Künt

The easternmost island of the Horned Ogre Archipelago is home to the pirate temple known simply as **Künt**, from which the dreaded Red Pirates launch raids all the way from the Kingdom of Gold in the north to Luden in the south, and they rob trade ships that travel among the kingdoms of the East.

For a time they were safe from attacks from the civilized nations, since no one was crazy enough to land an army in the islands of the terrible horned ogres. That changed with the rise and expansion of the followers of Avangar, the red pirates of Künt now see their once unassailable home in the threatened by the encroaching Elyrians.

The greatest peculiarity of the red pirates is their unusual way of fighting, which centres around unarmed combat. Legend claims that the red pirates were created by a peasant from Changrila [some unsourced reports claim he was actually a Jooi merchant] who believed that the commoners should depose the nobility, the bureaucrats and even the God-Emperor himself and distribute all the land between themselves, forming autonomous peasant communities in which everyone was equal. Needless to say, such crazy idea failed. The peasant then fled his homeland, never to return, and traveled the breath and wide of the continent, learning the combat arts of all the proud great warriors he could find. He learned from the Kinga, the nomads of Ogabo, the Gökmavi khans, the Thuleans of U'mer, the Bhakkari, the rangers of Gor'GoLeth, the Soomi of the Chill Steppe, and more, though, legend claims, he would always say that his greatest knowledge was learned from a wise snoloth.

He then traveled to the horned ogre islands, where he unified all his knowledge and experience into one supreme martial art, known as Künt (etymology unknown, some have claimed that that's just what the horned ogres called him after he showed them his skills), to which he added his personal philophy, based on the three principles, formally known as the "three ghosts":

1. There's no good or evil.

2. There's no afterlife.

3. There's no property.

Thus, the Master Künt scouted the realms of the East in search of orphans and young urchins which would make for promising disciples of Künt. These apprentices formed his own personal pirate band, training at the temple every year during the cold winter in order to raid in the summer. Since then a new Master Künt has risen after the death of the previous one, though very few information ever gets out of Künt, so we don't know how many Masters have been.

Rumours in Seagard's trader taverns nowadays say that the current holder of the title of Master Künt, and de facto leader of the red pirates, is actually a young woman.

## History

The island of **Ils Muslík** has been inhabited for millennia. Its position as the furthest island from the Sitrai Martöflu Archipelago, far from the main trade routes and population centers kept the island from having big populations, which mostly focused on agriculture and sea fishing. Aside from the growing trade between the two sides of the Sea of Innocence and the Saint Pitcasasti Inner Sea, the island and its population was left to its own devices, not being seen as particularly important by the growing nations there. However, this also meant that Ils Muslík was particularly vulnerable to the threat of the ogres. Most of the ogres coming from Stór Kartöflu found the undefended villages and fishing towns in Ils Muslík to be easy pickings, and thus the population suffered under their raids. The ogres never fully colonized the island, preferring to only stay long enough to eat their food reserves and move on.

This situation lasted for centuries, which kept the island from advancing alongside the rest of the world. Ils Muslík became the backwater of not just the Sitrai Martöflu Archipelago, but of Littlestep as a whole. However, this situation of relatively lawlessness also caused the island to attract more nefarious visitors. Pirates, bandits and outlaws found a home in the island, hiding from their pursuers as well as hoarding their stolen goods. This would turn out to be a blessing in disguise: since the rogues tended to have experience in fighting, they could be persuaded to help against the ogres. After all, if the criminals helped the ogres terrorize the villagers, they would get scant rewards, since the ogres would eat their food reserves anyway. But if the criminals helped the villagers fight off the ogres, they would gain an invaluable ally, an island full of graceful servants who would guarantee food supplies, manpower and a base of operations. Many pirate groups quickly allied with the locals to fend off the ogres, mostly by sinking their ships before they could sail, and in a couple of decades, the threat of ogre raids was history.

The defeat of the ogres began a fight between the outlaws for the control of the island. Many different groups jumped at each other to turn the island of Ils Muslík into their own fiefdom. This would not cause that much damage to the island as one would think, since the criminals were intent to capture the region intact. Plus, if they made an enemy of the villagers, they would find themselves being stabbed in the back at a later date. After a couple of decades of fighting, the group called the **White Pirates** was the one who managed to take control of the island, with the remaining criminals joining them or dying. This would begin an age of terror in the waters of Eastern Giantstep. The White Pirates would amass a fleet that would raid year after year the coasts of the east, stealing ships and gathering their stolen treasures back to Ils Muslík. Their raids became so far-reaching that even the Kingdom of Nogar was threatened by the White Pirates. However, over the years, the eastern nations managed to slowly and steadily take down the pirates, chipping away their fleets and forcing them to reduce their area of operations. By the time the Avangar Empire was formed, the White Pirates’ activities could only reach the Sitrai Martöflu Archipelago.

It was at this point when an unusual visitor reached the island of Ils Muslík. Far away in the west, the Changrilese Civil War had ended, and with it, a flurry of exiles of those associated (or suspected to be associated) with the Red Lotus Cult. Threatened by the imperial armies, those who were suspected of aiding the dreaded Dihong Xinjianng were being put to the sword. One of these people was **Huaban Maoo**, the Master of the Temple of Serenity. Initially a peasant raised by monks in a monastery, he had been attracted by the ideals of peace and universal unity and brotherhood, and had joined his forces during the war, but had become disillusioned with the way the Red Lotus had twisted into the same corruption they had been claiming to fight against. After the defeat of the Red Lotus’ armies, Huaban Maoo travelled throughout Giantstep, learning from the ways of war of other cultures along the way.

Around 3.066 ABE, Huaban Maoo reached the island of Ils Muslik. By the time he arrived to the island, the White Pirates had descended into clear infighting, threatening not only the population to survive, but also each other. Huaban saw the cruelty of the pirates and began teaching the inhabitants of Ils Muslik his brand of martial arts, crafted over the years of his travels, named Künt. This would slowly snowball into a force that could oppose the pirates, and later defeat the White Pirates. To fight the outlaws, he decided to organize his own band of buccaneers, though he had little seafaring experience, as after centuries of piracy the population had grown fond of the trade. After six years of fight, the pupils of Huaban Maoo managed to kick out the last of the remaining White Pirates, taking over their empire. The renewed forces of the island built the Temple of Künt, which serves as both a meditation centre, a fortress and a base of operations for the recently created **Red Pirates**. However, by the time of their victory, Huaban Maoo was an old man, and died soon after. His heirs have continued raiding the waters of Eastern Giantstep for decades now, passing generation after generation the teachings of Huaban Maoo.

## The Pirates from the North

The Island of Ils Muslík has been the biggest gathering of pirates in the northeastern waters for many centuries now. Since the days of the defeat of the ogres, the population has been indebted to the buccaneers and outlaws that use the region as a safe haven, producing food and other resources for the pirate fleets. Over time, the populations began seeing piracy as the norm, and many marriages between the locals and the crews meant that they quickly grew into one single whole. After the fall of the White Pirates and the rise of the Red Pirates, the culture of the island began changing, seeing as the White Pirates lost the goodwill from the locals and were thus ousted by the new organization. This meant a renewal of the pirate activities of Ils Muslík, and while they haven’t reached the peak successes the White Pirates got in their heyday, they are growing slowly but surely again.

Part to their success is owned to the island itself. Ils Muslík has been fortified time and time again, and since it can produce its own food, water and gunpowder, a prolonged siege is not enough to take down the pirate lair. The waters around the island are full of treacherous rock formations, which can sink a vessel if one does not know the waters well enough. The natives have prepared the island to resist the assaults: at all times, small prahos guard the main routes to the island, both to search for ships that have lost their way and for navy assaults. Using the jagged seafloor, many pirates have learned specific meditation techniques to be able to hold their breath while swimming for much longer periods of time. During the night, they will then attach small barrels of gunpowder with the insides protected by wax and other isolating elements. They will then glue them to the exterior to the ships, leave and see from afar the explosion, which will cripple or even sink even the bigger vessels.

And to even arrive to the island, one would have to organize a coalition of the navies of many nations, since the pirates can outnumber the fleets to a ridiculous degree. While a concerted effort would be able to eventually grind the hundreds of individual pirate ships of all kinds and sizes, the island’s authorities have prepared for a siege. From the coast fortresses once can see massive cannons, able to outrange their ship equivalents, since they aren’t limited by the capabilities of a vessel. The pirates have to pay a portion of their earnings for the maintenance of these strongholds, to avoid being caught unaware. This means the island of ls Muslík is one of the biggest powder kegs in the world, always ready to repel an attack. To add to this, the pirates have been able to play the different nations of Littlestep and Eastern Giantstep against each other. The threat of Avangar expansion is somewhat neutered due to the constant raids they receive from the pirates, and even if they are not a catastrophic danger to the empire, they do distract the elyrians from expanding against their neighbors, since they cannot afford to do so while their supply lines are threatened by corsairs. This has made many other nations to subtly look the other way as long as the pirates’ raids are not that big or important.

The arrival of Huaban Maoo to the island resulted in the introduction of the martial art known as Künt, as well as its accompanying philosophy. While at first many nations feared the ties of the Master of Künt with the Red Lotus would result in a duplicate Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, they would prove them wrong. Huaban Maoo had ended up scorned with the Red Lotus, and as such, it only took some of its founding elements to create the philosophy of Künt, and thus they avoided to turn the island into a cult.