BROHTAUR

Brohtaur: The Path of Growth
Codex of the Brohlorians — Horn, Hide, and Handshake
“If the plant grows, I grow.”
I. The Vanishing of Paradise
Before the desert winds howled across Scorrachai, there were jungles.
Thick canopy. Heavy air. Water that shimmered like a dream.
The Brohtaur remember this not as history, but as inheritance.
Then one day, the jungle was gone.
No slow decay.
No creeping blight.
No warning.
A flash. A heat. A silence.
Some said it was a great spell gone wrong.
Some blamed the gods above.
Some whispered of creatures from beyond the stars.
Others said nothing at all.
What mattered was simple:
Scorrachai was no longer home.
II. The Plant Philosophy
Among their elders was a quiet philosopher who once kept a single jungle plant in a clay pot beside his dwelling.
Each day he watched it.
It endured heat.
It drank water.
It rooted itself in dirt that was not its birthplace.
And it grew.
He said:
“We must be like plant. If plant grows, I grow.”
When the jungle vanished, many despaired.
He did not.
“If the land no longer grows us,” he said, “we grow ourselves.”
Thus was born the Brohtaur creed:
Growth through hardship.
Strength through change.
Blessing through loss.
The scorching was not punishment.
It was invitation.
III. Southward Into Shadow
The first migrations led them south into Myrr’Kael.
They expected jungle.
They found something else.
The canopy was thicker.
The water darker.
The silence heavier.
This was no paradise. This was the Gloamhollow Expanse—a stretch of swamp and tangled forest where light struggled and rot remembered.
It was alive.
And it watched.
There, the Brohtaur encountered another people.
IV. The Meeting of Brothers
They were massive like themselves, but smooth-skinned and broad-mouthed. Hippofolk. The Brohlax.
At first, there was tension.
Horn met tusk.
Snort met grunt.
Suspicion met stare.
Then someone laughed.
Then someone offered food.
Then someone performed the same strange clasped-hand greeting both cultures had practiced since youth.
A mirrored gesture.
Silence followed.
One Brohtaur said, “You lost home too?”
One Brohlax nodded.
That was enough.
They were not the same people.
But they were the same story.
V. The Brohlorian Belief
Together they formed the Brohlorians.
Their belief was simple:
The lords did not take paradise to punish.
They took paradise to unite.
Loss had led them to one another.
If Scorrachai had not burned, they would never have met.
Thus they gave thanks—not for destruction, but for the brother found within it.
“Paradise is not place.
Paradise is people.”
VI. The Western Settlement
They built along the western coast of Myrr’Kael, where ocean winds softened the swamp’s breath.
Roles formed naturally:
Hunters brought back massive game.
Farmers cultivated hardy jungle crops.
Guards patrolled borders at dusk.
Cooks prepared feasts large enough for ten tables.
Musicians played deep drums and reed-flutes beneath lantern light.
They trained together.
They laughed loudly.
They built wide.
Life thrived.
Until night came harder.
VII. The Swamp That Hates Light
The Gloamhollow Expanse did not appreciate lanterns.
Creatures began slipping from the mangroves at night.
Feral things.
Long-limbed things.
Bone-crowned silhouettes dragging themselves through mud.
These were called the Umbravore—swamp-born predators that fed on warmth and disruption.
They did not raid for food.
They raided for silence.
Homes burned. Guards fell. Children were frightened.
The Brohlorians did not flee.
They formed something new.
VIII. The Hornbound Lodge
Thus rose the Hornbound Lodge—a monster-hunting brotherhood forged by oath.
Their vow:
“We do not wait for darkness.
We meet it.”
Bands of Brohtaur and Brohlax ventured deep into Gloamhollow.
They mapped Mirebound Colossi routes.
They tracked Umbravore nests.
They waded chest-deep into black water to strike at threats before they reached home.
Their hunts became legend:
The Night of Seven Lanterns.
The Colossus That Bled Black Sap.
The Battle Beneath the Mangrove Moon.
Scars were honored.
Losses remembered.
Growth continued.
IX. The Furling in the Swamp
One night, during a patrol near the eastern swamplands, a lone figure crashed through reeds.
Small. Breathless. Mud-caked.
Behind him thundered something massive.
The Lodge intervened.
Horn met bone.
Tusk met rot.
The Umbravore fell.
The small one was a Furling.
His name was Tovren Reedhand.
He spoke of Gloomdew. Of sacks. Of a tree called Vaelthyr. Of hawk-folk who ruled the sky. Of a promise earned—and a truth discovered.
The Brohlorians listened.
They did not mock.
They did not judge.
They shared food.
They offered direction.
And when Tovren chose to leave once more, they did not stop him.
New knowledge had arrived.
But the Lodge made a choice.
They would not entangle themselves in sky-politics.
Their duty was here.
The swamp still moved at night.
The people still needed protection.
X. The Path Forward
The Brohtaur believe growth never ends.
Scorched jungle led to dark swamp.
Dark swamp led to brotherhood.
Brotherhood led to purpose.
They do not seek empire.
They do not chase gods.
They grow.
And if another paradise burns tomorrow—
They will grow again.
XI. The Rise of the Brohseidon
One morning, the western sea did something unfamiliar.
It held its breath.
The tide drew back farther than it should have. Gulls went silent. The horizon darkened—not with storm, not with cloud, but with shape.
A fin broke the surface.
Not flesh.
Steel.
From beneath the horizon surged a shadow vast enough to swallow memory. Its back split the ocean in a single rising arc—ridged like the spine of an ancient predator, plated in salt-scarred iron and arcane seamwork.
Then came the full reveal.
A colossal vessel carved in the likeness of a megalodon.
Iron-toothed prow.
Runed gill-vents glowing faint beneath brine.
A dorsal ridge etched with sigils older than the marsh.
Along its flank, in bold hammered script:
MEGABROHDON Brohthership
The beaches emptied.
Brohlax dropped their nets.
Brohtaur lifted spears.
The Hornbound Lodge formed ranks without a word.
The vessel breached fully, sand trembling beneath its displacement. Steam hissed from vents. A hatch along its spine irised open.
Out stepped figures broad of shoulder and heavy of tooth.
Sharkfolk.
Scarred by pressure.
Sun-bleached along the jawline.
Salt-worn and sea-steady.
And smiling.
The Brohlorians stood tense.
The newcomers approached without blades drawn.
For a long moment, wind moved between horn and fin. The marsh inhaled. The sea exhaled.
Then one sharkfolk removed his helm and spoke, voice deep as undertow.
“…Sup, broh?”
Silence held.
A Brohtaur blinked.
A Brohlax exhaled through wide nostrils.
Then a Brohlax stepped forward with roasted root in hand.
The sharkfolk accepted.
A Brohtaur passed a gourd of fermented jungle brew.
The sharkfolk nodded once, approving.
Then came laughter.
Deep. Rolling. From gut and gill alike.
Then came the clasp.
Not horn-to-hand.
Not hoof-to-fin.
Forearm to forearm.
Firm.
Recognized.
They named themselves the Brohseidon Tideborn.
Descendants not of Scorrachai’s forests, but of a drowned reef-city far beyond the western shelf—a citadel of coral towers and tide-lantern streets shattered when a leviathan kraken rose from the abyss and brought ruin in a single catastrophic surge.
They too remembered home.
They too remembered light refracted through water.
They too lost everything in one crushing collision of tentacle and stone.
And so they built.
They forged vessels instead of walls.
They learned the language of pressure and current.
They shaped arcane turbines to answer the deep.
The MEGABROHDON Brohthership was not merely transport.
It was vow made metal.
A hunter shaped like the thing they feared.
For scores they roamed the western tides, hunting rumors of the kraken that shattered their city, following tremors along trench and reef. In their patrols, they sensed something inland—another people forged by loss, hardened by swamp and scar.
Now they had found it.
Not rivals.
Not threat.
Brohthers.
The Brohlorian Accord expanded that day.
Horn.
Hide.
Fin.
Where Brohtaur struck, Brohseidon breached.
Where Brohlax anchored, Brohseidon held the line beneath the waterline.
The Hornbound Lodge became triune.
Tide-patrols guarded the western marsh-mouths.
Joint marsh-sea operations cleansed Umbravore dens.
Amphibious formations rose from fog and surf alike.
The army grew.
Not louder in arrogance—
but steadier in bond.
The Brohseidon brought their own doctrine:
“Pressure reveals fracture.”
“Depth humbles the loud.”
“Breathe steady. Bite clean.”
They honored the river.
They respected the horn.
They added the tide.
Thus upon the western coast of Myrr’Kael stands a triune strength:
Brohtaur — Growth through force.
Brohlax — Flow through patience.
Brohseidon — Depth through pressure.
Three peoples.
One memory of what was taken.
One vow never to lose it again.
When the swamp darkens, they answer.
When the sea rises, they adapt.
When the night howls, the shoreline glows with firelight and shared laughter.
For paradise was not destroyed.
It was scattered.
And the Brohlorians found it again—
in each other.
XII. When the Bog Called for Horn and Hide
Peace in Myrr’Kael is never permanent. It is borrowed.
The Groglings of the central bog had long endured the pressure of the Southern Concord—Crocren cunning and Drizzak brutality pressing northward in steady, calculated expansion. At first it was skirmishes along reed lines. Then burned huts. Then full war-bands.
When the Southern Concord began claiming marshland by force, their intent became clear:
The bog was not enough.
The coast would be next.
And the coast belonged to the Brohlorians.
One dusk, as the western sky burned amber, a delegation of Groglings emerged from the reedbanks of Brohlorian territory. No weapons raised. No threats spoken.
Their Chief stepped forward, mud-streaked and steady.
“They are not stopping with us,” he said.
“When our land falls, yours will follow.”
The Hornbound Lodge listened.
The Rootwater Circles listened.
The Brohtaur did not need many words. Force understood force. If conquest was allowed to stand in the marsh, it would one day knock upon their coast.
The Brohlax required even fewer. They had built something rare in Myrr’Kael—community without domination. They would not see it swallowed by expansionist ambition.
The Brohlorians acted.
Brohtaur war-bands marched inland, horns wrapped in iron bands, forming disciplined wedges designed to break Drizzak shield lines. Where Drizzak strength met Brohtaur charge, the earth itself seemed to recoil.
Brohlax followed close—shielded formations, steady advance, anchoring Grogling flanks that had grown thin from seasons of attrition. Their presence turned retreat into resilience.
The Groglings adapted instantly. Guerrilla strikes synchronized with Brohtaur pushes. Ambushes timed to Brohlax stabilization. Swamp knowledge fused with coastal discipline.
When the Southern Concord realized the west had joined the fight, it was too late.
The Brohlorians were not defending marsh alone.
They were defending balance.
The war shifted.
And from that season forward, a simple understanding endured between coast and bog:
If one falls, the other answers.
Not out of charity.
Not out of obligation.
But because paradise had once been taken from them.
And they would not watch it taken again.

Brother.