Verdance had never been a place for the weak, and the natural rule imposed severe changes to all fauna, sentient or not. However, of the Velusians, some refused to lick the knees of instincts, and forbid the sprawling chaos to manipulate them. These people, which sought a possibly better future, strayed off the habits and customs that spread amongst their kindred, and started to organize the environment to their own accord, no more mere temporary inhabitants of an untameable wilderness, but colonists of an ancient world. One of these clans was indeed the Hétrya, which eventually would find refuge in the Kargath, and develop a civilization on their own; however, they were not the only ones who proclaimed themselves independent from the will of the Grove, but many other tribes followed the same path, and tried to settle down in little paradises alike, spots of the world still uncontaminated by chaos to a certain extent. Elea born in one of these tribes, whose name went for Vaàl Ilvia, or ‘shimmering stream’, which was one of these stationary ethnic groups; most of his young life went off flawlessly – if becoming family heir though being fifth son may be considered normal -, educated to the common concepts of knowledge and ethics druids kept for generations. However, when he was around ten, war suddenly spread through the jungle sector they inhabited, and the tribe became soon conscious that they could not survive against the feral hatred of their brothers; it was settled to reach out for the western ravines, in hope to cross the run down bridge that connected the two extremities, and eventually enter in allied territory.
The Vaàl Ilvia village But death was faster.
The muddy streams that unrolled under the stilts of Ilvia were inevitably filled with the blood of innocents, and everything was left in ashes, or in rotting decay. As soon as the savages came, left, without even bothering pillaging the village, just seeking blood to fed the madness which had grasped them. However, few individuals were blessed with survival; one of them was indeed Elea. But things didn’t go as any kind soul would have hoped. Knocked down in the first minutes of battle, his body slipped off the wood walkways, feeling into the small rivers. His body eventually survived drowning, unlikely his war mates, and was found by a wandering sentinel group, alerted by the sudden apparition of black smoke out of the dense foliage of the jungle. He never met the crumbling embers that were left of his spiling village, nor the mowed arts and body left everywhere to rot; Elea just woke up several days later, in the Kargath, lost, and estranged from his birthplace.
He eventually found again the will to fight, started to believe in the ideals that were the basis of the Hétrya, and in the end, decided to enter officially the military, to get good uses of his unique capabilities of factual marksman, and of his adept skills of druidism and elementalism. Hardships filled his path, and human and feral odds he had to overcome, raising his grade across the army, and awarding badges of honour, glory, and justice.
Sooner he was able to obtain for himself even a proper nickname, renowned in all the region, and sometimes even beyond it. He became the Water fury, a symbol of how man can raise himself from savagery to the most elevate concepts of chivalry.
Time passes, and mercilessly makes everything wither and die under his passage. Apparently, death’s shadow appeared more often, and already at the date of his twenty-fifth birthday, the first fatal omen appeared, preannouncing an inevitable and proxime end.
That day at least come, and Elea, completely unaware of his fate being shred under the eyes of unknown deities, abandoned the city, for the common recognition that routine asked to be fulfilled by everyone. Sent as head of a nutritious fellowship, composed of five or six man of noble attitude, left he Kargath and ventured into the unknown mist of the jungle, with the simple mission of surveying a zone inhabited by a group of friendly forest spawns: a routine work. Afterall forest spawns are seldom to be attacked by wandering beasts, and their mass and potentially un-ending life shielded them from most of dangers; one thing that seemed they lacked was company, and queerly enough nobody asked himself why they had never asked to join the resistance.
Following the same tracks used by even by the most inexpert novices, they reached the small valley inhabited by the forest spawns, finding it deserted. Initially perplexed, they sensed the atmosphere didn’t give any good omen on what was going to happen shortly later. And indeed, instincts are not always as bad as Velusians may think.
One of the most vicious and monstrous creature in the Grove is probably the Phlegmy worm, a rare species of invertebrates that has fun at smashing in pieces incidental sentinels or savages, gulping with ferine impetuosity the gory flesh mowed in little parts, enjoying particularly the languid and viscid feel that intestine gave when sliding through their simple digestive apparatus. Now, for one of the most unfortunate cases, or even more likely for the mischievous plot of some superior entity, the fellowship encountered the beasts, and was inevitably annihilated. The monstrous power of the worms, combined with the hostility of the environment brought death to those men. And with them fell also Elea. Or so it seemed.
Phlegmy worms attack Elea and his legacy Time passed, and the expedition was long forgotten, long thought dead; calamity struck the kingdom, after that a particularly strong giant insects swarm attacked the Kargath whereas the lighthouse ceremony was completed, and the king died, the crown left without an heir, and darkness soon to befall into the kingdom.
But suddenly, like a ghost arisen from the legend of the past, exactly like fairy tails said, the rightful hero returned to take his proper place: Elea came back, escorted by the glorious magnificence of a dragon army, subjected to the new king; and Dragon king was thus nominated.
Elea, already considered hero of the people, ascended to the crown, and was posed as absolute ruler of the Kargath, of its lands, of its inhabitants. However many noted that Elea's behaviour had much changed, and his aims are not clear even now. Sure is, the latest successful expansionist campaigns prove that the king is determined to proceed further on the sanctified quest his predecessors overlooked.
