significance
Many different conceptions exist of the Ofirar, as many as there are countries and cultures within Pretheya. In the present day, many mistakenly believe them to have gone extinct entirely, thinking them to have been wiped out by the crusaders at the end of the Landamaeri War. Others think that they live on in the far west, in Ostokive and beyond. Belief in their extinction is most prevalent in countries to the east of Ressengia, where the Ofirar have not been seen for centuries, whereas in the west the knowledge of their survival in Grestvyt is more common.
Generally, in Rukhmarite countries, the Ofirar are demonised for their perceived nature as lecherous and perverted beings. Their supernatural beauty is stated to be a characteristic designed to tempt human men and women into having sex with them, an action which is said to sully the soul and sever one from the cycle of rebirth; making it one of the most dire sins possible to commit. In addition to this, they are often depicted as tyrannical and uncaring despots for the role they played during the Wyrm Kingdoms period, often being shown to treat humans as lesser expendable creatures. Various mythological creatures also exist within the folklore of countries like Belyria, Asutoa, and Ressengia which are thought by scholars to have probably been based upon the Ofirar. These creatures usually have a motif that is to do either with sex, or ruling over large groups of humans and treating them as akin to cattle.
In Sassania, the Ofirar are revered as semi-sacred beings. Seen as essentially 'better' humans in every way, they were considered the rightful rulers of the kingdom for centuries, and many of the country's inhabitants still wish for a Wyrmkin ruling dynasty in the present. Their reputation here is unique, and owes to the fact that the Ofirar of Sassania once threw off the Wyrm King and took control of the country themselves, where they then conducted a benevolent and prosperous reign for over a century.
Within the Landamaeri countries, views of the Ofirar differ. In Heralya, they are thought of particularly fondly dating back to the days of the Wyrmkin Kingdom, and are the subject of many tragic plays and poetry about the fate that befell them during the Landamaeri War. As in Sassania, they are also symbols of exemplary beauty, intelligence, and wisdom, and comparison to the Ofirar is considered a high form of flattery.
History
Creation & The Grannrormrlen
The first of the Ofirar began to be created within the first centuries of the Grannrormrlen's establishment. The individuals created at this time numbered only in the dozens at the utmost, the result of a small handful of Fyrstbairn who were particularly quick to both grow used to life in their human forms, and to develop attraction towards a human. These first Ofirar were formed in by far the most differing ways from one another, owing to the fact that the Fyrstbairn had not yet decided upon a pattern which their creations ought to follow.
This would change by the middle of the 4th century Re, at which point the act of creating Ofirar had become commonplace among the Wyrms. It was around this time that they began developing loose standards for the way that creatures of this new species ought to look; pertaining to matters such as their height, the colour of their skin, the length and texture of their hair, and so on and so forth. This practise had been commonplace since the enactment of the Law of Mortality, having first been decided upon by the Ormr as a method of ensuring different creatures of the same type did not grow so visually distinct that they could no longer be identified as all one species.
The Fyrstbairn did not look at the Ofirar as children in the same way that humans saw their offspring. Instead, they saw them in largely the same light as other lifeforms they had brought about during the Vikingar; as works of art foremost and living beings second. They thought of the Ofirar in particular as a joint creative process, one shared between them and their human lover, who they would often allow to choose the Ofirar's name, gender, and physical features.
The Ofirar's human parent also often struggled to see them the same way as they would a normal human child. This could be for any number of reasons, ranging from their not-entirely-humanlike appearance, to their strange and at times uncanny behaviour. The most common factor was very likely that the Ofirar were created fully grown, meaning that the majority of the steps of the parenting process expected in bringing up a human child were simply absent. There was also the issue that the parent of the Ofirar would often live the rest of their life and die of old age, during which time the Ofirar themselves would show no sign of aging, and continue living for centuries after their parent passed away. This eventually came to be seen as a severe oversight in their design, but was never truly addressed; with the majority of Fyrstbairn simply ceasing creating Ofirar after the first time they personally were subjected to this.
When the Crisis of the Sixth Century occurred, large swathes of Belyria, Sassania, and Asutoa temporarily rose in revolt against the Wyrm Lord. During this time, there was a pressing need for more administrators to repair the damage done by breaking away from the Grannr and create new state infrastructure. It was necessary that the loyalty of such individuals be assured, however, and so it was to this end that the Fyrstbairn turned to the Ofirar. Despite the troubled relationship that the two races had had up until this point, it was considered that they were likely more reliable than humans, and so members of the Fyrstbairn began entrusting more and more responsibilities to their Ofirar progeny.
This period of cooperation between the Fyrstbairn and the Ofirar served to form a genuine bond between a significant number of them that had been lacking up until this point. Even after the Crisis ended and the revolting provinces rejoined the Grannr, the Ofirar retained their positions as administrators, and would soon end up becoming an integral part of the bureaucratic machinery of the empire. It was demonstrated that they were able to perform their duties to an equal and in many cases far superior extent than humans, owing to their longevity which allowed them to accrue far more experience. In addition to this, the Ofirar came to be seen as invaluable in performing negotiations with both the empire's human population and foreign humans, who were often unwilling to trust the Wyrms themselves for a variety of reasons. The Ofirar were seen as at least somewhat more human - and by extension, significantly less dangerous than one of the Fyrstbairn, and therefore less of a threat to allow inside of one's borders - and so began to regularly serve as diplomats and emissaries to foreign countries.
During the Wyrm Kingdoms
When the eastern half of the Grannrormrlen declared independence, the newly crowned Wyrm Kings called upon the Ofirar to once again aid them in running their new kingdoms. In this new age of separate states, it became necessary for the Fyrstbairn to form alliances between each other in order to protect against their enemies, but they required a way of consolidating these pacts. To that end, they decided to appropriate the human tradition of marriage. It became commonplace for the Wyrm Kings to offer the hand of one of their Ofirar in marriage in order to secure an alliance with another ruler, with the act being intended to represent the creation of a new bond between the two families. In effect, this caused the Ofirar to become a kind of nobility amongst the Wyrm Kingdoms, and their new role in cementing alliances allowed them to rapidly begin accumulating wealth and power.
It is unclear how this system might have evolved, as the Wyrm Kingdoms only lasted around 150 years before the advent of the Blazing Empire. Once the Rukhmarites began invading Belyria, Wyrm Kingdoms began to fall left and right, as their Arcana-wielding rulers were unable to put up a fight against the new system of Theos and the great power that it put in the hands of ordinary folk.
In the chaos that ensued, many Ofirar attempted to flee Belyria. Those who did not or were unsuccessful were almost invariably killed, either executed by Rukhmarites or lynched by the peasants they had once ruled over. It is estimated that around half of the Ofirar present in the subcontinent at the time of the Blazing Empire's invasion were killed in total, and this would signal the beginning of a longlasting and seemingly irreversible decline in their population.
Some among the Ofirar had by this point come to deeply resent the way that the Fyrstbairn had treated them throughout their lives, and saw in the chaos of the Rukhmarite invasion an opportunity to free themselves from their creators' yoke. This occurred most famously in Sassania, where the Ofirar children of the Wyrm King slew him one night in his sleep, and took control of the kingdom themselves. They would go on to rule it for an entire century longer than any of the Fyrstbairn-lead kingdoms lasted, only eventually being ousted from control at the hands of the Karvina emperor near the end of the 12th century Re. The last family of Ofirar outside of Landamar were put to death in the year 1201 Re / 338 FF on the orders of the Karvina governor of Sassania.
In Landamar
The Ofirar who had successfully fled from the Blazing Empire's invasion were very ironically forced to seek safety in the Grannrormrlen, which they had only a few centuries past rebelled against and seceded from. The memory of this betrayal was still fresh in the minds of some of the Fyrstbairn of the Grannr, many of whom advocated for the expulsion of the Ofirar refugees. Wyrm opinion of them was particularly sullied as a result of the Sassanian Ofirar's overthrow of the Wyrm King two centuries prior, and the general consensus had now become that the Ofirar were dishonest and could not be trusted.
Yet, in the end, the Grannr did decide to accept the Ofirar into its borders. The reason for this fell almost entirely upon the present Wyrm Lord that had been elected half a century past, who had been one of the very first to ever create Ofirar now nearly a millennia ago. The Wyrm Lord decided against the wishes of the other Fyrstbairn that the Ofirar would be allowed back into the Grannrormrlen and given full citizenship as before, declaring as well that any Ofirar that had been involved in the deposition of Wyrm Kings would be pardoned for their crimes of killing a Fyrstbairn.
Despite this, the Ofirar went on to be treated like second class citizens by the majority of Fyrstbairn within the empire. They would never again be given any positions of power within the Grannr's bureaucracy or administration, and in some cases were even forbidden to use Arcana and forced to plough the fields as peasants might. They were routinely refused any type of support from the state, and the majority of the time were forced to fend for themselves. Those not barred from doing so found work utilising Arcana for various ends, while some others were forced to stoop to manual labour, owing to the fact that they were unfamiliar with the workings of any trades. More yet were forced into prostitution, finding it a particularly lucrative - if dangerous and demeaning - line of work, owing to the way that the Ofirar were perceived as exotic and desirable by humans.
In 1214 Re / 351 FF, the forces of the Karvina emperor invaded Ressengia. The Ofirar that had settled there would once again be forced to flee deeper into the Grannr, but they would find no peace there either, as in 1227 Re / 364 FF the Karvinas pushed on into Heralya. Affairs for the Ofirar were by far at their worst during this time, with most artisanal work involving Arcana having dried up. The Grannr had at this point grown so desperate that it allowed Ofirar to join the military as esoterikii, which saw many of them fighting on the front lines against the Karvina invaders. Their participation in the battles of the Ressengian War is considered to have been a deciding factor in the Karvinas failure to push into Heralya, but came at the cost of hundreds of lives.
Their role in the Ressengian War had an unforeseen consequence, however. After seeing the Ofirar fight alongside them on the battlefield, both Fyrstbairn and human alike began to reassess their opinions of them, coming to see them not as outsiders but rather comrades-in-arms. This lead to the removal of the vast majority of restrictions that had been placed upon the Ofirar and even saw some of them restored to former administrative positions, while others remained within the army and became senior officers and commanders.
Peace reigned for another fifty years after the close of the Ressengian War, during which time the Ofirar enjoyed a mostly unopposed rise through society. Eventually, however, political developments in the empire saw the Heralyan region on the cusp of secession. The Grannr had gone to war with a nation in the far west, and had begun drafting soldiers from all of its provinces to fight in the war. The region of Heralya had long been neglected, seen by those living in the capital region of the Cardinal Waterways as a backcountry owing to its lack of a connection to the Granite Hold. Because of this, it had seen high taxation ever since Forfir's death, and little to no funding had been allotted to it to help repair the damage wrought by the Karvina invasion. This had incensed the people living there, and it seemed as if the entire region had now become a powderkeg just waiting for a spark.
The Landamaeri War
When that spark finally came in 1291 Re / 428 FF, the Ofirar swooped into action. They seized control of the cities in the region, including the Moss and Slate holds in the east and west, and declared Heralya independent from the Grannrormrlen. Where the Ofirar had once been novices in the ways of battle, much as the Wyrms before the War for Heaven, the years since the Blazing Empire's invasion and the Ressengian War had now trained them into deadly esoterikii, small groups of whom were more than a match for one of the Fyrstbairn. The Wyrms that had been kind to them during their tenure in the empire they spared, and all others they hunted down and put to death.
With their control over the region secured, they set about creating a new kingdom similar to that which had existed in Sassania. The people were remarkably quick to accept rule by the Ofirar; they had not desired independence from Wyrm rule, only better treatment, which the Ofirar seemed willing to provide. The state that they created came to be known as the Wyrmkin Kingdom, deriving from the perception of the Ofirar as the children of the Fyrstbairn.
The Ofirar had bet on the Grannrormrlen being slow to respond to their rebellion, and their prediction turned out to be correct. What they had not anticipated, however, was that the Grannr did not seem intent on retaliating at all. A year passed, and then an entire decade, and no force came down from the centre of the Silver Mountains to lay siege to the Slate Hold. This posed a problem for the Ofirar. They knew that the Fyrstbairn would never simply leave them to rule over Heralya, and understood that there must have been some exterior circumstance keeping them busy elsewhere, and that when it inevitably ended they would descend upon the region. But the people did not. When ten, and then twenty years passed without any sign of the Wyrms travelling east, the Wyrmkin Kingdom's human subjects began to forget all about the Wyrm Lord.
In total, it was 46 years before the day of vengeance came. Then, in the year 1337 Re / 474 FF, the entire might of the Grannrormrlen descended on Heralya without warning, coming not past the Silver Mountains but through them. The Ofirar were taken completely by surprise, and did not even have time to organise a defence before the centre of the country was overrun. They found themselves split in halves, and so retreated to their two holds to barricade themselves inside.
The siege that followed would likely have spelled the end for them, had history not then turned as it so often does. Over the last four decades, the Ofirar had attempted to cultivate relations with the Rukhmarite countries of Pretheya. While unwilling to embrace the Shahru religion, they attempted to present themselves as a desirable alternative to full-on Wyrm rule, making it clear that they had no plans to ever attempt to expand out from beyond the Silver Mountains. Progress on this front had been slow to the point of being almost negligible, with the majority of Pretheyan nations seeing this as an at-best academic concern, owing to the absence of the Wyrms. But now, the Wyrm Lord had returned, and they were faced with a choice; cede Heralya to the Grannrormrlen and allow it a foothold in the mainland once again, or step in to prevent them from conquering the Ofirar.
The Pretheyan nations seemed poised to choose the former option: It had after all taken the Grannrormrlen nearly 50 years to retaliate against the petty Wyrmkin Kingdom, what threat could it possibly pose to the Rukhmarite countries it had been losing wars against for centuries? In the end, it was the very Alight himself who saw otherwise. The leader of the Firebird Church was similarly unconcerned by the risk posed by the Wyrms, but he saw in this war something that the kings and queens of Pretheya did not; an opportunity to drive both the Fyrstbairn and the Ofirar from Pretheya, this time for good.
The Alight declared a crusade, stating that the time had come to rid Pretheya of the Wyrm menace, and called upon the rulers of the Shahru nations to unite and wage war against the Fyrstbairn and Ofirar alike. It took two years to arrange, but eventually, a flood of Rukhmarite soldiers began to pour into Heralya through gaps in the Silver Mountains. What had been a conflict between the Wyrms and their descendants now became a three-way free-for-all, as the entire region descended into chaos.
The Ofirar realised almost immediately that they were doomed. Not only was victory impossible, there was a very real chance that their race being wiped out entirely if they lost the conflict. The two factions of Ofirar in the east and west quickly came to the same conclusion; that their only choice was to flee. However, both of their holds had been under constant siege ever since the Grannr forces arrived, and had impossible to break out from. They likely would have remained trapped there until the very stone comprising the mountains was brought down upon their head, but in both separate locations were saved by the arrival of crusading forces. The Rukhmarites engaged the Grannr forces in battle, providing the besieged Ofirar a chance to slip out amidst the chaos and escape.
Those who had been in the Slate Hold travelled to the south, opting to flee Landamar entirely and head for the Pretheyan border. Others made their way to the coast and commandeered boats, setting sail for the Broken Lands. A scant few decided to try their luck sneaking back into the Grannr, and so headed further west, towards Ostokive.
Those holed up in the Moss Hold in the east did not have such options available to them. Even were they to escape, they were surrounded on all sides by either the Fyrstbairn or the Rukhmarites. They spent sleepless devising plans for escape, desperate to think of any possible way out of their predicament, but it seemed like it would be for naught, for they simply did not know where to go. They could not travel south as those of the Slate Hold had - it was certain that they would be caught by the armies of the Grannr and destroyed - nor could they travel east, for they would never be able to make it to Sassania while Ressengian forces held all the passes through the Silver Mountains.
Just as it seemed that all was lost, one among their number proposed travelling to Grestvyt. It was a region in the north that had once been a fertile valley during the time when Forfir was still Wyrm Lord, but had been charred to ash during a catastrophic engagement against the Leskeln, ruined to the extent that crops could no longer grow there. As a result, it was uninhabited, and unclaimed by any country or polity. This, they realised, was their one hope of salvation. If they could make it to Grestvyt, no one would have reason to follow them there, and they could finally be at peace.
What followed next was an operation that would go down in legend throughout the continent of Pretheya. The Ofirar fought their way out of the Moss Hold and then made a beeline for the north-western exit from the Silver Mountains, which was only lightly guarded by crusading forces. There, they smashed their way through the Rukhmarite garrison - who had not been expecting them at all and were only lightly armed with a small contingent of Theos-wielding priests - and pushed through into Summerlen. There, they moved at a lightning pace through the countryside, following the Silver River up north until they reached the border of the Blasted Mountains. It was there, with the pass through the mountains leading to Grestvyt nearly in sight, that one of the Vestaltir's armies caught up with them and ambushed them from behind.
The Ofirar found themselves facing off against a force of six thousand crusading soldiers, supported by more than a thousand Rukhmarite priests. The former would normally have been no threat to them, but the contingent of Theos-wielders was enough to tip the scales to the point where victory was impossible.
A decision was made: One third of the Ofirar would stay behind to fend off the Rukhmarites while the rest pushed on to Grestvyt. Five hundred of them stayed behind, and bought time dearly for the remainder to escape. They lasted for six hours against the crusading forces, killing more than twice their number before the last among them perished.
In that time, the remaining Ofirar made it across the border to Grestvyt. The Rukhmarites soon caught up with them, but stopped at the border, unwilling to pursue any farther; for they knew that attempting to chase the Ofirar through the mountainous terrain without a proper supply line would have been suicide. So it was that they abandoned the pursuit, and turned around to rejoin the main force in Heralya.
The Ofirar had succeeded, and in so doing had finally escaped to a land where none would ever again persecute them. Yet, it had come at a great cost. Less than a thousand of them now lived, and they were forced to subsist in a dead land where they could not even plant crops. Still, they refused to lose hope, and set themselves to the creation of a new settlement for their people. They began by creating new, unburnt land upon which to farm, on the edges of what had once been the Serene Lake during the early Grannr, but was now known as the House of Thunder. It took years, but they eventually restored a sufficient area of land that they could provide for themselves without the need to fabricate food. In light of everything that they had been through, the Ofirar decided to name their new city Refuge.
From that point, the next four centuries would pass largely without event for the Ofirar. As they had hoped, the humans never sought to bother them in their new home of Grestvyt, and some even chose to travel to Refuge, in search of a kingdom still ruled by Wyrmkin. The flow of migrants never grew to more than a trickle, but eventually the human population grew to a size of ten thousand; enough to transform Refuge into a true city. Despite now outnumbering the Ofirar more than ten-to-one, it continued to be ruled over by the children of the Fyrstbairn, as was the wish of the humans who had sought them out.
As time passed and the Ofirar sought new ways to survive and prosper, they took to writing down all they had lived through in the time since the Wyrm Lord's demise, becoming the continent's premiere historians. Books written by them would sell for more than the worth of a castle throughout the continent, and came to be among the most treasured possessions of various Rukhmarite rulers; many of whom were ironically descendants of the very crusaders that drove the Ofirar to their present home in Grestvyt centuries past.
The memory of the Ofirar and the rule that they once held over much of the continent eventually began to fade, as they came to be regarded more as sellers of books and precious jewellery than the ancient descendants of long-passed Wyrm emperors. But perhaps this suited the Ofirar; for now that they were no longer at the seat of power in the world, and as despondent as their civilisation was, they did at the very least finally know peace.
