The Askari
A matriarchal warrior civilization from the Skovos Isles, built on the legacy of their nephalem founders.
Origins and society
Section titled “Origins and society”The Askari are a warrior-oracle civilization based in the Skovos Isles, off the southern coast of Sanctuary. Outsiders most often know them by their warrior caste: the Amazons.
Their society is organized around two ruling castes. The Amazon Caste supplies the civilization’s warriors and protectors; the Oracle Caste supplies its seers and prophets, who read the future through a relic tradition tied to the Sightless Eye. Political power is held jointly by two queens, one drawn from each caste.
The Askari trace their founding to two ancestors: Philios, a first-generation nephalem, and Lycander, a renegade angel. Both are remembered as the source of the civilization’s warrior and prophetic traditions alike.
Beliefs and outlook
Section titled “Beliefs and outlook”Askari religion venerates Philios and Lycander as deified ancestors, in place of the Light of the Zakarum Church or the doctrine of the High Heavens. Their worldview centers on cosmic order and the obligation of the strong to uphold it. Physical and spiritual discipline are treated as a single practice rather than separate pursuits, and strength is understood as something owed to that order rather than a means of conquest.
Relationships
Section titled “Relationships”The Askari hold themselves apart from both the Zakarum Church and the eastern mage clans, whose politics they regard as beneath them.
The Sisterhood of the Sightless Eye, active in Khanduras, began as a group of Askari women who broke away with a stolen prophetic relic. The Askari consider them renegades and thieves, and the theft remains a source of tension between the two.
Ties to Tristram
Section titled “Ties to Tristram”An Askari abroad is almost always there on a formal commission. When the Oracles foresaw the return of the Prime Evils, they sent a champion west to intervene. Within Askari culture this is a sanctioned duty carried out on behalf of the state, not a personal adventure, and it is what could bring one of their warriors into the events unfolding around Tristram.
Player character ideas
Section titled “Player character ideas”Example motivations:
- A duty owed to prophecy and to the civilization that issued the commission.
- Physical and spiritual discipline treated as inseparable.
- Strength placed in the service of order rather than conquest.
Suggested classes: Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Cleric (War or Light).