The Rise of Orisis
by Marco DalmonteCHEIMOS
Cheimos was born in Taymor when the Nithians began to move the first steps
towards their greatness and the Taymora were going downhill. Man of great
intelligence and very talented in the magical arts, he quickly became
apprentice of one of the wisest sages of his time, the venerable Eldrian,
living in its tower on the northern borders of the empire, safe from the fiery
political and military conflicts between the various sorcerer kings and
necromancers. However, after one century Cheimos understood that he had learnt
all that his master could teach him, and he reasoned that only two possible
ways stretched in front of him: either remain in Taymor and enter the fray that
by now was extended to every region of the nation, trying to defy weaker
sorcerer in order to steal their secrets or to gain more political power, or
leave Taymor and wander across the world looking for other secrets and hidden
magic. Lacking ambition or a warlike soul and being thirsty for knowledge, he
packed up and started to wander in the lands north of Taymor (basically in
present day Karameikos and Ylaruam). He then came upon the newly founded
Kingdom of Nithia, where he struck friendship with the local king, Orisis, and
settled down there, becoming court magist at the service of Orisis and Maat.
There he became acquainted with the cult of Thothys (Ssu-ma) and became first a
devout follower and then one of its high-ranking ministers.
ENTER MAAT AND ORISIS
During her mortal life, Maat was a brave paladin renowned for her beauty, her courage and her virtue at the dawn of the Nithian civilisation. Being a worthy warrior, she took command of a numerous tribe in the fertile Nithian valley, her virtue and faith in justice a shining example to her followers during her life. So great was her dedication to the cause of Goodness and her respect of life that she succeeded to impress her patroness, Terra, finally discovering the path of the Polymath. After being reincarnated three times to recover the Ivory Plume, she finally set out for her last deed: the unification and the pacification of the tribes living in the Nithian basin.
Orisis on his part was a very wise and capable man, and his desire to give the Nithians a wide set of laws to prevent injustice and to allow the creation of a real nation with firm beliefs led him to seek for Maat's alliance. After a long military campaign she finally decided to join forces with the enlightened
chieftain of the Western Tribes, Orisis, and she married him. After a series of
oaths and political weddings arranged either by sheer force of the arms and or
by diplomatic talks, the pair was then able to proclaim the foundation of the
Kingdom of Nithia around BC 1600. Later the pair started to know each other and
they fell in love, thus strengthening their leadership over Nithia.
ENTER BACHRAEUS
However, Bachraeus coveted his older brother's power and so started to spin a
conspiracy in order to assassinate the king and take his place both on the
throne and on the wedding thalamus. Bachraeus lured Orisis outside the royal
palace by inciting some eastern tribes to revolt against Nithia. He then set
out to subdue the rebel tribes, but once there he faked his own kidnapping.
Worried about his brother, Orisis travelled to that region personally to parlay
with the rebels, and there he was first poisoned and later murdered by
Bachraeus, who then cut his body into different pieces and scattered them along
the river Nithia. Bachraeus then killed all of the people who had participated
in his coup to eliminate uncomfortable witnesses, and travelled back to Nithia
with sad news. After his brother's demise he made his claim on the throne of
the kingdom and thanks to his allies' support and the lack of a heir, he was
granted the title of Prince Regent.
ORISIS' VENGEANCE
After the rise of Bachraeus, Cheimos remained at his place without openly
opposing him, but secretly helped Maat in her quest to find her consort and
revive him. In fact, although struck deep at the heart, Maat didn't resign to
the situation, and shortly before the crowning of her brother-in-law she fled
the capital looking for the corpse of Orisis. Thanks to her determination and
the magical knowledge of Cheimos, she managed to recover the thirteen parts of
Orisis's body and mummified the corpse, succeeding to revive him as the first
mummy. Orisis, aware of Bachraeus's deceit, returned to get a rightful revenge
and reclaim his lost throne.
When Bachraeus got word that Maat had finally came back, he arranged for a
meeting with her in his desire of securing his grip on the throne and wooing
the widow queen as soon as possible. Great was his dismay when he found out
that Orisis had come back too, and the rightful king unmasked his brother's
fiendish plan just in front of the court, calling upon divine powers to defeat
him and reclaim his position at Maat's side.
Bachraeus was then banned from Nithia and Orisis laid a terrible curse upon
him, making him half man and half snake, the first male medusa. In his long
wandering outside Nithia's borders, Bachraeus called upon the Immortals' mercy
many times, but every time he got only the hatred and spite of all the tribes
he encountered in his path, shunned and driven off as the terrible monster he
had become. This poisoned his mind completely, and finally he began to make
appeals to dark entities. Demogorgon answered his pleas, and led Bachraeus in
the underground tunnels beneath Nithia, in the lost pathways and cities of an
ancient but now dead civilisation of intelligent lizardmen. There she tested
his wickedness and loyalty and eventually turned Bachraeus in the first
weresnake, granting him demonic powers to further his vendetta.
ENTER SETIS
When Bachraeus came back to Nithia under the identity of Setis, Cheimos was the
first to be influenced by his malign powers. Setis bent the magist's will to
his own through a magical subterfuge and began to manipulate him first in order
to discover the mysterious secrets that he guarded, and then to obtain Orisis's
trust, becoming one of his counsellors. Thanks to his powerful divine and arcane
magic and his alliance with the Entropic forces, Bachraeus spun his web of
intrigue and deceit, murders and blackmailings, creating turmoil and hatred
among the different factions behind the throne. These tensions culminated in a
civil war and an attempted coup against Orisis and Maat, which Setis promptly
used to murder Orisis (after discovering the weaknesses of his undead nature)
and force Maat and Cheimos to flee in exile. Before Orisis' demise however,
Maat succeeded in transferring his soul within her womb, getting pregnant by
magic and later giving birth to Mitras, son and father of himself.
In BC 1570 Bachraeus destroyed the last followers of the old monarchs and
through a firm grip on the army he subdued to obedience the princes that had
caused the unrest in the kingdom, establishing a reign of cruelty during which
Nithia knew the power and the corruption of the entropic powers for the first
time.
ENTER MITRAS
After only twenty years a powerful and holy hero named Mitras, heir of Orisis
and Maat, stood against Setis's fiendish rulership and with the help of Maat's
charisma and influence over the Nithians, he led the people to revolt against
the oppression spread by the corrupt rulers. After a civil war that last well
over three years, Mitras forced Setis to escape after seizing the capital, and
he reclaimed the throne of his father (his own throne), while Setis/Bachraeus
crossed the border and completed his path in the sphere of Entropy around BC
1400.
Mitras ascended to the throne strengthening the dynasty of Orisis, bringing
Nithia from the bronze age to the iron age and enlarging the kingdom to the
point of creating a real empire.
On her part, after completing the construction of the Pyramid of Light, the
first huge monument of the Nithian greatness (later destroyed during the fall
of the empire), in BC 1520 Maat was surrounded by a moonlight in a gently
summer night and disappeared, having succeeded in the Path of the Polymath.
Following Mitras's will, the Nithians created elaborate rituals to worship
Orisis and Maat, the first Pharaohs, starting to follow them as true Immortals
(and thus granting a large following to himself well before he ascended to
immortality). Mitras/Orisis later completed the path of the Dynast he had begun
in BC 1500 after establishing the Nithian Empire, and he then joined with his
wife/mother Maat to continue looking over their followers.
Maat and Orisis got a very important place in the Nithian pantheon: she became
the Goddess of Justice and Honour, Mother of Nithia, while Orisis became the
Founder, the Lawgiver, the Bringer of Light and the Keeper of the Dead,
increasing the base of their faithful followers as a result of the expansion of
the Nithian Empire. Orisis got a broad following even under the identity of
Mitras both during his life and after his ascension, where Mitras was
worshipped as the Justiciar, Warrior of Goodness and Destroyer of Evil.
BACK TO CHEIMOS
When unfortunately Setis revealed his true intentions and Orisis was destroyed,
Cheimos decided to flee Nithia, with the minions of Setis following his trail.
Running for his life he came to the mountains of the northwest, in the broken
lands created by the Glantrian catastrophe that had occurred a century before,
where he succeeded in evading his pursuers. Unfortunately after rambling in
this cold desert he contracted a terrible disease that began to corrupt his
flesh and to eat away its memory, pushing him on the brim of the madness.
Fortunately he was saved by a group of elven Wendarian scouts, and later
carried in their forests, where they cured him with the Elvenstar.
From his rescuers, Cheimos came to know that a terrible magical catastrophe had
turned the southern lands into that cradle of diseases and aberrations, and
this revelation hit his mind in a very odd way. Cheimos (remembering his
experience with Setis and the Taymora sorcerers) became convinced that magic
was too much dangerous and powerful to wield, and that it should have been
taught only to the wisest and most responsible people in order to avoid its
misuse. Obsessed by this idea, Cheimos undertook a solitary quest in order to recover
as many artifacts with arcane and divine powers and as many tomes containing
precious secrets and knowledge as he could, so that they did not fall in the
wrong hands. During this epic quest he got hold of an artifact of the Sphere of
Thought that he used to hinder the plans of an ambitious Nithian wizard who
lived in the Northern Reaches (who was trying to create an army of created
using the souls of his slaves to power them), destroying the Entropic artifact
that was the source of his power and therefore his infernal army. Finally
Cheimos built a hideout on the mountains between Glantri and Wendar in a
totally isolated zone, and an Endless Stair through which only the chosen ones
could reach his hideout, where he hid and guarded all the artifacts he found in
his voyages. Then, after choosing the wisest among the elven wizards as his
assistant, he created an item to defend his shelter: the Throne of Power. After
this feat Thothys (Ssu-Ma) appeared and announced him that he had completed the
path of the Epic Hero, and in the XIV century the doors of immortality opened
for Cheimos. Cheimos gave his tower and his inheritance to his apprentice, who
became the Cheiromar, keeper of the secrets of the Endless Stair.