Nyoria

The long-time enemy of the Aldraku, their kingdom was shattered after a terrible defeat by their enemy. Once their strength was shattered, their many subject peoples rose up and exterminated them as part of the Dire Wars.

An Unfriendly, Unpleasant People
The Nyorians were a powerful, iron-age people with a large empire. They held this empire with a great fleet of wooden triremes backed up by well armed marines. Numerous other peoples paid homage to the Nyorians, typically offering up their young people as slaves and concubines.

Dark minds and Darker magic...
The Nyorians held congress with beings of the nether realms, worshipping Demons along with the spirits of their forefathers. They dabbled also in the arts of Necromancy, but not to the level of their hated Aldraku foemen.

A Vanished People Unmourned

The Dire Wars succeeded in removing the Nyorians from the world, completing the destruction the Aldraku started. The hatred the subject tribes held for the Nyorians was such that all structures of Nyorian make were cast down. Any such structures remained were buried by flood or volcano before their fall. Apart from legends and the occasional strange silver coin, virtually nothing remains of this people.

The World of Neyathis has been populated by four major ‘invasions' of humans from other worlds, including our (or an alternate) Earth, and so many of the peoples are strong analogs to known cultural groups. This is so because I simply love these cultures too much not to use them. However, their coming to the world is far enough back in time that pretty much any change can happen...

Cultural & Technological Notes -

The Nyorians were descended from people from northeast Terran africa and bear Egyptian and North-African remnants, though at their fall, they were at a late dark age/early middle-aged technology level. Iron and steel was used, ships were fairly seaworthy and weapons as complicated as arbalests were available.

Religion was tied closely to their Egyptian ancestors, but the signficance of such details as the Nile river largely vanished. Their homelands did not contain any river close to the Nile in size or cultural signficance.

The Nyorians are closely related to the peoples of the more recent Helena-Thoth empire, whose peoples were much more successful over the millennia.

The Nyorians developed a writing system that evolved from the hieroglyphics to a nearly pure Phonetic alphabet, though one that still strongly resembles its origins.

Artifacts and other remnants

Of course, no species of man can dwell upon the world and not mark it in some manner. Even the very through scourging by their enemies failed to destroy everything they built. Some items of great values remained intact, often as spoil retained by those who did not care as much about the origins of the item. After a couple of generations, there were few indeed who would even recognize an item as being of Nyorian origin. In truth, many items currently identified as of ‘ancient Helena-Thoth' origin are actually even older relics of the Nyorians. Few if any could identify the difference, except perhaps those few Nyorian undead. Sadly, any current Nyorian Undead are so old that they are all mad as hatters.

The Undead

The greatest collection of Nyorian undead is the vast swarm of wraiths that is Nethernimbus, though the wards of the Ku! have so far held, preventing these from entering the world. A few other Nyorian spirits still walk the world, speaking their dead language and bearing the finery of their station. The practice of Necromancy was present in Nyorian magic, but was eclipsed by their use of demonic magics.

Having been dead and gone for millennia, no corporeal Nyorian undead are known to exist - all of long since crumbled to dust - and the few non-corporeal undead are almost all terribly insane.

Campaign Use

As a dead people, they are little more then backstory, the creators of ruins and odd artifacts. Legends have grown over the ages, and what tales exist of the lost people are exaggerated. Where they occasionally summoned demons, they became demon worshippers, where worshippers, they have become demons themselves.

Much of their story is told in Nethernimbus