Time for dragons.

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Height: 11.3 mi (18.2km) (maximum height of current incarnations)
Age: Immortal (original incarnations existed over 5,000 years ago)
Abilities: Reincarnation, Death Empowerment, Divinity
Occupation: Tribal Warlords (original incarnations); Divine Sovereigns (currently)


Appearance

One thousand souls cease movement at the violent churning of earth. Two thousand eyes rise to a sky devoid of sun seconds before sheer vastness, ravenous crimson feet howling with the rage of a thunderstorm, part the clouds. The soles of the gods stretch from one end of the valley to the other and beyond without end. Displaced air, violent gusts, rush out from great, hungering scales that crush the summits of crumbling obstacles that dare call themselves mountains. But rather than run from oblivion, they throw themselves to the splintering ground in supplication, or race to meet their end, when earth and sky become one at the fall of thunderous unity. And like the craters the gods leave in their wake, already refilling with soil and grass at their whim, flowing with new rivers running through the grooves and hollows their toes left behind, one thousand will be reborn anew.


History

It is impossible to say how old these ancient and unfathomably powerful beings truly are, or count the number of names and faces they’ve worn over their millennia-spanning existence. Records only reach so far back into the mists of time, and what little about them that can be pieced together had been recorded by the ancestors of their neighboring nations, who to this day still cower in their looming shadow. Their origins stretch back to an ancient age, to a harsh life in the unforgiving steppes where rolling hills and soaring mountains dominate, where one’s loyalties revolved around the tribe, and a spear through the chest resolved as many disputes as they caused. Life back then was as cyclical as it was brutally simple: one tribe would grow strong enough to dominate their neighbors by force, and the survivors would be absorbed into the growing clan. Its chieftain would cultivate ambitions of empire at the height of their power, delusions of sweeping across the land like locusts to slaughter and pillage for gold, glory, and all the women (and/or men) and wine they could stomach. Only to catch an unfortunate case of death without leaving an heir. The tribes they conquered, who chafed under servitude, would violently rebel, and any power the once dominant clan had crumbed. Relative peace would return to the arid plains for a few decades, until another chieftain with more brains than brawn came of age.

Yajj was that chieftain. Infamous for her bloody campaigns of merciless conquest, many tribes on her warpath threw down their weapons and surrendered to the warlord at the earliest signs of her approach. You’ll never find the names of the tribes that resisted her in any tale or text. But there was a growing problem that impeded her subjugation of the steppes: powerful women wielding weapons of war were in season. Ambitious chieftains near and far, hoping to tame the she-beast cutting a gory swathe through their lands, were lining up outside her yurt, hoping to be the one to bring the tyrant to heel.

She was outraged. War, not love, was what she craved. Conquering the bedroom stoked no passion in her. And the impudence of these cowards, thinking they could master her with their loins instead of blades. Motivated by her disgust of these undesirables, she devised an alternative method of thinning the herd instead of simply having them rounded up and butchered like pigs: duel her to first blood. They win, they wed her; they lose, she kills them.

This did little to deter her would-be suitors at first. Seeing her disembowel her opponents the instant she scored a lethal wound drove away all but the most determined, for they had more to lose than just their meager lives. The tribe of the deceased chieftain would be assimilated into hers, strengthening her dominance over the rest with each death. The line of potential challengers rapidly dwindled until one chieftain, Kuzen, stepped forward not to woo her, but to face her in combat. Their duel would be sung in the epics for years to come, for they battled to a standstill, neither giving ground for days, until Kuzen at last landed the telling blow. Defeated at long last, Yajj was not upset with her loss, for at last she had found her equal. Rather than consummate their union, they consolidated their forces, and bludgeoned the remaining tribes into submission together. And for the first time in its harsh history, the land was united under one rule.

But realms beyond their burgeoning borders were ripe for the taking. And take they did, until one campaign, when the pair discovered a remote temple beyond the fringes of their territory unlike any they had ever seen. Within the sanctuary, Kuzen and Yajj witnessed the true nature of life and death, and learned the secret of immortality. They returned, changed. Priorities shifted, suddenly swerving away from conquest and rapid expansion to shunning the world and spreading this new philosophy among their people. They sent out members of the conquered tribes to live beyond their borders, so they and their descendants could observe the flow of history while Kuzen and Yajj’s budding empire shut itself away from the world. Their history from then on has remained an unknowable, near-mythical enigma.


Abilities

Their original incarnations were fearsome warriors and charismatic leaders, chieftains who commanded the respect of their people and earned the esteemed dread of wary neighbors through their campaigns of conquest. Both were capable leaders on and off the battlefield, and they were the first to unite the once numerous, disparate tribes under one banner through force.

With each death, they carried over a lifetime of acquired skills and knowledge on to their next incarnations, building upon the foundation of their original lives as overlords. No longer was death the impenetrable barrier that brings grim finality to achievements and triumphs. What they could not accomplish in one lifetime, they would simply resume the next. The difficulty at first was remembering that they had been born before. Their previous lives, unsettled by the trauma of death, became a swirling storm of jumbled memories that could only be pieced together with great effort and discipline of the spirit. Each incarnation would present to them different forms, occasionally different genders, from what they had been previously. Like fumbling for clothes in the dark, they would not know the shape they wore, or its strengths and limitations, until they were brought into the light of birth and beheld their mothers and survived long enough to realize their potential.

But with each rebirth came deep reflection, and a profound understanding of the true nature of death and life. In time, they had learned how to mold the desirable elements of their next vessels between deaths. They would be reborn stronger, achieve greater feats than their previous bodies were capable of: larger forms, greater wills, supernatural gifts. And after five millennia and countless incarnations, nothing is beyond the grasp of their draconic vessels that swell with divine power beyond mortal comprehension. Kuzen and Yajj are godly titans that soar above the clouds and crush mountains and cities under their stride like one flattens an anthill. And should they deign it, both can compress themselves to a “minuscule” size the mind can grasp. The weight of their attention can crush the mind and seize the thoughts from those they gaze upon. Yajj harnesses the power of the storm to move with at the speed of lightning, and channels her aggression into darkening skies and raging tempests. Kuzen embraces the earth to mold the world they so easily break, reshaping their eternal empire with but a thought. It is hard to imagine such powerful beings succumbing to death, as all things must. It will be terrifying to behold the strength of their next avatars when they do.


Personalities

Yajj is aggression, savage ferocity honed by a domineering mind. She is the first to act, the first to make the weight of her fury known to the world beneath her, a trait that has persisted across many of her lives. She has little patience for Kuzen’s meticulous planning, often urging him to act rather than ruminate during the rare moments when timing actually matters. But she appreciates her mate’s great wisdom and unwavering determination when he is roused to action.

Kuzen, by contrast, is the stoic mountain that weathers the storm of his mate’s passions. It is not unusual for him to devote months, even years of his lives, to the careful planning of a single action, should it warrant intense contemplation. But when action is finally taken, his plans are executed with methodical and unrelenting precision, and his resolve is unbreakable. He advises Yajj to think before acting, which often fails, knowing full well that urging restraint in her is like trying to stop the sun from rising.

With each rebirth comes greater power, a widening of the vast chasm between themselves and the life teeming at their feet. The average person and their desires and anxieties, their triumphs and tragedies, have grown so small and petty over the thousands of years the two have grown in power. They can no longer comprehend the minds of the insects crawling around their feet, miles below their notice. They cannot console the grieving widow who has just lost her lifelong companion, or share the bliss of their people, ants who look up to them as their gods and guardians.

At their full and terrible height, they see only blue sky and starlit night, clouds billowing around their legs like water, and the ocean of earth stretching below. When they deign to squeeze the height of a mountain beneath the sea of clouds to better glimpse their worshippers, they must they must focus to see individual faces among thousands dotting minuscule villages and little cities. But the slightest flicker in their concentration, the blink of an eye, and insect has vanished into the mass once more. Merely being hundreds of feet tall, or even fifty, does nothing to humanize the faceless many swarming them. It does not put into better perspective the homes and settlements they’ve trampled beneath their feet, or the lives their vast soles have sent to their next rebirth, not out of malice, but by simply existing. It is looking at ants up close.

Kuzen and Yajj see their people as a single organism, a living mass of cells and nerves, bundles of sinew and organs that each have their function and place within the ever-shifting creature they operate as one. The body may swell and contract with rebirths and deaths, but all must act with one body and one mind, so all may prosper. Other nations and their organisms are no different in their eyes. But they are sickly things, diseased, hobbling beasts limping everywhere and going nowhere without consensus as spasming limbs act of their own accord. The body kills itself from the inside out. The enfeebled brain deludes itself, not realizing, or caring, that its own body is failing. They must be kept out, so their sickness does not spread, or better, be put out of their misery.


Worshippers

To understand their people, you must appreciate death. There is no place on earth where death cannot find us. It is madness to think you can succeed. Kuzen and Yajj realized this millennia ago, and to this day remind their people of it: you cannot avoid facing death forever. But why fear what comes naturally? Death, after all, is merely the cessation of life. A natural process we all must face.

They preach it is because of the ego’s instinctive desire to live, “your” desire to postpone the savage end to everything it holds dear. The ego believes itself personal, unique. It smothers the secret fear of impermanence by surrounding itself with more goods and more comforts to nurture and shield itself from what it dare not confront. It is dependent on an endless collection of things to prop it up: “your” name, “your” biography, “your” partners, family, home, job, hobbies. A fragile and transient support it clings to for security. So when death takes them all away, will you have any idea who “you” really are?

Then the storm of realization overwhelms the ego. It cries, it rages, it despairs having to leave everything behind, especially the body it tried so hard to keep alive. It cannot face the truth. It does not want to abandon the failing vessel; it clings to what it believed for so long was permanent, and dies with it.

Kuzen and Yajj have taught their people another way, a way to lift the veil and deprive death of its greatest advantage. Cling not to the material, nor grasp for validation of the ego. Accept death while you live, and prepare for its arrival, for none know not the hour of its coming. In welcoming death, they welcome hope, and the liberty from the shackles of the ego, and the boundless freedom that is theirs to choose. In life, they strive for freedom that enables them to choose their death and thus choose their birth. For their people, who have prepared and practiced, death comes not as a defeat, but as a triumph, the crowning and most glorious moment of life.

When they die, they are reborn anew wearing new flesh. While they may see the world with new eyes and greet old friends with an unfamiliar voice, they retain the experiences of their former life and the lives before that. And given enough time and profound understanding, one may come back stronger than they were before they passed on.


Relations

Ruling only a small piece of the world will test the resolve of any god when all that is not theirs stretches before them as an ever-growing temptation. No deity is immune to the hungering desire for more, more territory, more worship, more power. Kuzen and Yajj have grown lethargic and distant from their people, collecting dust while time and the world have moved on without them or their archaic empire. Their people know peace, they want for nothing. There is no hunger. All have a place to call home, and each knows their place in society. There are no quarrels to mediate, no rebellions to put down, no disease of the body or mind that cannot be cured with rebirth. There is only harmony, nearly five millennia of unbroken, peaceful tranquility. It is no wonder the faint echoes of their original incarnations bay for conquest.

But there are only two of them. While it would be so simple to step on countries and turn their people into crimson smears as they campaign together like the old days, leaving their empire vulnerable to the predations of the world would be disastrous. So they birthed a guardian: their child, Traes. When he grows old enough, he will hold down the fort while mommy and daddy conquer the world. It is no wonder that their progeny is seen as less their flesh and blood and more an appendage of their will.

He has one role, one purpose in his current life. But he is their son, their divine offspring. It will not do to squander his godly potential while he grows complacent with the comforts of his homeland. Thus Kuzen and Yajj cast him out into the impure land, so he will grow strong, and resist its many temptations. Then one day, when they retrieve him, he will realize his capabilities and the gravity of his parents’ task. But his worth as their flesh and blood must be tested. And to remind him of the death that he must embrace, Traes has been raised and trained by the descendants of one of the tribes they scattered to the winds. They have devolved into a den of assassins and hired killers who have Kuzen and Yajj’s blessings to kill their son at any time. But he has been led astray by the enticements of material wealth, and the inferior mortal woman he has taken as a mate. Both will be corrected. They will teach him the error of his ways.

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Very big dragons.

Kuzen & Yajj appear in: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/27183888/

Art done by  ameliacostanza / Ameliaafterdark on DA

Kuzen & Yajj et al belong to me