Uqbar is a place but it cannot be shown on a map. On the other hand, no map is needed. Anyone can come there. You could simply walk. Just go towards Owbrik in the sky, owards, ever owards, and you will get there, eventually. Of course, there is always the shortcut.

When you die, your soul will end up there in any case.

There, on the pinnacle of this greatest of all trees, where it touches the skies, turns Uneve, the Black Hole at the End of the World. All existence is drawn to it and disappears in it. All the threads of the Weave end up here, to make place for new life that Allmother Eve bestows. And the residue of life, the unused, the haunted, the dark matter, all amasses here at the end of its cycle, forming the space that is Uqbar.

But there are  people who make use and service to Eve of this, people who live even here, for all of Eve’s creation is Man’s to pursue. The last remnants of those who have inhabited this land in a time before ends, when Mankind was more than it is now and all elements were ours to be harnessed. Their ancestors were those who followed Inra, the elder Aeon of Green. After his de-emanation, they remained unyieldingly loyal to his brother Owbrik the Dark, who saved the Weave by embracing Uneve.

The Goqinra, as they call themselves, though also mortal and Men as much as anyone, are possesing of strange sensibilities and aptitudes. They consider their people to be “chosen” as custodians of the world, or more precisely, the custodians of its decay. They see this position as a sort of a trade-off, an ancestral duty, for stubbornly adhering to their land even after it became the World’s End. When Owbrik’s dominion over Death was established, their Lords became his first servants – the dreaded Harlequin, judges over all souls. Those dead who are “bereaved” by them are cast out of the Weave by the Harlequin remain bound to Uqbar as undead – banshee they call them –  to serve the Goqinra as tools for labor and lust, further adding to the already quite macabre atmosphere of this unique society.

The Goqinra are almost exclusively born of the elements of either Green or Darkness, as befits their lineage, intertwined with Ancient Devas of Inra. They are short of stature and unnervingly pale of complexion, seeming as mere shadows of us Kahar men. Despite that, they are prideful, irreverent and often opaque when held to our standards of decision-making and motivations. No wonder, since they have been living for so long in an environment so bleak, so unforgiving of life and the many mistakes it entails.

Tutorial notes for Our Exalted Emperor Agaven XIX , Imperial Record Orchard, fruit V-XIX