Difference between revisions of "Dominion Era/Prophetess Llyrileýwa"

Latest revision as of 20:34, 24 December 2015

NOTE: This article is written from the point of view of a Tretalleri historian toward the end of the Dominion Era, some thirty thousand years after the events described in the text. Note that there is significant cultural bias in the piece, as well as ambiguity due to the fact that a lot of what is known about the Prophetess was passed down through oral traditions.

The Prophetess Llyrileýwa (Tretalleri: /ljɪ.ɾɪ.lɛ.jɪ.wæ/), known to the Elledynnë as the Prophet d'Lyr~lea Lyrisovë (Prophet Lyr~lea of the Golden Brow), is one of the more important points of cultural and historical conflict between the Dominion and the Silvered Realm. A woman, or a man—depending on the historical texts consulted—of the people, the Prophetess was loved by all, despite her transparent ties to the opposing faction of elf. It was the Prophetess that was the last great leader and adherent of the Druidic Lore in the East, and it was she that last attempted to broker peace between the Elledynnë and the Tretallë.

Though the two elfin kingdoms would never heed the Prophetess' wisdom on the matter of their rival, they did listen to her for all else. The people loved the Prophetess, and though the leaders of either culture would have rather she not existed, they could not move against her without rousing the ire of the people. Alas, it was this love for the Prophetess that further drove the two races apart, as the vision that she and her retainers experienced at the moment of her supposed death formed the foundations of two very different elfin outlooks on the afterlife.

Early Life and Background

Born of an era long before the entrance of the insidious Triple Goddess into the yet-united Elfin realm, Llyrileýwa was one of the few elves that came into being during the mysterious Time Immortal. Though born with the gift of eternal youth, the prophetess grew up during a time of great societal upheaval within the Elfin realm. By the eldest accounts of her birth, life, and death, during the prophetess' childhood, tensions were coming to a head between the two major factions of Elfin society at the time—the Immortal elves, Di'Tatydynnë and the mortal elves, Di'Netatydynnë. Allegedly, the prophetess' birth, some three hundred years after the last Immortal elf was born, made it apparent that the immortality that had once blessed the Elfin-folk was beginning to leave the blood.

The prophetess was born to druid acolytes—mortal elves whose names have long been forgotten to the mists of myth and legend. She was raised among a people that believed that immortality had been a gift from The Pale God and that its loss was a punishment because the Elfin-folk and their kings had begun to turn away from the druidic roots of their people. For a time, the balance between the mortal and immortal elves was kept by the prophetess' people, but as the first of the elves who would eventually become the Tretallë emerged from the population, the political and social clout of the druids was decimated by an opportunist king. This king blamed the Pale God for the weakness in the blood of the elves, claiming boldly that he had abandoned their people, where the druids believed that the truth was the exact opposite.

Soon enough, many of the elves turned to the belief that their gods, primarily the Pale God, had abandoned them. The prophetess could not bring it upon herself to accept what the rest of her brethren had readily embraced. The stories say that in her youth, the Pale God had come to her and befriended her. Legend still whispers that the prophetess alone was able to interpret the will of the Pale God with accuracy. She alone knew the Pale God best, and she alone stood resolute in the face of the change that was sweeping across the Elfin realm.

Where a number of her closest friends, once-high members of the Druidic Order abandoned the ancient gods, the prophetess remained resolute in her faith. While the Elden Circle lay broken at her feet, she rose to take the Gnarled Crown of the Order with little resistance. The prophetess warned of dire punishment from the Pale God, and to this end, she demonstrated the powers that he granted her, singing trees into shape—a talent that had been thought lost until then—and bringing the newly fallen back to life.

The Triple Goddess and the Mantle of the Prophetess

Early on in her reign as the head of the Druidic Order, the prophetess was known only as the High Priestess. Her reputation as the prophetess came much later. The title, in particular, was bequeathed upon her by the disparate Tretalleri communities that her interference had, in the end, allowed to escape from slavery under the fairer elves.

The legends speak of the prophetess never being far from the instrument of her proselytization: a staff made of wood so pale it was white like bleached bone, where an iron spike was embedded in the tip and held in place by a delicate latticework of the same wood as the rest of the staff. All mages in the Elfin realm knew that such a staff could not be used for magic, as its arcane focus was made of iron and yet, the prophetess performed miracles with her weapon. Nevertheless, the prophetess' dire warnings fell upon the deaf ears of the elves that would one day become the Elledynnë. Many took to calling her Doomsayer in mockery.

Very few of the middle-class Aen_evë believed the Prophetess' warnings. Simply put, too many had turned away from the druidic roots that had made the empire of the Great Elves of the East the most resplendent in all the lands then known. The prophetess tried her best, but she convinced few among those that even paid her any heed, whether out of pity or sheer goodness of heart. The greatest obstacle that stood in the prophetess' way was the introduction of a new deity, the Triple Goddess, as she was called. A growing section of the population adhered to the hedonistic teachings of the Triple Goddess' church; chief among them was the king himself.

While the prophetess lacked the support of the majority of the Elfin population of the time, she gained the favour of the ancestors of the Tretallë, whom the prophetess had named the Pale Ones—Syd'Taedë Aedyla. These elves, that had been unfortunate enough to be born with not only longer-than-normal lifespans and skin the colour of ash, had been treated progressively worse under the regime of the then-incumbent Elfin king who seemed bent on painting them as the spawn of evil. Where the king saw only vile corruptions of Elfin blood that stank with the touch of the Triple Goddess' nemesis, the Great Raven, the prophetess saw the very image of the Pale God. Though she could not act directly to help these outcasts for fear of losing what little—and dwindling—political clout she had to protect them with, the prophetess ushered many of them unto safety during her years.

Ultimately, the prophetess' efforts proved insufficient. She was unable to stop the declaration that stripped the Pale Ones of any rights as citizens of the Elfin realm and sent them to the mountains to mine for the silver and gold and precious stones that had become the cornerstone of the Elfin realm's economy. She could only watch, helplessly, as her most steadfast followers were led away from her in manacles, shackles, and chains. Dispirited but determined, the legend of the prophetess purports that for four moons and forty lengths, she petitioned the crown for the right to preach to the Pale Ones at the end of their twelve-hour-long work days. The stories claim that she was given the royal assent only after, with a heavy heart, she argued that if she could teach the savages to believe in the Pale God, then perhaps the priests of the Triple Goddess could convince them to live their lives in atonement for their existence—considered a grave insult to the Triple Goddess.

In the bowels of the Shrouded Peaks, the prophetess delivered her sermons about the Pale God and the hope that he brought each spring. She spoke of deliverance from grief through the Pale God and began to compose the tragic song of the Pale Ones. Those whom she could, she taught how to read and how to write. Though the prophetess longed to teach the Pale Ones the musical language of the Aen_evë, she knew that to ensure the survival of the Pale Ones, they needed to seem like savages. The writing that she helped them develop was crude and rigid, unlike the flowing and changing script of Aen_evelyndë. Its phonetics, while still somewhat graceful, was, compared, to the speech of the Aen_evë, guttural and harsh. It was from this work of hers that, allegedly, the Tretalleri dialect of Elle'lyndë came to be.

Ultimately, the salvation that the prophetess had promised to the Pale Ones came about by their own design, under the guidance of an entity that they had called the Stranger. Theologians of the modern day debate why it was that the early Pale Ones called the entity that was clearly the Pale God the stranger, instead, though a popular theory suggests that the Pale Ones, still afflicted by their centuries of suffering under the Aen_evë, believed themselves unworthy of the Pale God's light. Regardless, because what Llyrileýwa "foretold" came to pass, the Pale Ones began to call her prophetess.

The Wars of Attrition and the Pale Ones' Diaspora

Following the interference of the Pale God and the subsequent egress of the Pale Ones from their slavery under the thumb of the Aen_evë, a long drawn-out war lasting centuries erupted between the Elfin realm and the newly-freed Pale Ones. Modern scholars consider the conflict a war of attrition, where Syd'Taedë Adyla, determined to bring the empire of their oppressors to its knees, fought the considerable might of the Elfin realm in the only way that they knew how: minor skirmishes that slowly, inexorably, whittled down the resources of the Elfin realm.

As the years passed, the prophetess saw a chance for the redemption of the Elfin peoples. The Pale Ones inexorably grew stronger and more bold in their operations. Once the Pale Ones had established villages and cities, where the druidic arts helped them craft weapons and grow food from the earth, the tide of the war slowly began to turn. Among the Aen_evë, the prophetess pleaded for peace, even offering herself up as ambassadors to the people that the vast majority of the Elfin realm still viewed as savages. Her efforts proved to be in vain and only incited a section of the populace to push for escalation of the war—exactly what she wanted.

The ruling class, however, recognized the ramifications of the situation that they had found themselves in. As a direct result of the fact that many of the elves still remembered the prophetess' warning words, that a reckoning would come to the Elfin realm if they continued to abandon their druidic roots and turn their backs on the Pale God, a significant portion of the population began to turn back to the old ways. For the first time in centuries, some Aen_everi cities became enclaves under the protection of the Druidic Order.

Though in public, the prophetess continued her plea for peace betweent the two elfin peoples, under the cover of night, she taught the Pale Ones the secrets of steel and iron as had been revealed to her by the Pale God. Before long, the forests of Di'Termalttë rang with the striking of anvils. With iron and steel to protect them from the magic of the Aen_eve, they easily crushed the inferior copper and bronze of the Elfin realm in the last ten years of the war, sweeping across the realm and razing cities known to house supporters of the slavers and the slavers themselves.

In the aftermath of the war that left the Elfin realm broken, the remnants of the old empire took to calling themselves the Elledynnë, while the Pale Ones called themselves the Tretallë. Those of the Elledynnë that remembered Llyrileýwa's words took to calling her the prophetess as well, since the reckoning that she had foretold had come to pass. However, though fearful and respectful of the prophetess at this point, the Elledynnë remained arrogant enough that they never considered the possibility that it was Llyrileýwa herself that had been instrumental in the breaking of the Elfin realm. Those few who noticed that the Druidic Enclaves were untouched by the war were shouted down, and Llyrileýwa simply explained the strange situation by saying that she and her followers had tended to the wounds of both sides equally and had thus been spared from the war. In truth, the Tretalleri forces knew not to attack the Druidic Enclaves because the prophetess had expressly forbidden it.

After the war ended, Llyrileýwa, seeing firsthand the results of her actions and moved, for once, from her steadfast devotion to the Pale God, decided to slowly extract herself from a political life among the remnants of the Elfin realm. Though there was still a significant amount of public disdain for the prophetess, she and her druids were in high demand among the fragmented cities of the Elledynnë, as whatever healing expertise the Elledynnë might have once possessed was massively diminished by the war that had brought the Elfin realm to its end. The matter of succession to the gnarled crown proved to be troublesome to the prophetess. She found a suitable candidate, after a few years, one who proved to be as wily and capable as she was.

With a successor firmly positioned to take over, the prophetess slowly began to extract herself from public life. Though the woman that succeeded her carried out her legacy and in fact raised the Druidic Order further than Llyrileýwa herself had managed, she has been forgotten to the mists of time.

While Llyrileýwa was extracting herself from the public sphere, the Tretallë, who had been united against a common enemy thus far, began to diverge on the matter of what to do now that the Elfin realm had been shattered. The infighting that followed eventually led to the establishment of numerous disparate Tretalleri tribes. This period was known as the Diaspora for the Tretallë, and it was during this time that the prophetess cemented her position in their myths by walking among the early Tretallë and offering her numerous talents as a druid to the tribes.

The Dominion and the Silvered Realm

Apart from occasional appearances among the disparate Elledynnë cities, the prophetess spent the next few thousand years dwelling among the Tretallë. It wasn't until the Silvered Realm was established, with the Ovyrë Ohyrda as the state religion, that the prophetess rose to prominence once again. However, this time, neither her nor her successors to the Gnarled Crown had any political clout with the new sovereign nation that had seized control of a significant portion of the old Elfin realm's lands. The prophetess herself, thanks to her sporadic presence among the Elledynnë had been relegated to myth and legend. The shorter lifespans of the Elledynnë, of whom only half ever saw the end of their first century of life, certainly led to the perversion of her legacy.

The priests of the Triple Goddess, members of the elite families that had survived the fall of the Elfin realm, knew of the prophetess and her instrumental role in polarizing the populace of the Elfin realm, making it weaker in the process. To prevent this, they took her near-legendary figure and twisted it to the demands and dogma of their faith. The prophetess became the prophet, to the Elledynnë, a heroic figure that spoke of the dangers of allowing the Tretallë to live, a figure who blamed the Druidic Order for its interference in the matters of the genocide of the Tretallë, who foretold that unless the Tretallë were exterminated, the Elfin realm would fall.

At odds with the rapidly expanding Silvered Realm, the Druidic Orders and the enclaves that the prophetess had spent so long building turned to her for help. Yet, despite the best efforts of the prophetess herself and her living successors, the battle was a lost one. The Druidic Order was wiped from the face of the Termalttë, its Enclaves burned to the ground on the charge of heresy. The prophetess herself was branded an enemy of the Silvered Realm and had to slip back into the shadows in order to hide from the Elledynnë that were hell-bent on finding her and executing her.

The next time that the prophetess emerged, though there are some historians that dispute whether or not the prophetess through all these stories is the same person, was during the early years of the Dominion. The prophetess, it's argued, knew very well that if the Silvered Realm continued its unchecked expansion, it would cause a repeat of the strife and corruption that had cleft the Elfin realm in twain so many years prior. She knew that in order to prevent the past from repeating itself that an empire to rival the Silvered Realm must rise. She searched for a long time, but found her opportunity when the Ivory Throne was unearthed.

The prophetess, using her political wiles, proved instrumental in the establishment of the precursor kingdom to the Tretalleri Dominion, the Kingship of the Bone Trees. More than that, she facilitated the peaceful integration of nearby Tretalleri city-states to the Kingship, masterfully wielding her legendary reputation among the Tretallë to convince rulers that the Kingship of the Bone Trees was the direction that the Stranger intended for the Tretallë. Though she attempted to reestablish the Druidic Order in the infant kingdom, the prophetess was unable to do so. Organically, another faith began to coalesce from the shamanic traditions—centred around the Stranger—from the distinct cultures of each of the city-states that formed the Kingship.

Under the prophetess' guidance, one ruler of the Kingship, Cilritanë a'Detvida, who presided over the Kingship during a time of unprecedented peace, where all the city-states within its borders had agreed fully to the Kingship's rule, turned his sights outward. Knowing that the Silvered Realm was still expanding to the southwest, the prophetess urged Cilritanë to set his sights on the lands to the west, to the east, and to the north of the Forest of Bones, which were free to be taken under the Kingship. The prophetess counselled Cilritanë that it was in the best interests of the Tretallë to avoid conflict with their fairer cousins until they were united once again.

With the prophetess at his side, Cilritanë quickly assimilated the rest of the Tretallë and united them under his banner. He rechristened the Kingship of the Bone Trees to something more fitting its widespread purview—the Dominion. Under Cilritanë, the faith that had been growing slowly until that point was also codified and standardised. A canon was developed in the Pale Grimoire, and the faith called Di'Averrë Nenn. Though displeased that she had failed to reestablish the Druidic Order, the prophetess was happy that at least the Tretallë worshipped the Stranger, simply another name for her Pale God. Knowing that she had finally helped established a united realm to rival the Silvered Realm, the prophetess took her leave of Cilritanë with a heavy heart.

The Death of the Prophetess

Though the prophetess is reputedly immortal, there are a number of accounts of her death—or at least her disappearance.

While she stayed out of public life for the remainder of her time with the Tretallë, she was said to visit Cilritanë often, offering her advice whenever he needed it. The stories say that the prophetess thought of the first Pale Imperator as her own son, since her long life as the leader of the druids during a troubled time had left her with little time to rear children. Even after the war had ended, it is said, the prophetess never sought out love and rebuffed all who tried—Elledynnë and Tretallë both.

Nevertheless, the prophetess was sporadically seen through the many years of Cilritanë's long life. Most notably, she was present at the wedding between himself and the man that he had chosen to be his husband. The stories speak of the way that the prophetess' tears of joy turned to diamonds that she fashioned into rings that she presented to both men as a reminder of her blessing of their union. The prophetess was also present at the birth of the Imperator's daughter by surrogate, and perhaps, most shockingly to those that knew of her story—or at least the account thus far of it—was baptised into the Faith of the Nine with the little girl.

The last time that the prophetess was seen was at Cilritanë's deathbed. She had vanished for a good forty years prior to the old Imperator's illness, and had caused quite a stir in the Dominion with her return. No longer dressed in her flaxen robes of white, but dressed in the red-and-charcoal cloth of the priesthood of the Nine, the woman that returned to the Dominion was different from the woman that had left it. Nevertheless, it is said that Cilritanë took one look at the prophetess, laughed until his heart gave out, and then passed into the embrace of the Stranger with a smile on his face.

Though she delivered a short eulogy for the deceased king, and though she was asked to remain to look after the Dominion until the next Imperatrix—Cilritanë's daughter—was crowned, the prophetess did not remain. The stories say that she imparted all of her wisdom to Cilritanë's daughter, and then departed in the middle of the night, never to be seen again.