Lore: The Red Sword of Ythr

The Red Sword of Ythr is one of the most powerful magical artifacts to have ever been crafted by human hands. It was created two cycles ago now, by the hands of master artificers in the smithies in the heart of Ythr, the capital of Human Gleshmere and the lost cultural home of humans the world over. The Ythrians were renowned for their research into the higher mysteries of the realms, breaking into hundreds of outer planes, exploiting each one for its resources to use in ever more advanced and esoteric magical rites. The Red Sword was a culminating achievement in the arts of transdimensional metallurgy, polydimensional abjuration, and psychosomatic connection. It was given by the smiths of Ythr to the High Magos of Ythr at the Ceremony of Union, when the Pridesmen of Mounbreath finally pledged their axes and knowledge to the furtherance of humanities destiny. 

Such was the artifact's power that it was placed in the arms of a statue created from the cemented ash of ten thousand fallen Ythrian Legionnaires and wreathed in a bubble of space-time which can only be broken by the High Magos of Ythr. Even at the height of the Necerarch Crisis, when countless towns across Gleshmere were awash in blood, and the armies of man beset in all their bastions, the Red Sword was not unsheathed.


The Fall of Ythr

It was the 2nd Cycle, Ythr-Mounbreath had unified humanity and made peace with all the races of Gleshmere and Pessawyr. Twice the Necerach's had risen to rot the realm, and twice they had been thrown back, when the Third Rot of the Necerach's came, the peoples of Gleshmere were ready. Such was the scale of the nightmare host that crashed upon the shores, that the Giants were roused from their repose to resist the enemies of life. The battles fought there, upon the shores of the world wolf's continent are the stuff of legend,  it is said that every member of the Paladins of Vilhmae were slain in glory at the Bluffs of Klig, that the Cataphracts of the Ythrian Legion broke the 6th Siege of Andevite despite being outnumbered by fifty to one. One could fill tome after tome with the heroes and actions of that war, but they would all be overshadowed by the depth of the cataclysm to come.

The exact nature of the doom that befell Gleshmere is not well understood, the depth of violence that was unleashed left a deep scar in the memories and histories of that time. Much lore was lost in the fires, but what is known is that at the height of the Third Rot, the forces of the Necerach had reached the outskirts of Ythr itself, the first time that the mighty city had ever come under such a threat. Night fell on the third day of the siege and would not rise over Gleshmere again, a blood-red twilight would descend on the continent, and flocks of oil slick carrion swarmed over the land picking the flesh from dead and living alike. Children disappeared, dark figures stalked the land, and noxious clouds of poison energy drifted off the ocean.  Chaos reigned, the leaders of men suspected the Necerarchs had unleashed forbidden magics from the time before the perpetual cycle, they began their own rites to dispell the energies but ceased when reality tore open in the heart of the Necerarch's host. Lashing tendrils of pure hate tore out of the weeping sore in the skin of the world, as unspeakable creatures sallied forth from the maw and tore the Necerarch's host to pieces.

More of these tears opened around Gleshmere, and it was known that hope was surely fading fast.  In desperation, the call was given to abandon Gleshmere for any shore that was safe from the doom. The armies of Ythr-Mounbreath saved as many as they could, holding back nightmare things from beyond the ken of sanity. The Magi of Ythr and the Fangs of Mounbreath, the honor guards of their societies and representing the apex of arcane and physical military excellence in human society gathered in the shadow of the Statue of the Fallen as the High Magos of Ythr broke the seals and grasped the Red Sword. The shriek of daemons and the resounding howl of the Red Sword is said to have been heard throughout the world.

None saw the fate of the men and women that made that proud charge, but the transdimensional feedback that heralded the success of their mission was felt the realm over. The overpressure of reality reasserting itself knocked down every tree in Gleshmere and deafened any human within a mile of its shores.  For generations following the Fall of Ythr, none dared venture to the land that was touched by the unspeakable hand of outer creatures, for tales abound still of flocks of carrion bird darkening the skies and tendrils of unknown substance looming at the edge of the horizon.

The Indagators and Curian Pride of the River Lords made an expedition to those lost shores, called The Cradle Expedition it occured just after hostilities began with the Scintillians nearly a decade ago, looking for any scraps of Gleshmerian culture they could find. Those few that returned had blinded themselves to safeguard their minds from the things they had seen, but they carried with them, wrapped in a simple muslin bag, the Red Sword of Ythr. 

It is kept now in the heart of the Royal Library of Norastrah gripped in the hands of a Statue of a Blinded Indagator, etched with the names of every known member of the Paladins of Vilhmae, the Ythrian Legion, the Pride of Mounbreath, and all other warriors lost in the Fall of Ythr,  it is tended by a specialist team of caretakers including Vrundian Mages and Earasi artificers alongside numerous human scholars and artisans. None claim the right to use the blade in combat, such is the might legacy and power that lies inherent in its bearing, it is a symbol of the Master of Unified Humanity, a title which none may now hold with any legitimacy.