Drust

The **Drust** were a population of seafaring vrykul who some time after the Sundering settled on the island of Kul Tiras. They wielded powerful death magic and mainly lived in Drustvar, but also resided in several areas of Tiragarde Sound and to lesser extent Stormsong Valley; to this day, their ruins and ancient roads can be seen throughout the island. When human sailors from Gilneas arrived in Kul Tiras around 2,700 years ago, the Drust king Gorak Tul led his people into war against the human settlers. However, not all Drust agreed with the war, and the druidic Thornspeakers left Drust society to side with the humans.

Gorak Tul eventually lost the conflict, and his Drust were almost all slain by the human invaders. However, Gorak Tul called upon the dark powers of Thros, the Blighted Lands, where the Drust's spirits found refuge.

## History

Some vrykul settlements were scattered prior to the Great Sundering. After the Sundering, various vrykul tribes set out for the seas, and one such population of seafaring vrykul settled on Kul Tiras.

Before the reign of Gorak Tul, the Drust practiced druidism. In the opinion of the druids, Gorak Tul's twisted ways brought disgrace to the Drust. Gorak Tul, their sorcerer king, was the one who perverted the druidic rituals of the Drust and set their people upon the path of death and domination. The Drust fought many enemies over their history, including beings that looked like themselves or great beasts, smaller beings that resembled gnomes in stature, and naga.

Around 2,700 years ago, humans from Gilneas arrived on the island, which they would later call Kul Tiras. The humans tried for peace with the Drust, but the latter went to war immediately, aggressively launching raids against the humans' fledgling hamlets from Drustvar. The Drust barbarians glorified the slaughter, attacking unarmed civilians. It was during this war that the Drust tapped into Thros, the Blighted Lands.

Only a few of the Drust tolerated new neighbors. A member of the druidic Thornspeakers by the name of Sef Iwen protested the brutality of Gorak Tul, stating that the Drust could live in harmony with the humans if they tried. Tul gave Iwen the choice to either submit or "hide in the woods forever". Iwen chose the latter, believing Tul meant exile, but instead the king tore her soul from her body, cursing her to forever haunt the woods later called the Glenbrook Hunting Grounds and using her death as an example to scare other dissidents into submission. This act of brutality alongside the others that Tul continued to enact upon the humans ultimately led to the Thornspeakers leaving the Drust to join Kul Tiran society. Some of the humans' Kul Tiran descendants heard the call of the wilds and sought to learn the ancient ways, and so the Drust Thornspeakers taught them the ways of druidism.

The Drust assaults carried on for many years until the ancestors of House Waycrest decided something had to be done and began a war against the Drust. But though the Waycrests were hearty folk, the Drust's death magic was strong and the humans began to lose the war. The Waycrests researched their magic and created the Order of Embers to fight them. To counter the Drust magic, the Order of Embers used weapons of silver and rowan wood, the latter of which is not found in Drustvar. A complex alchemical solution called Liquid Fire was a weapon used to "burn away the Drust".

In time the Drust would be forced to withdraw as they lost numbers to the human settlers. As the war went on, the desperate Drust called onto dark powers. Unbeknownst to them, they had reached the Emerald Nightmare. Their fallen warriors would find refuge in Thros, an offshoot of the Nightmare which they named differently as they were not aware of what the Nightmare was. When their great leader Gorak Tul ran out of living warriors, he conducted a ritual to create stone constructs to fight for him as part of his desperation to win. The Drust settlement of Gol Osigr would become the place of their final defeat. Colonel Arom Waycrest, who later became the first Lord of Drustvar, led the humans' final assault on the Drust and stabbed Gorak Tul himself. As he was stabbed Gorak Tul's power was broken and, with it, his connection to his stone constructs which shattered. But though wounded and broken, Gorak Tul did not die.

In modern times, the story has been warped. The modern Kul Tirans believe that the stone constructs were used for a longer period than just near the end of the war, that Arom had killed Gorak Tul, and that Gorak Tul's living army fell soon after his death instead of earlier on.