New setting: Hak’tar

A canine cousin-species to the M’ella, the Hak’tar were quick to create a advanced civilization (at least compared to their cousins), and mastered bronze working and masonry, building great feats of architecture in their temple-cities.

They also got into conflict with the M’ella because of their complete disregard of the natural cycle, and due to the fact that they embraced dark, alien gods from beyond the universe. Intangible things foreign to the concepts of the world they came from, offering them their hearts’ desires in exchange for worship and obedience.

And what the Hak’tar desired was immortality. Something their gods eventually granted them… in a way.

The immortality they were granted was not an eternal life, but the return of the soul to the body after death, trapping the subject in eternal unlife. This practice was then perfected by the Hak’tar, creating vessels for the soul so that it would not die if the body collapsed, as well as ways to preserve the body, preventing it from decomposing.

Additionally, the lich-priests of the Hak’tar mastered the art of animating the dead, creating unliving puppets to serve their every need.

This, of course, did not go over well to the gods of the universe, specifically the god of Death took offense to this transgression of the natural order. He then created the first seekers to beat down the infection that he considered the undead.

Long wars between the “civilized” Hak’tar and the M’ella tribes followed, but in the end the Hak’tar were forced to flee when their alien gods failed to protect them from the wrath of the world’s gods.

The few remaining Hak’tar settlements in existence are put in isolated places such as vast deserts or secluded valleys, where the Hak’tar death-lords and lich-priests brood upon their eventual return, and the destruction of those who stood against them.