Bretheren of Blood

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The I'sa'miukai ra sana (Ji'lako, fig. Bretheren of Blood) is a Mukasa legend about a pair of fraternal twin Zahar and the fanatical order they founded. As the legend goes, they were among the first generation to be cast down from the Anarai — born in the Salt Desert, back when the brown grasses grew there, when it was known as the Sa'inu'raiau (lit. Dead Fields). The brother, Çao'sana, is said to have been skilled in transmutation magic, and the sister, Ai'sana, in all things to do with blood.

The legend, and all of the names of entities within the legend, were scrapped together by the Mukasa from historical evidence, wall-carvings found in temples, and salvaged pieces of writing, and combined with a healthy dose of mysticism from those who drank the blood of the Fountain Corpse. As a result, parts of it are backed to an extent by scholarly research, and other parts were woven to fill the gaps. It is typically broken into four chapters, and begins with the fall of the Anarai.

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The Amalgams

The legend says that, following the fall of the Anarai, the twins became obsessed with regaining the divinity they had lost. They devised a hypothesis; that the Zahar were but a tiny fraction of the Anarai, but that enough fractions added together still make a whole. With their combined knowledge of transmutation, blood, and bodies, they began work on Amalgams: combinations of animals, constructed to test if the twins could form a greater whole from lesser parts. Many of the early experiments lived brief, torturous lives, but through more refined processes the twins were able to create new life forms, even capable of reproducing.

Some Mukasa storytellers like to claim that the descendants of some of these early experiments still live in the Salt Desert — notably, the lizard horses ridden by the Mukasa, and the desert's notorious bone wasps — but this is not verifiable from any early Zahar records.

The formation of the Bretheren and the Sa'fao'je

The influence of the twins spread far and quickly among Zahar hoping for a return to divinity; through some means, they quickly accumulated a following, forming what the Mukasa refer to as the Bretheren of Blood. The twins' influence peaked just before the Amalgam War; according to records of that time, a full third of the townships within the Dead Fields contained followers of the twins.

There are two major theories on the nature of the twins' followers, in both cases referred to as the the I'sa'mikai ra sana (lit. Children of Blood). Some scholars believe that I'sa'mikai ra sana refers only to a group of close disciples, with other followers falling under a different classification with significantly less structure. Others believe that the I'sa'mikai ra sana was a much larger, organized body of followers, spanning whole schools and temples across various cities in the Dead Fields.

Wall carvings and records from the latter third of the antebellum period indicate that, in time, the twins progressed from making animal Amalgams to fusing Zahar together. These entities, known as Sa'fao'je (fig. Joined Families) are said to have been of power proportional to the number of bodies within them, which would've brought credence to the twins' theory. The Sa'fao'je were mindless, thrashing, dangerous creatures; it is said that the fusing of body and blood together brought upon a special kind of madness.

It is unknown from where the twins sourced the bodies. Most agree it was likely that some of the bodies were devout Children of Blood; competing theories claim that it was unwilling followers, or even victims kidnapped from other towns. Scholars tend to tell the first version, that the Sa'fao'je were formed from willing I'sa'mikai ra sana, but the more colorful Mukasa storytellers prefer the kidnapping version.

The Amalgam War

Many recovered diaries and letters of Zahar in the Dead Fields speak of a war during the peak of the Bretheren's power. The creation of Zahar Amalgams began to unsettle those Plains-dwelling Zahar not a part of the Bretheren, inciting a war between the Bretheren-allied Zahar and an alliance formed among the remainder of the Zahar living in the Dead Fields. It lasted about a year, and ended in the favor of the Bretheren, though it claimed the life of Çao'sana. No writings of any kind have surfaced from any time period following the conclusion of the war.

During this war, the most complex and fearsome Sa'fao'je were created, and were bragged about frequently in military communications among the Bretheren. Field reports often mourn that, after being unleashed onto the battlefields, the Sa'fao'je caused significant friendly casualties and could not easily be recaptured, though the response to such letters was more often than not to simply create another Sa'fao'je.

The Myth of the Rai'kă'pę

The most fearsome of the wartime Sa'fao'je is said in Mukasa mythology to have been the Rai'kă'pę (lit. God Worm). It's described by storytellers as having been formed from the bodies of no less than fifty Children of Blood near the end of the war, and twisted into the horrible shape of a long worm. A popular story goes that, upon its creation, Çao'sana himself offered his body to it, and the worm drained him of all his blood, then sprouted a new face and arm resembling his and left the old body to crumble.

It is said that the Bretheren released the worm during the final, decisive battle of the war, where it crushed and devoured every last warrior on both sides within seven minutes, then burrowed into the ground and disappeared. Those intending to scare children often suggest that it's still down there, burrowing, calling out to the other Sa'fao'je which escaped during the war and now roam the sands.

The precise details of the worm are largely unsubstantiated and devised by storytellers, as the Bretheren did not seem to keep any records of it. Whether Çao'sana died to the worm or more natural wartime causes is therefore unclear.

The Rise and Fall of Ai'sana

No writings of any kind have been recovered from after the war; the only indication that the Bretheren won was frequent Alliance military communications of panic and potential surrender. From here, the end of the legend is mostly in the hands of storytellers and bards. The most common version goes something like this:

Ai'sana, after witnessing the death of her brother and the end of the war, opted to alter their research and move away from transmutation. Citing how the Rai'kă'pę devoured Çao'sana's blood but left the body, she theorized that blood may be a more pure carrier of power than the combination of blood and body. Using the blood of the prisoners of war, she began research anew.

Soon enough, Ai'sana discovered a method to magically distill blood into its purest power-giving essence and mix it with her own within her body, elevating her own power. She and her closest followers repeated this experiment again and again, until there were no more bodies to be easily drained.

Here, Ai'sana was stuck for some time, until she discovered another method; one by which she could distill any being which lived in the eyes of the gods into its purest life force, dissolved in the solvent of blood, even if blood did not run through its veins. By this method, her power grew without bounds, until, by a great ritual, she consumed every living being in the Dead Fields at once, leaving behind only husks which were ground by the wind into a poisonous salt. The Amalgams and Sa'fao'je were spared, not being living beings in the eyes of the gods; though they carried blood, it did not flow, but instead congealed inert in their veins.

Following this ritual, Ai'sana and her followers confronted the gods, demanding a seat among the divine once again as beings risen higher from the Zahar. The gods cursed them, spat on them, cut them down and doomed them to undeath; as a cruel joke, they were allowed to keep their power, but prevented from ever exercising it, instead forced to lie dormant within a corpse, blood ever churning through magically preserved veins, gazing through rotting eye sockets. Due to the sheer concentration of life within them, they could not bleed out, and so instead spilled blood eternally, staining the sand red, until eventually discovered by the Mukasa Peoples.

The story, if true, would imply that the Fountain Corpse and Lesser Fountains are, in fact, the bodies of Ai'sana and her I'sa'mikai ra sana. Though commonly accepted mythology, this is unverified by Mukasa scholars.