Category:Arakian

The Arakians were the human, surface dwellers of the land of Arak. They herded sheep and goats, and were also miners. A road crossed their land joining the eastern end of the Old Svalich Road in eastern Barovia to Darkon probably just west of Tempe Falls. There was also a road to Sidnar in Darkon. The Arakians possessed an abject fear, which they attempted to impress upon others, of the hours of the night when the Sneeuane Feallagh ("gossamer folk") would swarm up from the kingdom of Niurin Scaa ("Shadow Nether") to devour the souls of mortal men.

Niurin Scaa was subject to a strange temporal fugue that the Arakians encountered as they plumbed the depths. A miner might spend a week underground and return to the surface to discover that only a day had passed. The phenomenon grew more marked and unnerving the deeper the Arakians dug, and ultimately they foreswore mining far beneath the surface, warning visiting Darkonese dwarves and gnomes not to dig too deep.

In 588 BC a sandstorm of unprecedented ferocity scoured the land of Arak clean in an event recorded as the Scourge of Arak. The storm did not harm life far beneath the surface of the land however. Yet when the shadow fey emerged from their hidden kingdom of Niurin Scaa it was to survey their loss. The Arakians, who had been an excellent diversion from the ennui of eternity, were no more.

Evidence of the existence of the Arakians consists of their mines and the tales of Darkonese dwarves and gnomes whose fathers came to mine the Mountains of Misery after the appearance of Darkon on the northern frontier of Arak in 579 BC.