LORE FEATURE #7 - NARFENI LEGEND: THE BRIGHT LADY
Li’ora: literally, beautiful heaven; graceful sky in Renorn
Lore submitted by: @priestoftheshadows
There is a saying within the southern tribes of the Narfeni that to be blessed by the Brilliant Lady is to be touched by the hand of light itself. The legend goes that hundreds of years before Arden Skoldin discovered the Islands, the people that lived there were much the same as they are today. They were a mainly peaceful people, particularly invested in seafaring and trading amongst the tribes, of which there was a single chieftain for each of the, then, small tribes, numbering twelve in total. The politics of the Islands was a crude system, the very beginning of what is today known as the Golden Summit, and the disagreements held between the chieftains there often resulted in the useless deaths of many men, their women, and their children.
It was into this world that a young Li’ora El-Amin was born. Her family was one steeped in poverty, her father having very little luck in the way of trade. His mercantile business was a humble one, kept afloat by the workings of he, his wife, and their five children, elder siblings to Li’ora and names, sadly, lost to the Island’s memory. Li’ora’s birth was the last for her mother, for she would pass into the Balance bringing her daughter into the world. Her father, though saddened greatly by his wife’s death, felt this grief to be overshadowed by the child who would become woven into the very fabric of the Islands’ history.
Born with a shock of pure white hair, Li’ora was doted upon by her father, a simple man who believed her coloring to be a sign from the Balance, a great thing that would manifest in this little girl who laughed often and grew so quickly at the hands of her siblings. She was a curious child, eager to learn, quick to jump to any challenge placed before her and, when she looked at you, her eyes spoke of stories she should have been much too young to witness, but witness them she had, all the same. Li’ora was a small child and grew to be a small woman, her size a direct relation to her mother’s stock. Her diminutive size, however, was not something to deter her and, as would be common traits found in all those given her blessing, she was clever and possessed a quick wit, using these attributes to make up for her small stature.
Despite her humble upbringings, Li’ora craved understanding and, above all things, knowledge. When she was old enough to come out from beneath the protection of her father’s house Li’ora would complete a pilgrimage that spanned the rest of her years, going from her home Island of Bujan in the south into the northernmost reaches of the Islands, settling and eventually dying in Az’zynia. It was on these travels that she learned much of the teachings that would become the basis for the Oracles, later on. Li’ora believed it her duty to learn and to share what she had been taught to her people, believing that each Island could learn from one another, thus making her impartiality a great feat for a tribal community whose leaders often disagreed about many, often trivial, things. It was this impartiality that moved the tribal heads to call upon her in times of great strife and hardship, hoping that her forethought and, even, her healing could mend the broken bonds within the tribes.
She owed much to the elderly wise men and women of the isles and, as repayment, she shared her gifts of foresight and healing with their grandchildren, the first of their kind to be blessed by the Brilliant Lady and rumored to be the foundation for the greatly revered Oracles. Because of her immense knowledge, it is thought to be believed that the Balance granted Li’ora a long life, one which she passes onto her Children through her blessings, as well as those who began to exhibit similar gifts as she had early in her youth. Though most are no longer born with her shock of white hair, those rare few are revered by the Narfeni as holy, believing them to be capable of great things and, thus, to be protected at all costs.
Though Li’ora no longer walks in this realm, it has been a rumored believed whispered for many years by the elderly ones that, if you are lucky, she may guide you in your dreams, a bright light in the darkness of this existence. In the times of strife and panic that loom on the horizon, belief in Li’ora has reemerged in the Exotic Islands from the cracks and crevices of time, in hiding for so long that if one were to hear her story in Eldris they’d believe her to be only a mirage, a figment of a feeble mind and too much drink.
| Narfeni Islands | World Map | RP Plot | Open Characters |
