Kara Khan

Kara Khan was a Great Khan that lived at the end of the Sixth Era. At the time, the Magna Orde was the greatest power in the known world. When they came of age, Kara made a pilgrimage to the great spire. No one knows what they saw there but when they emerged, they seemed to possess eerie powers of the mind that led them to great victories in battle.

Kara's army of "Soulriders" was made up of tribesmen from across the Great Plains and beyond. Goblins, Treant and Humans alike rode in "Great Hunts" that weakened the power of the Magna Orde until its leader, Aeetli Han, came to face Kara in single combat. Kara won the battle and took the pelt of Aetli's Giant Lion as a trophy.

With the Magna Orde falling apart, Kara's wife, Pellar, asked them to settle down and organize their horde into a proper empire. Kara was obsessed, however, and embarked on what would be their Final Hunt.

Kara assembled an army of Soulriders, Horselord and Tnz'qran both, and declared The Great Hunt. They would ride past the World Scar, trek through the cursed wasteland, and circle the Izill mountains until they could plunder the lost secrets of the ancients.

Many thought the Khan mad, but the victories on the battlefield gave the Khan a sense of near divinity. So ten thousand soul riders left from the Crystal Spire and began a long trek west.

Half would die by the time they passed through the Wasteland, many begging to be killed out of mercy from the pain and terror the sands brought. Yet that horror was a mere taste of what was to come.

The 3000 soulriders who made it into the land of gold were crushed by metal demons since thrown into myth. Blue flame seared meat from bones, ferocious sounds saw men and beast alike claw out their own eyes; their soldiers died like flies and yet Kara pressed ever forward.

At the final bend, in the heart of Goldland itself, the remaining 100 soulriders begged Kara to turn back, but a strange look in the eye of the Khan told them there was no answer that led to survival. With tears in their eyes (as they told it) the last hundred turned back, to watch the Kahn travel to their death.

Of that hundred, only 12 made it back through the wasteland. Found by scouts and taken back to the Crystal Spire, the report of the Khan's death crushed the people.

Pelar declared herself Khan and completed the raids against the Ordes but she was no Kara. Without their divine figurehead, any dream of any empire to match the Magna Orde was dashed.

The Final Hunt was the final major interaction between the eastern and western halves of the continent until Vayos the Belarian made their Great Voyage centuries later.

The double power gap of the fall of The Second Great Orde and the Kara Khanate lead to a massive vaccum in the East that enabled the Celestial Empire and Treant Empire to rise to the heights they see now.

And the legend of the Last Hunt cemented Goldland as a place of fear and terror for generations and religions to come.

To this day the name Kara is considered near sacrilegious to be granted in Orde and Khanate cultures, and their death has been cemented in the national myths of both peoples.

#### **The Tear of Kara Khan**

When 12 soulriders returned from Kara Khan's ill-fate exposition from Goldland, they returned with a scrap of Mithril, the largest such source of the metal found west of the Cursed Wastelands.

It has exchanged hands across the centuries from Khan to Khan and the occasional foreign raider. It was originally used as a symbol of power to connect to the fallen great Khan, until Uruz mages learned how to magically smelt off shards of The Tear that couldn't otherwise be torn. Mithril arrowheads have become a prize product of the Tear, notable for being more durable than steel and being able to conduct magical energy better than gold. Due to the small size of the Tear, most mihtril weaponry is used for vanity weapons by various Khans.

Owing to his wariness of anything having to do with the Cursed Wastelands or ancient power, the Great Khan doesn't use an Mithril weaponry, though he was wise enough to keep the Tear safe in the Kanakar Steppes away from ambitious wizards like Kana Khan.