The Red Eyes Are Shut

As I mentioned in my previous post, Veyra Blackwing, better known as Jenůfa Nószimål, learned how to shape-shift, then appeared before General Kazímir Skharnov and told him to gather a massive army and invade Minkut.  As Minkutian colonies were beginning to encroach upon Skharan territory (see below), the general did not need much convincing.  However, Nószimål’s motive was actually to satisfy a long-held grudge.

This grudge was far older than Veyra, and goes all the way back to the end of the Minkutian Bronze Age, approximately two thousand cycles before Veyra’s hatching (chuyinka are not “born,” in the mammalian sense, they hatch from eggs).

This is Cheya Redeye, the last chuyinka to rule Sing-Yat-San.  Sorry if the pictures are a bit small, but re-sizing them to both fit in line hasn’t worked for me.  Anyway, during Cheya’s time, the climate was changing for the worse, and the Kraichis Desert to the west was expanding.  The entire city was built around a lone mountain, and the royal palace was built at the very peak.  From the top of the central tower, which only the monarch and those he personally invited were ever allowed to access, one could see the sandstorms in the desert, something that no-one had ever seen before.  Cheya was quite worried, and decided that his empire needed to expand and seek out new resources if it was to survive.  Therefore, he launched a brutal military campaign to conquer the surrounding territories.  Unfortunately, his campaign made him almost as unpopular at home as it did abroad.  Festivities in Sing-Yat-San were always accompanied by fireworks, the key ingredient of which, black powder, was considered sacred in Minkutian culture.  Using it as a weapon was considered a sin.  Cheya, however, didn’t care, and unleashed his rockets against armies and cities alike.  Upon hearing dreadful tales of their use, however, many soldiers in Cheya’s own army flatly refused to light the fuses, and others even went so far as to sabotage the rockets so that the sacred black powder could never be used to harm anyone, and metal had to be used instead.  Knowing that no empire could withstand treason from within, Cheya decided to make examples of those soldiers who defied his orders, stuffing them (in one manner or another) with bombs that still worked, and blowing them up.  He was given the nickname “the Mad God,” as chuyinka were worshiped as gods all over Minkut at the time.

Cheya was ultimately successful, and after the bloodshed had finally concluded, he built a massive trade network all over his new empire.  Unfortunately, Sing-Yat-San was becoming hotter by the year, and since Chuyinka are not fond of warm climates, two important things happened: first, Cheya found himself alone.  No other chuyinka remained in the region, so he was unable to continue his line.  Second, he was too exhausted to launch another military campaign, move the capital north, and look for a mate in a more favourable climate.  Instead, he lazed about his palace and painted his talons.  However, his mind remained sharp, and his civil reforms were welcomed by noble and peasant alike.  Besides, the generations that endured his slaughter were all gone.

I know what you’re thinking: some descendant of a soldier that got gutted, stuffed with a bomb, sewn back up, and blown to smithereens decided to avenge his ancestor by slaying the Mad God.  Well, no.  What actually happened was that a mysterious green crystal somehow emerged from the ground in a far-off reach of the empire, and was discovered by another ambitious individual, one who fancied himself a sorcerer.  This crystal, which responded to sound by either glowing or levitating, simply begged to be studied.  “It must possess great power, power that simply eludes me,” the sorcerer mused.  Oh, it did, but it would not be until Urya Goldfeather and Tska Redleaf built the very first glossarion levitator for the Kardenian Empire some 3500 cycles later that said power would actually be harnessed.  Still, the green crystal was instrumental in keeping the Minkutian Empire together.

The sorcerer managed to get into Cheya’s good graces, and visited him on his deathbed.  Then, through a good bit of trickery, convinced everyone that he had trapped Cheya’s spirit within the crystal, and thus the line of sorcerers gained control of Minkut.  Cheya’s body was embalmed and put on display, along with the crystal, which would dance to the sorcerers’ chanting.  Since chuyinka always burn their dead, without exception, this display was seen as an affront to the power they once held over the land.  However, by this point, they had abandoned the entire southern half of the continent, and had no real power outside of Durkuz, so their revenge had to wait.  Bitter, bloodthirsty, and arrogant as they were, they never forgot.  Of course, they also wrote everything down.

This where some elements of my original version of Nószimål come in.  Valona was never happy about being stuck in semi-human form, and was always looking for an escape.  Veyra, meanwhile, began to have increasing regrets about binding her life to the Skharnovs, the greatest of which was having to go on for who-knows-how-long outliving her own children, which were no bigger than that tiny Skharnov girl at the time they met.  However, killing lots of lower life-forms was a tried-and-true stress reliever for chuyinka, so gathering a Skharan army and laying waste to Minkut seemed like the perfect rage outlet.  To make the long story short, but also because I plan on telling the long story at some point, Kazímir Skharnov broke through the gates of Sing-Yat-San, sacked the city, and burned the palace to the ground, Cheya’s mummified body very much included.  With that final stroke, all knowledge of the chuyinka disappeared from the south, just the way they wanted it.  If that seems confusing, don’t worry.  It should.