Xakarah (zak-ah-rah), is home to the grellkin. These towering humanoids are skilled in the art of using the volcanic nature of their homeland to create great feats of metalwork and smithing. The island itself was formed during the events of The Sundering, when the world trembled from a magical blast that changed the landscape. It is formed of a ring of towering mountains, seething in volcanic activity, which makes it a hazardous and hostile place for anyone not accustomed to the conditions there.
Author's Note
The grellkin are one of my favourite races of Iiosia, and I think they're quite unique - a mix between trolls and dwarfs.
This page is a little under developed, especially the history section and the dealings with the ghreal. it will be fleshed out more at a later date.
Xakarah is inhabited by the grellkin, who are the dominant race of the land and Xakarah is regarded as the grellkin homeland. These towering, humanoid creatures have a natural resistance to heat, and their skin is as thick as elephant hide. They may not possess as keen an intellect as other civilised races, and the aspects of magic are largely beyond them, yet their rudimentary intelligence has enabled them to build a civilisation within the mountains, and they have established trade with the humans who are keen to barter for the keen weapons and thick armour of the grellkin.
Large salamanders lurk in the deepest depths of the island and are almost as numerous as the grellkin. Salamanders possess only a rudimentary, bestial intelligence however, and lurk within the dark, warm caverns beneath the mountains of Xakarah. These huge lizards are both the main threat to grellkin, and also the grellkin's primary food source. Grellkin on the verge of adulthood are sent into the lower caverns in order to kill one of the beasts, and that provides their rite of passage to adulthood.
Drakelins are small, agile lizards who are just at home on two legs as on four. They are far more intelligent than the salamanders and are able to master speech and some magical aspects. They are also far less hostile. They have become a part of grellkin society and are kept as a cross between pets, servants and messengers. It is said that drakelins are somehow related to dragons, and tended to their gigantic cousins while they roamed the skies.
There is also a rumour, albeit an unfounded and very fanciful one, that Xakarah is one of the resting places of the dragons.
Most of Xakarah is made up of gorges and high peaks, dotted with geysers, volcanoes and hot springs. It is a hazardous place to travel across; even innocuous looking streams may be heated to boiling temperatures, and the ground itself is prone to letting off poisonous sulphurous gasses.
The country is totally unsuitable for farming. What little flat land there is, is covered not by soil but by ash or igneous rocks, and what plant life does grow will likely be poisonous and/or bad to taste.
Sea life does no better, for the waters around and especially within Xakarah’s inland sea is highly toxic and unable to support much life at all. The water has become highly acidic and is extremely harmful to all but the hardiest of lifeforms. Thus is has been dubbed The Putrid Sea.
Traversing any reasonable distance overland is nigh impossible with the steep cliffs and hazardous terrain of the land. Thoroughfares can be found through caves within the mountains, but many of these are the homes of salamanders and other such dangerous animals that will not take kindly to trespassers. Most of these are unmapped, and it is surmised that the vast majority of Xakarah has never been discovered or explored.
Xakarah’s high mountain ranges are nigh impassable for their entire length; the only plausible ways through them into the inner sea is through a narrow water channel to the southwest, and a treacherous ravine called Ghathrack Gorge on the northern edge.
During quiet periods of volcanic activity, Xakarah has a relatively mild climate of cool summers and mild winters. Rainfall is common, and it is notoriously windy here with sea winds blowing in mostly from the sea to the south and east. However, the relatively frequent occurrence of volcanic eruptions mean that ash clouds and acidic rain falling here is not uncommon either.
Rhudd (rud) is the major city of the grellkin. It is housed largely within a vast complex of caverns inside the mountains, and consists of multiple levels of metalworks, stores, and living quarters. A veritable fortress, Rhudd is nigh unassailable from any external attack. Its weakness lies upon the shores of the Putrid Sea, from where a great many great caves lead within the city. A few external structures have been erected along both the inner shoreline of the Putrid Sea and on the seaward side of the mountains also. The latter of these are known as The Rhudd Docks
The Rhudd Docks are a series of crude but solid and serviceable jetties which serve as Xakarah's only port. It is here that trading takes place between the grellkin and other races who come to trade things which the grellkin can find little of on Xakarah, like soft furs and coloured fabrics, delicate meats, ales, wines, and fine jewellery.
The Sea Gate is a massive construct, made by the trolls to keep invaders out of The Putrid Sea and, by extension, stop them gaining access to Rhudd. They are the largest unnatural construction in the world, standing a full fifty feet out of the water and worked by giant hinges and steam driven hydraulics which open and close them as needed. In times of high seas, they must be opened, but when the tides are normal they can be closed; the water able to pass through many underwater holes within the gates below the waterline.
The Hall of the King is a gigantic cavern within which the Grellkin king sits and takes audience with his subjects. From here affairs of Xakarah’s state are settled in often loud and heated debate that would seem like chaos for any other race, yet the Grellkin have their own manner of order. The hall itself is draped in furs and skins from animals both native to Xakarah and brought from foreign climes, and giant braziers burn salts and exotic herbs to fill the air with a thick heady smell.
The Great Forge the heart of Grellkin society, as it is here that the largest and most productive smelting and forging takes place. The forge is a massive complex that spreads both under and overground. Above ground, the fast flowing rivers are utilised to turn huge metal water wheels. These wheels power the bellows and pumps that drive air underground to the forges there. The forges gush out immense amounts of heat into the smelting and forging caverns, in which hundreds of the most skilled Grellkin toil to create metalworks ranging from swords and armour to mechanical devices and small decorative trinkets.
The Isle of Dawn is of special significance to the Grellkin, as it is here that the Sunstones are created that allow their kind to traverse in the daylight. So long as a Grellkin carries the stone with him, he won’t be turned to stone by the sun’s rays.
When a Grellkin is born, he will be brought here and lain on an altar in the centre of the island with a ruby atop him. As the sun crests the horizon over the eastern mountains, the island imbues the stone with the power it needs to protect the baby for the rest of its life.
Separated from the majority of the Grellkin settlements, the Bural Ground of the Ancients is where the Grellkin carry their dead to lay them to rest. Grellkin funerals involve long processions to the burial grounds, where they are interred into the rock there. The caverns of the halls are made of chalk caves that have formed intricate formations of stalactites and stalagmites, creating a beautiful natural complex in which the Grellkin remember their dead.
Before they are buried in the chalk, the bodies of dead Grellkin are taken to the Isle of Dusk. The isle is the opposite of the Isle of Dawn, in that as the sun sets it removes the power of the Sunstone. The Grellkin believe that without doing this, the dead Grellkin’s spirit would be trapped in the stone forever, and thus taking the body, or at least the stone itself, to the Isle of Dusk us a vital part of the funeral process.
The Putrid Sea, named not by the trolls but called so by the visitors to the island, primarily refers to Xakarah’s inland sea but can also be said of its outer coastline also. Xakarah’s waters are full of poisonous gasses from the volcanoes in and around the island, making it smell like something rotting, and seeing shoals of dead fish who have been unwise enough to swim too close floating dead on the waters is not a rare occurrence.
Mt. Arkatap is thought to be the tallest active volcano of Iisoia. It stands just over 15,000 feet tall, and is a constant source of eruptions and tremors. The instability it causes means that even the Grellkin avoid it,
Runic Year -300: The Formation of Xakarah
The events of The Sundering occur, and with it the world is ravaged by earthquakes and floods. The ring of mountains that come to form Xakarah surges from the seabed, and over the next few centuries the Grellkin form their homeland there. They begin construction of their great city, Rhudd, and form an insular society within the caverns there.
Runic Year 198 - 230: The Discovery of the Grellkin
Waylaid by a powerful storm, half-starved sailors from Rune drift to the shores of Xakarah. There, they meet the strange, towering forms of the Grellkin. Initially afraid, the sailors were glad to find that their hosts were not hostile, and indeed helped them by repairing their ship and allowing them to rest. This began a prosperous trading agreement between humans and Grellkin, as the humans valued the metalwork of Xakarah just as much as the Grellkin desired the soft fabrics and strange herbs and spices that the humans could provide.
Runic Year 401-413: The Stolen Sunstones
In the year 401, assassins from Ghrea sneak into Rhudd and take many of the Sunstones that are needed for the Grellkin to go into the daylight without turning to stone – including those belonging to the Grellkin king and his entourage. The ghreal use the stones as leverage to begin a trade agreement, in which the ghreal must stop supplying the people of rune, and instead supply the ghreal instead. At the time, the ghreal were at war with the human nation of Oun, which was getting a measure of its weapons from Rune. This meant that it severely weakened Oun, though it did not fall through military might.
In the year 413, the Grellkin launched their first and only invasion on foreign soil, and beached their crude vessils on Ghrea. Not a single drop of blood was shed, however, as the ghreal relented and returned the sunstones. Weakened as they were by decades of war in Oun, they were not ready to enter another, and had amassed a large stockpile of Grellkin steel regardless.
