The Rukkar

Iron is proven in the fire, and a Rukkar in the hardship. Neither one is ever permitted to break.

a saying of the Unbroken Kraetorum

The Rukkar are the people of the Great Rukken Empire, a single, disciplined warrior-culture of the West. They speak Rukken, they march under the eagle and the god Korran, the Unbroken, and they believe above all else that a person is not born strong but made strong. To understand a Rukkar, understand their pillars.

The pillars

1. Discipline is the forge of the self

A Rukkar is drilled, tested, and hardened like iron in fire. They prize self-mastery, endurance, and control over the body and over fear. Softness, indulgence, and the chaos within are shameful. Discipline is the first virtue, the one all the others are built on.

2. Strength, vitality, vigor

Iron and stone are their soul. Iron is strength tested and tempered; stone is endurance that outlasts ages. They honor the vigorous body, the forge, and the wall. Their capital, Korrum, the Great Stone, is hewn from iron and grey rock to say it plainly: we do not break.

3. The warrior is the truest Rukkar

The soldier's life is the highest calling, and the army, the Unbroken Kraetorum, is the model for all of society. Its soldiers, the Kraetin, are the warriors who do not break. To bear arms for the empire, to hold the line, to die at your post rather than yield, is the greatest honor a life can carry.

4. Never retreat, never abandon the empire

Allegiance is absolute. To flee a battle, desert a post, or break faith with the empire is treason, and the traitor becomes forsworn: cast out, struck from his House and from memory, forbidden to be spoken of. It is the one truly unforgivable thing, a living death.

5. Vigilance

After Korran, the Unbroken, the Sentinel who never leaves his post, the Rukkar hold that one must never be caught unready, never lower the guard, never leave the wall. The long, unsleeping watch is a sacred duty, and patience under hardship is its own kind of strength.

6. Order and rank

A disciplined people is an ordered one. Every Rukkar has a place in the chain, from the Iperator down through the Houses and the Kraetorum, and to know your rank and keep it is discipline made into a society. Disorder is the mark of weakness.

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The hidden truth

The Rukkar believe they simply love discipline and loathe chaos. They do not know that this is the mortal echo of a cosmic law: Vire against Rive, order against rupture. The West lives the cosmology without ever naming it, which is why their god is Korran, the Unbroken, the Sentinel who is their own discipline written into the heavens.