Toathra

As told by High Priestess Ora of the Batiri Goblins to members of the Assassin's Vine, LLC.

Transcribed and edited by Dr. Orvex Ocrammas of Haoma University

In the Beginning

This story, like all stories, starts at the beginning.
Hundreds of thousands of years ago, a pathway opened between a place that would one day be called Chult and the distant plane of Elysium. While the pathway was open, a curious tribe of couatl – celestial feathered serpents -- decided to investigate this strange land. While exploring the jungle the gateway closed, trapping the couatl in this world. They were the first intelligent life to make Chult their home. They called the place ‘Ahntoa’ after Ahntu, god of prophecy and forests and one of the first gods they learned of in this new world.
For millennia, the couatl lived in a timeless peace. Too powerful to be threatened by the dinosaurs and monsters that roamed the river valleys and swamps, they were Ahntoa’s benevolent caretakers. Their care for the land helped awaken the geshtai of Ahntoa. They named it Ubtao and became its passionate collaborators.
Millenia passed and the lands of Ahntoa were untouched by happenings in the outside world. Eight thousand years ago the outside world began to intrude. Caravans of goblins pushed south from the Tarqan Plains crossed the mountains on the southwestern boundary of their ancient homeland and discovered Ahntoa, They called this new land “Chult” after culta, their word for trees. Coming from a continent-spanning savannah, they had never seen so many trees. Seven tribes of goblins moved into the jungles. Whatever they were running from has long been forgotten. They gave up their elaborate wagons, useless on the narrow forest tracks of their new home and explored on foot.
These ‘batiri’ as they called themselves, were (and still are) a confederation of several goblin tribes. Since shortly after their arrival, they have lived in short-term villages made of grass huts, only staying five or ten years in any one place. As they slowly move across Chult, they shape the forest, planting fruit and nut trees and cultivating edible and/or medicinal plants.
The batiri brought their gods with them from the old country. From the couatl they also learned of Ubtao, add-ing the geshtai of Chult to their prayers. The gods were pleased, and all was peace and good hunting. For five thousand years, the batiri lived happily in Chult with occasional visits from the couatl, who had begun to move up into the mountains. Occasionally, small groups would find their way to Chult. Some thrived, some didn’t. It’s unclear when the ancestors of today’s aarakocra, firbolg and tabaxi tribes arrived, but they were few in number at first and all agree the batiri welcomed them upon their arrival.

The Olmans and Tamoachan the Great

Four thousand years ago, ausrani explorers from across the northern sea arrived in sailing ships, making camp at the mouth of the Soshenstar River. The couatl told the batiri about them and within a few days the strange ausrani and the batiri goblins were talking and trading, helped by the couatls’ telepathic abilities. The strangers said they were from a kingdom beyond the northern sea called Godossea and the batiri told them the stories of this place. All was peace and good hunting.
It turned out the strangers intended to stay. They cleared the jungle to build homes and villages. The batiri traded with them, showed them the wonders of Chult, and introduced them to the mysteries of the geshtai Ubtao. In time, the newcomers became many. Their villages became towns, and their towns grew to cities. They even built great stone pyramids, sometimes as tombs and sometimes as temples to their gods.
For two hundred years, the Godosseans traded, explored, and hunted the length and breadth of Chult. The couatls and batiri goblins introduced them to the tabaxi, firbolg and aarakocra tribes living deep in the interior. Strangers became neighbors, Chult was changed forever, and all was peace and good hunting.
Within a few centuries of the Godosseans’ arrival, the couatl had all but disappeared. No one knows if they died, or moved on, or even returned finally to their home in Elysium, but few have been seen in the 2,500 years since.
The Godossean colonists soon began to call their land ‘Olma’, and themselves ‘Olmans.’ They had built towns all through the interior of the Soshenstar Valley. The largest of these were dominated by stone pyramids, used as tombs of revered leaders and temples to the many minor gods (or greater geshtai) of Chult. Over the centuries, even minor geshtai were worshipped by the religiously promiscuous Olmans.
At the height of the Olman expansion south out of Nyanzaru an elven stranger appeared out of the jungle. No one saw a boat. Calling himself Tamoachan, he claimed to come from a country far to the north called ‘Cushra.’
His adventures quickly made him a folk hero. Tamoachan rode a triceratops into battle, armored in bone and brightly painted. Tamoachan once killed a tyrannosaurus with his bare hands. Tamoachan rescued a village from a horde of giant spiders. Tamoachan fed the hungry and consoled the grieving. It was no surprise that when the old king died suddenly with no heir, the people demanded that Tamoachan be crowned by the high priests. And so Tamoachan the Cushrite was made ruler of the Olman kingdom of N’gaza, though no one now remembers where N’gaza was; the city was reclaimed by the jungle long before the Olmans disappeared.
Tamoachan’s cruelty grew along with his power, and he terrorized the people of N’gaza. He enslaved them, work-ing them to death to complete the pyramid temple he had ordered built. At the height of his power, he became legendary for defeating several Chultan geshtai and trapping them in the pyramid he had built for himself. In time, of course, Tamoachan the Great became a threat to his neighbors as well as his own subjects. The other Olman kings then joined together, marched on the tyrant, and overthrew him. Many songs were once sung of Tamoachan’s defeat: songs of daring midnight raids, songs of duels between great heroes, songs of the siege of N’gaza and songs of the final defeat of Tamoachan by the Sorcerer-Queen of Ankara. The victors freed the slaves and adopted the survivors into their own kingdoms. The people left N’gaza for good in the wake of their liberation and the place was forgotten. Today only songs and ruins remain.
Soon after the death of Tamoachan and the abandonment of N’gaza, a sickness came upon the Olmans. The dying was terrible and lasted five years. When it was over not one in three Olmans remained alive. Their towns in the interior were abandoned and soon forgotten. The survivors moved to Nyanazru on the northern coast. Trade with the kingdoms across the northern sea dried up and disappeared. The various Olman kingdoms are for the most part long forgotten. Their ruins lost, only legends remain.
Among the stories of Tamoachan that survive, a few tell of his second in command, the vampire Tloques. Many of Tloques’ stories involve a magical bronze axe. It is said to be a powerful magical weapon that allows its’ wielder to walk through walls, among other powers. It is also said that Tloques can always sense the axe and will track down anyone who steals it from them and eat them alive. Slowly.
After the time of Tamoachan and after the Plague, the surviving Olmans recovered, but slowly. Within a thousand years they had returned to the jungle, founding five small city-states: Nyanzaru, the holy city of Mezro, Orolunga, Omu, and Mbala. By the time Godossea collapsed 1,200 years ago, the people of these cities had forgotten they once called themselves Olmans, let alone Godosseans. They sometimes called themselves ‘Chultans’ but most often identified as the people of a certain city: Orolungans, Omuans, and so on.
The Chultans’ cities thrived. Once again, they built stone monuments and trade flourished. All was peace and good hunting.

Acererack and the Fall of Omu

The rest of the story you know. After an all-too-brief golden age, the Omuans abandoned the worship of the geshtai Ubtao, turning instead to nine indigenous trickster geshtai. Some warned that their city’s subsequent decline was due to their abandonment of the old ways, but it was too late. The planewalking lich Acererack had arrived, in disguise and offering salvation through order.
At first the Omuans worked on his underground temple freely, in exchange for the peace and stability that Acererack brought. But eventually the lich took complete control, killing the nine trickster geshtai and enslaving the Omuans. He forced them to abandon everything to excavate what had become a tomb for the gods he had killed. The city of Omu became a death camp and Acererack -- deeply feared even in other cities -- was often whispered to be ‘Tamoachan Returned.’ When the Tomb of the Nine Gods was finished, Acererack massacred the remaining Omuans so that none could reveal the Tomb’s secrets. Acererack left, leaving behind the charnel house of Omu, bodies still littering the streets.
A century after the fall of Omu, Orolunga and Mbala destroyed each other in war. Holy Mezro survived until sixty years ago. At that time the entire population of the city mysteriously disappeared after the paladin lord Ras Nsi was defeated and his undead army driven into the jungle. Now only Nyanzaru remains, the smallest of the old Chultan cities. All the rest are memory and ruin. Nyanzaru itself had a renaissance when refugees from Orolunga and Mbala found their way to the coast after the war, swelling Nyanzaru’s population.
That was hundreds of years ago now. In that time, Nyanzaru and the religious center at Mezro were the only outposts of the formerly widespread Godossean-Olman-Chultan people. Over the past few hundred years, merchant ships began to appear for the first time since the fall of the Olmans more than a thousand years ago. At first just a few, but more have come from across the sea as the years have passed. Shanite, Nymerian, Thaanian, and Rheanese ships now regularly trade at Nyanzaru, allowing the merchant princes who control that trade to maintain their power. In the two generations since the disappearance of Holy Mezro, Nyanzaru has once again become a busy port.
The batiri have watched all of this unfold over many centuries. We were here long before Ras Nsi tried to conquer Mezro, long before Acererack destroyed Omu, long before the Olmans built their pyramids, and long before the first Godossean explorer landed at Nyanzaru four thousand years ago. Only the couatl have been here longer (if any, in fact, remain). We were here at the beginning, we gave this land a name, and we will be here long after everyone else is gone. May you have peace and good hunting.

The Return of Acererack, the Death Curse, and the Assassin's Vine, LLC.

See "The Death Curse of 1207 A.C." and "The Assassin's Vine, LLC" for details.

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