Kaa Kar

### Relatives

Stannis Mako (lover), Taris Mako (daughter), Thallan Nym (step-son), Ni Gylah Nym (grand-daughter)

## After the War

The Kara, or the Crows, were an order of assassins who lived in the south of Aglazdere in a temple called the Karnash Jin, not far from Al Basazar. They were founded during the Unification Wars by one of many apocalyptic cults, breaking away from the rule of Raclaw brothers and fighting their own shadow war. Towards the end of the war, they would ally with the Prophet, and establish a secretive place for themselves in Aglazdere. They maintained ties with Angon of Nallval, who would hire them for certain tasks. These contacts would be maintained by his successor, Annakiya, who would dispatch their members during the War of the Philosopher-Kings for certain clandestine work that her Meadowguard could not do. One of these agents, Janue Oussani, would be sent to spy in the Final Empire.

Janue Oussani and Sara would return to Karnash Jin in time for the War of the Philosopher-Kings, and witnessed the aftermath of the armies of Atlantis under King Raine sacking the cities of Ta-al Kayji and Al Basazar. They found the Crows murdered and their temple razed, but it was clear that it was not the work of King Raine, but of some other, more mysterious power. What they did not know at the time was that Kuldeep of Shangare, who was plotting his ascent to power, had sought to contract with the Kara, and been rebuffed. In a show of strength, the great demon had brought woe to the temple as punishment. It was the first successful test of his power.

Janue Oussani and Sara, now named Kaa Kar, trained in the abandoned Final Empire, warring with scattered pockets of Hobgoblins from Tyrant Skraz’s army and Celymnaian beasts that had escaped the Imperial counterattack against the Wild Hunt. They would next travel to Scarbantia in World’s End, where Ramander ruled as Emperor. It was a country of the dead, where the few humans that survived had become blood bags for their vampiric overloads. There Janue would perish from a consumptive blood-borne plague, and Kaa Kar would birth the child of Stannis Mako, the Thief Guildmaster of World’s End. Mako was a complicated figure, for he ran an enterprise in which he would protect living men and women who fled from the blood bag camps in return for payment and servitude. For this, he earned the sobriquet “Lord of the Living,” but nonetheless, he was an ally of the Emperor, who utilized Mako’s agents for tasks his own Vampire Spawn he could not do. After an attempt on her life by Mako, Kaa Kar would kill him and become the Guildmaster of World’s End. She would continue protecting the human refugees and working for Emperor Ramander, just as Mako had before her. She would train her daughter Taris in her ways, but end up disowning her as Taris fled to Ragnarok for a peaceful life as a seamstress.

Taris Mako would arrive in Ragnarok at the end of the reign of King Bolgar, and was present for the famous Funeral Games of Bolgar, which were won by the Red Knight, Khamsa. She was fascinated to see him, for her mother had told her how Khamsa had arrived just in time to save Moor’s Sister, and how the duplicitous Emperor Ramander had tried to steal his identity to rule World’s End. But Khamsa was not at all how her mother had described her. Aged by grief and the burden of bearing the Pallid Mask, the Red Knight was a pale, hollowed figure who reeked of blood, eyes haunted by visions of eldritch truth, his humanity greatly diminished, yet all the more fearsome a warrior. No one in Ragnarok was his match. Taris was witness to the knights of Ragnarok offering their swords to him, begging him to take up the crown, but Khamsa refused, telling the assembled warriors to pledge their blades to his squire, Ludwig. The Red Knight returned to Thunderdome in the Final Empire to continue his duty, warring with the Deep Ones from Atlantis who hungered for the throne. Taris became a seamstress and married Thallan Nym, a drow blacksmith, who had been the son of the drow who forged the Black Blade of Disaster wielded by King Bolgar, and now by King Ludwig. The two had a daughter, Ni Gylah Nym, who grew up in the era of Ragnarok’s decline. Beset on the east from Deep Ones of Atlantis and on the south from the armies of Shangare, Ragnarok’s knights were beginning to fall prey to a plague of madness. The worst afflicted were the poor souls sent to aid Khamsa at the Thunderdome, but no one was safe. Ni Gylah Nym resented the knights, hollow suits of armor filled with arrogance and self-righteousness. Many had begun to whisper with resentment about the duty of protecting helpless civilians, who they began to see as unworthy of their aid. As more and more knights fell in battle or fell prey to madness, the recruitment standards dropped, and Ragnarok began to rot from the inside.

At the age of thirteen, Ni Gylah Nym was visited by her grandmother Ka Kar, and faked her death so that she could travel to Scarbantia to train with her. There, they fell under the patronage of Astinus, Count of Ansalon, the son of Emperor Ramander and Gwendolyn Livossa-Coralis, the sister of Khamsa. The grandson of Tolumvire of Arendur, Astinus was ambitious, and was far more inclined to rely on the work of the criminal underworld than his increasingly slothful and blood-drunk father. He admired and feared Kaa Kar, but warmed to Ni Gylah Nym. He talked a great deal to her about his ancestral home in New Arendur, conquered by the warmongering and virulent anti-magic Reich. The rulers of New Arendur, he used to say, where cowards who cowered before their god, the King in Yellow, and were so afraid of their storied past that they censored it from their history books. Kaa Kar indulged the Count of Ansalon, but warned her pupil that though he resembled his uncle Khamsa in appearance, he was as power-hungry and megalomaniacal as the Philosopher-Kings of old, of whom his grandfather had been first in infamy.

Eventually, Astinus would make good on his words and travel to New Arendur. Not long afterwards, Ni Gylah Nym would try to return to Ragnarok out of guilt over the abandonment of her parents by pretending to visit Celymnaia on an assassination attempt, but found Kaa Kar waiting for, her parents slain. There they clashed, and Ni Gylah Nym emerged the victor, with Kaa Kar naming her Sagno Kar, the Last Crow.