Bretheren of Blood

The Bretheren of Blood (or I'sa'miukai ra sana) 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, the 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. It is typically broken into four chapters, and begins with the fall of the Anarai.

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 siblings could form a greater whole from lesser parts. It is said that many of the early experiments lived brief, torturous lives, but through more refined processes the siblings were able to create new life forms, even capable of reproducing. Some even say 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.

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

The influence of the twins is said to have 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. Some scholars believe it to have only a group of disciples, the I'sa'mikai ra sana, referred to as the Children of Blood. Others believe that the I'sa'mikai ra sana was a much larger, amorphous body of followers, spanning whole schools and temples across various cities in the Dead Fields. At any rate, scholars agree that at the peak of the twins' influence, it is likely a full third of the townships within the Dead Fields contained at least some followers, Children of Blood or otherwise.

Wall carvings and records indicate that, at some point, the twins progressed from making animal Amalgams to fusing Zahar together. These entities, known as Sa'fao'je, are said to have been of power proportional to the number of bodies within them, which would've brought credence to the twins' theory. Unfortunately, the Sa'fao'je were likely 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 writings speak of a war during the peak of the Bretheren's power. It is almost universally agreed that the creation of Zahar Amalgams began to unsettle those Plains-dwelling Zahar not a part of the Bretheren. By best reckoning, at this point in history nearly a third of the Dead Fields swore fealty to the Bretheren, and thus likely could not be taken down in one swift blow.

Legend says that during this war that the most complex and fearsome Sa'fao'je were created, and they swiftly and bloodily won the Bretheren the war. Some say that after being unleashed onto the battlefields, the Sa'fao'je sometimes could not be recaptured, and so some still skulk through the corners of the Salt Desert, wreaking havoc as they go; this is largely dismissed by scholars as unsubstantiated fairy tales, but persists in the mythology nonetheless, especially among the less central Mukasa cities.

The most fearsome of the wartime Sa'fao'je is said to have been the Rai'kă'pę. It's written to have 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. The 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. The worm is a favorite subject among Mukasa storytellers; 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, waiting to climb back to the surface and feast.

The precise details of the worm are largely unsubstantiated and devised by storytellers, as the Bretheren did not seem to keep many records of it. Evidence does suggest, however, that there was at least something called the Rai'kă'pę, that it was a Fao'je of some sort, and that it was a decisive weapon in the war. Çao'sana is also likely to have disappeared at some point during the war, but whether it was due to the Rai'kă'pę or something simpler is unclear.

The Rise and Fall of Ai'sana

Following the war, there are remarkably few historical records, almost abnormally so. 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.