Komari Xul –The Severed Breed
A re-skinned OD&D Dwarf Fighting-man for the Bazen Pur Campaign Setting
“We Were Not Born. We Were Broken Into Being.”
Overview
The Komari Xul are not a natural people. They are a crafted breed, shaped by inhuman hands in steaming flesh-vats beneath the Peaks of Dawn, where light could not reach and screams echoed for centuries. They were not born of womb or love, but conjured from clay, bone slush, and fire-glass. Their flesh is packed dense with calcified memory; their sinews laced with arcane ligament runes.
They were made to serve.
Their makers, the Naruk Azhur, were not gods nor giants, but something older—a caste of colossal, near-immortal sorcerers who devoured form to master it. Masters of lost bio-occult geometries and echo-sorceries, the Naruk Azhur created the Komari Xul to dig, to carry, to bleed on command. These beings were bred hollow, with no true names, no heritage, no hope.
But one day, they remembered.
A fracture occurred in the forges of the deep—an error in binding, a name whispered wrongly. The Komari Xul turned against their architects. They crushed them with cursed picks and uncoiled their own binding glyphs. Those who survived the revolt climbed to the surface. What remains below still watches, still hungers.
The Naruk Azhur have not forgiven them. The Komari will never forget.
Class Framework
Class: Fighting-Men, limited to 6th level
Prime Requisite: Strength
Weapons Permitted: Any
Armor permitted: Any
Magic Use: None (sorcery distrusted)
Other Class or Cultural Abilities (see below for setting details):
- Improved Toughness
- Improved Saving Throws
- Improved Listening
- Underworld Perception and Knowledge
- Crafting, Metallurgy, Gemology Knowledge
- Can wield Xar Kulak, a lost artifact
Other Disadvantage(s):
- Hatred of Naruk Ahzur and other evil vat creatures of the Deep, attack on sight
Languages:
- Rugh (commonly called “Komari” by outsiders)
- Common (Trade-Qarian)
- Alignment Cant (Law or Neutrality)
- Various dialects of corrupted Old Rugh spoken by other enslaved vat creatures of the Deep
- Old Rugh Ebb Glyphs of the Naruk Azhur (spoken only as liturgical fragments)
| XP | Level | Hit Dice | Title |
| 0 | 1 | 1+1 | Shard-Bound |
| 2,000 | 2 | 2 | Breaker of Glyphs |
| 4,000 | 3 | 3 | Echo-Walker |
| 8,000 | 4 | 4 | Oath-Forged |
| 16,000 | 5 | 5+1 | Stone-Chosen |
| 32,000 | 6 | 6 | Nameless One |
Level Titles
| Level | Title | Meaning and Context |
| 1 | Shard-Bound (Xular Kraktum) | One newly awakened from the vat or one who remembers the bindings of servitude. Still bears unbroken runes from the Shapers. Muscles remember orders more than names. |
| 2 | Breaker of Glyphs (Nul-Saram) | One who has shattered or severed the binding sigils etched into their flesh. Often marked by self-carved scars or excised runes. Begins to speak with their voice. |
| 3 | Echo-Walker (Darakth Vorn) | A Komari who moves among ruins of the Deep, listening to the reverberations of their kind. May hear fragments of forgotten commands, but walks unshackled. Trusted to read silent stone. |
| 4 | Oath-forged (Kul-Orum) | One who has forged a personal oath, beyond programming. Their will is a weapon, and their scars are scripture. May bear a reforged binding plate as armor—not as submission, but remembrance. |
| 5 | Stone-Chosen (Komar Zhul) | A name once lost, now earned. These warriors are believed to embody ancestral memory—the bone-song of their kind. Often serve as guides for the Nameless Ones or keepers of ossuaries. |
| 6 | Nameless One (Vorn-Akha) | A state of sacred refusal. One who has renounced name, lineage, and even selfhood to become an unbreakable sentinel of the Severed. Their silence is prophecy; their presence, a final oath. |
Alignment
The Komari Xul may be aligned with Law or Neutrality. Those who bind themselves to ancestral oaths, seek the preservation of their kind, or dedicate their blade to the defense of vaults and memory walk the path of Law—refusing the dissolution their creators intended. Others, bearing neither hatred nor allegiance, simply endure. Those Komari that walk the path of Neutrality act from necessity and survival, guided by internal gravity rather than creed. No Komari Xul may be aligned with Chaos; chaos is the voice of the Shapers, and the Severed do not answer.
Cultural Abilities & Traits of the Komari Xul
Flesh-Engineered Form
Komari Xul bodies are denser than most humanoids—muscle fused with alchemical calcium and nerve iron. Because of their unnatural compactness, structure, and bred ability to absorb external pressures, they are unusually stable and enduring in combat, against larger creatures (such as the Naruk Azhur, colossal vat-creatures, or war constructs). Such creatures only score one-half damage against the Komari Xul. This is not due to dodging, but because the force needed to disrupt them is greater.
Echo-Resistance
The rituals of their making involved layered psychic seals designed to suppress free will. Those seals were broken—but their fractured remnants remain. Komari Xul add four levels to all saving throws. Spells targeting their minds may sometimes yield contradictory echoes or fragments of prior commands.
Attuned Hearing
Their genetic programing has attuned them to detecting the shifting of stones and earth, as well as other potential hazards of the Deep. Komari Xul have a 2-in-6 chance of detecting noise and other sounds.
Woundless Perception
Though they no longer reside in the Deep, their creational blood-vats attuned them to shifts in pressure, temperature, and sound. Komari Xul automatically sense subtle changes in underground construction, sloping and shifting corridors, hollow walls, and mechanical disturbances. This is not learned skill—it is leftover programming.
Runeblood Legacy
All Komari Xul carry a residual crafting function—whether metallurgy, geomancy, arcane etching, or stone-bone graftwork. These talents often express themselves involuntarily under stress, and many Stone-Chosen bear strange marks across their bodies that shift subtly in moonlight.
The Lost Artifact of Xar Kulak
This magical artifact was lost after the Komari Xul shattered the programmed chains that once bound them to the Naruk Azhur. This powerful artifact is now intimately attuned to the Komari through an arcane biomancy not fully understood. None but a Komari Xul can wield this weapon.
Naruk-Bound Hatred
Komari Xul who encounter agents, creations, or sorceries of the Naruk Azhur feel a rising pulse in their blood. They will attack on sight. Their hatred is both emotional and genetic.
Komari Xul Lore
Beliefs of the Severed Breed
The Komari Xul do not have gods. They have memories and rituals meant to guard against dissolution.
- The Litany of Refusal – A recitation of false names and broken glyphs that their ancestors tore from the walls of their birthing vaults. It is spoken before battle or when death seems likely.
- The Creed of Form’s Lie – All visible shape is a deception. True self must be extracted, not discovered.
- The Oath of the Echo-Silenced – A warrior may choose to have their name removed by ritual excoriation, becoming a Nameless One. These elite fight with suicidal calm, knowing they have left memory behind.
Cultural Practices
Face-Vaults and Scar Keys
The Komari Zul are a hermaphroditic dying breed. Their liberation also divorced them from keys to their programming and ability to spawn. Offspring and those still capable of spawning in the ancient vats are sacred and revered. Komari Xul capable of spawning wear metal faceplates when they come of age. These are not decorative—they are both lock and key to their personal ancestry and mark them as sacred. The plates are never removed in public, and some are fused directly to flesh. Komari warriors will fight to the death, regardless of the odds, to protect even a single Komari youth, and to assault a masked Komari or remove their faceplate is punishable by death for the offender.
No Graves, Only Vaults
The dead are not buried, but returned to stone—reabsorbed into sacred ossuaries in deep places. When one dies far from home, their teeth or faceplate are carried back by oath.
Masks of the Viscera-Singers
Some among them, scarred by failed transformation rituals or uncompleted unbindings, become semi-prophets known as Viscera-Singers, who chant in cracked glyph tones and can barely speak. Their utterances are seen as oracles.
Common Sayings of the Komari Xul
“We were made to break. So we broke.”
“I was not born. I was bound.”
“The chains are clever. So are the teeth.”
“To forgive the Shapers is to forget the song.”