Avía-rá

An Avía-rá soldier of the Maw'kin tribe

### Color(s)

Copper, yellow, orange, red, green, blue, purple, brown, silver, gold, white, black, and grey.

### Distinctions

Bird-like head, claw tipped hands and feet, digitigrade bipedal

### Featured in

Dark Matter TTRPG

An avian species that hails from the Ym'k'ru Dwarf Galaxy, the Avía-rá bear a very curious resemblance to the Ancient Chozo, including their immense heights and body mass. Though not as technologically advanced as the Ancient Chozo or the Forerunners, the Avía-rá are still one of the more advanced species in Ym'k'ru, rivaled perhaps only by the Ju'rai.

## History

The Avía-rá know their history, recount the tales of their ancestors and trade back their lineages to the great Ancients who served under the Sun Above, the Holy Star. Hailing from Kémet, a harsh, desert planet crisscrossed by rivers and lakes, they have always known an appreciation for the sun’s blessings and cruelties, which forms the backbone of their religion, inspires their arts and sciences, and informs their view of the cosmos. Their dogma centers squarely on their deity, the Sun Above, to which there can be no equal.

### Traversing the Stars

When the Avía-rá took their first tentative steps into space, their religion bent and adapted to the wider universe in which they found themselves. Suddenly, their Sun Above was no longer Déshrét, the star around which their homeworld orbits, but a metaphysical “true star” from which all stars, including their own, derived meaning. It was centuries before they ventured to the center of the galaxy and encountered what they consider the physical embodiment of the Sun Above: the Sepulcher Star.

In those days, the Star orbited much further from the black hole at the galactic core, and it was definitively under Ju'rai control. The Avía-rá soon learned from the Ju'rai that the Sepulcher Star wasn't merely a star, but contained some sort of supermassive construct within. Though strictly an academic curiosity to the Ju'rai, this discovery galvanized the Avía-rá: in the heart of this star, near the exact center of the galaxy, was their Sun Above. Over the next millennia, the Avía-rá quietly bolstered and gathered their fleets in preparation for the First Crusade.

This was the first of many Crusades, bloody battles between the Avía-rá and the Ju'rai for control of the center of the galaxy. Each crusade was punctuated with the signing of a treaty, a respite from battle, and a consolidation of forces. Always, a surprise attack by one of the two sides reignited the conflict anew. In the Third Crusade, the Avía-rá constructed the massive Solar Citadel in orbit around the Sepulcher Star—a holy city, built for the glory of the Sun Above and to deter aggression from the Ju'rai. In short order, it was seized by an Ju'rian sneak attack; ever since, the Citadel has become a flashpoint for conflict and a central focus for Crusades.

### The Night Crusade

The most recent of these battles, called the Night Crusade, nearly saw the wholesale destruction of the Ju'rian Empire. The holy Avía-rá fleet, known as the Congregation, captured the center of the galaxy in a series of decisive victories and pushed the Ju'rai back to their home system. In this moment, the balance of the galaxy was threatened, and the Ju'rai struck a bargain: in exchange for their assistance, the Ju'rai would liberate the Vect across their empire—a move which would eventually pave the way for Vect freedom across the galaxy.

The culmination of this deal was at the Battle of Alden’val, where the Vect fleet turned the tide for the Ju'rai, critically wounding the Avía-rá’s flagship, ***The Prophet***. The ensuing retreat made an opening for the Ju'rian Forest-Fleet, which encircled the Congregation, spelling the end of the Crusade. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty Black, a document that quieted hostilities and established the Order of the Sepulcher to safeguard against similar crises in the future.

## Depths of Dogma

To some, the Avía-rá’s captivating dogma, high priesthood, and Congregation warfleet represent a light and peace in the galaxy, but to others, it represents a simmering kettle, just waiting to boil over.

In the past, the Avía-rá have found little success spreading the message of the Sun Above to the established races of the galaxy. After all, their pantheons are extensive and integral to their societies; a monotheistic god has little place among them. Instead, the Avía-rá have turned to primitive civilizations, especially those on undiscovered planets, with which to share their message.

The pattern for their evangelism is simple: build a civilization on an undeveloped world, founded on the philosophy of their solar religion, reside with it long enough to ensure it leaves a lasting legacy, and depart once again for the stars. In the Avía-rá religion, all worship of the sun is indirectly worship of the Sun Above, so any evolution their gods of light and flame take on with the passing of centuries is inconsequential; they are still effigies of Old Un in the Sepulcher Star. This practice is controversial, to say the least. Many worlds have ancient tales of travelers from other worlds, bringing with them the blessings of the Sun, and these depictions paint them much like gods themselves. Ju'rai and D'war'mir hold their own pantheons as sacred, and condemn Avía-rá missionaries as a whole, but there is little that the galactic community can do, short of inciting galactic war. Thus, Avía-rá evangelism occupies an uncomfortable, but tolerated position in the galaxy.

## Technological Achievements

The Avía-rá are a firm Tier 2 civilization, having mastered interstellar travel many millennia ago and sending explorers to all corners of the Ym'k'ru Dwarf Galaxy. Despite these achievements, they have evidence of their ancestors having been far more advanced than even they or the Ju'rai have reached. The cause of their apparent regression in civilization is unknown, though many signs, including Ju'rian historical records, indicate that it has to do with the entity that resides with the Sepulcher Star.

## The Long Lost Truth

The Avía-rá have told the tales of their Sun-touched ancestors over many thousands of years, relating how they spread once across the stars in the name of their deity, only to be fallen upon by an unknown catastrophe. This faith is instilled in every Avía-rá from the day they hatch, dogma guiding them in their veneration of the Sepulcher Star and the entity contained deep within it.

This history is a lie. What the leaders of the Avía-rá hide from the tribes and clans is that their ancestors came from not Kémet, but from a far distant galaxy that has been long forgotten to history. The Avía-rá are not children of the Sun Above, but the descendants of the Ancient Chozo who came to what they would call Ym'k'ru and remained after they were exiled from their fellows. Fourteen thousand years ago, the ancestors of the Avía-rá arrived as exiles from the greater spiral galaxy that this satellite was bound to. The Chozo of the era were warriors, an empire built on the ideals of what they referred to as the Mantle of Guidance, or the concept that they had been tasked by their higher creators to "guide" the lesser races of the universe on what they perceived as the greater path. Having been cast out after a horrifying civil war with a growing collective of the younger generations and their more altruistic ideals, these exiled tribes took residence for a time in the satellite galaxy before many would continue on for the deeper void.

A number of the outcast tribes chose to remain, perhaps realizing the follies of their conflict with their kin, and explored their new home, eventually finding a strange singularity at the center of the dwarf galaxy and a star that defied said singularity's hunger. The Chozo could sense something was strange about the star, but instead of heeding this as a warning, they delved further, and were met by the Ju'rai, a humanoid species of mystic manipulators and masters of organic plant based technologies. The Ju'rai warned the Chozo exiles that something terrible resided within the paranatural star, even came to blows with them, and in their victory to drive the Ju'rai back, the Chozo refugees then fell to a madness and eventually suffered a terrible regression at the effects of whatever it was that was contained within. It would be many millennia before what was left of their civilization could pull itself back together on Kémet, and much had by then been lost. The Aetherite technologies of their ancestors had been depleted or shattered, forcing the recovering Chozo, now renamed as the Avía-rá, to find a new means of powering their civilization as they made efforts to return to the stars, having to record a new history with their heritage now lost. This led to their eventual rediscovery of the Sepulcher Star, encountering once more the Ju'rai, and finding their course forever changed.