Lore
The cracked earth, where the air trembles with toxic gases, was once inhabited by creatures so powerful that the shadow of their wings could block out the sun. Among them was the Iron Crow, a giant bird whose feathers were like armour and whose bones were like steel, hardened by the depths of the earth itself. Its heart beat so hard that it shook the mountains, and its cry could reduce rocks to dust.
The centuries dragged on, and one by one the Iron Giants withered into dust. The world became desolate. The Iron Crow, broken and fading, sank into the black veins of the earth. There it lay in slumber, its flesh stiffening, its wings calcifying, until it was no longer wholly creature, no longer wholly stone – a relic suspended between life and death.
It was then that the first Emperor appeared. He was a man who found its remains and implanted a fragment of its tissue into himself, trying to steal the giant’s power, but what he gained was far greater and far stranger.
Through the Earthmarrow, he forged a bond with the Iron Crow. Its voice, at once whisper and thunder, entered his mind. A neural network with The Iron Crow was created. A hundred days and a hundred nights of meditation and consultations with his High Priests it took him to begin understanding the voice in his head.
But with this eventual success, he knew what he must do.
Gather titan bones and iron. Rebuild the colossal skeleton.
Earthmarrow would become its new blood.
The newly founded church would come to learn to call forth the arcane might of the Iron Crow.
Armies were raised, their commanders joined to the neural network with a miniscule version of the procedure the Emperor himself had undergone. They were able to move swiftly with great coordination, their communication impossible to intercept. Soon they conquered the nearby lands.
The Emperor proclaimed himself Iron Crow’s incarnation, and his army took on the appearance of birds – helmets shaped like beaks, armour decorated with wings, masks resembling crow skulls.
Thus was born the Yorok Empire.
