Drenari Origins

= The Age of Myth – The Drenmeroth =

I: Recompense of the Exiled
 The Drenmeroth weren't always the cold and bitter beings that they are today. During an era of The Age of Myth, lost to the currents of time, the civil war between two opposing Sonmerian factions tore their homeland in two, quite literally. When the losing side that would eventually become the Drenmeroth of today was banished, Nerevane caused the peninsula on which the Sonmeri dwelled to split off from the mainland in a perhaps rash attempt to preserve her favored people. Meanwhile, the banished Sonmeri were sealed in what was known as the Middark, hopelessly cut off from their home, abandoned by their goddess. It was the most perfect yet the most cruel prison in which they could have been interred. The victorious Sonmeri, however, were woefully unaware that the Middark had already served this purpose once before, an unfathomably long time ago. So long ago, in fact, that it was but a hushed rumor at which the Sonmeri were quick to scoff, even in the Age of Myth.  There were unforeseeable consequences for what they assumed to be mass fratricide. The Sonmeri at the time thought that banishment to the Middark, a stigmatic realm of un-light shrouded in mystery, would spell certain doom for their defeated kin. It was understood that exposure to the sun's radiance was what sustained the Sonmeri, and was necessary for their continued existence. While this was true, it was true only to an extent. With their homes and possessions plundered, the banished Sonmeri retreated deep into the unfathomable abyss of their prison, clinging to survival on a new sense of intense bitterness and ferocious will. Had they been sentenced to any other sightless pit, they most certainly would have perished. The Middark, it seems, had other plans. As they established meager colonies in the caverns and scrambled to find fuel for light sources after they'd burned all they had to burn, the vitality from the sun that lingered in each one of them rapidly began to fade, and with it– life itself.

 However.

 Their fury kept them clinging still to existence, hell-bent on spitting in the face of their kin in any way they could. Survival, they reasoned, would be the ultimate revenge. As the light that once resided in them seeped from their being, the oppressive, almost tangible darkness pushed in, unyielding and all-consuming. It is said that the hate-fire that now burned within the outcast Sonmeri was irresistible to the omnipresent conscience of the Middark and the chaos and shadow magics that lurked therein. This darkness, this force–the Dren, as they called it–imbued itself into each and every Mer that still stoked the smouldering flame of tenacious acrimony within. As it took hold, they were swiftly enlightened to the fact that their withering had ceased. Their strength returned twice over; their throttled sight now abundantly clear, their rekindled ambition more mighty than that of the proudest of kings. They embraced the Dren and all that entailed, and reveled in their newfound identity as one people once more. This is why they rechristened themselves–with pride–as the Drenmeroth.  The Dren's powerful influence caused their likenesses to warp, their once-radiant golden-tan skin was bedimmed to a gray pallor, the beautiful hair that they once cherished regressed to a raven black or an ivory white. Their eyes warped as well; though each soul was irreversibly voiden, they were each still unique, and as windows to the soul, they shone true. For some, they glowed a passionate red, or a fiery topaz. For others, a ghostly pale blue, or an unnerving sheen of icy white. An odd few of the Drenmeroth developed irises of unique and unpredictable hue, no two pairs alike (to this day, this irregularity amongst their heredity persists, and to this day it is just as rare as it was at the event of the metamorphosis).  After this abrupt turn of events, they were quick to partition themselves into tribes, each numbering in the thousands. There were twelve at the dawn of the Age of the Drenmeroth, and twelve remain to this day, no longer primal tribes but proud clans, their stature sacrosanct. From each tribe, one was chosen to partake in the Council of Houses, an authority to maintain peace, order, and prosperity. In doing this, they hoped that it would be enough to deter any notion of a civil war that may be instigated amongst any one of the Houses. This sustained them for centuries, during which they discovered that their lives were no longer threaded into the fabric of time as it was for their Sonmeri ancestors. They were the first of the Merkind to be stricken with mortality as a people, though they were not the last. Despite the disconcertion of an inevitable death that lurked in their shadows, they each lived for many centuries before returning to Dark from whence they were birthed. And at the close of one such century, a whisper from before time fell on the entranced ears of the Drenmeroth.

To be continued shortly
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