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Hyborea

by Marco Dalmonte English translation by Gary Davies

Zugzul - Fire and creatures of fire, power, war, necromancy
Stodos - Cold, ice, storms, creatures of cold
White Claw (Ninfangle) - Hunting, travel, bravery, adventure, travel, battle
Hel - Reincarnation, death, darkness, corruption
Garal - Inventors and thinkers, science and mechanics, crafts
Notes:
1. The qaurik are a people who descended from the Blackmoorians and from the Neathar survivors of the Great Rain of Fire. They live in the icy Hyborean lands locked up in great cities protected by an enormous dome of magical crystal, which serves to hold back the ice and the inclemencies. These cities and these domes were constructed on ancient Blackmoorian settlements thanks to the conversion from technology to magic operated in collaboration with some dwarven engineers and human mages. Now they are ruled by a caste of mysterious individuals called Lords of the Flame, mage-priests devoted to Zugzul who has at hand the knowledge about the operation of the system of heating of these cities and tyrannising in that way the qauriks that live there. There are about 15 qaurik cities scattered through the Hyborean region, all in contact between them.
2. Zugzul is the main Immortal among the qaurik, a cult imposed with the strength of the Lords of the Flame, to which are dedicated daily rituals and even human sacrifices, completed in secret by the priests in their tower. Zugzul tyrannises the qaurik as personal revenge, given that the ancestors of the qaurik, the Blackmoorians, were responsible for the annihilation of his Afridhi favourites. Moreover, he also has followers among the Hyborean humanoids, who consider him the most powerful Immortal and associate him with the source of life and of the ultimate supremacy: fire.
3. Stodos is the King of Ice, is considered a demon by the qaurik and doesn’t have any followers in their city. However, he is worshipped by many tribes of humanoids, of cryon and of frost giants that live in the Hyborean region, and he is opposed to the settlements controlled by Zugzul, urging his acolytes to constant assaults against the qauriks and against the tribes subject to Zugzul in order to bring the cold energy over all the area.
4. White Claw is the name with which Ninfangle is known and worshipped in his quality as patron of hunting, of travellers and of the heroes with all the tribes of rakasta present in Hyborea (snow pardasta and lynxman), as well as with some of the Hyborean humanoid communities. His cult is rooted in the age of Blackmoor, and has been handed down to orcs and bugbears proper from their contact with the arctic rakasta.
5. Hel was also worshipped by some humanoid tribes as the mother of their entire race, the one who had carved the first humanoids in the eternal ice and gave them life by breathing over them the energy from the shadow. For the humanoid cult, Hel is the source of life and the one to which all return, and only she decides what cycle of reincarnation is due to each individual. The humanoids have a unique objective according to this faith: bring death and corruption in the world in a way to increase the energy of Hel, since every humanoid brings with him when he dies the spirits of those that were killed as tribute to the Immortal. The greatest will be paid in spirits, the higher charge will be covered once reincarnated by Hel.
6. Garal is the Immortal worshipped by the majority of the population, those people that were taught by the dwarves how to alter the Blackmoorian technology in order to make it stable. Unfortunately his followers were crushed by a plot of followers of Zugzul, and the stolen dwarven secrets are now in the hands of the Lords of the Flame. The cult of Garal is tolerated but is considered inferior, and few are the qaurik who dare gather in secret in the name of Garal in order to engineer an insurrection against the despotic Lords of the Flame, in the attempt of gaining freedom and knowledge.