Lore Report – The Kamal

What are the Kamal? Well, simple enough, the Kamal were a race of snow demons living in Akavir. Kamal itself translates to snow hell. These snow demons would spend the cold winter months frozen solid, but, when summer came, they would thaw out and immediately attack Tang Mo, though they were always unsuccessful.

(Akavir) 

Tang Mo, the Thousand Monkey Isles, was inhabited by many different breeds of monkeys, collectively forming the race called Tang Mo. Oddly enough, every race in Akavir has attempted to enslave them at some point, and, thus far, none have been successful.

In 2E 572, the Kamal invaded Tamriel under their king, Ada’soom Dir-Kamal, supposedly in search of something they called the “Ordained Receptacle”. They arrived in northeast Skyrim and ransacked Windhelm, successfully taking the city and killing Queen Mabjaarn and Nurnhilde, her daughter.

(The Ebonheart Pact was formed shortly after the Second Akaviri Invasion) 

Jorunn, Mabjaarn’s son, escaped the slaughter. He met up with the Dunmer army led by Almalexia and they marched on Windhelm. The battle seemed to be in favor of the Kamal until a phalanx of Argonians arrived. Dir-Kamal, now trapped between Jorunn’s army of rallied Nords, Alamalexia’s Dunmer forces, and the savage Argonian army, was pushed back, driven into the sea to drown. Some attest it was the combined might of the three armies that drove back the Kamal, but others say Vivec himself arrived and raised a massive tidal wave to destroy the Kamal. Whatever the case, Jorunn was later crowned High-King.

(The Coral Heart, deep within Vivec's Antlers) 

The site of the final battle, a place in the Stonefalls of Morrowind, would become known as Vivec’s Antlers. This further proves the theory that it was Vivec that destroyed the Kamal. It is home to several species of bizarre land-coral that looks like trees on fire, and Vivec’s Antlers is also home to what is known as the Coral Heart.

This was not the last time Tamriel would see the Kamal, however. Remnants of Dir-Kamal’s invasion force that somehow managed to survive the assault at Vivec’s Antlers would resurface over two hundred years later.

(Akaviri Ghosts holed up within an Akavir Ruin)

In 2E 812, the Kamal returned in Cyrodiil, this time capturing the Ruby Throne from the successors of Attrebus, a notorious warlord who was infamously known as the Pretender King. He reigned over the Imperial Throne sometime around 2E 430 until the reign of the Longhouse Emperors. He mounted a campaign to rid Cyrodiil of foreigners and began by forcefully expelling the Akaviri, who fled Cyrodiil to settle in Elsweyr, founding the city of Rimmen.

During this invasion of Cyrodiil by the Kamal survivors, the Akaviri living in Rimmen rose to invade Cyrodiil alongside the Kamal and they were successful in taking Cyrodiil almost in entirety, though they failed, quite horribly, at raising their own empire. The Akaviri of Rimmen slowly returned to Elsweyr only to learn the Khajiit had taken Rimmen back and the Akaviri refugees were once again put under the rule of The Mane. They have since adopted a renewed tribute, a sort of tax, to maintain their independence.

(Rimmen in Elsweyr)

What happened to the Kamal after this is anyone’s guess. They seem to have disappeared entirely from Tamriel, but perhaps they are beneath the frozen tundra of Skyrim, waiting to be thawed.