The Merridel of Old

Twenty Summers shy of half a thousand years ago, there was a land known as Merridel. It bordered on a vast, sparkling sea to the West and South, endless polar wastelands to the North, and a great savannah ringed with mountains to the East, known as the Orcish Khanlands. It was between all these many places that Merridel was situated, and in it lived many peoples, of which the three most widespread were the Elves, of forested Arden and mountainous Nidahn, the Humans, of Middenland’s rivers and valleys, and the Dwarves, of the endless dunes of Lothern.

There was little in the way of contact between them, and indeed, in these ancient days, Merridel was not a place, but simply a name, its origins long since lost to time. City-states and small kingdoms dotted the landscape, carved out by those with the resources and drive to do so. A few, such as the town of Dove in the northern foothills of the Green-Teeth Mountains, were entirely isolated, existing only as a single city and going without much trade or contact. However, the majority of these cities had found themselves a part of a larger nation. Among the most prosperous of these nations(and notably, among the youngest) was the city-state of Runestone, which had been founded by Ardeni Elves fleeing their homeland some century and a half prior, and which sat atop the Crystalrock, a great plateau on a peninsula near the very westernmost edge of Merridel. Here, the fledgling dynasty of House Torien had ruled for some seventy years, replacing the previous Green Council with a proper monarchy, and bringing the inhabitants of the greater peninsula under their banners. Other civilizations of similar size and far older age existed, however. To the North, Nidahn had long been ruled by the imperial Kahn Dynasty, which supposedly once ruled over far more land. However, roughly four hundred years prior, a group of Southern Humans had come to Nidahn and colonized its Southern foothills. Such colonizers had come from Middenland, where an ancient religious tradition had long connected the towns and cities surrounding Beacon Lake. East of Middenland, two centuries after a bloody war, a line of Dwarven Gaeseains had ruled Lothern from their seat of power, Castellum, a huge city which sat on the shores of the largest oasis in Lothern. South of the Green-Teeth, a spiritualist order of Elves held great sway over the inhabitants of Arden, led by the Greenspeakers, ancient seers and shamans who traced their histories even into the deep past. Further to the West and North of Runestone lay the smallest of these kingdoms; the Harborlands of Mûlona, where small, spritely men called Halflings fished the rivers and oceans of their homeland, under the rule of a line of fisher-queens. And yet, despite this bounty of cultures and of life, Merridel was sorely lacking unity, teeming with petty conflicts between peoples and prone to violence. Scars of old wars still lay in the earth, which had not healed for many centuries. But change was coming—change greater than any Merridelan could have ever imagined, and in only a few short years, these lands would be unrecognizable.

The Shadow Plague

It came from the East; a sickness like no other, infecting and consuming those exposed. But these victims did not die; no, they changed, their skin and their hair taking a shade blacker than coal and their eyes turning white as marble. When the transformation had been completed, the results were ruthless savages, who seemed to desire nothing less than absolute carnage. They became known as shadow men, or simply shadows, and the plague itself was known as the shadow plague. As it swept across Merridel, growing faster and faster, it seemed as though the world itself had come to an end. Every city that could battened down the hatches and quarantined themselves as best they were able, and in the depths of darkness, no one had any idea what to do.

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Until, at once, they did. Hope would not come from Merridel, however, but indeed when something else emerged from the East—someone else. She was called Heia Reyn, an Elven woman hailing from beyond even the Khanlands, and she had followed the shadow men from whatever dark pit they’d crawled out of. With her she carried a blade, one that glowed with a molten white radiance like a star fallen from the heavens. Heia called the weapon Excalibur, the Sword of the Mist, and said that it had chosen her to ‘keep Watch’. To say the people of Merridel did not understand her would be an understatement, but they were grateful for her help all the same, for she was not alone. Not alone indeed; Heia Reyn flew to war upon the back of a proud, winged beast whose breath was starlight and claws were death. She called this creature a Dragon, originating from some faraway land, and the Dragon called itself by a singular name, spoken within the very minds of those it met: Moltera.

Together, Heia and her Draconic partner turned back the tide of the shadow men, leading the peoples of Merridel as one army against the enemy and stemming their flow wherever they arose. Thanks to her leadership, the shadow men never reached past Beacon Lake. To the people of Merridel, Heia and Moltera were a godsent miracle; practically immortal guardians of the world itself against whatever darkness dared to threaten it. Within only a year the pair had pushed the shadow men back to the border between Lothern and the Eastern horizon, a large valley betwixt two mountain ranges, where they fought one final battle against the shadow men. It was here that the dark queen of the shadow men, mastermind of the Shadow Plague, finally showed herself, a being Heia referred to as Dól Kavûra, an Orcish phrase meaning darkest devil. When the queen entered the fray it was atop a colossal serpent, whose sibilant mind-speech was fear itself, striking down Merridel’s armies with a crushing despair. Yet even this, it seemed, was no match for Heia Reyn, and on that final night she and Moltera charged to face the queen alone. The battle raged long into the night, but by the coming of the dawn, the shadow men were defeated. Heia slew their queen and her steed, and cast a great curse upon the surviving shadow men, afflicting them with a vulnerability to sunlight that would turn their skin to ash if left unchecked. With their leader gone and the shadow men beginning to smolder in the morning light, the army of shadows scattered, and as far as it can be presumed, every single one of them died there that day, burning to a crisp upon the grasslands of the far East. Since that day, the valley where the battle was won has been known as the Valley of the Dawn, and Heia, among many other titles, as the Dragon-Rider-Dawn-Bringer.

The Life of Heia Reyn

In the years to come, Heia would remain in Merridel, and accept a seemingly limitless number of accolades, from Dwarven knighthoods to Human anointments in the waters of Beacon Lake, all with what could only be described as great humility. Though she had by all means earned them all, she seemed entirely disinterested in flaunting them. Indeed, for Heia Reyn seemed only to have eyes for one reward: the blessing of the King of Runestone to marry his son, the prince Lumiel Torien, whom Heia had grown quite fond of during the Shadow War. The two were soon married, and for the remainder of their lives, Heia would work to secure a great unity, throughout Merridel, and go on to mother a child, heir to the new ruling House of Runestone. That child was called Hemaia, of the Molteran Dynasty, as the Toriens came to be called, in honor of Heia’s noble friend. Decades later, when Heia finally died, peacefully in her bed, she was buried not in Épiros Royalis, the great royal crypts of Runestone, but beneath a small temple in the Valley of the Dawn, so that she might continue her Watch forever. Moltera would keep her own Watch over her lifelong friend’s grave, one which would last decades until, finally the great Dragon faded into memory, too.