Maraloi

The Maraloi, or Ancient Lords, were a mysterious race inhabiting northern Kara-Tur.

Name
The word '"maraloi" meant "ancient lords" in the Pazruki language.

Race
The ancestry of the Maraloi was unknown to outsiders. Some thought them human, others that they were a form of spirit folk. In fact, they were an archaic eastern branch of the elf race and were counted as being spirit beings as Kara-Turans knew them.

Description
The Maraloi were known to be tall and fair of skin and hair.

Magic & Technology
Maraloi wielded tools and weaponry forged of bronze, because iron was apparently poisonous to them. Thus they never used implements of iron.

They were said to command a potent and alien magic.

History
Legend told that, millennia before the 14th century DR, the Maraloi ruled the lands known as the Northern Wastes. They opposed the ogre magi, oni, and lesser humanoid races, and maintained their dominance until the use of iron became widespread in the Ama Basin, and thereafter fell into decline.

To outsiders, the ultimate fate of the Maraloi remained unknown. It was thought possible they were all killed, that they migrated to other lands, or that they joined with and were assimilated into the human tribes of the area. For example, several small native tribes (those unrelated to the Issacortae, Pazruki, Wu-haltai, or others, and not more recent immigrants) of primitive ways who still wielded stone and bronze, not iron, were theorized to be descendants of the Ancient Lords. They figured in many local legends. Most humans thought they no longer existed.

However, the Maraloi lived on in secret, dwelling in "the great northern wood" This was a secret known only to a few outsiders, but included the Emperor of Shou Lung (Kai Tsao Shou Chin around 1359 DR), who imparted it to trusted agents, such as a hu hsien assassin.

Bayalun was half-Maraloi, being the daughter of a Maraloi woman and a human man. She grew up among them but married into the Tuigan people and became prominent as Second Empress Eke Bayalun Khadun beside Yamun Khahan of the Grand Army of the Tuigan. She was also a talented wizard.

Lands
Relics and ruins attributed to the Maraloi could often be found in the Koryaz Mountains, concealed in its isolated valleys, and at sites in the Ama Basin to the north.

The ruins in the Valley of Nanayok in the eastern Koryaz Mountains were the primary Maraloi site. Filled with ruins, though mostly no more than heaps of crumbling stones shrouded in vegetation, it was believed to be a center of Maraloi culture and politics. It was whispered that places beneath the ground here still contained the secrets of the Ancient Lords.

Legends
The Maraloi appeared conspicuously in the legends of the Pazruki people, who lived near the Koryaz Mountains. However, they had a taboo on the matter of the Maraloi. They would never accept relics known to be taken from Maraloi ruins, not in gift or in payment, and few would set foot in the Valley of Nanayok. Only a few intrepid Pazruki wu jen dared investigate the site; those who returned did not speak of what they might have found. The Pazruki said that a child of remarkably light complexion or, more rarely, hair color bore the "the mark of the Maraloi". This was believed to be a portent of their high potential for magical talent. Such children were expected to become wu jen. For example, Ayana No-Shui had white bangs amidst her jet-black hair, and was a powerful magician.

Notable Maraloi

 * Bayalun