The Barghast

 

Barghast (non-human): pastoral nomadic warrior society (GotM, Glossary)

 

The Barghast: a warrior caste tribe found on various continents (MoI, glossary)

 

Physical Description

 

"The three Barghast were clearly siblings, with the woman the eldest. White paint had been smeared on their faces, giving them a skull-like appearance. Braids stained with red ochre hung down to their shoulders, knotted with bone fetishes. All three wore hauberks of holed coins - the currency ranging from copper to silver and no doubt from some looted hoard, as most looked ancient and unfamiliar to Gruntle's eye. Coin-backed gauntlets covered their hands."  - (MoI US HB, p.170) 

 

 

Origins

 

 

Bauchelain: 'Extraordinary, isn’t it, that such people can be found on other continents as well, calling themselves by the same name and practising, it seems, virtually identical customs. What vast history lies buried and now lost in their ignorance, I wonder?...The Barghast are an ancient people indeed, and were once far more numerous. Accomplished seafarers as well...Not a question of a fall from some civilized height into savagery, however. Simply an eternal . . .stagnation. The belief system, with all its ancestor worship, is anathema to progress, or so I have concluded given the evidence.’ - (MoI, UK Trade, p.189)

 

 

'He knew something of the clan markings among the Barghast, how each hunter group was identified through their woad tattooing.' - (GotM, UK Trade, p. 198)

 

'Barghast were known for their odd sense of humour.' - (GotM, UK Trade, p. 116)

 

Seventh Nameless One in the Ritual of Release: 'Barghast, Trell, Tartheno Toblakai...these are the surviving threads of Imass blood, no matter their claims to purity. Such claims are inventions, yet inventions have a purpose. They assert distinction, they redirect the path walked before, and the path to come. They shape the emblems upon the standards in every war, and so give justification to slaughter. Their purpose, therefore, is to assert convenient lies.' - (BH, Prologue)

 

Favoured Weapons:

Lance

Short Axe

 

Ancient Barghast Swords: 

A sword, its water-etched blade narrow, single-edged, and like liquid in the play of torchlight. The weapon was overlong, tip flaring at the last hand-span. A small diamond-shaped hilt of black iron protected the sinew-wrapped grip. The sword was unmarked by its centuries unoiled and unsheathed. 

‘There is sorcery within that.’

‘No.’ Cafal raised the weapon, closing both hands in an odd fingerlocking grasp around the grip. ‘In our people’s youth, patience and skill were wedded in perfect union. The blades we made were without equal then, and remain so now.’

...

The blend of metals defies time’s assault. Among them, metals that have yet to be rediscovered and now, with sorcery so prevalent, may never be.’ He held the sword out to Paran. ‘It looks unbalanced, yes? Top-heavy. Here.’

Paran accepted the weapon. It was as light as a dagger. ‘Impossible,’ he muttered. ‘It must break—’

‘Not easily, Captain. The flex seems stiff, yes? Thus you conclude it is brittle, but it is not. Examine the edge. There are no nicks, yet this particular sword has seen battle many, many times. The edge remains true and sharp. This sword does not need mothering.’ - (MoI UK Trade, p.571)

 

 

Examples of Barghast Sorcery

 

'The Barghast shaman worked his talents on them. A disease took them all, even my stallion' - (GotM, UK Trade, p.204)

 

'a Barghast shaman bringing himself and his hand-picked hunters into the area. He must have used a Warren to get here.' - (GotM, UK Trade, p.202)

 

The Barghast on Genabackis

 

The Barghast Spirit World

 

The high-prowed canoes lay rotting in the swamp, the ropes strung between them and nearby cedar boles bearded in moss. Dozens of the craft were visible. Humped bundles of supplies lay on low rises, swathed in thick mould, sprouting toadstools and mushrooms. The light was pallid, faintly yellow. 

 Insects flitted through the air in a desultory absence of haste. Frogs croaked and the sound of dripping water was constant. A faint smell of salt was in the air. I’m in a long dead warren, decayed by the loss of mortal memory. The living Barghast know nothing of this place, yet it is where their dead go –assuming they make it this far. - (MoI UK Trade, p.346)

 

Movement in the mists alerted him. Figures appeared, closing in tentatively, knee-deep in the swirling black water. The wizard’s eyes narrowed. These creatures were not the Barghast he knew from the mortal realm. Squatter, wider, robustly boned, they were a mix of Imass and Toblakai. Gods, how old is this place? Hooded brow-ridges hid small, glittering eyes in darkness. Black leather strips stitched their way down gaunt cheeks, reaching past hairless jawlines where they were tied around small longbones that ran parallel to the jaw. Black hair hung in rough braids, parted down the middle. The men and women closing in around Quick Ben were one and all dressed in close-fitting sealskins decorated with bone, antler and shell. Long, thin-bladed knives hung at their hips. A few of the males carried barbed spears that seemed made entirely of bone. - (MoI UK Trade, P 346 -347)

 

The First Landing and the Founding Spirits

 

‘The First Landing. Here wait the warriors who did not survive the journey’s end. Our fleet was vast, Mage, yet when the voyage was done, fully half of the canoes held only corpses. We had crossed an ocean in ceaseless battle.’

‘And where do the Barghast dead go now?’

‘Nowhere, and everywhere. They are lost. ....

 

‘These are the warriors. The army. Yet . . . our warchiefs are not among us. The Founding Spirits were lost long ago. Mage, a child of Humbrall Taur has found them. Foundthem!’

‘But there’s a problem.’

Talamandas seemed to slump. ‘There is. They are trapped . . . within the city of Capustan.’  - (MoI UK Trade, P 346 -347)

 

‘Does Humbrall Taur know?’

‘He does not. I was driven away by his shouldermen. The most ancient of spirits are not welcome. Only the young ones are allowed to be present, for they have little power. Their gift is comfort, and comfort has come to mean a great deal among the Barghast. It was not always so. You see before you a pantheon divided, and the vast schism between us is time – and the loss of memory. We are as strangers to our children; they will not listen to our wisdom and they fear our potential power.’

‘Was it Humbrall Taur’s hope that his child would find these Founding Spirits?’

‘He embraces a grave risk, yet he knows the White Face clans are vulnerable. The young spirits are too weak to resist the Pannion Domin. They will be enslaved or destroyed. When comfort is torn away, all that will be revealed is a weakness of faith, an absence of strength. The clans will be crushed by the Domin’s armies. Humbrall Taur reaches for power, yet he gropes blindly.’ - (MoI UK Trade, P 348)

 

Can you feel them, Captain? The spirits? All the barriers have been shattered, the Old Ones have joined with their younger spirit kin. The forgotten warren is forgotten no more.’

 

Every shoulderman among the White Faces will awaken to the change, to the burgeoning. They’ll feel that power, and know it for what it is. More, the spirits will make it known that

their masters – the true gods of the Barghast – are trapped in Capustan. The Founding Spirits are awake. The time has come to free them.’

 

Capustan and the Founding Spirits

 

Barghast do not live upon holy ground – the dwelling place of the bones of their ancestors. Do you live in your own cemeteries? You do not. Nor do we. The first Capan tribes found naught but the barrows of Barghast dead. They levelled them and with the Daru raised a city on our sacred land.

‘This affront cannot be undone. The past is immutable, and we are not so foolish as to insist otherwise. No, our request was simple. Formal recognition of our ownership, and right to make pilgrimage.

‘You denied the request, again and again. Priests, our patience is at an end.’  - (MoI UK Trade, p. 311)

 

Aye. The Barghast gambit. Generations of pilgrims . . . long before the coming of the Capan and Daru, long before the settlement was born. Barghast do not normally honour their dead in such a manner. 

 

No, the bones hidden here – somewhere – are not simply the bones of some dead warchief or shoulderman. These bones belong to someone . . . profoundly important. Valued so highly that the sons and daughters of countless generations journeyed to their legendary resting place.

Thus, one significant truth . . . which leads to the next one.

Hetan trembles. The Barghast spirits . . . tremble. They have been lost – made blind by the desecration. For so long . . . lost. Those holiest of remains . . . and the Barghast themselves were never certain – never certain that they were here, in this earth in this place, were never certain that they existed at all.

The mortal remains of their spirit-gods.

And Hetan is about to find them. Humbrall Taur’s long-held suspicion . . . Humbrall Taur’s audacious – no, outrageous – gambit.

‘Find me the bones of the Founding Families, daughter Hetan.’

 

The bones lie beneath us. Gathered here, in the chambered heart of the Thrall – how long ago, I wonder? - (MoI UK Trade, p. 313-314)

 

From where Itkovian stood he could see a web-like span of branches reaching out to an outrigger.

Three workers lowered themselves into the chamber, lanterns in hand. The Shield Anvil moved closer. The craft had been carved from a single tree, its entire length – more than ten paces – now flattened and corkscrewed in its resting place. Alongside it, Itkovian could now make out another craft, identical with the first, then another. The entire hidden floor of the Thrall’s Council Chamber was crowded with boats.

He had not known what to expect, but it was certainly not this. The Barghast are not seafarers . . . not any more. Gods below, these craft must be thousands of years old.

‘Tens of thousands,’ the Destriant whispered at his side. ‘Even the sorcery that preserves them has begun to fail.’ ( MoI UK Trade, p.318)

 

Bodies filled the craft, stacked haphazardly, each one wrapped in what looked to be red-stained sailcloth, each limb separately entwined, the rough-woven cloth covering each corpse from head to toe. There appeared to be no desiccation beneath the wrapping.

Rath’Queen of Dreams spoke, ‘The early writings of our Council describe the finding of such dugout canoes . . . in most of the barrows razed during the building of Capustan. Each held but a few bodies such as these you see here, and most of the canoes disintegrated in the effort of removing them. However, some measure of respect for the dead was honoured – those corpses not inadvertently destroyed in the excavations were gathered, and reinterred within the surviving craft.

There are,’ she continued, her words cutting through the silence, ‘nine canoes beneath us, and over sixty bodies. It was the belief of scholars at that time that these barrows were not Barghast – I think you can see why that conclusion was reached. You may also note that the bodies are larger – almost Toblakai in stature – supporting the notion that they weren’t Barghast. Although, it must be granted, there are most certainly Toblakai traits among Hetan and her people. My own belief is that the Toblakai, the Barghast and the Trell are all from the same stock, with the Barghast having more human blood than the other two. I have little evidence to support my belief, apart from simple observation of physical characteristics and ways of living.’

‘These are our Founding Spirits,’ Hetan said. ‘The truth screams within me. The truth closes about my heart with iron fingers.’

‘They find their power,’ Cafal rumbled from the edge of the pit.

Karnadas nodded and said quietly, ‘They do indeed. Joy and pain . . . exaltation tempered by the sorrow for the ones still lost. Shield Anvil, we are witnessing the birth of gods.’  - (MoI UK Trade, p.319)

 

Itkovian slowly nodded. ‘It is well,’ he said with fullest understanding, ‘when you find yourself in the embrace of your god.’

Cafal bared his teeth. ‘Gods, wolf. We have many. The first Barghast to come to this land, the very first.’

‘Your ancestors have ascended.’

‘They have. Who now dares challenge our pride?’

 

The Barghast Gods

 

The birth of Barghast gods rang like a hammer on the

anvil of the pantheon. Primordial in their aspect, these

ascended spirits emerged from the Hold of the Beast, that

most ancient of realms from the long-lost Elder Deck.

Possessors of secrets and mysteries born in the bestial

shadow of humanity, theirs was a power wreathed in

antiquity.

Indeed, the other gods must have felt the tremor of

their rising, rearing their heads in alarm and consternation.

One of their own, after all, had just been abandoned in

the mortal realm, whilst a First Hero assumed the

warrior mantle in his place. More, the Fallen One had

returned to the game in dire malice, corrupting the

warrens to announce his deadly desire for vengeance

and, it must be said in clear-eyed retrospect, domination.

Burn’s sleep was fevered. Human civilization

floundered in countless lands, drowning in the mire

of spilled blood. These were dark times, and it was

a darkness that seemed made for the dawn of the

Barghast gods . . .

In the Wake of Dreams

Imrygyn Tallobant the Younger

(MoI, UK Trade, p.534)

 

Rituals, Beliefs and Sticksnares

 

Hetan: 'Mortal souls are savage things...Many must be held down to keep them from ill-wandering. Thus, the oaks are brought down from the north. The shouldermen carve magic into their trunks. The one to be buried is pinned beneath the tree. Spirits are drawn as well, as guardians, and other traps are

placed along the edges of the dark circle. Even so, sometimes the souls escape – imprisoned by one of the traps, yet able to travel the land. Those who return to the clans where they once lived are quickly destroyed, so they have learned to stay away – here, in these lowlands. Sometimes, such a sticksnare retains a loyalty to its mortal kin, and will send dreams to our shouldermen, to tell us of danger.’(MoI, UK Trade, p.186)

 

Hetan: 'We stood long in the bone circle, Captain, whilst every shaman of the gathered clans danced the weft of power. Long in the bone circle.’(MoI, UK Trade, p.191)

 

'Blood-iron – that’s iron quenched in snow-chilled blood . . . a Barghast practice when shamans invest weapons. Thus, the wielder and the weapon are linked. Merged . . .'(MoI, UK Trade, p.185)

 

Pre-Battle Ritual

The three Barghast had gathered now, Cafal jabbing a row of lances into the stony earth whilst Hetan busied herself tying a thick cord to join the three of them. Fetishes of feather and bone hung from knots in the cord...the span between each warrior would be five or six arm-lengths. When the other two were done, Netok handed them double-bladed axes. All three set the weapons down at their feet and collected a lance each. Hetan leading, they began a soft, rumbling chant...The Barghast chant ended abruptly. Gruntle glanced in their

direction. The three warriors faced east, lances ready. Coils of fog rose around their legs, thickening. In moments Hetan and her brothers would be completely enveloped.'(MoI, UK Trade, p.196-7)

 

Spirit Ritual

 

Hetan and her brother, Cafal, in full sunlight. The two Barghast were squatting on a worn, faded rug, heads bowed. Sweat – blackened with ash – dripped from them both. Between them was a broad, shallow brazier, perched on three hand-high iron legs and filled with smouldering coals.  Soldiers and court messengers flowed around them on all sides.

Shield Anvil Itkovian studied the siblings from where he stood near  the headquarters entrance. He had not known the Barghast as a people enamoured of meditation, yet Hetan and Cafal had done little else, it seemed, since their return from the Thrall. Fasting, uncommunicative, inconveniently encamped in the centre of the barracks compound, they had made of themselves an unapproachable island.

 

Hetan and Cafal were now leaning close to the brazier, where white smoke rose in twisting coils into the sunlit air.

Startled, it was a moment before Itkovian stepped forward.  As he approached, he saw that an object had been placed on the brazier’s coals. Red-tinged on its edges, flat and milky white in the centre. A fresh scapula, too light to be from a bhederin, yet thinner and longer than a human’s. A deer’s shoulder blade, perhaps, or an antelope’s. The Barghast had begun a divination, employing the object that gave meaning to the tribal name of their shamans. More than just warriors, then. I should have guessed. Cafal’s chant in the Thrall. He is a shoulderman; and Hetan is his female counterpart.  He stopped just beyond the edge of the rug, slightly to Cafal’s left. The shoulder blade had begun to show cracks. Fat bubbled up along the thick edges of the bone, sizzled and flared like a ring of fire. The simplest divination was the interpretation of the cracks as a map, a means of finding wild herds for the tribe’s hunters. In this instance,

 

Itkovian well knew, the sorcery under way was far more complex, the cracks more than simply a map of the physical world. The Shield Anvil stayed silent, tried to catch the mumbled conversation between Hetan and her brother. They were speaking Barghast, a language of which Itkovian had but passing knowledge. Even stranger, it seemed the conversation was three-way, the siblings cocking their heads or nodding at replies only they could hear.

The scapula was a maze of cracks now, the bone showing blue, beige and calcined white. Before too long it would begin to crumble, as the creature’s spirit surrendered to the overwhelming power flowing through its dwindling lifeforce.

 

The Barghast, The Tiste Edur and the Moranth

 

The Shield Anvil’s attention was drawn to the carving on the prows; while no two sets were identical, there was a continuity in the themes depicted – scenes of battle at sea, the Barghast clearly recognizable in their long, low dugouts, struggling with a singular enemy, a tall, lithe species with angular faces and large, almond-shaped eyes, in high-walled ships.

As he crouched to study one such panel, Cafal murmured behind him, ‘T’isten’ur.’

Itkovian glanced back. ‘Sir?’

‘The enemies of our Founding Spirits. T’isten’ur, the Grey-Skinned. Demons in the oldest tales who collected heads, yet kept the victims living . . . heads that remained watchful, bodies that worked ceaselessly. T’isten’ur: demons who dwelt in shadows. The Founding Spirits fought them on the Blue Wastes . . .’ He fell silent, brow knitting, then continued,

‘The Blue Wastes. We had no understanding of such a place. The shouldermen believed it was our Birth Realm. But now . . . it was the sea, the oceans.’

‘The Barghast Birth Realm in truth, then.’

‘Aye. The Founding Spirits drove the T’isten’ur from the Blue Wastes, drove the demons back into their underworld, the Forest of Shadows – a realm said to lie far to the southeast . . .’

‘Another continent, perhaps.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘You are discovering the truth behind your oldest legends, Cafal. In my home of Elingarth, far to the south of here, there are stories of a distant continent in the direction you have indicated. A land, sir, of giant firs and redwoods and spruce – a forest unbroken, its feet hidden in shadows and peopled with deadly wraiths.

‘As Shield Anvil,’ Itkovian resumed after a moment, returning his attention once more to the carvings, ‘I am as much a scholar as a warrior. T’isten’ur – a name with curious echoes. Tiste Andii, the Dwellers in Darkness. And, more rarely mentioned, and then in naught but fearful whispers, their shadow-kin, the Tiste Edur. Grey-skinned, believed extinct – and thankfully so, for it is a name sheathed in dread. T’isten’ur, the first glottal stop implies past tense, yes? Tlan, now T’lan – your language is kin to that of the Imass. Close kin. Tell me, do you understand Moranth?’

Cafal grunted. ‘The Moranth speak the language of the Barghast shouldermen – the holy tongue – the language that rose from the pit of darkness from whence all thought and all words first came. The Moranth claim kinship with the Barghast – they call us their Fallen Kin.

But it is they who have fallen, not us. They who have found a shadowed forest in which to live. They who have embraced the alchemies of the T’isten’ur. They who made peace with the demons long ago, exchanging secrets, before retreating into their mountain fastnesses and hiding for ever behind their insect masks. Ask no more of the Moranth, wolf.They are fallen and unrepentant. No more.’

 

Barghast Clans

 

Ilgres Clan

'...Ilgres Clan. Before the Crimson Guard had enlisted them, their home territory had been...among the mountains just south of the Porule...The Ilgres numbered among the strongest of those who had joined the Crimson Guard at Blackdog Forest'(GotM, UK Trade, p. 198)

 

White Face Clan (nation)

 (including: Senan, Gilk, Ahkrata, Barahn, Nith’rithal - MoI, Glossary)

Hetan: 'The clans have never united to wage war, but if they did, the warriors of the White Face would number seventy thousand.' (MoI, UK Trade, p.309)

 

Ahkrata Clan

'Distinguished by their characteristic nose-plugs, lone braids and multi-toned armour fashioned from Moranth victims – including Green, Black, Red and, here and there, Gold Clans – they were the smallest contingent, having travelled farthest, yet reputedly the meanest. Avowed enemies of the Ilgres Clan...' (MoI, UK Trade, p.336)

 

Skincuts - female warrior society of the Ahkrata

 

Barahn Clan

'Humbrall Taur’s closest rival was the warchief Maral Eb, whose own Barahn Clan had arrived in strength – over ten thousand weaponbearers, painted in red ochre and wearing bronze brigandine armour, their hair spiked and bristling with porcupine quills.' (MoI, UK Trade, p. 336)

 

Sub-Clan/Warrior Society: Skullsplitters

 

Gilk Clan

'Their hair was cut in stiff, narrow wedges and they wore armour assembled from the plates of some kind of tortoise. Distinctively short and stout for Barghast, they looked to the captain to be a match for any heavy infantry they might face.' (MoI, UK Trade, p. 336)

A plains clan whetted on interminable wars against mounted enemies

 

Senan Clan

Humbrall Taur's own clan

 

Gadra Clan

- paint their bodies with red and yellow ochre

 

Sub-Clan: Snakehunter

 

 

 

 

 

Clothing

 

First Appearance of Hetan, Cafal and Netok:

 

'The three Barghast were clearly siblings, with the woman the eldest. White paint had been smeared on their faces, giving them a skull-like appearance. Braids stained with red ochre hung down to their shoulders, knotted with bone fetishes. All three wore hauberks of holed coins – the currency ranging from copper to silver...ancient and unfamiliar... Coin-backed gauntlets covered their hands. A guardblock’s worth of weapons accompanied the trio – bundled lances, throwing axes and copper-sheathed long-hafted fighting axes, hookbladed swords and assorted knives and daggers.' (MoI, UK Trade, p.183)

 

Given the alarmingly thick and rancid greases with which the Barghast covered their bodies, Gruntle suspected those insects were suffering from frustration – drawn close by a warm body but unwilling or unable to alight.

 

 

 

Living conditions

 

Paran studied the tent and its meagre scatter of contents, seeking clues as to the nature of the warrior who stood before him. The floor was covered in bhederin hides. A half-dozen spears lay to one side, one of them splintered. A lone wooden chest carved from a single tree trunk, big enough to hold a three-deep stack of stretched-out corpses, dominated the far wall. The lid was thrown back, revealing on its underside a huge, massively complex locking mechanism. An unruly tumble of blankets ran parallel to the chest where Taur evidently slept.  Coins, stitched into the hide walls, glittered dully on all sides, and on the conical ceiling more coins hung like tassels – these ones blackened by years of smoke.

 

 

 

Notable Barghast

 

Trotts

Humbrall Taur

Hetan

Cafal

Netok

 

 

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