The Arrival of Taratai and the Kalashtar on Eberron

Population Migration / Travel

The alien Quori once again enter Eberron but through different means and with different results.

In -802 YK, the quori who became the humanoid race known as the kalashtar first reached Sarlona, fleeing the plane of Dal Quor, the Region of Dreams and the persecution of their fellow quori who were allied to the ruling collective consciousness of the Plane of Dreams, the foul il-Lashtavar, which meant “the Dreaming Dark” in the Quori tongue.

The plane of Dal Quor has a deep and fundamental link to Eberron, the Material Realm, and the spirits of mortals travel to the Plane of Dreams when they sleep. Dal Quor is a mutable realm, and the fringes of the plane are shaped by the minds of the mortal dreamers. The center of the realm is shaped by an intelligent force more powerful than any mortal mind. This force, a form of collective consciousness, is vast and alien, and even its children—the quori—can not communicate with it directly. The heart of Dal Quor is shaped in the image of this unseen dreamer, and its essence permeates all things. The quori call this force the Quor Tarai, “the Dream of the Age” in the Quori tongue. There are multiple quori castes, but all quori are aspects of the Quor Tarai. The quori are immortal as they are born from the fabric of their home plane itself. Quori are immortals alien to Eberron. Though immortal beings, the quori still feed—they consume the psychic energy of dreaming mortals. They do not reproduce, but they can be killed; the total population always remains the same, however. When a quori spirit is destroyed, a new spirit eventually appears fully formed in the heart of the realm. This spirit is generally of the same caste as the spirit that was slain, but it does not possess the memories or personality of its predecessor. So it would be impossible for a native of Eberron to kill all of the tsucora caste of quori; there will always be more. But a hero could at least eradicate a particularly hateful quori personality.

While the Quor Tarai is a force with the power to match that of any god, it is not immortal. Quori sages have reached the conclusion that the current age is the third incarnation of the Quor Tarai—and that, eventually, the current Quor Tarai will pass away. When this occurs, the Plane of Dreams will implode, only to explode outward with the birth of the next Quor Tarai. This cataclysmic event will destroy all of the quori. The sages speculate that the spiritual energy that is the essence of the quori will remain and that a new host of spirits will be formed from this force, but no one can say what those spirits will be like, and in any case, the personalities of the living quori will be destroyed.
If the Quor Tarai is the collective dream that shapes Dal Quor, then that dream is currently a nightmare. The center of Dal Quor is a realm of horrors, and the quori are terrifying monstrosities. At the very heart of Dal Quor is a pit of shadows, filled with impossible and terrifying visions. The sages say that this is the core of the current Quor Tarai. They call it il-Lashtavar in the Quori tongue, “the darkness that dreams,” or more commonly, “the Dreaming Dark.” When quori are slain, the newborn quori emerge from this opening in the heart of the plane. While quori cannot communicate directly with the darkness, many feel an intuitive bond to it and feel its desires. Chief among the quori is the spirit of the leading kalaraq caste known as the Devourer of Dreams, the only quori to have ventured into the maw of the Dark and returned. Most quori revere the Dreaming Dark as the force that has given them life, and they revere the Devourer of Dreams as the voice of the Dark.

While most of the quori were creatures of their age, a few felt that their very spirits were at odds with the Dark, that they did not belong to this age. One of these, a kalaraq quori named Taratai, proved the theory of the cataclysmic ages of Dal Quor. She determined not only that the Quor Tarai would eventually be reborn, but that it would be reborn in a vastly different form; that this was an age of darkness, and the next age would be a time of light and joy. Taratai and her followers among the other quori castes immediately began to study the history of the plane to try to find a way to accelerate the change. This was their doom. The other quori had no desire for change and feared the thought of their world being transformed. The Devourer of Dreams declared that they would find a way to stop the turning of the age. The first step was to eliminate Taratai and her followers, with the hope that their essence would be reborn with more compliant personalities. This led to the events of the exodus and the birth of the race of kalashtar on Eberron. This conflict is the key to understanding both the quori and the kalashtar. The kalashtar want to reshape Dal Quor, and they believe that with their continued devotions to the religion they named the Path of Light they are doing so. The current residents of Dal Quor—the agents of the Dreaming Dark—are determined to maintain the current age and to break the cycle. It could be hundreds of thousands of years before the change is destined to occur, but the issue remains the same: the desire to find a path to an age of light set against the determination to maintain an age of darkness.

The kalashtar race has existed for only eighteen hundred years. It began in Dal Quor, where Taratai and her quori followers of light were being hunted down and exterminated by the agents of the Dreaming Dark. But there is more to Dal Quor than the realm of the Dreaming Dark. Every sentient creature on Eberron touches Dal Quor when it dreams, and every soul, every race, shapes its own piece of the fringes of Dal Quor. Fleeing from the Dreaming Dark, Taratai led her followers on an exodus through mortal dreams. While the quori could not travel physically between the planes as a result of the Quori-Giant War and the destruction of the world’s thirteenth moon, Taratai believed that she had found a way to cross through the subconscious and into mortal bodies on Eberron— provided that the proper portals could be found and that the hosts could be convinced to accept the travelers.

For a year Taratai and her quori traveled from dream to dream, passing through the dreams of dragons and beasts, never finding a place to rest. The Dreaming Dark’s agents were still baying at their heels, and between the Dark and the dangers of the dreams themselves, Taratai’s followers were slowly being destroyed. Finally, Taratai found the passage she needed in -802 YK—a subconscious conduit into the mind of a monk named Hazgaal from the mountainous nation of Adar on the southeastern tip of the continent of Sarlona. She knew that she could not maintain the connection for long, but she pleaded her case to Hazgaal, who was the master of the monastery—and to her surprise, he agreed to accept her band of fugitive spirits. Adar was the land of refuge, he said, and no creature would be turned away.

Sixty-seven Adaran men and women—including the Master Hazgaal himself—volunteered to share their bodies with the renegade quori spirits. In order to establish a permanent bond and truly escape from Dal Quor, it was necessary for the quori to merge fully—spiritually and mentally—with their human hosts, creating a synthesis of both personalities. These were the first of what Taratai called the kalashtar, a word in the Quori language that roughly translates as “wandering dreams.” It took time for the kalashtar to adapt to their new existence, but they were finally free from the Dreaming Dark. In Hazgaal’s body as the kalashtar Haztaratai (though many stories still call her Taratai), Taratai continued her studies of the nature of Dal Quor and the Dream of the Age, and she developed the traditions that are the core of the kalashtar, and now Adaran, faith called the Path of Light—a series of practices and devotions that she believed would accelerate the turn of the age in Dal Quor.

There was only one uncertainty for the first generation of kalashtar: What would happen when one of the kalashtar died? Before they found the answer to this question, another mystery was revealed: that of birth. When the first kalashtar child was born, they found that the quori spirit that was tied to the parent now also had a bond to the child. The spirit, Harath, found that it took more of an effort to communicate with either of his human hosts, but that he was nonetheless aware of the experiences of each.   Over the next few centuries, the process continued. As more and more kalashtar were born, the quori spirits were spread thinly among them, and it became almost impossible for the spirit to communicate directly with the kalashtar. The memories and basic personality were still there, however; even if they could not communicate, the spirits were still alive and conscious, experiencing the world through the eyes of hundreds of descendants. Each generation of kalashtar was more physically distinctive than the last, and each lived longer than the one before; it was clear that the spiritual symbiosis between human and quori was having a minor physical effect on the quori’s human hosts as well. As they slowly adapted to better suit their spiritual companions, the kalashtar began to develop potent psionic abilities. The kalashtar did not have access to the full psionic power of their ancestors, but they still had astonishing abilities. They could fly, send messages from one mind to another, and transform their bodies into living weapons. It was a time of wonders.

It would not last. Three hundred years had passed in the world of Eberron, but three thousand years had passed for the agents of the Dreaming Dark in Dal Quor where time flowed more quickly. The quori had spent these millennia studying Taratai’s flight, and they had found a way to improve upon it. Traveling the fringes of the Plane of Dreams where it interacted with Eberron, an interdimensional nexus called the Dreamspace, the quori could whisper into the dreaming minds of the people of Sarlona, implanting ideas and suggestions into their heads.

After a century of this manipulation, the quori managed to throw the nations of Sarlona into the chaos known as the Sundering around -500 YK. In the process, the quori arranged for certain people to meet, for bloodlines to be formed, and ultimately to create human hosts known as the Chosen that the quori loyal to the Dreaming Dark could psionically possess and control—without any degree of cooperation from the subject. Another two centuries passed, and a wave of charismatic young lords appeared among the war-torn realms of Sarlona in -302 YK. This new generation of rulers claimed to be divinely inspired, and they had the supernatural psionic powers to prove it. After a few more centuries, this alliance had “restored peace” to the shattered land—failing to mention that they had been responsible for the horrific wars of the Sundering, two centuries before. They established the nation of Riedra, home to hundreds of thousands of humans who were fanatically devoted to their new overlords, known as the Inspired.

The young kalashtar paid little attention to the events in Riedra, concentrating on their Path of Light—until the first army of the Inspired laid siege to Kasshta Keep. The kalashtar had been lucky to find Adar; the natural defenses of the mountainous land were almost impregnable. The Inspired had the resources of an entire continent at their disposal, however, and were growing more powerful every day. More than a thousand years later, this stalemate still continues.     But it was a stalemate forged through sacrifice. An aged Haztaratai had been the first of the kalashtar to cross Adar. Followed by her entire lineage, she did so as an indication that her people should spread out over Adar, stopping at the monasteries of Mountain soul and Korrandar, marking both as holy to many Adarans. In 151 Age of Taratai (-651 YK), Haztaratai passed from this world peacefully at Kasshta Keep. But the spirit of Taratai continued on, bound to Haztaratai’s lineage, and did so for over 550 years. Taratai’s scions were the most numerous among those kalashtar who had visions or dreams of the Shroud in the last stages of the Inspired’s takeover of most of Sarlona in the winter of 701 AT (-101 YK). The Shroud was a magical shield that would prevent the Inspired from magically teleporting into or scrying into Adar. Construction of the shroud resonators needed to create and maintain the Shroud started immediately, taking many months of work deep in Adar. When the Inspired finally laid siege to Kasshta Keep on the Adaran-Riedran border in mid-autumn of 702 AT (-100 YK), even the storms that naturally form when war comes to Adar could not stem the tide. The eldest of the Taratai lineage put out a call to his brethren, many of whom came to the front as quickly as they could. Together, the members of the Taratai line created a psionic meta concert unlike the world has ever seen.

Accompanied by a small army of brave Adaran monks and mystics, the Taratai kalashtar met the Riedrans near the Kasshta River and on the headlands of Syrkarn. Even those who survived the clash remember only silvery light. In the end, the Riedran army was broken, and Lord Ulakhun, one of the greatest kalaraq Inspired generals in history, was slain in body and his quori soul bound and imprisoned by the Keepers of the Word, the greatest masters of Adaran magic and mysticism. A magical gem still rests in Kasshta Keep, among many others, containing that quori fiend’s spirit. The war continued into winter, with the Taratai line of kalashtar fighting in the forefront against the Inspired—they felt personally responsible for the arrival of the Inspired on Eberron. By midwinter, the Inspired still pushed into Adar, razing to the ground the original Malshashar Monastery on the border of Riedra. The Inspired were less committed to taking Kasshta Keep only because of their losses to the Adarans’ soul-binding magic, but their war machine ground on from the north. In the late winter of 703 AT (-99 YK), shroud resonators were placed in the remaining fortresses in Adar, and one was placed in a cavern provided by new psionic allies the kalashtar had convinced to aid Adar—the insectoid race of dromites of the underground realm of Zi’til’natek. In the last month of winter of that same year, the few remaining kalashtar members of Taratai’s line came to each of Adar’s monastery-citadels. All the kalashtar disappeared in silver light as the shroud resonators began to function. The line of Taratai was no more, but their sacrifice meant that Adar’s borders became nearly impossible to cross by the troops of Riedra from that day forward.

The kalashtar were born in the mountains of Adar. Descended from the quori, a race of immortal and alien spirits, kalashtar have endless patience and a firm conviction that their traditions will someday usher in a golden age for all living beings of Eberron. They do not want to change in any way; they know what needs to be done to fight the Dreaming Dark, and they will continue until they succeed or have been destroyed. This attitude is reflected in the rigid monastic lifestyle of the Adarans, which has remained unchanged and uncontested for more than a thousand years. Almost all of the kalashtar live in one of the eight temple-fortresses that dot the mountainsides. What time is not spent in meditation or prayer is devoted to the defense of the realm, holding the natural battlements of Adar against the endless onslaught of the Inspired of Riedra. The Adaran kalashtar have no time for cultural change and no reason to believe that change is necessary.

Things are different on the continent of Reloren. The kalashtar of Reloren comes from a variety of backgrounds. Some migrated to Reloren before the Inspired arrived on Sarlona, blending quietly into the humans of the Five Nations before the Kingdom of Galifar united them. Others have been sent by kalashtar elders over the course of the last few centuries. Some came to study Reloren, while others were sent away to ensure that kalashtar society could not be eliminated in a single blow by the Inspired. The kalashtar of Reloren have more interaction with other cultures and do not have to deal with the constant distraction of war.

As a result, the kalashtar of Reloren are generally more optimistic and innovative than their Adaran counterparts, and they enjoy experimenting with new things. The kalashtar population of Reloren is split between a number of racial enclaves in the major cities of the continent. This pattern has largely been driven by the war with the Dreaming Dark. The Inspired might be able to arrange for the destruction of a small rural community, but they would never get away with smuggling an army into Sharn. By placing themselves in the capitals of Reloren, the kalashtar are also able to monitor the activities of the Inspired ambassadors: They already have strong roots in the cities the Inspired are now working to infiltrate. They cluster together not because they are uncomfortable around members of other races, but because they need the sense of safety in numbers, and it is easier to spot the actions of the Dreaming Dark in a closed system. Within a kalashtar community, the most influential form of social group is the lineage—the quori spirit that a kalashtar is bound to. This is not the same as a family group. Kalashtar inherit the spiritual bond from their parents, but the bond is always based on gender; a son always takes the father’s bond, while a daughter inherits from the mother. Thus, each lineage is composed of a single gender. All members of a particular lineage think of the others as brothers or sisters, even if they are actually distant cousins at best. Most kalashtar live with other members of their line.

There is no tradition of marriage among the kalashtar. Members of different lines socialize together and procreate (with the children being adopted and raised communally by the others of their lineage), but it is difficult for a kalashtar to imagine living with a member of another line for the rest of his life. In Reloren many old traditions are being questioned, however. The kalashtar respect age and wisdom, and most kalashtar communities are governed by a council with a representative from each lineage that has a presence in the community. Conflicts between lines are uncommon; the greater threat of the Dreaming Dark has always held the kalashtar together through periods of possible unrest. The method used to select a representative varies by lineage; in general, the leader is simply the person who has the overall confidence of his line, and it will change if that confidence is ever lost. The different communities are linked by lines of psionic communication; most communities have one psion who can open a telepathic link with other kalashat communities, which is used to check in with the guiding councils of the other cities in Reloren and the elders of Adar.

As a whole, mental discipline is part of kalashtar life, and this is reflected by their well-ordered society. Kalashtar generally act in the interests of what they consider to be the greater good, and mercy, kindness, and hospitality are important virtues within their society. Well-mannered visitors are always welcome, though a shadow watcher keeps a sharp eye on outsiders until he is certain they are not agents of the Dreaming Dark. Most other people find kalashtar communities to be austere; the disciplined kalashtar have few vices, and most donate any extra income to the community in the interests of defense, so they have few luxuries. But they are capable of enjoying life without much in the way of material goods, taking pleasure from the company of their kin. Some humans find this admirable, while others simply find it to be disturbing—because humans cannot understand the mental bond between kalashtar of the same line, the level of cooperation and lack of conflict between them often seems unnatural.

The kalashtar continue their devotion to the Path of Light, but many believe that the Inspired have come up with a counter to Taratai’s plans to overthrow the Dark. The Inspired have created a stagnant society in Riedra, and they are spreading their enormous hanbalani monoliths across the land in the hope of eventually realigning Eberron and the plane of Dal Quor so that the quori may once again physically enter the world. Many kalashtar believe that the Inspired plan to spread these monoliths across the entire world—and that if enough of them are built, it will finally secure the safety of the Dreaming Dark as all mortals dream exactly what the quori want them to.

The kalashtar do not intend to let that happen.