The Shara Mountain

The Shara Mountain is an ancient peak the is situated on the northern edge of the Hnura’i Empire, in the Province of Rin. It is the site of an ancient temple, long ago abandoned, and quire forgotten as it is forbidden ground. Though the capital city of the Province of Rin, Shara City, is nestled high in the foothills of the peak, no one is permitted on the slopes of the mountain itself. The mountain is considered sacred, though no one in the Hnura’i Empire remembers why. They have, however, respected the sacred nature of the mountain and never, ever venture onto its slopes.

The Shara Mountain in Creation Myths​

The Shara Mountain features heavily in Hnura’i creation myth. For the indigenous people of the region, they hold that the mountain is named for a fairy, who fled to the region from the south, pursued by demons who intended to force her hand in marriage. In order to protect herself, she begged the Earth for help.

Knowing the demons in pursuit were powerful beings, the Earth encased the fairy in a deep red gem and then raised the mountain around the gem.

When the demons approached, the mountain, having been tasked with the protection of the gem, caused its terrain and the forest upon it to continually change, obscuring the path up the mountain to the cavern where the gem was housed. Confused and frustrated, those demons that did not perish on the treacherous terrain ceased their pursuit and left the north, seeking other entertainment.

Terrified of their return, the fairy remains to this day contentedly encased in the gem. On cold nights, when the wind blows down the mountain, it is said you can hear her heart beating through the stone.

The Hnura’i, late comers to the region, have concocted their own explanation for the peak. Strangely, this, too, mentions a large red gem which is said to pulse like a heart that can be heard on cold nights.

In the Hnura’i imagination, the Shara Mountain is named for one of the Fallen; a heavenly non-corporeal entity whose kind was responsible for singing the world into being. In the time before the Hnura’i were set adrift on the ocean in the hopes of reuniting with their lord, the heavenly host, seduced and tricked by the Darkness, became embroiled in a terrible civil war.

In a rage, the Dragon Lord banished them from the heavens, casting them down in a great rain of fire. They were imprisoned in flesh and bone, forced to live as mortals until they learnt their lesson—which could take many hundreds of lives, according to the Hnura’i belief.

Not all of the host were given bodies, however. Some were so foolish as to receive no chance at all of redemption. One of these was Shara. She fell to earth with the rest of her kin, be instead of being forced to live a mortal life, her essence was trapped inside a large, deep red gem.

It was her fall, slamming into the earth at such speed and with such force that it created the broad plains of the steppe and forced the mountain to rise. Trapped, then, in the gem, she became encased in the mountain and was left there for all eternity to contemplate her foolishness.

Scholars note that there is evidence of the Keshaly’i heritage of the Hnura’i in this telling of the Shara Mountain creation; including the idea of the heavenly host engaging in a civil war and falling to earth in flames and blood in an event the Keshaly’i call The Great Fall. It appears that the Hnura’i may have combined this Keshaly’i creation myth for all the peoples of the earth with their specific emergence (much later than the telling in the Keshaly’i version) as the Hnura’i people on the northern continent.

Pre-Conquest

Prior to the treaty that made Rin a province of the Hnura’i Empire, the Shara Mountain was a sacred place for the indigenous peoples, but it was not forbidden territory. However, it was warned that people should venture up the slopes only at their own risk, for those who did not treat the mountain with respect, suffered the same fate as the demons whose pursuit of the fairy created the mountain in the first place.

When the Hnura’i arrived, conquering this last reach of the Hnura’i territory, a contingent of powerful warrior women discovered the giant red gem in a cavern on a small, high plateau on the slopes of the mountain. They named this stone The Heart of the Mountain and, having communed with the stone, established a temple on the site.

Worship of The Heart of the Mountain soon followed, and these warrior women transformed into warrior priestesses. Their philosophy seems to have different quite extensively from the rest of the Hnura’i. They did not appear to believe in the separation of the two peoples - the indigenous people and the Hnura’i peoples were equal in their eyes. Inter-racial marriages were common in this cult, when marriages did occur. The priestesses eschewed the institution entirely, opting to have children out of wedlock and, if the resulting child was a girl, raising them in the temple to become the warrior-priestess-guardians of the Shara Mountain.

Not much else is known about this cult, known to Hnura’i historians as the Cult of the Sacred Heart; no writings survive, save what was written about them by Hnura’i observers, who were uniformly appalled at this cult.

Hnura’i Unification and the Sacking of the Mountain​

The cult of The Sacred Heart was the final casualty in the unification efforts of the Eternal Emperor. A younger soul then, the Emperor was appalled at what he observed at the temple. The dissolution of the cult was a key point in his negotiations with the Kingdom of Rin, who was the first of the frontier provinces to negotiate an agreement to accept their Emperor as their regent.

The cult, however, long ago left to their devices by the rulers of the Kingdom, refused to either disavow their beliefs, and would not disband.

What followed was one of the few battles the emperor fought in his campaign to unite the Hnura’i under his banner. The priestesses fought valiantly, costing the emperor a great number of men; but they were egregiously outnumbered. In the end, they lost the battle, their High Priestess, whose name was never recorded, cut down in front of the altar that had been erected before the Heart of the Mountain.

So courageous was her last stand, and so pervasive was the sorrow of the stone that the emperor himself fell to his knees and wailed in grief at her death.

Post Unification

In his grief and shame at what he had done to the priestesses of the Cult of the Sacred Heart, the emperor declared the mountain forbidden territory. He forbade all mention of the cult and banned their teachings. None were permitted upon the slopes.

In this, it seems, the mountain was in agreement, for anyone afterwards who went seeking for the ruins of the temple soon found themselves lost. Those who could not find their way back down died on the slopes.

And so, the mountain, the cavern which held the heart, and the ruined temple remained undisturbed and its guardians forgotten until one fateful afternoon, when a very exhausted stranger and a gaggle of rescued children were granted sanctuary in the ruins…