The Yaghur (“the Faithful” in their own language) were a human tribe that inhabited the lands near the Sour Sea and the region around the future Cursed Pit.
History[]
Originally, the people who would become the Yaghur had migrated from the Darklands, finding shelter in the region around the Straits of Stars in the shadow of a great mountain. One night, the mountain was hit by a warpstone meteor of tremendous size. The tribe, believing that the meteor was the work of a wrathful god, began to worship it, renamed itself into the Yaghur. The Yaghur learned to harness the power of warpstone and began to build a small empire, which collapsed once the effects of Warpstone, like madness and mutation, became apparent. [1c] The Yaghur split into two warring groups: One held true to the worship of the sky-stone, the other embraced a new god called Melekh, the master of the Fourfold Path. Both sides waged war against each other for centuries, with the few remaining Yaghur that remained true to the old ways becoming more and more diminished.
Salvation seemed at hand when Nagash, accursed king of Khemri and first Necromancer, reached their lands. After Nagash had claimed the mountain and the warpstone within and had slaughtered the priesthood by raising the dead, the few remaining Yaghur began to worship him as the God of the Mountain made manifest. [1b] Accepting their fealty, Nagash drove the Yaghur northward to eradicate the followers of Melekh, raising the dead from the conflict for his own designs and eradicating their culture in a war that lasted over two hundred years. [1d] The Yaghur that remained loyal to him began to feast on the flesh of the dead on his demand, and were transformed into the degenerate ghouls that still haunt these lands. The subjugated former followers of Melekh would instead become the majority of Nagash's human servants.
Culture[]
Similar to the human tribes of the north, the Yaghur laid their leaders, called hetmans, to rest in large barrows, although without weapons or other grave-goods. They worshipped wodden totems of idealized human figures that were tended to by a wandering priesthood. [1a] These priests used the power of warpstone to command the dead, although without the sophistication of the rites that Nagash had mastered thanks to his study of Dark Magic under the Druchii. [1a]
Thanks to the presence of warpstone, most Yaghur were mutated in some way or the other. [1a] Their technology was barely advanced to the use of bronze, with most of their weaponry being looted from others or being remnants of their former empire. [1a]