The Yo’nari

🔈 (yo-NAH-ree)

The Yo’nari were an ancient proto-Deno’qai people and among the first humans to settle the northwest coast and interior mountains of Apporia. Before the Downfall Wars, most of these people vanished into Cairn Dor with their queen, Yeshara, leaving ruined settlements and standing stones behind on the Material Plane.

History

The Yo’nari belonged to the early Northros-speaking migrations, from which the Deno’qai, Vargaldi, Zimka, and perhaps others descended. They frequently encountered fey as they traveled across Apporia, and called the Feywild Nazil-Dimu. Their surviving sites on the Material Plane use monumental stonework and wolf imagery, including parallel rows of wolf-headed plinths and the trilithic Cleaver-Stone.

Yeshara’s growing fear of dreams divided the Yo’nari. Some fled as she outlawed sleep rites and imposed prolonged vigils, while those who remained participated in a midwinter rite intended to sever their connection to sleep and the Plane of Consciousness. The rite instead created Cairn Dor and carried Yeshara and her followers into the new realm.

Cairn Dor

The native population of Cairn Dor is the continuation of the Yo’nari people, transformed by long residence in the Shadowfolds and by Yeshara’s doctrine of eternal waking. The ordinary inhabitants, called the Nurim-Dor, or People of Eternal Waking, fear sleep yet must occasionally rest, while the Shemra Azem, or Guardians of the Vigil, formed a distinct sleepless military order sustained by magic.