Sapience: Chronicles of the Dark Blade

by Voice From the Abyss

Various tales of the Yautja Dark Blade Clan, in the form of an anthology, exploring various topics— from their origins, to their faiths, to specific people's backstories. (SubscribeStar link on my profile)

1. Origins

WARNING: The following story contains...
Mild descriptions of violence and nuanced political/sociological themes.

This is the origin-story of the Dark Blade Clan, as I envision it. The Dark Blade Clan is a canonical Yautja Clan— it's the Clan that Scar, Celtic, Chopper, Wolf, the Jungle Hunter (PREDATOR), Dark (AvP 2010), and Scarface (Concrete Jungle videogame) are members of, as far as I can tell. They're sort of the "Ultramarines" of the Yautja— the poster-boys, if you will.

Being companion-piece to my other story, Sapience, this is basically a distant prequel to Sapience, and... essentially everything else in my "Sapience Mythos".

Consider this a paraphrasing of the contents of a Dark Blade school's history-class, I guess. And if anything seems out-of-order or confusing or out-of-pocket: that's not me working off of canon lore, it's me deliberately keeping things unclear. Pretty much all of this is head-canon. I have an entire timeline for the AvP galaxy's history lined up, and I am revealing parts of it, piece by piece.

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Sapience: Chronicles of the Dark Blade — Origins
An Abridged Account of the History and Origins of the Dark Blade Clan

In the words you are reading, and in the meaning thereof, you shall henceforth find: the tale of the Dark Blade Clan.

The origins of the Dark Blade Clan are... unique, however, and require some amount of prerequisite explanation. Unlike many of the Clans of modern day, the Dark Blade do not trace their origins back to before The Great Defeat. It is not so simple as beginning with one particular warlord's rise-to-power during the ancient days of Yautja Prime's post-modern period, nor is it a matter of speaking about two, disparate Clans merging together, nor agreeing to form a third, allied Clan between them to serve as a territorial buffer, like many others.

The Dark Blade are not one of the Halcyon Clans whose members trace their lineages to any of the great conquerors of The Infancy and medieval era, nor is the Dark Blade a recent upstart, taking the political landscape by storm or stepping on the toes of their betters and neighbors. It is not the eldest, nor youngest; it is not the most or least powerful; it is not the wealthiest or the poorest; it is not most or least renowned...

But it is, by the reckoning of some, one of the most interesting to study from the outside...

The Dark Blade is unique among Yautja Clans in three aspects:
The nature of its birth. The nature of its early development. And its very recent rise to prominence.

None of these traits are unique or exclusive to the Dark Blade Clan, but the Clan is unique in that it embodies all three of them, at once, where other Clans may only be defined by a single of these things.

The tale of the Dark Blade Clan begins... with the Bright Spear Clan. For it is from the Bright Spears that the Dark Blade was born...

We begin our tale at the 2,112th Year After the Drukathi Migration (ADM) and the 1,239th Year Preceding the Filial Schism (PFS)— the Reconnection had been long-since accomplished, and the Reintegration was winding to a close. The vast and disparate Clans of our species had finally reunited after five-thousand years of disconnection, under a shared vision, and in the interest of fraternity. It is in the shadow of this cultural phenomenon that the Council of Ancients issued the Realignment Proclamation— the command for all Clans, separated by millennia of distance, to seek to repatriate themselves with the vaunted "Yautja Core".

This era of Yautja history was a turbulent and bizarre one, which many in the modern day tend to feel either very strongly about, or feel nothing at all about. It, however, is not the primary focus, nor reason, for our examination of Dark Blade history. Rather, the point is that during the Reintegration and leading up to the Realignment Proclamation, the Council of Ancients held a series of debates and votes collectively named The Contrition for Lyzatsad's Forgiveness, where it near-unanimously ruled that genetic-augmentation and engineering of any Yautja, for any reason, was a crime of the highest order, and that artificial enhancement of one's genes or the gene-pool of a population was an insult against the Gods Lyzatsad, Paya, and Edelrho.

It held that advancement via any means other than natural-selection and crucible is a hollow and meaningless victory; it held that The Path demanded effort, sacrifice, bloodshed, and strife on a population-level as much as on an individual and spiritual level (it would only be a matter of centuries later that Genetic Debasement became a punishment levied upon recidivist and egregious Bad-Bloods).

The arguments made for and against The Contrition, and the conflicts had over it, are a subject all on their own for another day. For now, what matters is the effect that this had on... the Bright Spear Clan.

The Bright Spear Clan, themselves, were brought into existence shortly after the fires and ruination wrought by The Great Defeat— when all of Yautja civilization hung in the balance on a blade's edge, and the First Council of Ancients was formed from the ashes of our near-extinction: all lived in a state of total martial-law. The Council, in fact, was primarily comprised of those lucky or skilled enough to have survived The Great Defeat and whom happened to be on Yautja Prime when interstellar travel was stolen from us, and nearly the totality of the rest of the population of Yautja Prime were the orphaned and the Clanless.

The Bright Spear Clan was born when seventy-seven of the smallest and most broken Clans on Yautja Prime took stock of what all had happened to our people and sought to do something about it. Legend says that they went to the fledgling Council of Ancients, as one, and asked what they must do— what the Council's will dictated, and what direction they must take in such desperate times. The Council had had no "official" power at the time, and so it was with this instance of these disparate Clans seeking their leadership that the Council's place in our society came to be. Having been veterans of war, the Council dictated these Clans unite together into stronger wholes and become extensions of the Council's will.

And so, they did. Banding together around mutual ties of geographical closeness and hereditary lineage, the seventy-seven became a league of twelve that each came to be greater than the sum of their parts. The Vassals of the First Council— The Charred Dozen. Among these twelve "Super-Clans" (they were each massive in number, at the time, but would be considered "average-size" by today's standards) were, in no particular order:

The industrious Alloy Jaws, who retained chief ownership of the largest dry-docks and industrial plants left on Yautja Prime and had the monopoly on experienced engineers and craftsmen. Their warehouses, infrastructure, and ship-building prowess would prove to be the backbone of a resurgent Yautja Prime for generations, and their first ziggurats stand resolute atop Yautja Prime's largest plateau, to this day; they are, in many ways, the diplomatic glue holding together The Charred Dozen and were the ones upon whom all relied for production and support, for generations to come. If you lost the favor of the Alloy Jaws, you would not last very long; if the Alloy Jaws did not support you, they'd be pressured into reversing their stance, sooner or later, by your allies— but not always fast enough to save you. Vying for the aid of the Jaws kept The Charred Dozen from growing complacent with, or falling upon one another many-a time.

The devout Celestial Sages, who came to possess the eldest and holiest relics and religious artifacts inherent to The Path, and whose members were and are among the most advanced and knowledgeable theologists and priests in all the Yautja. Their temples and monasteries are still considered some of the holiest places for any adherent to The Path, and their religious teachings are revered then and now; the Sages and their oracles continue to be widely-heeded. The suffering and ruin brought by The Great Defeat produced many deep, and wide-reaching theological questions, and it is the ongoing task of the Sages to help the Yautja remain in-alignment with the Gods and the Triumvirate. Their mountain-top dome-cities remain at the peaks of Yautja Prime's largest and highest mountain-range and they yet-still possess the fabled Damocline Texts— ancient relics whose dialect only the Sages can read, and whose pages reportedly contain hundreds-to-thousands of yet-unfulfilled prophecies.

The contemplative Stricken Seers, who, with little distinguishing characteristics other than their scholarly bent, took to the task of studying and recording history. All had seen how swiftly and easily the Yautja could be wiped out— all had felt and witnessed how close we had come to complete and total erasure and oblivion. All of the Yautja's achievements, struggles, stories, history, culture, art, philosophy, and meaning: had almost been rendered null and void— muted and silenced to nothingness in the hollow vacuum of reality, reduced to dust by a cruel and callous enemy that had no reason to remember us after their leisurely conquest. The Seers, then, knew that the memory of a people, more than anything else, is precious beyond reckoning— that of the Yautja, and all others.

Thus it was that they sought to aggregate and preserve any and all records they could possibly retrieve, from any and all sources available. They make it a tradition to discard and forget all grudges and disagreements— they make it a point of pride to remain impartial in all matters, as they send their stenographers and writers to note down anything and everything of import. They even make great efforts to understand the stories of other species, and it is because of the Seers that the Yautja Core lost its taste for genocide. The Seers continue, among a few others, to catalogue and clarify the ancient past, as well as the emerging present.

The thrifty Gilded Cartographers, who had amongst them the most experienced economists and sociologists on Yautja Prime. Their task, from the time of The Great Defeat, all the way up until halfway through the Reintegration, was to conceive of and establish a system of economics that would produce the greatest results while avoiding the stagnancy and complacence that the older system encouraged, and which partially led to The Great Defeat.

It is said that the Cartographers, by far, were the most ravaged by conflict within their own numbers, of all The Charred Dozen; it is said that the Cartographers spent nine-tenths of their lives and time fighting with one another in their desperation to create a workable solution to the economic question, for all Yautja kind— they're often stereotyped as having had little idea what precisely to do most of the time, and repeatedly coming to a miraculous solution at the very last minute (which is only partially true).

This acrimony was well-founded, for they understood, better than almost anyone, that the lifeblood of any civilization is the strength and endurance of its economy and industry. For this reason, the Cartographers having always been middling in numbers and combat-accolades compared to rest of The Charred Dozen remained among the most preeminent, as their trading and economic savvy saved whole peoples from devastating war, countless times. They, additionally, were cunning and prolific merchants and tradesmen, who pioneered the lanes and highways of commerce across Yautja Prime that are still used, even now.

Today, their Clan is still among the smallest of all Yautja, and yet their future is cast in the deepest stone, for they now serve as the incorruptible guardians of the Council of Ancient's Grand Treasury. Their members are the ones who collect taxes, yearly, from every Clan in the Great Wheel; to kill a Cartographer or refuse them entrance to your Clan is to invite censure from Council, itself.

The paranoid Undaunted Pathfinders, whose members were almost exclusively comprised of veterans and soldiers. They, among all the Dozen, were the most familiar with the carnage wrought by the Drukathi, for they were some of the few that had served in the old Grand Armada of the Yautja Empire, and they were some of the few who survived long enough to tell of what befell it. They, by virtue of having the strength and skill to survive, were some of the few to be able to claim that they fought during The Great Defeat. And so, beaten and broken down as all others, the Undaunted were tasked with creating a new military doctrine— a new standard and paradigm by which all must achieve excellence.

Their experience formed the basis of drilling and conscription for generations onward, and they spent most of their existence honing their own tactics and training all other Clans in the ways of war; even today, they continue to improve their doctrines and strategies, and continue to train other Clans in their ways— they remain the ones that evaluate and report the military-readiness of all other Clans to the Council of Ancients. The Undaunted were and are the very definition of military tacticians and strategists.

The innovative Erudite Talons, Sister-Clan to the Alloy Jaws by virtue of close relation, who happened to possess the largest proportion of physics and material-scientists among their number. Many, today, consider them an "off-shoot" of the Jaws, or a glorified vassal to them, but this is not the case. Despite being the smallest of all the Dozen, they still retained their own laws and leadership and sovereignty. It is because of their tireless efforts, blood, sweat, and sacrifice, that the Yautja regained their previous technological savvy, and innovated far beyond the old Empire; it is because of the Talons that the Yautja rediscovered FTL techniques, and it is because of them that the Yautja still today retain the best in camouflage, communication, weaponry, and transportation. And though they became so small in later centuries that they eventually completely disbanded: this is not mourned, for their fall is viewed as evidence that the Yautja species has advanced so far and grown so much in the realm of science-savvy: that an entire Clan dedicated to the advancement of it became redundant.

The wise Bone Wraiths, who were some of the few to retain detailed knowledge of skinning, gutting, naturalism, and ecology; their members initially united around their shared traditions and love of what once were called "The Old Ways" of The Hunt. Where such practices were once considered old-fashioned during the old Empire, the Clans that would become the Bone Wraiths stayed true to the older practices of Hunting, primarily due to being widely dedicated to Paya. The Wraiths were elevated as examples to follow by the First Council, for this, and much of their knowledge became the basis for the most foundational tenets of every Clan's Hunting and ecological policies. The Wraiths are responsible for things as ubiquitous and widely-accepted as Naming Days, and the stages of Hunting Proficiency throughout a child's teaching. Today, they remain avid and respected pioneers of incorporating the Trophies and body-parts of Prey into armor, weapons, equipment, and tools; and they remain the standard of Hunting practices against which all other Clans are judged.

The magnanimous Hallowed Judges, whose philosophers and former legal-experts set out to create and standardize the most efficient possible system for enforcing the laws put in place by the First Council. They were the first to conceptualize and pioneer the concept of Arbitrators and Inquisitors— where before every Clan had its own, internal policing, and pursuing Bad-Bloods and recidivists across borders or between jurisdictions was nearly impossible. In an especially chaotic and lawless time, the Hallowed Judges were a sorely-needed blessing, and today: their Capital, deep in one of Yautja Prime's largest canyons remains the largest, eldest, and most-revered source of training for prospective Arbitrators, despite that the Hallowed Judges Clan no longer make it their primary focus.

The diplomatic Serene Sentinels, whose lineages and members inherited and displayed an immense and uncanny talent for the art of dueling. The Clans which combined to form the Sentinels shared a common tradition of monasticism in learning ancient and complex martial-arts (many being devout followers of Trumaiak), and in the days after The Great Defeat, the Sentinels became the "face" which the Council used to make diplomatic overtures to other Clans— it was always a common truth that any Clan's representative should be representative of that Clan's strength, and so the Sentinels were oft-used as the diplomats of the First Council. It is said that not one Sentinel ever lost an Honor Duel while their Clan served as the Council of Ancient's diplomats, and their martial-art techniques and traditions were long-studied and sought-after by Clans all across Yautja Prime; today, it is primarily from the Sentinels that the Council employs its bodyguards and praetorians.

The diligent Earthen Scythes, who were the most knowledgeable and efficient farmers, brewers, agronomists, animal-husbandry experts, food-scientists, and nutritionists left on Yautja Prime. Unlike the others among The Charred Dozen, the Clans that would come to form the Earthen Scythes were specifically encouraged to do so by the First Council, as their combined skills were deemed particularly important. In a world that used to have vast infrastructure and supply-chains to support a civilization large enough to be called an "empire", where such luxury was violently and suddenly taken away by a ruthless enemy: the Earthen Scythes were undoubtedly the most important and vital resource on the planet for at least the first three millennia after The Great Defeat. Even today, the Earthen Scythes are a net-exporter of food and food-products to thousands of other Clans across the homeworld, and their techniques continue to be the gold-standard for the tending of crops. Their territories of vast floodplains are now known as Yautja Prime's bread-basket.

The imperious Bright Spears, who were not deficient compared to any of the rest, in any field, and boasted twice the population as the others. The Bright Spears, in many ways, constituted the First Council's personal enforcers, for they were the only member of the Dozen that could afford to stand alone against any of the others for any appreciable length of time (thanks partly to their ancient habit of being migratory), and they were the only Clan among the Dozen that held little to no scruples about carrying out any punishment demanded by the Council against any other Clan, no matter how ruthless or damning. Where the Serene Sentinels were the Council's first greeting to foreign Clans: the Bright Spears were the implicit (and sometimes very explicit) threat of force, to get across the Council's final word.

And... the Icarian Flesh Weavers, whose scientists were responsible for prodigious and mind-bending advances in genetic-engineering and gene-therapy, early into the post-Great Defeat period. In addition to pioneering and innovating medical and medicinal techniques that are still used, today, the Weavers were responsible for curing many or all of the ancient, genetic and hereditary diseases that plagued the Yautja from the dawn of time: via genetic manipulation. They were also responsible for the tripling of the Yautja lifespan, the improvement of the Yautja immune-system and musculoskeletal architecture, and... the creation of The Mutilated. In the period following The Great Defeat, many things once-thought sacred were... overlooked... and any possible advantage over the dreaded Drukathi was taken, with haste. Their ultimate fate... will be discussed, shortly.

The Charred Dozen would, for the next three-thousand years, work together extremely closely and would each focus monomaniacally on their specializations so as to make compartmentalization and the process of rebuilding more efficient, as they each carried out the First Council's will and formed the closest thing to a centralized government that the Yautja had ever had since The Infancy. They would lean on one another and prosper despite many trials throughout the millennia; they would defeat and halt many threats to the fledgling First Council, and they would be the examples by which all other Clans sought to emulate.

It was as The Charred Dozen first formed that the First Council issued The Signal: a single, gigantic message, broadcast across all Yautja space, to be heard by all that could possibly hear it with what little communicative equipment they had. The Signal was the First Council's seminal proclamation, and the one under which all isolated populations of Yautja lived and labored for millennia— that being:

"The hated enemy may have broken us; they may have taken our knowledge, they may have taken our wings, and they may have taken our dignity. But they have not, nor can they ever, take our will! To all sons and daughters of Yautja Prime, heed this call! Proliferate, prepare, and sharpen your knives! By any and all means available, even those we used to deem abhorrent! The war goes on, though the shooting may have halted! Our foe may have forgotten about us, but we shall show them soon enough that failing to wipe us out will be the gravest mistake of their wretched existence!".

And so, we come back to the start of our tale: 2,112 Y-ADM / 1,239 Y-PFS — the Reconnection long done, and the Reintegration coming to an end. The Contrition for Lyzatsad's Forgiveness is held, over the course of thirty-eight years (starting at 2,074 Y-ADM), and as it goes on: political winds begin to shift.

The Yautja, as a civilization, had largely restored itself to good health by the time the Reintegration ended. The myriad of Yautja colony-worlds and systems had, for the most part, been contacted and reconnected to a resurgent Yautja Prime, as the people seized back control of their galactic territory. The more interconnected Yautja worlds became, the more wealthy and populous many Clans became. And the more that all Clans began to prosper, the less and less important The Charred Dozen soon were. And the less that each of The Charred Dozen were needed for their given specializations, the more that each began to either hyper-specialize or diversify their assets. The Bright Spear Clan, having always been the "jack-of-all-trades", found themselves evermore irrelevant as their fellow league-member Clans broadened their own horizons.

But the Bright Spears had a stereotype and reputation for being the Council of Ancient's enforcers, and they were obsessively occupied with maintaining that identity and proving it right.

As The Contrition for Lyzatsad's Forgiveness came winding slowly but surely toward its conclusion, many among the Council began to spread rhetoric condemning, for the first time in a very long time, a particular Clan among The Charred Dozen. Genetic manipulation was becoming increasingly unfashionable, and the Flesh Weavers Clan were starting to sweat at the dialogue. They had their chance to self-advocate, of course, and made their case heard— genetic engineering had indisputably improved the life-span and quality of life for all Yautja, everywhere, and the Council had allowed those exact innovations to be done by all Yautja across the void of worlds via The Signal, while the Flesh Weavers' efforts were largely confined to the homeworld.

But that very improvement and artificial advancement of their species was deemed the problem, at hand. The Flesh Weavers could argue and profess, all they wanted, that the Yautja having the intelligence and means to genetically engineer in the first place was, in itself, evidence of Lyzatsad's favor (an admittedly unverifiable claim), but it didn't halt the impending consensus. Things became particularly enflamed when it suddenly became a popular talking-point that the Drukathi had been avid users of genetic-manipulation, as well, before they disappeared. It was entirely possible that the Drukathi did, indeed, make prolific use of such technologies, but the Council at the time (and even today) had no actual evidence of it. Still, on it went.

When it finally came that genetic-manipulation was deemed dishonorable, and an Unholy crime by the decree of a dozen Celestial Sages, the Weavers did not bother sending a representative to the Council. The Weavers, however, made no show of accepting this, and in fact: made no announcements or public-appearances. They all retreated into their ancestral home, the Brass Citadel, at the tip of the Ma'agin Peninsula.

This is where we come to the matter of the leader of the Bright Spear Clan, Clan Elder and Autarch: Gahn'tha-cte'Bhu'ja The Driven (1). A man of great renown within and without the Bright Spears. His exploits throughout his life are varied, and none of them are particularly impactful in terms of his actions during The Contrition, but all of them were drive, by his belief that the Bright Spear Clan had been, was, and must forever remain the most preeminent among The Charred Dozen (and that the Dozen should, themselves, remain preeminent among the species)— that the Bright Spear must serve as an example to all of the Yautja as a model of respect, strength, and above all else: virtue.

Gahn'tha-cte'Bhu'ja's seventh-sired son, the greatest of all the man's progeny, was a cunning and promising young politico named Bhu'ja-Ul-Ju'dha The Calculating (2), who had already become the most obvious successor to The Driven's position on the Bright Spear Council at the age of barely one-hundred. It was to the point that he assisted his father in everyday business and sitting in on Bright Spear Summits. Although he and his father tended to disagree on many topics, the former never attempted to seriously challenge the latter's position, nor even instigate an Honor Duel to seize power for himself. When asked why: Bhu'ja-Ul-Ju'dha simply implied that he believed his father still had important work to do for the Bright Spears.

And, finally, a man named Vy'ken-Mar'cte The Black (3) was an orphan raised among the Bright Spear's Ward-Halls, who was mauled by a beast, as a child and lost his eye. Mocked and derided by his fellows throughout childhood, both for his injury, and for his constantly-dour mood, The Black had everything against him and still managed to become one of the most feared and respected warriors among the entire Clan, through pure and total stubbornness. It was his contention, from adolescence onward, that one's heritage and circumstances mean nothing, and that the primary indicator of success was and will forever be: effort. An odd position for one who never took any obvious joy in Hunting or combat.

It is said that many Elders among the Bright Spear Clan's Council heavily disliked Vy'ken-Mar'cte for having outshone many of them, despite his lowly beginnings and young age. There had been an echoing theme in Bright Spear history, going back to the days of the First Council, of prideful and unreliable leadership who felt themselves inherently superior to their constituents— not an entirely unfounded notion, given that it tended to be individuals from a particular set of ten or-so families and lineages that rose to the level of Elder, for reasons that could range in explanation anywhere from dumb luck, to divine providence, to intrigue.

The Black, therefore, gained a following among the Bright Spears for being something of a mascot for many of their frustrations, and living proof that it did not take heritage or wealth to be truly great— this wasn't something he sought after, or took any pride in, and it never rose to anything beyond the people taking after his well-known habits and spoken opinions.

Vy'ken-Mar'cte and Bhu'ja-Ul-Ju'dha, incidentally, became very good friends despite the former being so unpopular among the latter's typical social-circle; Vy'ken-Mar'cte was often brought along on business by The Calculating, despite being six decades his junior.

These three individuals will now be the focus of our tale, for their actions are the crux of Bright Spear/Dark Blade history.

When the Flesh Weavers Clan went into seclusion as The Contrition wound to a close, little was said on it, and all among the Council of Ancients made no comment. It was presumed by most that the Weavers were simply coping with the condemnation, or preparing to do away with their bio-engineering systems and equipment, or something of that sort. But when this total silence and seclusion went on for another month, and when radio and electronic hails to them from other Clans yielded no response: suspicions rose (not helped by the recent association between the Weavers and the Drukathi). Gahn'tha-cte'Bhu'ja The Driven, acting without assent from the Council, nor from his fellow Elders, took it upon himself to see what the Flesh Weavers were doing— he set off, alone (save for a cadre of devoted bodyguards), and met the Flesh Weavers at their citadel, himself.

Upon arriving at their gates, he was invited inside from a shouting voice atop the walls, and The Driven allowed himself in. He wasn't seen or heard-from for exactly twenty-eight hours, and when he and his men left the Brass Citadel, they came out looking pale, haggard, traumatized, and generally unwell. They answered no questions and made no announcements— they only returned immediately home. Even Bhu'ja-Ul-Ju'dha could coax no answer from his father, as the Autarch simply proceeded to meet with the Bright Spear Council for a full day, after a preceding day of recovery. Nothing is known of what precisely occurred within the walls of the Brass Citadel (although some can guess)... all that is known is that Gahn'tha-cte'Bhu'ja The Driven spoke to the leadership of the Hallowed Judges, the Serene Sentinels, and the Undaunted Pathfinders.

Barely a Term after the fact, The Driven called for the mobilization of nearly half the Bright Spear Clan, and the assemblage of a war-party. He declared to all that the Flesh Weavers had flagrantly disregarded the decree of the Council of Ancients, and had continued committing the sin of "artificial advancement", thrice-fold, in the time since The Contrition. He claimed, before an audience of Bright Spear criers, that the Flesh Weavers attempted to bribe him into allying with them against the rest of The Charred Dozen, and ultimately against the Council, itself, in exchange for the power they could offer— high treason...

The Bright Spear Clan had little reason to doubt Gahn'tha-cte'Bhu'ja's word— especially given that his legend and rise-to-power began with him famously overthrowing the prior Autarch by exposing him for a fraud. And so it was that the Bright Spears rallied under him, with The Calculating and The Black called-upon to serve as his fellow brigade-leaders.

The Bright Spear war-party met, as planned, with another war-party from the Undaunted Pathfinders Clan, and together: the two set off toward Ma'agin Peninsula, bringing with them siege-vehicles and cannons. They did not expect a prolonged siege, nor a protracted fight, should the worst come to pass— the Flesh Weavers Clan had never been subjected to invasion or combat from others, as their relative importance on Yautja Prime had kept them safe and hidden in the shadow of The Charred Dozen. As such: the Brass Citadel had relatively few real defenses to speak of, as well as few valuable resources to take, and a pitifully small population.

As the combined force arrived within a dohret of the Citadel, it appeared as dead from outside as when Gahn'tha-cte'Bhu'ja first came there, with no visible activity. When the war-party came within shouting-distance of the Citadel's walls, The Driven hailed the Flesh Weavers with a klaxon-call until one appeared to speak with him. When one did, he proceeded decree to them that the Bright Spear and Undaunted Pathfinder Clans had come to pacify the traitors to the Council of Ancients. He demanded that all inhabitants of the Brass Citadel surrender themselves for judgement by the Hallowed Judges, that they relinquish all of their cursed technology, and that the Dishonor they had foisted upon themselves permanently cease.

A point of note, at this juncture, is that Gahn'tha-cte'Bhu'ja invoked the very name of the Council during this speech, and claimed to be acting with its direct say-so, which everyone present knew to be untrue. If the technicality struck anyone as troublesome, none voiced it, however...

A lone voice eventually responded to The Driven, from atop the walls, saying: "we admit to no wrong-doing, as the Council of Ancients has yet to officially proscribe genetic engineering in the way they have proscribed other Dishonors. A crime is a crime only once the arbiter declares it so, explicitly and publicly...".

It is recorded that there was a unit-long pause, after those words were shouted, eventually followed by: "we showed you the results of our efforts, Autarch. We showed you how great the Yautja could become, and you approved of it, even through your silence. If it is your wish to destroy the Yautja people's best chance at complete and total supremacy over life, death, and the universe, itself... then we invite you to try it, and we abdicate liability for the results you incur...".

Gahn'tha-cte'Bhu'ja The Driven merely shouted back: "your lies do nothing to help your case. If you will not surrender, willingly... then we will have to resort to unkind measures. You cannot hope to withstand us".

The only reply came back, moments later: "then hope, we shall, despite you!".

What followed was known, at the time, as the "Ma'agin Massacre", but would later be amended to... "The Battle of Brass Citadel".

The precise events of the battle are not recorded in too much detail, as it was short, brutal, and absolute; what follows is the best reconstruction of events that could be made.

The Flesh Weavers made no attempt to sally out and meet their aggressors on the open field, nor any attempt to man their meager defenses. When the walls of the Brass Citadel were caved-in, and hordes of energy-shield wielding breachers flooded into the outer-bailey, they were met with, at first, seemingly nothing. No people, no heat-signatures, no movement...

Only eerie silence and stillness— farmhouses left empty, crop-fields un-harvested...

As the war-party encroached deeper, their siege-vehicles came driving into the gaps in the walls. It was when each collapsed wall-section was blocked, totally, by the passage of the machines that a signal-roar was heard.

Rising up out of the fields of plants and from the rooftops of buildings were the Flesh Weavers, seemingly appearing from thin air like Soulless from Naalkagaar's realm. It was as the Flesh Weavers leapt upon their aggressors from their hiding places, wielding blade, hammer, and pistol, that the war-party realized their enemy gave off no heat, and in fact: no energy, whatsoever, on any visual-frequency. In the first short minutes of the brawl, hundreds of the war-party were mauled and butchered before Vy'ken-Mar'cte gave the order to switch visual-ranges to colored light, just in time to pull their force back from the edge of routing.

When the forces of the war-party did as ordered, and looked upon their enemy properly, what they saw gave them pause.

The Flesh Weavers had changed, physically, in so drastic a fashion that they resembled typical Yautja as much as a crystal resembles a stone. They were enormous— all standing at over twelve noks high, and burgeoning with unnatural muscle-mass— strong enough to rip a man in half, tall-wise, with their bare hands. They ran and fought with such speed and grace that they hardly seemed real with how soundlessly their massive bodies could move. Their flesh now resembled firm moss in appearance, and to the horror of the war-party, could change texture and color for near-perfect camouflage. Their mandibles had enlarged into great, scything tusks that hung down to their knees and could lop off limbs. Even their hair-plaits had hypertrophied into prehensile limbs, coated with a durable keratin that they could wield like a living shield. This, combined with their bodies giving off no energy on any visible spectrum but one, had made them far more terrifying opponents than they'd had any right to be...

Flesh, however, is flesh, and the war-party immediately unleashed torrents and volleys of Burner (4) fire. Shockingly, the Flesh Weaver's changed forms were moderately resistant to the extreme heat levied upon them, but they nevertheless began to perish at a precipitous rate. Fully half of their horde were cut down in minutes, and the Flesh Weavers collectively sprinted further into their Citadel at an unheard signal, leaping and climbing up the walls of their inner-keep.

The war-party were shaken, but undeterred, and pressed on, bringing their siege-vehicles across the breadth of the outer-bailey. This time, they faced defensive fire from atop the inner-keep's walls, forcing the war-party to make a slow and calculated advance, with shield-bearers in front to deflect enemy fire.

The breaching of the keep-walls and the fighting in the inner-bailey were far slower and more tactical than in the outer-bailey's farming fields. Urban combat, with squads of the war-party making a careful and coordinated advance inwards, stretched on for two whole cycles, as the Flesh Weavers organized ambushes and traps. In close-quarters, the Flesh Weavers were indisputably supreme, but they were still trading one of their own for three-to-four of the war-party with each exchange, on average, and the war-party had them outnumbered two-to-one. Each melee became less and less costly for the war-party, as their tactics adapted. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the Weavers had already lost, but they never made any attempt to surrender or negotiate. They simply kept fighting, even as the war-party broke through to the Brass Citadel's very heart— the Fortress.

The fighting within the Fortress's halls and labyrinthine passages was especially brutal, with grenades and explosives seeing the largest use, it was here that Flesh Weaver females revealed themselves, even fiercer and more durable than their men. Nonetheless... the war-party's victory was assured.

1,788 Flesh Weavers died that day, at the cost of ~1,200 Bright Spears and ~800 Undaunted Pathfinders. A death-toll far higher than any could have expected. The Flesh Weavers Clan was gone, in its entirety.

It was during the middle of the skirmishes in the Fortress, however, that Gahn'tha-cte'Bhu'ja left the bulk of his force in the hands of Bhu'ja-Ul-Ju'dha, and set off on his own with his personal retinue of Vanguards. He made no indication as to where he was going, and Vy'ken-Mar'cte took it upon himself to find where the Autarch had gone.

We know little of the details, but the abstract reports tell that Vy'ken-Mar'cte and his own retinue delved deeply into some secret passages on a hunch of his, finding a winding network of tunnels that traveled deep underground. In the depths of these tunnels, The Black caught sight of The Driven's retinue, and pursued in stealth, eventually watching as Gahn'tha-cte'Bhu'ja slaughtered disparate Flesh Weavers, even as they begged for mercy. The Autarch's party moved with purpose and direction, despite the maze-like interior, and came upon a natural cave-network. Within, there was some variety of secret laboratory, with the aggregate of the Flesh Weaver's genetic engineering equipment, technology, plans, data, and resources.

Vy'ken-Mar'cte, then, witnessed his Autarch ordering his men to take everything they could carry, and to place Cloaking devices on everything they couldn't. Gahn'tha-cte'Bhu'ja, reportedly, gave his retinue precise instructions on how to take a back-door escape from the cave-network, and to take all of the equipment directly to the Bright Spear capital...

Hearing and seeing this, The Black and his men were incensed and made their way out of the tunnels, back the way they'd come. Reaching the Fortress proper, above-ground, as the fighting had completely ceased (every single Flesh Weaver lying dead), he immediately sought out Bhu'ja-Ul-Ju'dha The Calculating, and reported what he had seen to the Autarch's son.

His accusations of subterfuge and treachery were met, at first with intense confusion, and then with anger from The Calculating. He was essentially accusing the man's father of intending to defy the Council of Ancients, and of blatantly misleading his own people (sacrificing their very lives) for personal gain.

From there, things escalated into a vicious argument between the two men, even almost coming to blows, as the dialogue devolved into the both of them quarreling over actions taken long in the past. Vy'ken-Mar'cte, who had never taken a strong stance on anything political, abruptly launched into a massive tirade about the corruption and bribery and fraud that infested the Bright Spear Halls of Leadership, accusing even The Calculating of being a product of nepotism. The Calculating, on the other hand, accused The Black of being guilty of the exact corruption he was complaining about— accusing the Autarch of Dishonor behind the man's back was never going to go over particularly smoothly.

The Black, realizing that this argument was going nowhere, declared Bhu'ja-Ul-Ju'dha a traitor, in league with his father to turn all among the Bright Spears into freakish monstrosities. He immediately set off toward the Bright Spear capital, a sizable portion of the war-party following him, as The Calculating was left dumbfounded and dismayed, with no attempt made to stop his former friend.

The Black, upon arriving in the capital, set to the streets with his men and, with their testimony, revealed to all the Bright Spears what had happened. Needless to say, this caused something of a stir, and led to more than a few cases of violence, as the Bright Spear Clan was sent into a frenzy. The Black claimed to wish to turn the people against their leadership, and to instigate a righteous rebellion, but many only saw it as a fabricated provocation that he would use to seize power, indirectly, without justly defeating the Autarch, himself. As a small civil war split the Bright Spear Clan in two, and the Bright Spear Council of Elders condemned him, utterly, it is said that he realized no true usurpation would be possible. The Bright Spear Clan could not be saved from the perversions of its leadership... but perhaps, a part of it might...

And it is here that the Vow of the Dark Blade was born.

Vy'ken-Mar'cte The Black, and his compatriots, hijacked the wireless networks of the Bright Spears to broadcast a message, reaching all and single-handedly halting the conflict.

Here, he gave an impassioned speech on the evils of corruption, the horrors he had witnessed hours earlier in the Brass Citadel, and the state of affairs among the Bright Spears. He railed against the existence of anything even resembling a "nobility", and insisted that the only thing the Bright Spear "elite" had that the common-folk didn't was "the Veil of Legitimacy". That veil, even now, was allowing the leadership to get away with the crimes he had just revealed; if the power of the ruling class only existed with the permission of the people (and everyone knew it did), then the only thing allowing the powerful to commit Dishonors was their air of supposed "sacredness". If, he stipulated, all simply disregarded the supposed "greatness" of the higher classes, then all would start believing in their own greatness, and the self-fulfilling prophecy of success would be turned to their advantage.

He finally declared that he would leave the Bright Spear Clan... and that if any wished to join him, he would welcome their help in building a new Clan. A Clan where no presumptions of superiority would be tolerated— a Clan where nothing but one's own actions would be the basis of their reputation, a Clan where the limits of your success are only constrained by your own self-belief, a Clan where those in leadership would never go unquestioned or un-scrutinized ever again (no matter their individual Honor) and where all could create their own destiny without the shadow of their heritage typecasting them.

This became known as The Sundering.

While fighting among the Bright Spears did cease, acrimony had not, and much angry debate was had while Gahn'tha-cte'Bhu'ja The Driven finally emerged from the depths of The Fortress and took command of his forces as they all marched home. By the time the Autarch learned what had happened, a full twenty-percent of the Bright Spear populace had left and followed Vy'ken-Mar'cte in his exodus, while the remaining population were left remarkably disgruntled.

It was only a Term later that Bhu'ja-Ul-Ju'dha The Calculating caught his father, and many members of the Bright Spear Council of Elders, in the act of moving the Flesh Weaver's bio-engineering equipment into the Bright Spear capital. Words were had, accusations made, pleas begged, and offers extended... but it could all only end one way. The Calculating challenged his father to an Honor-Duel and, after a brutal melee that lasted hours, slew him. Many among the Council of Elders subsequently challenged his claim to the Autarch's spear, and he slew all of them, in turn.

Then, of course, came the task of reporting the truth of the matter to his people...

Even hearing that everything The Black had said was true, no great reaction to it was had. No one was surprised, it seemed. A few were disappointed, a few felt vindicated. But none launched into a frenzy as they had, before. Instead: an additional thirty-percent of the Bright Spear populace left their homes and set off in search of Vy'ken-Mar'cte's fledgling Clan, in silent resignation.

What followed was arguably the single greatest shame in the Bright Spear Clan's entire history, up to that point. Bringing the truth of the matter to the Council of Ancients, taking responsibility for the un-sanctioned assault on the Brass Citadel, and the unwarranted genocide of the Flesh Weaver's Clan. The hearings on the matter were short, uneventful, and generally of low visibility. Given the results of what the Flesh Weavers had done to themselves following The Contrition, and given their refusal to surrender at the outset: the Council of Ancients was willing to conclude that there was, indeed, a direct defiance of their will which warranted some kind of action.

They could not, however, overlook the Dishonorable way in which the former Autarch had gone about it and lied about his true intentions, overlook the way he went over their heads and invoked their name, nor the fact that one of the originals — one of The Charred Dozen — had been wiped out...

The Council of Ancients commended Bhu'ja-Ul-Ju'dha The Calculating for meting out his own justice against his father, against his enemies among the Council of Elders, and for going out of his way to bring all of the evidence to the Ancients, but they deemed what had been done thus far to rectify the problem... insufficient. High Inquisitors from the Hallowed Judges were assigned to investigate the Bright Spears, from top-to-bottom, for evidence of any further treachery, and the Bright Spear Clan was officially censured— the Undaunted Pathfinders and Hallowed Judges were allowed to demand a reparatory sum of money, in exchange for the former Autarch's deceptions and the loss of life.

All in all: the remainder of the Bright Spear Clan picked itself back up, again, without very much drama. Yet, it was still the first time that the Bright Spear Clan had failed, in its prescribed duties. And all the rest of The Charred Dozen could see it.

Nothing specific came of this incident... but everything started taking a down-turn for the Bright Spears, it could be said, if one took an abstract view of history, going forward. The Bright Spears were consulted less and less often for matters of security or Hunts, and they were no longer explicitly invited to attend meetings, or even appear before the Council of Ancients. Other Clans no longer afforded the Bright Spears quite the same respect or gravitas, as before. The Clan which had been an example for all to follow had demonstrated itself to be fallible...

But none of this was of too great a concern for any Bright Spear, nor for their new leadership. What was of-concern was where their other half had gone, and how to get them back.
Bhu'ja-Ul-Ju'dha The Calculating called upon Vy'ken-Mar'cte The Black for a diplomatic meeting, known forever more as The Split. He greeted his friend as just that, and apologized to him. The Black accepted this, but knew that there was only one thing to speak about.

The bottom line of their meeting, however pleasant or congenial to begin, was the proposition of Vy'ken-Mar'cte's people rejoining with their old Clan. It had been almost two months since The Sundering, and the Bright Spear Clan was desperate to restore itself its prior numbers, quickly, so as to salvage themselves.

We have no records of what words, precisely, were spoken between the two men. All we know are the results.

A non-aggression pact, mutual-defense pact, and a series of centuries-long trading and breeding-agreements were signed between the Bright Spear Clan... and the newly-dubbed Dark Blade Clan. And it is said that the two men never spoke another word to each other, ever again, even as their respective peoples co-mingled, easily and with a surprisingly low level of bitterness. It is incredibly rare, as you well know, for a faction of a Clan to secede from its "parent" and for the two to simply agree on it, and move forward. As to why is a matter of debate— perhaps it was the old friendship between the two leaders, in question, perhaps it was the relatively-painless separation between the two populations.

The history of these two Clans, going forward, are far simpler to chronicle. The Bright Spears, for the second time in their history, chose to leave the homeworld on a series of Ark Ships in favor of newer horizons on the frontier of Yautja space, where they would go on to fund and sponsor a series of colonization and terraforming efforts; they ostensibly did this in order to seek bigger fortunes and push the bounds of the great Yautja species.
On the fringes of Yautja space, the Bright Spear Clan would largely recoup their loss in esteem from The Battle of the Brass Citadel, where dozens upon dozens of new worlds were graced with their patronage and guidance. In doing so: the Bright Spear Clan reignited its identity as space-faring trailblazers, an old hat from an earlier time-period that the Clan found a suitable choice to wear, for the next long while.

The Dark Blade Clan, meanwhile, needed to find a permanent home. They had occupied themselves with scrounging resources from in and around the territory occupied by the Bright Spears up until The Split. Afterward, their top priority was finding a place of safety— Yautja Prime is not a forgiving mistress for the homeless or adrift, and a nomadic lifestyle suited only those with the largest numbers, most of the time.
Vy'ken-Mar'cte The Black had been a passing enthusiast of history, and as such, had knowledge of an obscure, little-known piece of trivia. That of the Madrassi people, who were said to have made their home within a hollowed-out mountain, somewhere in the eastern reaches of the world's Western Hemisphere. This would have put them relatively nearby to a string of micro-mountain-ranges which made up the eastern-most end of The Bramble (a massive series of mountain-ranges which rimmed almost the totality of the northern edge of Yautja Prime's largest equatorial desert).
It is said that The Black merely thought to himself: "which mountain would I pick, if I were going to make it my home?", and from there, the Dark Blade Clan set off in pursuit of his hunch... toward one, particular mountain that seemed (by all accounts and perspectives) utterly unimportant.

It was a relatively small, volcanic-plug formation— scorching desert on the south side, wet lowlands on the north, with a stretch of brine-bogs to the east leading to the coast of a small ocean, and a small grassy plateau to the west which linked up to a larger stratovolcano, around a dohret away. This mountain was the very tip of The Bramble, though it had no name and was rarely represented on any maps. The fledgling Dark Blade made its way to it, nevertheless, on the chance that their leader's suspicion proved true— at absolute worst, they would have a decent-enough vantage-point from which to spot a good place to set down roots.
Miraculously, Vy'ken-Mar'cte's hunch was vindicated, as within twelve cycles of arriving at the mountain, the Dark Blade discovered a small, oblique crevice through which they walked and emerged into a deep, large cavern, hidden within the mountain's depths— big enough that the mountain as a whole seemed to be akin in structure to a teepee. In this hollowed-out cavern, the Dark Blade Clan found the ruins of ancient buildings, hewn from the limestone around them, as well as grave-sites and bones. The Madrassi's ancestral home had been found for the first time in over ten-thousand years.

This success came none too soon, as it was only a day later that a war-party from the Flame Eye Clan came rushing through the area in pursuit of the Dark Blade's supposed path. The Flame Eye were a minor Clan which, in the past, had been on the wrong end of some disputes with the Council of Ancients and, more pointedly, with the Bright Spear Clan. The Dark Blade were so young, that none outside their ranks yet knew their name, and the Flame Eye simply viewed the Dark Blade as Bright Spear exiles whom they could slaughter for petty revenge and easy profit. Yautja Prime bids little in the way of a grace-period before you are tested in fire, and if the Dark Blade could withstand this initial assault, their chances of a secure future would increase by an exponential degree, if one took up a statistical viewpoint.
The Dark Blade, hidden within the bowels of their mountain, were allowed the element of surprise, and the Flame Eye war-party were left floundering at the sudden disappearance of a trail to follow. The war-party's leader, a figure recorded only as "The Beast of the East", ordered her warriors to spread out on all sides of the mountain and search.

The Dark Blade Clan, acting only once their scouts could confirm the situation, chose their moment to strike, and sallied out of the mountain's single choke-point in a surprise breakout that left the war-party on the northern side utterly incapable of forming a counter-offensive. From there, the Dark Blade's fighting force harried fleeing Flame Eye clockwise around the mountain, as the enemy coordinated to converge in a counter-clockwise wave. As the two forces met on the south-east mountain-side, both hesitated— the Flame Eye already had hundreds of dead, and the Dark Blade had no real vendetta against their attackers, nor any desire to fight pointlessly. For a long few units, the situation became supremely awkward, with weapons aimed and primed to fire, and no one wishing to fire the first shot.

Vy'ken-Mar'cte The Black called out The Beast and demanded an Honor Duel with her, to determine a winner without needless death. The Beast, whose bloodlust was apparently only dwarfed by her sense of bravado, accepted on the condition that the Dark Blade would give up all of their valuables should she win. The Black, meanwhile, demanded the same, given that the Flame Eye had invaded their home without provocation. The Beast found this droll, and additionally demanded that the Dark Blade also hand over all of their weaponry, should she prove the victor. The Black, unflinchingly, demanded the same, should he win. And from there, the preemptive demands escalated, as both leaders kept staking more and more and more on winning or losing the duel.
It reached the point that the Clan of whomever won would be entitled to the losing Clan's valuables, weapons, heirlooms, farming equipment, medicine supplies, valued artworks, religious artifacts, any children under Chiva-Age, and even any and all women of a certain pedigree or social-class. The higher and higher the stakes were raised, the tenser things got. For the Flame Eye, what was supposed to be an easy outing and massacre for riches and bragging rights now suddenly had their entire future in the balance; for the Dark Blade, they had already risked everything when they left the Bright Spears, anyway, and so the raised stakes only begot smirks and bemusement. On some level, they all simply trusted The Black to win that much.

The Honor Duel commenced forthwith, as both armies stood mere jorrens away. The Beast of the East was a gargantuan woman, renowned for her proclivity for vicious tactics— her prized warhammer, Kneebane, had been used to cripple and eventually kill dozens of opponents in duels just like this one. Vy'ken-Mar'cte The Black, meanwhile, was a man of respectable stature and a skill that bordered on legendary, favoring the use of a pair of Push-Daggers named Impulse and Heartbeat.
The battle between the two lasted hours, first with a careful probing of defenses, then with tentative attack-flurries and evasions. Blows were exchanged, blocked, and parried with nearly every engagement, and both combatants found themselves drawn into trance. As the fight intensified and reached a fever-pitch, the Dark Blade and Flame Eye each began to chant in their respective leader's names, louder and louder.
Legend says, that as the fight neared its climax, an omen occurred. The sun began to disappear behind the tip of the mountain, and simultaneously: a solar-eclipse set the world awash in ghost-light, the south-east side of the mountain dipping to near-total dark, just as the killing blow was landed— Vy'ken-Mar'cte The Black leaping up and plunging both of his Push-Daggers into The Beast's throat, taking the full force of her hammer to his torso, mere heartbeats, later. This was the moment that the mountain received its name, forever more. "Darkmount".

The Beast fell, pouring a torrent of her blood onto the limestone beneath her, and collapsed; The Black was knocked unconscious and struggled to breathe. It is said that both forces went deadly-silent, as neither was certain that either of their leaders had survived. Vy'ken-Mar'cte, however, willing himself to awaken and stand, dragged himself to his feet despite shattered ribs and a punctured lung. It was as he stood that the solar eclipse ended, and a flash of yellow pulsed across the sky.
Needless to say, the Dark Blade celebrated and the Flame Eye Clan retreated, in shame. They returned only a Term, later, to hand over all that they agreed on, whereupon it was decided that the Flame Eye Clan had no chance of surviving on its own, and thus, the two Clans combined under the Dark Blade sigil in a blood-bonding ritual; this was helped along by the fact that the Flame Eye and Bright Spears had had begrudging breeding contracts, going back generations, and many had distant relatives among the others' ranks.

From there, the Dark Blade Clan skyrocketed to prominence from within the safety of Darkmount. Vy'ken-Mar'cte was officially acknowledged as Autarch of his Clan by the Council of Ancients, and far faster than it might have been estimated, the fledgling Clan set about exploiting their local terrain— creating channels for lava-flows of the volcano to the west, pastures and farms atop the plateau, building docks and harbors in the brine-bogs to the east, and more farms to the north, with most of the residences and defenses within the interior of the mountain to exploit the chokepoint. No fewer than six more Clans from far and wide attempted to assault Darkmount in retribution for Bright Spear deeds, over the next two years, and all of them were repelled with brusque impatience.

It is a bizarre sight, to see a Clan separate almost entirely in half with little-to-no bloodshed between them, and for both to go their separate ways in mutual agreement. It is even more bizarre to see both halves succeed, and for the lesser-equipped of the two to defeat so many early challengers, as the Dark Blade did. Even more bizarre than that is: the Dark Blade, once their new home was fully created after three years, immediately set about negotiating for trade-agreements with neighboring Clans, using their harbors and docks as a means to set up ocean-trade, and advertising Darkmount as a hospitable "pit-stop" for those seeking to make a journey across the desert.
Here is where the Dark Blade began to take up its own identity, separate from their origins as Bright Spears. Their own music, their own clothing, their own artwork, their own rituals, influenced by the Flame Eye's own— the Blood-Bonding becoming something of a yearly holiday. It is still a matter of debate as to precisely how much of this phenomenon was motivated by the fledgling Dark Blade populace's desire to culturally distance themselves from their Bright Spear cousins. Even the name "Dark Blade" was stated, by The Black, to have been at least partially conceived as an opposite to that of "Bright Spear" (which, itself, was a name grounded in the idea of serving as an idealistic "beacon" for other Clans to follow). It is a topic of some discussion how much of these cultural ideas influence the behavior of the populace, and vice versa— the Bright Spear Clan had long possessed a wide proclivity for polearm weapons, and as the Dark Blade more readily took up their new identity, they steadily began exhibiting predilections for shorter, stabbing implements as the next generation arose.

The Dark Blade's newfound identity, in either case, meant that those who'd had disagreements with the Bright Spears no longer had much cause to hate them, while the unrelated Clans had little clue what to do or think about them. In the Dark Blade, the vast majority of Clans in their region now had a new contender on the stage, with whom none had any prior quarrel. The Dark Blade, therefore, soon found itself playing the role of mediator to the disputes of their neighbors, and the role of a reliable middle-man or vendor from whom one could buy and sell without needing to account for one's enemies. The Dark Blade, therefore, found itself very, very wealthy in just under a century, and then became incredibly industrialized by the time two centuries had come and gone. Darkmount had a ship-breaking yard built halfway up the mountain-side, and a small fleet of its own by the time three centuries had passed, and none would dare attack them without careful forethought.

The Dark Blade Clan, beginning to engage in Hunts across the stars, quickly proved its mettle. It was here that the Dark Blade re-encountered the space-faring Bright Spears, whose Ark Ships had become their permanent home. Relations between the two Sister-Clans were surprisingly cordial, to begin with, and as the two found themselves interacting more and more often, a kinship was formed. Bright Spear and Dark Blade ships would accompany one another on expeditions, and would speak for one another in political disputes. "True deepness of appreciation is found in the deepest of separation", as Kagriinaht tells us.
The Dark Blade, while their neutrality had served them well as tradesmen, had kept themselves that way with everyone and had few real friends in the world; the Bright Spears, meanwhile, had spent much of its time in a teaching and guiding lesser Clans and playing the role of impartial judge— having a relative equal (with whom they shared no active disagreement) to share the stars with was refreshing.

Thus began a period known as The Twilight Alliance that would last for the next thousand years, where the Dark Blade and Bright Spear Clans were joined at the hip, inseparably, and calls for the two to reunite, fully, were not uncommon as the decades wore on. Those who had originally left the Bright Spears, three centuries ago, now carried a sense of nostalgia for the days when things were far less complicated. The Clans' respective leaders, The Black and The Calculating, did not speak to one another, personally, but each of their representatives did, and it wasn't long before the eldest sons of both Autarchs became fast friends.
The second son of Vy'ken-Mar'cte The Black, known to us only as "Jaded", and the third son of Bhu'ja-Ul-Ju'dha The Calculating, known to us only as "Strident"; both of these men became renowned throughout the Alliance by the time they became adults for being among the first of their Clans to Hunt the newly-discovered Kiande Admeha species: Ahgai'Palak, discovered in 2,681 Y-ADM.

Jaded and Strident, through a series of events that beggar belief, were both subject to the following circumstances:
— Both knew one another from an early age, despite the rest of their families having little contact.
— Both grew to outshine all of their siblings, despite both of them starting out as the "runts" of their "litters".
— Both happened to have names which alluded to the concept of joy.
— Both became the Autarchs of their Clans after their fathers' deaths by winning tournaments.
— Both of their fathers died, peacefully, in their sleep— one due to a blood-disease, and the other due to liver failure.

The similarities between the two were far from unnoticed, at the time, and the pair of them quickly became the cherished epitomes of their Clans, often Hunting and fighting side-by-side, with feasts and celebrations galore. Under the pair's leadership, both Clans prospered to new heights both due to higher cooperation, and competition; a brotherly rivalry colored every exchange and venture, and for a long while, it was well and truly glorious. Even as the Filial Schism rocked the entire Yautja Confederation and resulted in mass-bloodshed across the stars, and brother turned against brother: the Twilight Alliance remained strong, as Jaded and Strident became renowned beyond their own Clans for their performance as generals and admirals during the conflict.

All good things, as Kagriinaht says, end only one of three ways. With a triumphant shout, with a sudden silence, or with a tired whimper. The end of The Twilight Alliance came about only a century after the end of The Filial Schism.

It began with a night of drinking between friends. Strident and Jaded, as well as their closest advisors, had retired to a private feast-hall after a tournament of games between their Clans. The two became rather inebriated, and began to make verbal jabs at each other— such was hardly uncommon. However, for reasons that still are not understood, the topic of conversation came to be about the training-techniques that each Clan used in bringing up the youth. This wasn't an atypical, though what was atypical was how swiftly and abruptly the conversation turned hostile, when Strident began to imply that the Bright Spear Clan's methods were flatly superior, and even more gallingly: that Dark Blade training methods were, in some nebulous way, morally questionable— this, of course, led to Jaded responding in just the same way to the offense against his people's culture.
Words were said, remarks made, insults spat, blades drawn, and curses expelled— thankfully without actual bloodshed, though only barely.

Naturally, the morning after, both Autarchs apologized to each other, and claimed that the incident was a fluke and that it was already forgotten. And it did seem that way. At first.
It, however, signaled the beginning of an increasingly-common pattern of shortening tempers and repeated petty disagreements over nothing important— so common that the wider public took notice. And, so invested in and devoted to their leaders as they were, the people began to take after the two men, whether consciously or subconsciously.

The two men, over the course of a month, grew shorter and shorter and terser and terser with one another, until eventually: neither could pretend that nothing was wrong. It is said that both met, privately, to discuss the issue. An airing of grievances.

It came back to that first argument five Terms ago. As it turned out: neither of them had truly forgiven or forgotten about it.

And now, the two Autarchs took it up, once more— sober, this time, and far more heartfelt. We do not know what precisely was said, but by the end of it, the argument wasn't resolved... but they had a plan as to how it might be. A competition.
It all came back to one, particular comment uttered (we know not by whom) on that fateful night. "I would wager your Clan couldn't even train an Ooman how to Hunt grubs in dirt!".
And so it was that only a month later, the two Autarchs would put that to the test. Both Clans would take a collection of Oomans from their homeworld, train them in combat, and have them fight to the death to see which Clan truly had the better training-principles.

This entire disagreement, to our modern ears, seems flatly ridiculous. And even back then, many found it so. Many more, however, felt as strongly about it as the Autarchs, themselves, such was the strength of their connection to their leaders; it must be understood that both men held their people's hearts in the palms of their hands, and that the level to which they were admired as examples of the very best of their Clans cannot be understated. That the two suddenly had a feud was, of course, of great consequence— and that they now had a civil way of settling it was met with fervor.

The rules of the wager were as follows:
— Both Clans would have one Earth year to collect as many Oomans as they wished, and (upon that year's end) would train them in hand-to-hand sword-dueling with their Clan's common techniques, for a period of six Yautja months.
— At the end of those six months, both Clans would produce eleven of their best Ooman candidates.
— Those ten candidates would be made to fight to the death against the other Clan's eleven; a best-of-eleven contest.
— Whichever Clan had the most fighters remaining would be declared the winner, with the only prize awaiting them being bragging rights.
— The Ooman candidates must be returned to their homeworld after the competition, must be of at-least adult age, and must not be warriors by trade.
— Any chemical enhancements before or during the tournament are forbidden; genetic or bio-engineered enhancements are forbidden.

And so, it went. The near-totality of both Clans' expendable resources were soon being spent on the endeavor. It should be noted that neither Clan made this event known to any other Clan, nor to The Charred Dozen, nor to the Hallowed Judges, nor to the Council of Ancients. Largely because this was an unprecedented state of affairs, and the Honor Code had no basis of reference for such a thing as this— it was forbidden to take sapient prey from their homeworld for the purpose of Hunting them, but there was no indication if the same held true for the act of training the prey and pitting them against an opponent in supervised Combat.
The two Clans, however, did enlist the services of two Inquisitors— Arbitrators who would be there to watch and judge the contest, one assigned to each Clan's company.

Time passed, Oomans were found and trained to the best of standards, and the day for testing finally came.

Two at a time, one after the other, the Oomans were brought into the Kehrite of the Bright Spear's capital Ark Ship, Implacable Light, and made to fight until one killed the other, or became so injured that death was inevitable. As though the Gods themselves were laughing, however, the winner between Clans alternated with each bout— the Dark Blade candidate won, then the Bright Spear candidate, then Dark Blade, then Bright Spear, and so on... until both sides had five survivors... and it all came to one, final combat. A tiebreaker.
Everything came to rest on the result of the last contest, tensions were never higher, not a soul breathed a word during the fight.

The result?

Both combatants killed each other, at the same time... but the Dark Blade candidate landed the first killing-blow, impaling the other through the torso, only to have his throat carved out by his opponent's final strike. The two Oomans collapsed onto each other, and the entire Kehrite erupted into apoplectic frenzy. There was no official winner, the competition was tied almost perfectly, but nobody was happy about it. Suspicions, held silent for most of the proceedings, came shouting into accusations. Both sides accused the other of having cheated or broken the rules— such a result after a year of effort and hopes was far from welcome. Both sides were as enraged as Jaded and Strident, who themselves almost came to blows right then and there.
The two, observing Inquisitors put an immediate end to the fiasco and demanded that everyone cease behaving like children. Jaded and Strident, enraged to lunacy as they were, both drew their weapons on the Inquisitors and were both executed, on the spot, for the offense. It is rare that people are reminded that actively threatening an Arbitrator with bodily-harm, in obstruction of their duty, is a crime punishable by death...

The sudden deaths of their leaders and idols brought cold sobriety to all present.

The Inquisitors, thoroughly displeased with the turn of events at hand, declared that they would launch investigations into both Clans, for "although [they] and [their] leaders had embarrassed themselves": the Inquisitors had already been paid a substantial sum to fairly and officially adjudicate the competition, at hand. And they were dedicated to doing as they had sworn to do, even if their clients had displayed such a brazen contempt of it as to border on Dishonor. Appointing temporary Clan Leaders of the Bright Spears and Dark Blades with whom to work with, the Inquisitors did as they said they would, and investigated...

What they found came as a surprise to the vast majority of both Clans. Why? Everyone expected that the other Clan had cheated, but no one had expected that both had.

Both the Bright Spears and Dark Blades had broken the rules of the competition with the intent to gain an edge.
The rules of the contest, as written, forbade chemical or genetic enhancements, but technically not surgical enhancements; the Bright Spears had artificially augmented their Ooman fighters using surgically-implanted machinery to increase the effectiveness of blood-circulation, as well as flexible, sub-dermal armor-weave.
The rules of the contest, also, stipulated against cherry-picking Oomans whom were already "warriors", but didn't specify any time-frame— the Dark Blade collected their subjects from among those Oomans who had used to be warriors, and had the benefit of experience in combat, but had ceased that life-style long ago.

Both Clans had technically cheated... but only one Clan had been unaware of it. Jaded had told the Dark Blade to choose Oomans that had past experience in combat, and simply hadn't made it very clear that that violated the spirit of the rules of the contest— made a joke of it, in fact, as though it were a harmless prank. Strident, meanwhile, had had the Bright Spear's Ooman fighters surgically augmented in-secret, telling only the handful of medical professionals in-question.

With their investigation finished, the two Inquisitors took their leave and returned to Yautja Prime, not caring what became of the two Clans they had been hired to help, and all too glad to finally be on their way.

The two Clans, meanwhile, having eventually decided on new leadership, were immediately on the verge of being at each other's throats, again. The Dark Blade accused their Sister-Clan of their old sin— that they still could not trust their leadership and had been lied to, and believed the lies, once again; the Bright Spears insisted that the Dark Blade were no better, and that their leader had treated the whole contest far less seriously than he should have— that the Dark Blade had not the moral fiber to push back when Jaded had ordered them to so-carelessly trivialize the agreed-upon rules.

This enflamed acrimony may well have been cause for a true conflict... were it not for their newly-elected leaders (some of them having been the siblings of the two, previous Autarchs) shouting everyone back into line, and bringing final peace, in what came to be known... as Separation Day.

This incident, the new leadership insisted, ultimately meant only one thing. That neither Clan had truly matured, at all, from the days surrounding The Battle of the Brass Citadel, and that the mistakes they had all been party to was simply the symptom of a different illness. The idolization of a single individual, and the entrusting of total leadership to that single individual— the very thing that the Dark Blade had originally left the Bright Spears over. If the two Clans were to learn anything from this blunder, it was that neither of them could afford to have a single Autarch leading them, again. "No fewer than three", it was decided, would rule either the Dark Blade or the Bright Spears from then on.
Additionally, it was also judged that a separation was once again necessary— a renewed non-aggression pact was signed, but nothing else.

Not all among the Bright Spears or Dark Blade were happy about this... but all were more than weary enough to acquiesce to it. The two Clans divorced one another of their company, their fleets flew in solitude once more, and it is said that neither Clans' Council of Elders has officially communicated, since, even two-thousand years later. The Twilight Alliance was finished, and over time: the petty disagreement which led to Separation Day has been viewed, increasingly, with bitterness and regret. So much so that the true names of Strident and Jaded were forever stricken from the archives— their achievements recorded only in abstract.

Ever since Separation Day, the relationship between the Dark Blade and Bright Spears has remained icy, with little direct interaction. The Bright Spear Clan continued sponsoring the foundation of new Yautja colony-worlds, and the Dark Blade Clan continued as they were. It is only in very recent times that individuals from both Clans came together for the purpose of fostering competitions precisely like that which led to Separation Day (collecting groups of other species, training them as well as possible within a certain amount of time, and then using them in tournaments), called "The Hunted Arena"— a practice which, despite being increasingly popular, has been controversial.

Despite the end of The Twilight Alliance, the Dark Blade Clan continued to succeed and impress on the galactic stage. As impactful as Separation Day was on our collective identity, even five generations later: it had little long-term effect on our industrial, economic, or political health. That impact on our identity, however, could be argued to have been a cause for the Dark Blade's more modern inductee-policies; such as that of the "elitist" and "two-thirds" ordinances, where the Clan would proceed to only accept foreign immigrants if they had reached Elite rank, or higher.
While this did stem the flow of new blood into the Dark Blade, it artificially boosted the proportion of higher echelons of warriors in our numbers. That number of high-quality inductees, in turn, created a knock-on effect of the next generation being ever-so-slightly more successful in the Hunt than the last— whether by virtue of better genes or better knowledge and training from the original immigrants is to be debated. This, in turn, would go on to vastly improve the average Hunt-Statistics of the Dark Blade Clan by the time two generations had passed. And to this day, the Dark Blade have roughly thrice the proportion of Titled Hunters in our population than other Clans of similar size.

Darkmount, over the millennia, has blossomed into an industrial and cultural metropolis, with entire swathes of city and infrastructure having been built around the mountain, and the core of Dark Blade politics being held within the mountain's core. The Dark Bade Clan has become an ideal which many, newer Clans strive to imitate, though few have managed it.
The Dark Blade has had relatively few failings or serious conflicts with other Clans, diplomatically, largely due to our characteristic, highly-valued neutrality and carefulness in such matters. We have had the fortune of being largely without fault, externally... although, we are also cursed with the misfortune of being painfully aware of those faults we've managed to keep hidden from most...

Particularly, the failing of the one who would later be named: "Thar'n-dha-Ul-Dha-viath". A man of exceptional skill, yet low standing, who had taken to the Ooman homeworld to Hunt, over 150 years ago. He failed, in more ways than one, in so massive a fashion that it could only be called a fluke. Not only was he almost killed by Ooman Bad Bloods, but he activated his Detonation Module in the very center of an Ooman city-center (what they called "New Way City"), bringing the existence of the Yautja very nearly into total exposure to the Ooman populace. Despite the widespread destruction: the Oomans in-question still made off with the technology he carried, breaking one of the core tenets of Hunting sapients— to leave no Yautja technology for their possession.
And, as though all of that were not a large enough shame: Thar'n-dha-Ul-Dha-viath had somehow remained alive, despite the carnage and Dishonor he had wrought himself. Even at having the sense to die, Honorably, after his colossal failure: he had demonstrated a shameful inability.

At the time, the Dark Blade Clan's standard for the naming of a Death-Seeker precluded any who had not yet become Elite. Thar'n-dha-Ul-Dha-viath technically was not, and yet had seven Titles and could readily defeat any of the Adjudicators of the period; the Clan could not make a Wolf of him, but did not see fit to execute him, outright. His punishment, therefore, would be Exile with Prejudice, where he would be left utterly alone and with nothing to help him survive, on one of the most environmentally-hostile planets known to us, for a period of no less than sixty years. It was a world commonly used for exiling Bad Bloods— lethal sandstorms, horrific solar radiation all about the equator, and roving hordes of insectile beasts that qualified as Kiande Admeha by the measure of no less than 71% of Clans, throughout the Great Wheel.

All expected him to survive, for his skill and determination were simply that well-respected. The punishment he suffered was, in all honesty, more for the Clan's protection from outside scrutiny than for any adherence to the Honor Code.

Nevertheless: sixty years passed, as the aftermath of his failure came to maturity. The Oomans had taken the technology they'd won from him, and in the space of one of their centuries, used it to advance their understanding of the sciences, and were well on their way to creating their own form of faster-than-light travel. It was done through an Ooman guild named "Boor'jya Industries", which, in addition to spearheading their scientific advancement, had taken to reproducing Yautja technologies and distributing it to packs of Ooman Bad Bloods, using them as puppets with which to rule through subversion. It also managed to procure Ahgai'Palak specimens through means that are still unclear. The sickening irony of it was that the city that Boor'jya ruled via its criminal puppets was the very city it had helped build in the ruins of the one which Thar'n-dha-Ul-Dha-viath destroyed; the bigger irony was that the leader of this group happened to be the direct descendant of those that originally defeated him.
It was over those sixty years of Exile that the Dark Blade were made to report the immensity of the issue to the Council of Ancients. Showing that they had punished the offender in the way that their laws dictated, the Clan was saved from any more reproach than a censure, and was given a way of atoning: by destroying the Ooman guild that had tainted the sanctity of Soortzehn's designs.

And so it was that the Dark Blade did as it was told. Thar'n-dha-Ul-Dha-viath's Exile was nearing its end, and who better to rectify a mistake than the one that made it?

The offender was collected from the planet he'd been left on, given his mission, and let loose upon the Ooman city of "Nee'ohn-oppoliss". His mission was to dismantle the criminal operations of the Boor'jya's puppet Bad Bloods, take back the technology produced in mockery of Soortzehn's desires, and to slay the Boor'jya family.
And he did, earning back every right and Title he had lost with his Dishonor, and ultimately choosing a new name for himself. Boor'jya lost its head, lost its soul, and ultimately fell.

X — REDACTED BY ORDER OF THE COUNCIL OF ELDERS — X

While it was not Boor'jya Industries, alone, that used our technology to advance, they were the first and eldest Ooman group to do so. The only blessing is that the Boor'jya seemed to have done very little to fully capitalize on what they had, although that is small comfort, for the following reason. It should be noted that another Ooman conglomerate known as "Yootahnee Corporation" (who worked often with Boor'jya) had also taken a Plasma Caster from the aftermath of The Chiva Incident. An incident for which we, the Dark Blade, were also chiefly responsible.
Upon falling, Boor'jya's assets and personnel were purchased, in their entirety, by one only known as "Weilahnd"— this individual subsequently acquired Yootahnee Corporation some years later, forming a new and more powerful whole. That new whole went on to create the first, functional faster-than-light technology, made by Oomans, less than thirty years later.

Although all of this information remains speculation, with no hard evidence to support it, there are few other possibilities. It is virtually undeniable that the Dark Blade Clan is, if not singularly, then at least majorly responsible for the ascension of the Ooman species beyond their home-system. Whether that remains a good or bad thing shall be determined in the future. For now, the Dark Blade Clan's culpability for this turn of history has gone largely unsaid by other Clans and even the Council of Ancients, but it would be foolish to assume that none but us are aware of it.

X — REDACTED BY ORDER OF THE COUNCIL OF EDLERS — X

Thar'n-dha-Ul-Dha-viath returned to Darkmount, where his deeds and atonement were judged by the Council of Elders. There, he was forgiven for the Dishonors he'd caused the Clan, and given a clean slate— as though his failure, six decades ago, had never happened. For his Honorable redemption, and the feats of note that he had performed during it, he was offered the Rank of Elite. He, however, refused, and demanded instead to be taken into the Enclave, to serve where his talents would be the most useful. He was granted this, and it is in the Enclave that he serves, to this day.

This has been the Dark Blade Clan's story, through the ages. From its birth, to its successes and failures, to the present. Ours, overall is a tale of shirking destiny, of breaking molds, and of throwing off perceived notions of "fate". We accept nothing as a given, and we take nothing for granted; we make no apologies, and we suffer no foolishness.
This is our creed, and may it forever be so.

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1) Gahn'tha-cte = "ruthless" / Bhu'ja = "spirit/ghost" (see: one's soul).

2) Bhu'ja-Ul = "soul of" / Ju'dha = "water".

3) Vy'ken = "uncaring" / Mar'cte = "killer".

4) Burners are the Yautja equivalent of guns— rifle-like weapons that fire concentrated streams of plasma in tight beams, capable of instantly killing any person-sized target. Naturally, this is a weapon that the Yautja reserve entirely for war.