Tarakan - The All-Consuming Horde

They are hungry. They are countless. They are maw and claw and fire and death. They are endless. They will burn us all. They are here!

— Survivor of the First Encounter

Few people wish to speak of the horror lurking beyond the World's End Wall, the terrible form of life that has arisen from the desolation that is the Withered Land. They call them the "Shadow of the West", for vagueness is much preferred when talking about an endless ocean of abominable life.

Born from Hatred

by Greg Rutkowski

How the Tarakan came to be is not entirely clear. Their origin lies far in the past, in the time known as the Age of Discord. Sure is that they are children of the Fallen, the Traitor God that caused the first war among the Kaeni, and sure is that they emerged after their progenitor had been slain.
But that is where certainty ends. Some believe that they are the original creations of the Fallen, the beings that first entered the earth and started the great conflagration known as the Age of Discord. Others think that the original children died in their creator's fall and that the Tarakan are nothing but the mutated remains of the Fallen's flesh, woken by Mana to an unholy state of life.
Others again think them to hail from the void, crawling out of the wound that the Fallen's death carved into the earth aeons ago. However, most agree that this question is best left unanswered.

Born to Destroy

by Chris Cold

Whatever their true origin may be, there is no doubt about the purpose for which the Tarakan are on this world: to destroy. They do not create anything bar weapons and do not know any language bar that of violence. Hatred for life in all its forms runs through their veins, and they will go after everything, from tiny insects to the great giants, without hesitation.
A single form of Tarakan does not exist. Instead, the species can be divided into a number of types, each more monstrous than the last. The people of Dvergar have given them names, vague attempts to bring some sense into an everchanging mess of limbs, maws and claws.

by Nino Is.

Krayn, the pale fleshed legions of footsoldiers similar in build to the Elves. Vestir, the long-legged dog-like hunters that race across ashen dunes faster than a horse. Borgan, walking towers of iron with four arms each strong enough to break an Orc in half. Ordahn, the multi-legged nightmares that can master any surface with unnatural grace.
Last but certainly not least are the Skevisi, winged demons with voices as sharp as glass. And those are only the beings with vaguely familiar shapes. Among the Tarakan, there is a virtual host of horrific abominations with chaotic forms. Masses of flesh and armour, forests of limbs and claws, and maws as wide as oceans with waves of teeth rising in them.
Some are as tiny as insects, others tower as high as giants. How exactly they relate to the Tarakan is unknown, but the fact that they appear in every host that has attempted to destroy Dvergar has led many to the conclusion that some bond exists between them.

Born among Ashes

Few would ever be crazy enough to ponder wherever the Tarakan can be anything more than mindless savages. The thought that these nightmares may have built a civilisation out in the Withered Land, no matter how much of a twisted mirror to the glory of Dvergar it may be, is maddening on its own. But there are more than a few hints that what many see as twisted fantasy may, in fact, be nothing but terrible truth. For the Tarakan have weapons and armour, and engines of war. Their attacks show eerie intelligence at times, and many a defender of Timur's Gate has claimed to have heard a dark tongue among the many guttural cries emanating from the horde.

What can one do against such ceaseless hatred? Against an enemy that knows nothing but the desire to destroy you? Perhaps they will truly plague us for eternity.

— Valrik Stridslope, Dvergari Mage

Progenitor:
The Fallen

Lifespan

Unknown

Average Height

Varied

Average Weight

Varied

Average Length

Varied

Geographic Distribution

• The Withered Land

Related Myths

• Age of Discord

Dread Wars

Following the destruction of the First Garden, the Tarakan continued their attacks on the other races of Dvergar with unceasing energy. These conflicts, now known as Dread Wars, have occurred nearly two dozen times over the past four thousand years, although some contend that there has only ever been one large Dread War lasting over six thousand years since there is never a true peace, only a break between one horde's attack and the next.
Most individual Dread Wars will last between a decade and a century, ending only when the last remnants of a Tarakan army have been wiped out on the fields below Timur's Gate. How long exactly this takes depends on the size of the horde, which can vary between a few ten thousand and a few hundred thousand in size.

We killed a million of them. So what? Give them a hundred years and they'll be back.

— Lia Verenia, Queen of Hebara

by Max Kostin