First we need a lexicon because hooo boy I did not realize how many made up words there are in this thing. Also before that I should probably explain that Ariahd is a character from my Mediterranean-analog high fantasy setting. He’s one of my oldest ocs (and probably the one I’m most attached to), having come into being when I was going through my Earthsea/Dragonriders of Pern/Inkheart Trilogy phase in middle school. Wow I just dated myself. Anyway here’s the lexicon.
Issadai: The planet where all this shit takes place. Its name means “everything that is”
Mysska: Largest continent on Issadai, has a large sea in the middle of it called the Mysskaean Sea.
Mysskaean: Region of Mysska surrounding the Mysskaean Sea. Roughly equivalent to earth’s Mediterranean region in regards to climate and cultures that inhabit it.
Dymaexei: A large, mountainous peninsula that juts out into the Mysskaean Sea. Home to a dozen or more city-states, split into east and west by the Razka Mountains.
Dymae: The people of Dymaexei, also used as an adjective to describe anything originating in Dymaexei
Yianlai Empire: A vast empire that encompasses most of the Mysskaean. It was founded by the Yianlai, a culture of horsemen from the deserts of southeastern Mysska.
Eshtar-Neph: A loose alliance of maritime cities along the eastern coast of the Mysskaean Sea, all that remains of the late Eshtari Empire. Made up of three distinct cultural groups: the Eshtari, the Nephiri, and the Ossuans
Mages: Magic-users who draw power only from their own life-force. Most people of Issadai can work magecraft to some degree.
Sorcerers: Magic-users who draw power from their surroundings. It takes training and dedication to become an accomplished sorcerer. The Yianlai consider sorcery blasphemous, as it is believed to invite possession by evil spirits.
Warlocks: A culturally specific type of sorcerer; they served as priests and mystics in the ancient religion of the north, which incorporated dragon-worship.
Walking One: A chimera produced by the fusion of a human and dragon soul--essentially a dragon in a human body. Revered as living gods in the ancient northern cultures.
Okay now that you’re up to speed here’s Ariahd’s backstory
The Yianlai believe dragons are the offspring of the god of choas, their goddess Valena's greatest enemy. When the Yianlai Empire invaded and conquered the north, their dragon-hunters began killing off the high dragons, until there was only one small population left in the Razka Mountains of Dymaexei. A warlock from the city-state of Leknos stumbled upon an orphaned clutch of high dragon eggs in the high mountains. The mother had been killed by dragon-hunters while defending her nest. Although luckily the eggs had remained hidden from the hunters, they had gone without being warmed by the mother for so long that, despite the warlocks’ attempts to save them, all but one of the developing dragonets died in their eggs. Ariahd, the only one of his broodmates to survive, was carefully nurtured to hatching by the warlocks. He formed a fast connection with Enos, the young daughter of the head warlock, who helped her father care for him after he hatched. As he grew they became close friends, communicating by writing, since as a dragon Ariahd had no ability to form human-like speech. He and Enos altered the Dymae alphabet into cruder forms that would be easier for him to scratch into the dirt with his claws, and even invented pictograms, creating their own shorthand script.
The imperial occupation of Dymaexei meant that Ariahd’s existence had to be kept a secret. Because of this, he grew up very sheltered, unable to venture beyond the high walls of the monastery, his only knowledge of the outside world coming from stories told by the warlocks, and the travelers’ accounts that Enos found in the library and read aloud to him. The two would occasionally sneak out to fly in the mountains surrounding the city, careful to stay under cover of darkness.
While his earlier years were happy enough, as he grew older he began to become aware of the fact that he was likely one of the last of his kind, which effected him deeply. Over the years, as Enos joined the order’s ranks as a novitiate and then as a fully fledged warlock, Ariahd also came to envy her freedom and the ease with which her human form allowed her to move through the world. The warlocks began teaching her how to create the intricate murals they used as meditation guides, and she often practiced drawing the forms when she and Ariahd were together. Whenever she wasn’t around he would try over and over to draw like she did, but no matter how much he practiced, with his beast’s forelegs he could only manage crude scratches. As she grew older and learned magic of increasing difficulty and complexity, her formidable skill with sorcery was also a source of jealousy for him. He knew he had it in him to be just as powerful, but his dragon’s form was ill-suited to working the complex rituals of human sorcery.
Years passed, and as Ariahd neared thirty years old--still a child in dragon years--he became increasingly restless; as Enos’ duties within the order kept her occupied, he took to wandering the mountains alone, straying further and further from the monastery each time. On one such flight, unbeknownst to him he was spotted by imperial troops. Soon imperial inquisitors were dispatched to Leknos, with orders to dispose of Ariahd and execute the warlocks both for practicing sorcery, a heresy, and for sheltering a dragon. The monastery was attacked, and in an act of rash bravery Ariahd flew out to try to confront the attackers directly. He managed to kill a number of imperial troops but was mortally wounded himself; the distraction he provided allowed a large number of the order, including Enos, to escape into the mountains with the preserved dragon souls.
The remaining warlocks dragged the dying Ariahd back behind the safety of the monastery walls. Desperate, in agony, and afraid, he begged them to preserve his soul in a vessel to keep him from truly dying. The warlocks agreed. After performing the ritual, they hid Ariahd’s soul vessel in the relic vault, which was located deep in the maze of catacombs carved into the massive rock bluff the monastery sat on. They resealed the relic vault, then committed ritual suicide rather than be tortured and executed by the inquisitors.
Ariahd's soul laid dormant, trapped in its vessel in the vault as the years went by. Fifty years later, it was discovered by a Nephiri sorcerer, Yupal. On the run from inquisitors, she had fled across the Mysskaean Sea to Dymaexei and settled in Leknos thirteen years before, where she took up a new identity, married a Leknosian man, and had a daughter, Lys. When Lys was thirteen, the Great Plague struck the Mysskaean. After ravaging coastal Dymaexei, it reached Leknos, carried by those fleeing the ports, whose streets were littered with the dead and dying. In no time it began running its way through the city; Yupal and her family fell ill, and her husband succumbed to the Plague, leaving her and their daughter alone and close to death. Desperate to save Lys’ life, she broke into the relic vault in the monastery, hoping she'd be able to find something there to heal her. She sensed the strong magic emanating from Ariahd's soul vessel, and stole it. By the time she had returned home, Lys had died. In desperation she attempted to use necromancy to channel Ariahd's life force to resurrect her child, but accidentally opened a conduit that allowed his soul to enter the girl’s body and fuse with her soul, creating the last Walking One.
Ariahd was taken to the monastery’s infirmary, where the monks were doing their best to heal the gravely ill. For days he lay in a deep sleep, as the two souls within his body fused into one, and the monks caring for him feared he would die. Finally, he awoke. Unable to speak or write with his new hands, he had no way of telling the monks who he was or what had happened. At a loss, the monks asked Phare, a senior monk and accomplished healer, to attend to him. She had been a novitiate before the inquisitors’ attack on the monastery and the warlocks’ extermination, and when she used magic to examine Ariahd’s soul she realized immediately what he was. Phare informed the monks, and they made the decision to take him in (along with countless other children orphaned by the Plague), and began teaching him to be human.
