Alter Aeon The Great Library

Welcome to the Alter Aeon Historical Archive!

Note - as with any topic, researchers should question the reliability
and veracity of these texts.  The library's aim is to preserve
documents, not verify accuracy.

AABN:  47603
Title: a book entitled, "The Rock Eaters"

 "They eat rocks like men eat bread, and leave the land wasted and barren
in their wake. No man can stand against them. The Blue Dragon is their only
fear."

--Shaman Durgo the scrub orc, as quoted by General Reraroca the Rock

 The U'ra are the most infamous of murlocks, universally hated by all the
indigenous peoples of the K'tinga River Valley.  They look like slender
bipedal newts, complete with tails.  They are of great stature for
murlocks, often standing over seven feet tall. Their skin is brown, their
bellies bright orange.   They can live on dry land, far from water, for
many weeks, and they incubate their eggs in shallow muddy pools of their
own creation.  They are distantly akin to the so-called toad-kind murlocks,
but the blood-tie is so remote that it is doubtful that an U'ra could
produce young with any other breed of murlock. Some murlocks consider the
U'ra to be supernatural beings, desert spirits of famine. Others regard
them the way men regard orcs: similar in shape and habits, but not of any
relation at all.

 The U'ra were never numerous, but their superior size and strength allowed
them to raid and enslave humans, jann and their fellow murlocks alike. 
They wiped out lost Oriental merchant vans and exploring Aztec war parties.
They survived by training all their males for battle and sending them on
raids, using slaves to hunt, mine and dig their burrows.  The females were
fierce taskmasters, watching over the slaves.  They practice a very
rudimentary form of geomancy.  The U'ra were very recently pacified by the
Combine military.  They were forced to settle around the largest of their
gold mines, in a colony known simply as Minetown.  They are rebellious and
often stage coups against the mercenaries garrisoned there.

 The southern portion of the Rud'Jali Desert is called the Desolation of
U'ras. The entire region is stripped of nearly all life.  The U'ra even
felled trees and ate them.  The very soil has had the vitality leeched from
it by U'ra geomancers.  Huge megaliths, etched with the scrawls of U'ra
petroglyphs, are scattered across the region, and piles of skulls mark
places of ancient slaughters and feasts.