Lord Nara is a figure from the mythic history of the Yonggan, and the subject of various legends recorded in the Yonggan epic Barutugisun and the semi-historical Naraejebun.
Lord Nara is said to have been one of the sons of Yonggan culture-hero and demi-spirit Barutu. His years, according to the Naraejebun, were 2477-1877 BG, but this chronology is tenuous at best. He is the progenitor of one of the major Yonggan clans, the Nara clan, who eventually founded a conquest dynasty of the Earth Kingdom before being deposed by the Hao Ting as Earth Monarchs. The Nara retained power in the Yonggan state because a cadet branch of the Nara family made peace with the Hao Ting, but many years later the Nara clan supported Qin the Great's attempt to overthrow the Hao Ting. For this, they were exiled and arguably subjected to genocide by the victorious Hao Ting earth king.
In the years of the Nara ascendancy, Lord Nara was glorified as a demispiritual culture hero alongside his father Barutu, being venerated by many members of the Imperial Clan as their great ancestor.
Nara is his given name, and he had no surname, but his name effectively became the clan name for his descendants. Clan names came to be inherited matrilineally over time (possibly because they were associated with hereditary grazing rights, and the certitude of maternity was favored for such an important matter.)
Mythic Life History
Nara was the second child of Barutu (which may acknowledge the Jala clan's customary seniority over the Nara before the Ascendancy.) Nara's other parent is the shape-shifting mountain spirit Ikirihan, who is often described as male in the wider Yonggan legendarium, but is said to have taken a female form in order to bear children with Barutu. Nara learned the ways of mining and badgermole husbandry from his father Barutu (who purportedly invented these things), and learned earthbending from Ikirihan. He tamed a badgermole when he was three years old, though by that time he was physically an adult. He is said to have been able to lift the animal above his head with one hand, such was his physical strength. He had the spiritual power to turn his skin to stone, and to him is attributed the earthbending technique of stone armor. His badgermole was a female with a white patch on her coat, named Balda. Balda was said to be able to jump three li between hills with no rider, and two with a rider.
Nara fathered many children (literally hundreds, as enumerated in the Barutugisun) and gave rise to the Yonggan clan bearing his name. Nara and the warriors among his descendants joined Barutu in fighting the forces of his uncle, Barutu's brother Gaihasu; this is thought to reflect the ancient conflict between the Abka and Yonggan. In the Barutugisun's very long account of the battle, Nara slays sixteen named opponents, mostly with earthbending.
Barutu eventually makes Nara's son Nara Baninaraku the khan of the Nara clan, and his eldest daughter Nara Fodoho the founder of the Nara house of mantic priesthood; they receive, respectively, portions of Barutu's temporal and spiritual power. Why Nara himself does not receive a boon from Barutu is not explained, but it's conjectured that it was, in antiquity, considered improper for a man other than Barutu himself to hold the spiritual powers of the mantic priesthood, or for Nara's sisters to hold the khanate themselves.
The Naraejebun adds little to the Barutugisun's story of Lord Nara, apart from chronological speculations and lists of descendants and territorial holdings; that work is more historicizing and thus tends to concentrate on his much later, better-documented descendants. However, there are legends of Lord Nara which did not make the "cut" of the Barutugisun. Eastern Yonggan tell that he had an incestuous affair with his sister Ikulu, who gave birth to a monstrous spirit as a result. Lord Nara is also said to have been the first goldsmith, and to have made a luminous mirror for himself. His daughter Nara Fuse was purportedly the first geomancer, but was seduced by a fox-spirit and expelled by Nara when he found out about it. Finally, another well-attested, but probably late, legend omitted from the Barutugisun is that Nara and Jala were twins, and that Nara was actually the firstborn.