Tangda

Born of towering spires of flame and ash, of fickle murky lakes and rivers that shift over mere weeks, and acrid clouds that blot out the light of the Warlock above, Tangda rose. Its two moons, equal and opposite, mock the basalt-laden crags below them. Ash-spire sneers at Tangda for its weak volcanoes, glowing with its expansive lava plains. Seakeeper weeps at Tangda's shifting puddles, disappointed in its lack of waters and likeness to herself. It may be that Ash-spire is winning the tug-of-war over Tangda's environment, though, as volcanic lands cover most of its cracked and quaking surface, whilst seas are an entirely foreign concept to the obsidian pearl.

History

Despite its hostile and constantly toxic nature, or perhaps to spite the gods for forcing it to be born this way, Tangda hosted and nurtured life. Plants that learned to shift with the coming landslides, animals that grew stony shells to shelter them from cindery scalding rains, and not just one, but two intelligent races.

The Kanra were the first of these races to evolve, taking their sweet time spreading across the churning crust of the world. Their primary food source was meat, specifically the meat of animals that had developed incredible internal resource conservation. These animals, however, were on the fast track to intelligence themselves, and eventually rose up as the Arsho. As soon as they had the language to express it, the Arsho began telling tales of the Kanra as demons, monstrous beasts that existed only to torment their kind. The Kanra believed that the Arsho were still their food, intelligent or not, and so continued to consume them.

Just as the Arsho were developing technology and weaponry enough to fight back against the Kanra and secure their place as equals on the mafic world, Tangda made its closest approach to the High Warlock. The humanoid sun stared up at a realm far beyond Sinister, one its own light blocked from Tangda's view. Crystal rain fell from the skies in glittering meteor showers day after day. Shards embedded themselves in stone and mud. The Warlock's eyes bloomed a deep, permeating vermillion as the malevolent species squabbled below it.

By the time Tangda had left the Warlock's domain, thousands of pseudo-pylons had been scattered on and within the crust of Tangda. Most had been damaged in their arrival, and thus could only channel the Aeterna in one or two specific ways. the Kanra seized hundreds of these crystal shards and incorporated them into weapons and other objects, granting them the abilities of the High Warlock's imperfect crystal waste.

The Arsho, while technologically behind, managed to snag a few dozen of the pseudo-pylons scattered across Tangda's lava floes and shattered mountains. With both races powered up beyond any previous technology, they started a planet-scale war. The fighting raged over the landscapes under the ashen clouds, energies of the Aeterna being slung about haphazardly by relic-holding warriors. In the centuries of conflict, technological progression halted entirely, with all scientific efforts being focused on making better weapons or finding the perfect pseudo-pylon.

Though the battle raged between the races, an unlikely friendship emerged between two young fighters. Kertya Goldlotus, an Arsho warrior yet to claim his glory on the battlefield, and Amurak Vikstone, a Kanra in exile as a rite of passage. The two met in an isolated valley and, realizing neither wanted to start the seemingly inevitable battle, opted to just chat instead. They quickly became friends with one another, almost forgetting the atrocities their peoples were committing against each other.

The two met at that same valley for months, until a nearby eruption buried the place in ash and rhyolite. They found each other again on rare occasions, but being brought back into their own cultures for long periods of time created some tensions between them. Kertya had to reconcile the facts that this long-time friend of his was part of a race that saw his people as food. Amurak, on the other hand, had begun to enter a crisis of interests, knowing that the food species his race was fighting so hard to keep access to was capable of connecting with him on such a deep level.

One chance encounter of theirs was permeated by an awkward silence. Neither would speak first, just as they refused to strike the first blow when they first met each other. A sense of dread and anxiety filled Kertya, fear that Amurak's time away had made him more open to eating him. Amurak was wracked with guilt, on the other hand. Guilt over his people consuming Arsho flesh and blood. The skies released a slight drizzle of ashy water as Amurak made a declaration to seal the growing rift between them.

"I don't want to eat Arsho meat anymore if it hurts you. I won't do it at all! So just... talk to me more, okay?"

Kertya was moved by this. Amurak had chosen a path that would require massive resourcefulness and adaptation to keep one friend in his life. The two reconciled as the steaming rain poured into ashy and silty rivers around them, and later on became lovers. They talked of nonsense dreams of leaving Tangda, finding a paradise world to live on away from the war. They imagined Seakeeper's oceans falling to the world and quenching its violent volcanism. They spoke of little miracles they saw that never really mattered. But at the end of the day, they were still bound to their own clans and cities and had to return home.

Their love would not go unnoticed for long, however. Amurak's cousin noticed his changed behavior and strange Arsho-less diet, as well as his refusal to elaborate much on the matter. Sneaking behind Amurak as the latter went to meet with Kertya one day, the devoted Kanra warrior saw the scenario he feared the most. A hardened warrior with a code of steel, Amurak's cousin took his bow and shot a flaming arrow through Amurak's heart before slinking back into the darkness of the stony crags.

Amurak died in Kertya's arms, barely able to get last words out before his consciousness disappeared from the universe forever. Kertya grieved intensely over his lost love, and staring up at the Warlock far above, asked the universe for a reason. A reason for what? Nothing in particular came to mind. He just wanted answers, no matter what they were.

Kertya believed that the sun would have the answers he sought. After much work to assemble a makeshift ship, he stole three relics from his city that helped him get to and survive in space. He travelled for years before he reached the High Warlock, whose gleaming skeletal mass put a sense of awe into Kertya. Entering the ribcage, he found a man sitting by a small tent. The man tossed him a shard of the obsidian skeleton, then made a motion that seemed to indicate eating. Kertya reluctantly obliged, consuming the bone shard. The lead soles of the man's shoes felt... different. Kertya lifted his hand and the man's shoes were raised as well. The two discussed this development for a while, and then Kertya left.

Having seen the face of the High Warlock and having become a Bishop of lead, Kertya spent the several years he took to return to Tangda thinking about life. By the time he had arrived, he had reached a state of enlightenment. However, the world he returned to had long moved past the war. Both Arsho and Kanra were under the subjugation of the Order of Cobalt Sorcery, being made to act as slaves to mine for pseudo-pylons. Kertya did not realize that he had travelled a full 1500 years into the future, but the enslavement of his and Amurak's people was something he could not stand by and endure.

File:Kertya-solos.png

Kertya's only outburst of genuine anger at the sight of his planet's enslavement.

Kertya took molten lead from the burning mountains around him and forged it into a white-hot glowing lotus of blades. Using lead under his feet to walk on air, Kertya flew to the largest building he saw and cut his way in. His destructive rampage had no casualties but the facility itself. He would continue this pattern until the Order noticed his presence. Not wanting to fight another Bishop, the Order of Cobalt Sorcery demanded that all of their forces leave Tangda immediately to appease this terrifying new threat.

Once Kertya had learned just how much time had passed and acclimated to his new world, the Arsho heralded him as a hero. The Kanra were less grateful, but the Bishop held them under his protection all the same. In the decades of the Order's dominance, the Kanra had forgotten the taste of Arsho flesh, and the Arsho had forgotten that the Kanra were their original oppressors.

The pseudo-pylons the people had recovered had led to so much suffering over the centuries. Kertya refused to let this continue. Rallying for peace, he built the Pyroclastia Reliquary to serve as a library of the pseudo-pylons and objects containing them, so that they may be understood and not used for casual fighting. Every known pseudo-pylon mined during the Order of Cobalt Sorcery's reign on Tangda was recovered and placed in the Reliquary. After this was complete, Kertya spent several decades refining his philosophy into a set of teachings, as well as working on a martial art that redirects force with as little energy cost to the user as possible.