Alreigch
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Who are the Two Great Lovers?
🕑 Added 2023-11-29 23:48:44 +0000 UTC***written on my phone so please forgive any grammar issues***
By now you must have seen me ramble on and on in varying formats about two of my most beloved characters: Oborro Othello and Lykopis. I've longed for years to find a format and the words to convey my love for these two and their story which has become central to nearly everything I now write, and only now have found that outlet.
But why should they be so important? How can I appropriately convey just who these 2 are, and why their tale is so meaningful and important to me? Maybe this little bit of world building will help.
~Alreigch, Fourth of His Name
It is said in the chronicles of Talamh that there once lived a pair of lovers. Different from one another as the day is from the night, they would nevertheless come to one fated day come to gaze upon each other for the first time. In that moment, their souls would connect, as if finding the direct other half of themselves.
Separated by adversity, distance, or simple lack of awareness of their proximity to one another, they would inevitably find one another. No matter the challenges they faced, no force on Talamh could stop their love, inexorable as the tide, the crumbling of stones into dust, and the stars to herald the following day. Entire kingdoms might and have fallen in the wake when they made the choice to stand in the way of their many reunions.
And so preserved has this story become, that every time it is told, it begins the same way. With one of the pair speaking to the other, these immortal words:
“In another time, in another life, you were you and I was there too.
I shall find you, as the Bright Moon forever chases the Sun. Chasing each other until they are One.
You are mine, always mine, and will always be. To the End and Beyond, forever are we.
And I will love you, only you, fiercely.”
In the Fourth yet Unnamed Age of Talamh, following the Ages of Dread, Conquerer, and Lore, the Two Great Lovers were reunited once more. They have been known by many titles, individual chapters in the great anthology of stories that is their ever-continuing romance.
The Beast and the Prince
The Dragon and Hunter
Barbarian and Bard.
On the eve of war between her queendom of Rende and her longtime diplomatic rival, the Principality of New Aurot, Lykopis the She-Wolf had a newcomer steal into the midst of her camp. With honeyed words and a winning smile, he won his way past her sentinels and was brought unbound before her throne.
His plea to gain such an audience, he claimed, was to plead with the leader of the vast savage host that came ready for war to the gates of his city. No doubt he had tricks to ply, songs to serenade, manifestos to motivate and chastise. He was not like other Bards that she had ever heard of.
Against her more hot-natured norm, she accepted his parley and so was Oborro Othello, the so-named Greatest Bard who Never Lived, brought before Lykopis.
Jaded as her heart had became, even she could not deny the truth when it dawned in her golden wolf eyes as she looked upon the unimpressive Bard. He who came so brazenly to the center of her power with a delusion, a pipedream of somehow stopping a warhost of Orcs from doing what Orcs do best.
It seemed even she could still be surprised. Even she, the Mad Queen so named for her ruthless, methodical way of removing all those who would threaten the safety and peace of the kingdom she named Rende, could not deny fate.
One look at Oborros heterochromatic orbs, the silver sheen of his scarred temple, and the smile upon his fair visage, and that was that. The powerful warrior queen fell, and hard. So too would Oborro have fallen for her, if he had not already done so many years before they were ever to meet, immediately and utterly. In his defense, however, he had been searching all of Talamh for her over the space of several years, seeking the Half-ofc woman with wolf yellow eyes and hair of midnight black. She had been shown to him in a vision by Alreigch, the All Conquerer, Second of his Name, and now he had finally found her.
Even legends like theirs needed a nudge every now and then from the Teller of Tales.
However, before they could be united in an embrace both had been deprived of all their lives, they had to resolve the ferocious set of circumstances that had become grand enough to call their separate halves back together again. They had to bring peace between the two lands most assured of about to head to open war.
The city of New Aurot, resplendent and decadent capitol of the slowly recovering Landsrayd, following the fall of the Dread Malig, home of the Bardic College of the Arts, and center for all culture, commerce, and civility for all the races whom it offered safe harbor.
Although its promise for open representation was meant well, it would all but be lost amongst by nearly everyone but the restrictive Colleges. Humans swiftly rose to positions of privilege and power. Their language became the universally accepted Trade tongue, their laws held more prevalence within the city's boundaries, and their clever manipulation to make their minted coin the standard commerce gave them the ability to quickly make themselves the richest and most influential.
Other races, such as those they named Elves, Dwarves, Fearmen and many others would become substandard citizens, only allowed to remain so as long as they obeyed the laws.
A contemptible attitude to most and not unlike the Dread Malig, many were heard to mutter and condemn. Against such criticism the Human nobles would simply shrug, agree, but reference previous ages, where the Elves, then known as the Aldar, had reigned for centuries untold above all others whom were treated as slaves of the mighty Varithi empire. It didn't make it right, but at least they were being ‘better’.
Those that did not agree to be ruled by the Humans spread back out into their various lands, still wild and ravaged by Malig's reign. There they would attempt to recover their failing cultures amidst a world populated by the monstrous, the unkind, and those splinter factions still attempting to cling to the Dread Empire of Evil's legacy.
Beyond the boundaries of these lands, considered to be near the Edge of the world stretched the Wilderlands, and carved out of that savage place where monsters still roamed in great numbers was born New Aurot's mirror opposite. Rende, the Realm of the Wolf. Rather than ruled by laws and politics, peace was instead bought by kindness, and enforced by those that most of the world might still call monstrous barbarians: the Orcs. These grim, eccentric and uncensored peoples appreciated such a wild place, where all Tribes were welcome and old hatreds finally allowed to rest.
Such change would have been seen as utterly alien merely a few decades previous, brought about by the one all hailed as the War God's Daughter. A Mad Queen of a mad kingdom, that welcomed refugees the world over so long as they obeyed the Wolf Queen's rule.
“Say Nothing if it is not Kind. Mercy before Law, but Betrayal never Forgotten.”
How would two such differing peoples then find common ground when just about to once again draw blood em masse? When the prejudice of the civilized was met with the unforgiving savagery of the honest, and those called beastly stood to put the mocking Lordlings in their place; how could spontaneous peace suddenly be found?
It's said that among all the Powers in Talamh, Love is among the only ones just as strong as the laws of End. Even against the Doom of all things, Love would find a way to survive, even in war but preferring peace.
The Two Great Lovers had again been reunited, and not even these forces could stand between them. Even so, cleverness would have to be their weapon. And in that moment, cunning Lykopis came up with an impossible, completely mad trade: the lives of thousands for a single song, meant to satisfy even insanely the requirements of both peoples. If peace was to be bought for the Singing City, let it be done by a Bard who did not stand for the Colleges but the people instead.
It was for them they had both risked so much on their journeys thus far. It was learning to fight for others that taught both of them real strength, and that only by accepting one's path would allow one to choose their destiny. True love will out until the End and Beyond.
And there you have it.
Were it not for them, this world might have been broken asunder once again in war and strife. Without Oborro and Lykopis, this story might never have been told; I might never have learned my own worth and become brave enough to write the story I've always wanted to tell.
We join them now on the morning after their Fated meeting, when differences for now ignored but now be faced. Peace has been bought and Lovers brought together again if only for now. Even for all this world's Magic, there are still laws and restrictions keeping their worlds apart. Entire nations stand in their way, a whole world seemingly ready to deny them their well-deserved moments of peace and joy.
But we already know how that's going to end, dont we?
