Bone Pounder

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In the Year 1100, a scarred and aged jara was becoming known across the Tribe Steppes. He was so terrible in his methods of dealing with opposition that they called him Bone Pounder. After defeating a rival group of jara or some foreign frontier settlement, and if a stiff resistance was put up, he would have his soldiers lay out the bodies, and then they would ride about them, trampling and kicking the dead. They would then turn to eating them in between these bouts of playing with their dead.

Bone Pounder, now calling himself a Jara Khan, had under him five thousand warriors. His upbringing was the same as those around him. As a nomadic people, they are always on the move, so everyone is trained to fight. Their newborns are called foals, not babies.

I don’t say this in jest, the jara are centaurs, but more beast than humanoid. They may look like centaurs from afar, but once you get close enough to see their features you see something wicked and monstrous. Something that looks like it was born on one of the Cesspools of Evil, the demon worlds of the Abyss. If a jara warband is one the move, and a foal is born, they don’t stop. It is tossed a spear and left behind. Once the newborn jara can steady themselves on their knotted and twisted hoofs, they can try to catch up with their pack. Most do not, for the dust cloud in their wake is gone. The foals soon learn that following tracks is pointless because the landscape is crisscrossed with tracks of both their kind and others. If not killed by starvation or something meaner, they will eventually get picked up by a jara warband, but probably not the one they were born to. As such, they have no sense of family.

- Galathrel, to the 1^st Ackarion Squad, Pillar of Horns - "Tarfilerquar, Another Form"

Over the next five years, by force and guile, Bone Pounder’s horde had increased to 20,000. Bone Pounder took his horde east, riding into Cinazan attacking the Khazarkar Empire. At the time, the Khazarkars were still on the eastern fringes of the Cinazan region, on the other side of the river Rute.

For ten years Bone Pounder's Bloodletters left a trail of destruction. They rode through the land forcing the Khazarkars to stay bottled up in their castles and cities. Word of Bone Pounder’s victories got back, and more and more jara came out to join his victorious army.

In 1115, with 30,000 jara under him, they attacked the Khazarkar capital city Nibar-Pharân. Bone Pounder's crack unit, the Blood Stormers, battled an elite guard of temple defenders, mummy lord priests of Set, stone elementals, and a pair of devils summoned to bolster their defenses. Bone Pounder’s Blood Stormers died to the last. Bone Pounder finished off the defenders then galloped up the bloodied steps of the Abattâdas Pyramid where he battled the leader of the Khazarkar Empire, Setarch Benâth. In a bloodied and severely wounded state, Bone Pounder fought the priest for ten minutes, supposedly dying from fatigue rather than wounds.

In the First Ugradrath War, out of necessity, Mirkathân became a bed of necromancy. This was a time when the Khazarkar Empire and the Orchish Empire were coming into conflict, their borders meeting in the Ugradrath mountains. This new conflict came about in 1421, the same year the Khazarkars were wrapping up affairs with the recently conquered empire Gilraen; and dealing with the Salbâth Insurgency created from it. The recently dead and the long dead were being moved to Mirkathân from all over the empire. They were needed for the armies of undead required to meet a threat far greater than what the token resistance put by the Gilraen.

Bone Pounder’s remains found themselves in Mirkathân. They did not remain here long. His grave was robbed, the bones carried back to the Tribe Steppes, homeland of the jara. They were laid to rest in a burial place specifically built for him, the Mound of Bone Pounder.

Six centuries later, in 1790, part-time adventurers and also heads of this company called Crimson Eye, Inc. raided Bone Pounder's resting place. Inside Bone Pounder’s ribcage they discovered a gnarled and dried seed (c.f. Tarfilerquar). They claim it radiated minor magic and seemed incapable of bearing life. This seed was the heart of Bone Pounder, but long before that it was also the heart of an evil god. How it came to be the heart of Bone Pounder can only be speculated. Perhaps his mother ate the seed. This could be either from it magically coaxing her do it, or coming bout from a time of scarcity when jara begrudgingly resort to eating nuts, berries, seeds, and plants.

Seeing little value in the seed, Crimson Eye traded it to an outlaw druid named Black Wood. A year later, on 4 Bloom 1791, this crazed user of dark nature magic, planted the heart of Bone Pounder, the heart of a long dead god named Tarfilerquar, in the Maegorion forest. It corrupted and darkened the forest and all within it. Thereafter, animals and beasts became overgrown versions of their former selves and were of a much darker sort. Treants became dark treants, and some of the oldest became undead treants. Sprites became quicklings, and some plants became evil-natured and carnivorous.