Neateir

This is the page for the Region of Neateir, click Here to get to the page for Nealite Culture.

Neateir (nay-ah-tay-ear), also known in later times as Neala (nay-all-ah), is a wide pocket of arid habitability that surrounds the great Skrall River, and contains numerous peoples and notable locations. It has a sea to it's southwest aptly named the Sea of Liquid Sand; to it's north past the Border Steppe are the remnants of the Great Mountains and the Scarred Plateau; to its east is the Barrier Desert; and to the south, past Creep Canyon and Iron Canyon, is the largely uninhabitable wasteland called Ani'Keyah, meaning Death Land to the formerly-rational natives there.

Neateir was once a land of arid plains with pockets of desert (such as the timeless Dunes of Treason) with green grass and farmlands going out of the Skrall River, but after the Shattering of Spherus Magna, Neala was largely a desert with only remnants of the arid grass appearing around water. After the Battle of Bara Magna that ruined the mountains of the north and shook the planet, and the Melding and Restoration, which put the planet back together and spread life back across Spherus Magna (including bringing back some extinct species), Neala is once more a land of hot grasslands; though not all of the areas can naturally support all the life, so some areas have returned into being desert, like the Dunes of Treason. With the arrival of Mata Nui's subjects from his domain of Ao, now refugees after their universe was destroyed in the Battle of Bara Magna, the various biomechanical races have spread throughout Neala and are starting to move beyond; they cannot reproduce, but seek to avert certain extinction by replicating the processes of their creation somewhere on Spherus Magna.

The economic center of Neateir was Ateiropolis (or Atero) since prehistory, the city so important it was accepted as a zone of neutrality during the Core War, until it was rivaled by Tajun with the Tajunite Empire; later, Tajun was humbled in the Rise of Kertavus, and Atero was completely destroyed and Tajun nearly-destroyed in the Skrall War. After Atero's destruction, Vulkanus began to somewhat fill in this void of power until after the Battle of Bara Magna, where with the help of the newly arrived Matoran, the city of Aternea (New Atero) was built and immediately and rapidly grew in dominance. Tesara could have risen to the forefront after the Shattering (and for a very brief time it did) as it was the only place in Neateir that mysteriously continued to have some healthy green vegetation, if it was not for its deep divisions and constant fighting with itself (which allowed it to be sacked numerous times by the Vulka Bone Hunters, and be captured by Tajun when the city-state began its hegemony).

History
For much of history, Spherus Magna has been ignorant and reliant only on the myths of kults and what little has survived the millennia. This has made it hard to tell what happened and when it happened, if it happened. Thankfully, there have been recent events in history that have shone a light into a very mystified subject, they being the Revelations of Mata Nui as recorded by Tarduk, and the Visions of Thasos as recorded by Iaredios, though these greatly de-legitimize some of the traditions of the Kult of Heroes and the Elder Kult, and so they are treated as heresy to these religious faiths.

Larfeia Period
Neateir was uninhabited by sentient life until the Larfeia (means Masked), the first group of agori to migrate out of Geneteira, settled here for a few centuries. In that time, they built large, mysterious monolithic structures and constructed masks of power, which their chieftains would go out to put into booby-trapped temples far away in the wilds.

The earliest record written by these early people comes from ancient runes with angular carvings found on Knee Island, the carvings saying it's prehistoric name was ' Okoto ' '. The runes contained a myth, dubbed ' The Ekimu Myth ' or ' The Epic of Ekimu ' or simply ' 'The Okoto Myth '. The myth told of a blue-painted chieftain who wore a gold crown/mask named King Ekimu, both a royal mask maker and over a thousand years old, and his contention with the undead king Kulta the Skull Grinder, and an evil hunter named Umarak who made a covenant with Kulta's dark homeland. As his brother Prince Atukam would rule as regent as his brother went to confront the dark forces, Ekimu had help from spiritual warriors fight against Umarak and his undead warrior allies as Umarak hunted for immortal spiritual animals that housed the power of the gods that would make him a god, and the undead warriors tried to absorb the powers of the warriors with their undead king Kulta the Skull Grinder serving a masters from the 'black sea'. In various feats Ekimu and the band of spiritual warriors were able to stop the two forces of evil, but while all that was happening, Ekimu's brother Atukam wanted to help, and so crafted a mask of ultimate power with energy from the 'black sea' to fight the threats their people (fighting fire with fire), but the mask he created corrupted him. The chieftain-king and his brother prince had a duel, in the duel Atukam confessed that he was the one who hired Umarak in order to make himself godly and summoned the undead warriors from the 'black sea'. Ekimu knocking off his brother's mask and for the greater good destroyed Atukam's new mask, its destruction sent a blast that destroyed the civilization ('it vanished into a ruinous crater') on the island and nearby land, Ekimu and Atukam being slain in the blast's epicenter. The myth also tells of how there is a prophecy of how Ekimu would return to bring life to the barren land and his spiritual warriors would return with him. The writer claims he or she was of the last of their people and they would all die of drought. It is unknown how much a time distance there was between the writing here and the events covered. Despite supposedly inadvertently causing the end of the Okoto Civilization, Ekimu was praised by the unknown writer as the 'greatest of kings across all of time'.

It is unknown how much of the Ekimu Myth is true, but it serves as the earliest dated written transcription in history. If the mask-making part was true, then that means that the Larfeia, or at least he Okoto Civilization, was the first to discover and invent metallurgy. The more spiritually inclined see the Ekimu Myth as being true, as well as the prophecy, and it was fulfilled by Mata Nui, but that's up for debate. Historians complain how if there were any other remains of the Okoto Civilization they were most likely destroyed by Knee Island's former-namesake landed on the island after the Great Being's Prototype Ao blew up, as was revealed by Mata Nui. It should be noted that it is unknown by what the author means exactly by 'black sea', however, the presence of the undead and dark forces correlates with later mythic history concerning the tales of Greani Ateir and the Black Rain leads some to believe that Ekimu and his 'spiritual warriors' (who little is known about) were dealing with some sort of Krahagnu invasion and his actions most likely saved the world from a planetary invasion.

Second oldest known record would be the 'History of The People ', a record carved into a monument in ruins in east Neala, in the same strange angular text as the Ekimu Myth was written in. It is from the translation of this one by later people that the Epic of Ekimu was able to be read. The History told of the origin of the Larfeia from what is now known as Geneteira, and is set before the events of The Ekimu Myth. It tells of how in a village of boulder walls named Yaka, there was a good king, and his rule was good and he died old. He was beloved and people mourned his death. His son succeeded him, and he was a ruthless king, evil but kept his people alive in hard times. He died and people were split on his legacy, the two parties being led by his children, a son named Ankan and a daughter Ashan. The son said that the way of their father was the best to rule, while the daughter said the way of their grandfather was the best way. the two bickered until it seemed that bloodshed was eminent. Not wanting anyone to perish, especially her kin, Ashan proposed that her and her party leave in self-exile, and Ankan and party couldn't wait to be rid of them fast enough. Before leaving, he asked if she and her people can take the totem masks of their people, the power of the spirits to held fend off the dangers of the wild. Content with their boulder walls, the new king of Yaka agreed and watched his sister and people leave. Ankan would later find that his sister stole the Egg of Knowledge, a large hallowed out egg that had the instructions on how to make masks of power written on there in and that their wooden yet enchanted Mask of Monarchs was also gone, and in anger he cursed that Ashan and her people die horrifically. The History talks about their life in the desert, encounters with monsters, and an extensive of succession with the passing down of the Mask of Monarchs. It also talks about their first arrival in what would later be named Neateir. While there is some damage to the original temple in which the carved record is stored, it can't easily be said for most other Larfeia ruins in Neala. The Core War and the cataclysmic Shattering obliterated most of these fragile antiquities, and the conflicts of the Age of Anarchy only continued to damaged others, much to the dismay of those that would like to see them.

After a thousand years of living in Neateir, the Larfeia were driven out by a barbarians from the north dubbed by modern historian as the Madialnar. It is now known that the Larfeia migrated to the north west, beyond the immediate Great Mountains into an expansive valley surrounded by the vast mountainous lands of the north that lay south of the Northern Frost, the valley later dubbed the Valley of the Great Beings. The Madialnar left little amount of original structures of their own, mostly living in the abandoned buildings left by the Larfeia they had ousted. After centuries of inhabiting the region, a great drought occurred in Neala that forced them to head back north, eventually migrating east into the continent of Bota Magna.

After the abandonment of Neala by the Larfeia and the Madialnar, the region become uninhabited by sentient life for thousands of years, some of Larfeia structures beginning to crumble but many still roughly intact. By this time, the Giants of the Dark Valley had invaded and conquered Geneteira, the giant clans taking over most of the known civilized world. 700 hundred years passed since that dark day and year, and the world changed with the coming of Greani Ateir. 35 some years after his birth Greani took his anti-Giant resistance and fled Bota Magna.