Muria (ˈmuɾiɑ)
"While the Empire of Muria only lasted for around two hundred years, it transformed the Great Ring so as to render it unrecognizable." - Callisthenes of Macris
Muria was the largest empire ever to rule the Great Ring, encompassing all of the islands except for Umingmak, the Myteyar Archipelago, and the Chichyū Islands. It was controlled by the soul-eating Nakaal, who used their Magic to forge the islands together. It was a place of great wonder and amazing wealth, built upon the blood of millions sacrificed to power it. Ultimately, their dependence on the power of ritual sacrifice drove Muria to its destruction when it brought humans and Clarati into this world. Today, there are barely even ruins remaining from Muria, and much of what is known of them is blurred by time and distorted by myth.
The Nakaal of Bhati
According to the stories, Muria was founded on the island of Bhati, home of the Nakaal people. Exactly where Bhati was is unclear - many connect it to the current island of Quizqueya, while others claim it was in the Nichibotsu Sea and the Clarati used Magic to sink the entire island, leaving only the Final Monument above water. Others claim that the tale of the sinking of Bhati was conflated with the destruction of Bato and the creation of the Mangimoi Archipelago, and that the strange monument rising above the waters of the Nichibotsu is from a different civilization altogether.
Regardless of the actual location of Bhati, the initial rise of Muria is the same. Either by accident or design, a new class of people arose among the Nakaal. They were called the Mahānākaltzin, or High Nakaal, and they were very different from the common folk. The most obvious alteration was their lack of eyes; instead, they had patches of skin that were sensitive to light and magic, which allowed them to navigate the world, but no true sight. The other alteration was more significant - they could all manipulate the magical energies of the Spirit Realm, using them to perform powerful feats of Magic.
Prior to the appearance of the High Nakaal, true magic was very rare in the Great Ring, as it is today. Only one in a million are born with the gift of True Magic, and while those individuals can become extremely powerful, their rarity limits their impact on the world. The emergence of a large population of magic-users destroyed the balance of power that then existed in the Great Ring, and the Nakaal used that power first to transform Bhati into a magical paradise, and then to extend their dominion across as much of the world as they cared to rule.
The Cost of Power
Unlike the gift of True Magic, the power used by the High Nakaal did not originate within their own Pneumas. Their power was destructive to the energies they manipulated, resulting in the Soul-Death of whatever creature was used to fuel their spells. The High Nakaal could store vast amounts of power within themselves, but it had to be gathered from living beings via ritual sacrifice, wherein the heart of the creature was taken and their Pneuma ripped from them to become nothing but raw magic.
In the beginning, Muria was powered exclusively by the sacrifice of animals. But as the empire grew, the relatively small amount of power from an animal sacrifice was not sufficient. Sacrifices of condemned criminals was the next step, as the slaughter of a sentient person yielded far more energy. Eventually, not even this was enough, and the Empire turned to conquest to gather enough power to sustain their utopia. Entire kingdoms were slaughtered for the power within their souls. Some historians believe that this was the true reason Muria became an empire; an ever-increasing demand for magical energies.
A Crisis of Resources
Ultimately, conquest was not a solution either. The subjects of the Empire were unhappy with the blood their lives were built upon, and many suspected that when there were no foreigners to sacrifice, the High Nakaal would turn to them as the next source of energy. A demand was made to find an animal that could serve as the foundation for the magical economy of Muria, one that had as much or more power within them as a person, but would not be so problematic.
The desire to find such a being led the High Nakaal to enact the greatest feat of ritual magic ever seen in the Great Ring. It is unknown how many people died to empower the ritual, but estimates begin at a million souls and rise to more than one hundred million. The High Nakaal sent their spellwork out into The Dream to seek across hundreds of worlds, and seek out an animal that might meet their needs. It found humans.
From several different worlds, the magic siezed human populations and deposited them in various locations around the Great Ring. It often brought along large sections of the local ecosystem as well, and many of the animals and plants of the islands arrived with humanity. From the point of view of the Nakaal, humans were brutish and animalistic, but had similar levels of inherent power to the Kikipua. They believed that a sacrifice on a grand scale would serve to fuel the Empire for decades to come, and that more could be brought through if needed.
The Clarati
What the High Nakaal did not realize was that they had not only brought humans through - they had also brought the Clarati. This race greatly resembled humans, but were fundamentally different from them. All of the Clarati were True Mages, and were both ancient and incredibly skilled in the arcane arts. At first, they simply observed the agents of the empire to see what they planned to do. But once it became clear that Muria intended to slaughter all the beings they had pulled into their world, the Clarati chose to act.
The High Nakaal had exhausted much of their stored power to cast the great ritual, and had no idea that they had accidentally included an enemy more powerful than themselves in their summoning. The Clarati attacked without mercy or compunction, and used spells designed to create massive destruction. Over the course of a year they ripped through the islands slaughtering indiscriminately. Their weapons included earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and hurricanes, along with more arcane means of devastation. Every trace of Muria was sought out and ground into dust, along with most of the Kikipua who the Nakaal had conquered. The Clarati left the humans where they had been deposited, and they often attacked the survivors of the Clarati spells, making it even more likely that no citizens of Muria would remain. And after the initial wave of devastation, the Clarati continued to seek out and kill any Kikipua who was hatched without eyes in order to ensure that the gift of the High Nakaal never returned.
The Legacy of Muria
The Great Ring was transformed utterly due to the existence of Muria. Islands were destroyed and created, and the population of the ring was irrevocably altered. Humans and their offshoots are the most common people in the islands, and with them came a radical overthrow of the old gods, with many of them being forgotten or transformed. While there are few artifacts that remain from the rule of the High Nakaal, the marks of their actions are manifest throughout the Great Ring.
Before Muria
Before the rise of Muria, it is believed that there were many different governments and governmental systems which ruled the Great Ring. Sadly, we have little evidence of this, as the destruction of Muria was so utter and complete that we only have fragments of this history remaining. Muria itself discouraged discussion of the past and actively destroyed records and histories from before the rise of the Empire, preferring to pretend that it arose to bring order to an ungoverned and chaotic world, and little of what survived their purges was then spared by the attacks of the Clarati.
Descendants of the Low Nakaal
It is the tradition of several Kikipua cultures such as the Naga and the Chilseongsin to identify as having descended from the Nakaal, specifically from the Low Nakaal who made up most of the population. However, it seems likely that the term "Low Nakaal" referred to any Kikipua who was not actually Nakaal at all, and encompassed several ethnic groups ruled by the "High Nakaal". This would help explain the significant linguistic and phenotypical differences between the cultures who claim the Low Nakaal as their ancestors - the Low Nakaal were not a monolithic culture that diverged widely, but were always a conglomerate of different ethnicities.
The Last Murian
The goddess Rangdayan of the Kanluranan island group was one of the High Nakaal before undergoing apotheosis, and managed to survive the Clarati purge by hiding from them among the monsters she had created. She persists today as the goddess of the Jatayu, who are descended from the winged troops she once created for Muria to use in its conquests. She is probably the last surviving entity who can remember Muria at its height, although her memories will have been warped by time and the Egregoric Force. You can read more about Rangdayan here.
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This article was originally written for Spooktober 2024. You can find all of my Spooktober Articles at Spooktober Central.
This article was originally written for Spooktober 2023. You can find all of my Spooktober Articles at Spooktober Central.
I love how many things have been lost or distorted by time, though we still have the bare bones of what happened. I'm always in awe of how you manage to give such a grand historical scale to your work.
Explore Etrea | March of 31 Tales
Thank you!