World Setting

DARRAKNOIR HISTORY

Chapter I: Before the Ashes

- 10,000 BR (Before the Rift)

Before the Velak’ar clawed their way through the Shudderpoint and reshaped the world in soulfire and shadow, Darraknoir was already a complex, volatile realm. It was not a land of peace—but it was a land with balance, of sorts. Life thrived across its vast continents under shifting stars and a true sun, albeit a world threaded with danger and ancient power.

Large populations of humans coexisted—uneasily, at times—with a variety of supernatural beings. Werecats formed tribal enclaves in the deep wilds, holding dominion over sacred groves and beast-paths. The Nightwing—winged beings touched by ancient starlight—acted as secretive observers from their tree-top settlements. The Archelosaurians, long-lived gator-people with a thirst for knowledge, often served as itinerant scholars and chroniclers, traveling between courts and libraries to preserve the accumulated wisdom of the ages. And the Berserkers, elemental-bound warriors of the northern wastes, carved out kingdoms with tooth and iron.

These factions clashed, but also traded, mingled, and, at times, intermarried. Wars were fought, borders redrawn, and grudges held. Yet these were struggles of mortal scale—fierce, but survivable. Magic was known and practiced, woven into the world through ley-lines that pulsed with living energy, but its use was structured, studied, and respected.

The cities of Ossavar, Nytherra, and Kel'Tharuun rose as centers of learning and trade. Floating markets bustled with alchemists, beast-tamers, and spirit-binders. Great spires of obsidian and silver pierced the skies in harmony with the land, not in defiance of it. Even the darkest corners of the realm, such as the haunted forests of Vaelwood or the sunken ruins beneath Lake Umbreth, existed within a shared understanding of danger—a map of known perils.

In this age, the balance between light and shadow was tenuous but intact. Civilization flourished through strength and diplomacy, through war tempered by ritual, and through an understanding that the world itself was alive—capable of giving, but just as capable of taking.

Then came the Shudderpoint. And nothing was ever the same.

Chapter II: Ashlight Awakens

In exploring the history of the Badlands and its entanglement with forces beyond our reality, we must look toward Darraknoir—a world of eternal ashlight, eldritch dominion, and fractured memory. Unlike the natural world, Darraknoir is a land born from warping, ruptured magic, where light itself has been twisted by the legacy of the Velak’ar.

The Velak’ar

“The Ash-Tongued. The First Blasphemers.”

Derived from ancient dialects: “veta” (to rend) and “kar” (soul) — Velak’ar (veh-lahk-ar)

The Velak’ar are an ancient and accursed race of ‘daemonic’ origin, said to have emerged not from a place, but a tear in reality - a wound in the fabric of Darraknoir itself, known in forbidden texts as the Shudderpoint.

Once believed to be celestial beings cast down from their defiance of the natural order, the Velak’ar refer to themselves as “The Rightful Flame” - a mockery of light, fire, and all that brings life. In truth, they are beings of hollow fire and inverted light, whose touch consumes the soul before the flesh.

• Read More: The Velak’ar Lords
  

Chapter III: A Land of Perpetual Twilight

Darraknoir lies in the grip of the Black Sun, an unmoving celestial wound left after the Nocturnum Binding, a ritual that stole away true daylight. The skies weep crimson twilight, casting jagged mountains, corrupted plains, and shifting wastelands into hues of rot and ruin. Natural law is a suggestion here—time folds, landscapes weep, and the very soil remembers names long forgotten.

The First Age of Fracture

- 7,000 BR

When the Velak’ar entered the world, they did not come with armies - they came as whispers, as falling stars and plagues of blindness. One by one, the sun-worshipping kingdoms of Darraknoir began to fall. Crops rotted. Lakes boiled. And beneath blackening skies, the Black Sun rose.

Historians refer to this era as The Sundering Eclipse, when the Velak’ar - led by the arch-field Velkharas the Mouthless - unleashed the Nocturnum Binding, a ritual so catastrophic it torn the sun from the sky, plunging the world into eternal, twilight-choked darkness.

Humanity was nearly lost.

Chapter IV: The Velak’ar Legacy

- 6,998 BR

The heart of Darraknoir's nightmare is the presence of the Velak’ar, daemonic beings of hollow fire and soul-consuming flame, birthed from a wound in the world known as the Shudderpoint. Their dominion shattered the mortal world during the First Age of Fracture, birthing horrors like the Vel’surak (vampire progenitors), Gnath’turak (alchemical werebeasts), and swarms of lesser creatures—mirror hounds, ashwings, veilspiders—each a blasphemous weapon crafted from dread.

Beasts of War: Bloodborn and Nightspawn

The Velak’ar did not wage war alone. From their black citadels and soul-forges they birthed the first non-natural supernatural beings within Darraknoir - monsters not of nature, but of malice and magic. Chief among these were the original vampires, known in the old tongues as the Vel’surak, or “those who drink the flame.” These vampires were once highborn warriors or nobles who resisted the Velak’ar. Reforged with cursed blood and eternal hunger, they became aristocrats of decay, ruling over the living like livestock.

These beings were not turned - they were forged, sculpted from living captives and bound with daemonic essence. Their thirst was not for blood alone, but for memory, identity, and lineage. A single bite could unravel a person’s name, their ancestry, their very self. These Vel’surak became overlords of ruin, governing by terror, feeding not merely for survival, but to unmake legacies.

In their wake followed the Gnath’turak, or “howling flesh”. These were the progenitors of modern werewolves within Darraknoir - beasts made not by curse or bloodline, but by forced alchemical fusion of beast-soul and man. They were chaos embodied: shock troopers of the dark, tearing through entire provinces with unrelenting fury.

And beyond them were the lesser horrors: mirror hounds that hunted reflections, ashwings that roosted in smolder skies, and veilspiders that stitched the dreams of sleepers with dread. Each creature was crafted for purpose - not bred, not conjured, infused with daemonic will and sustained by ley corruption.

These creations were more than soldiers; they were weapons of despair. Where the Velak’ar walked, these beasts ran ahead - softening lands with blood, teaching mortals that resistance would not be met with death, but with transformation.

The creatures that were created through the aftermath, the lesser breeds, such as the shade wretches, ashwings, and mirror hounds, were birthed through war rituals. These creatures had no natural counterparts, living only to consume and sow terror. These creations were not armies in the traditional sense - they were plagues made flesh, sent to destabilize the world.

Entire regions became uninhabitable - Black Hollow, The Silent Vale, Crimson Throne, and others - where the veil between mortal and daemonic bled thin.

Chapter V: The Hollow Age

- 6,152 BR

For centuries, the Velak’ar ruled from Cathedra Noctis, living soul-forges that drained essence from mortals to power their endless conquests. This age, known as the Hollow Age, left humanity scattered and haunted, reduced to survivors clinging to shadowed caverns and cursed ruins. Resistance was rare, and when it arose, the Velak’ar punished it with soul-flaying, repurposing defiance into weapons.

Survival in the Ashlight

In the centuries that followed, the Velak’ar ruled vast black citadels known as Cathedra Noctis - living temples powered by soul-essence, fed by harvested mortals. Civilization as it was known crumbled. The few remaining human strongholds - hidden in caverns, ruins, and cursed forests - referred to this time as The Hollow Age.

Resistance was not only dangerous but punishable by soul-flaying - a process by which Velak’ar extracted the very essence of defiance and reshaped it into weapons of war.

Anatomy & Nature

Velak’ar are not flesh-bound in the conventional sense. They wore husks of scorched bone and ebon-iron, bound together by living fire. Their voices were said to have fractured thought, often requiring runes of silencing in human defenders just to stand in their presence. They did not require physical foods, instead they fed upon willpower, memory, and lineage, making the destruction they caused generational.

The Turning Tide (The Pale Reclamation)

The eventual resistance came through the hands of Archivist-Priests, ancient order keepers who unearthed the Chronicles of the Pre-Shade, texts that predated even the Velak’ar’s arrival. It was with these fragments of forgotten light magic that the last remnants of humanity pushed the Velak’ar into retreat - not through strength, but through division, turning them against one another.

Though scattered, the Velak’ar were never destroyed - merely bruised beneath time and wards. Now, their name is invoked as a curse, a warning, and in some heretical corners, a promise.

After the Dust Settled

• The Black Sun still hangs motionless in the sky.

• The Nightveins - subterranean energy lines corrupted by Velak’ar rituals - still pulse beneath the land.

• Some believe Velkharas the Mouthless speaks again - through dreams, through cracked mirrors, through children born with no reflection.

• Whistle the Velak’ar remain a constant threat, humanity has managed to recover somewhat.