Ban legends - The Love of Adro
How long ago was it, that our beloved patron, Adro, was so unjustly exiled into the rip across the Teyn created by her own mother?
Our foolish cousins speak of how Adro desired only destruction and death for all life. But they know nothing. Though her contempt for her kind and the mortals that walked Tey was great indeed, she had more love in her divine spirit than any of her treacherous fellow Gods. Those of us who saw her way as the true way and who followed her in her quest were not her slaves and pawns, as the Kii would have the world believe, but her worshippers, her friends, her companions. If she cared nothing for us, then how could we explain her response to the Kii's massacre of our town that would be rebuilt as the city of Fortata? Would an evil user of the Ban have abandoned her assault on Neander to slay the unrepentant soldiers that revelled in their atrocity? Would she have returned to our shores and gathered the survivors to her, whispering words of comfort to the children and promises of revenge to the adults?
No, her love for her followers outweighed even her justified hatred for the Kii and their Gods. Remember especially her love for the founder of our kind, Johoret Ban. Their meeting would be the starting point for our race, and the bane of the Kii. Even before Johoret encountered the Goddess, his fellow Kii spat and threw stones at him, calling him "monster" and "outcast" for the crime of speaking out against the Kii monarchy and the Ne-Kii's leaders. He was forced to live the life of a hermit, harrassed by his neighbours who sought to drive him insane for their amusement. But Johoret was stronger than that, and he endured, even prospered in his own way, until the day he made to check his animal traps and saw a Kii warrior unit attempting to bring down a single enemy. Even though he was outnumbered, he lept into the battle, taking down several soldiers before he was stabbed from behind by the captain. He slumped to the ground, mourning his failure to save the woman. But despite his pain, his sorrow soon turned to amazement as the apparently-helpless lady single-handedly destroyed the soldiers, and Johoret realised that the lady had had no need for his assistance.
The lady took the dying Johoret to a deep cave nearby, and healed his mortal wound with the skin of the least-damaged soldier. As isolated as he had lived, even Johoret had heared of the "evil traitor Goddess" Adro, who wore the skins of her victims. Yet even though the woman had easily destroyed over twenty soldiers and had used their skin to heal him, Johoret could not believe that this beautiful lady was the same hideous monster that he had heard about. He realised the truth - that like the nearby villages had done to him, the Kii as a race and their Gods had cast Adro out just for seeking a better way of living.
Adro had saved Johoret's life out of mere curiosity. She wished to know why a Kii would fight for her, as demonised as she had been. But when Johoret told his story, Adro saw the parallel between his life and her own sorrows. This may well have been the first time Adro realised that she need not be alone, that if one Kii could see through the lies that followed her, maybe there could be others.
Adro and Johoret left the area and travelled long, until they reached the Ne-Kii city of Ru. Johoret entered the city and started to spread the word of Adro in secret. Away from the slander that had haunted him in his previous home, Johoret proved to be highly charismatic. Soon, Adro had a small force of worshippers in the Ru underground. Many were from the poorer areas of the city, the mistreated who had finally found their light. A few were from families of power who sought to control the cult to increase their power. These ones, however, tried to betray the cult once they discovered the divine force behind it - thankfully, Johoret and his followers silenced these traitors before their identites could be revealed.
The first breakthrough in Adro's conquest of Ru came in the form of a single teenager. Ru was ruled by the Greaha family. The eldest daughter of the Ru Leader, Feru Greaha, was Dia, and should have been next in line to rule after her father. But from a young age, she had experienced unrestful sleep, and her behaviour when awake, wild and angrily rebellious, had caused her family to shut her away from the world, denying her her birthright. Johoret discovered this, and Adro herself visited Dia on several nights. Dia was receptive to Adro's visits, and eagerly agreed to her plans. Dia was unconcerned that the plans included the deaths of her entire family - she truly was one of vision.
After a little time, the cult had grown enough for the conquest to begin. During several days of terrible storms, which would keep visitors from other tribes and cities away from Ru, Dia murdered her family, while the cult suprised and eliminated the city's warriors and defences. By the time the storms cleared, everyone in the city had either joined the Ban, as the cult was named after its founder, or had been executed. Word went out to the Ne-Kii that a terrible fire had killed the Greaha family in their sleep, and the sole survivor, Dia, was the new Ru Leader. As was, and still is, customary with the Ne-Kii, the new Leader was to be offically coronated at a Ne-Kii Gathering. Dia took several Ban with her and used the Gathering to spread the influence of Adro to the other Ne-Kii cities.
Meanwhile, as Ru was adapted to Adro's liking, the Goddess took Johoret as more than a priest, but as a consort to her. With her, he fathered a child, a glowing blue-skinned son that was named Yalei. As a token of her love, Adro offered Johoret immortality to spend the rest of eternity with her. The price was that Johoret would have to replace his own skin with those of others over time. But with so many enemies to force donations from, Johoret was more than pleased with his new existence.
As time went by, the Ban grew more powerful, and rumours of their existence started to emerge. Adro, rather than silencing the rumours, helped to spread them, especially to the Kii monarchy. The inevitable happened, and the Kii sent their armies at the Ne-Kii, believing that the Ban had completely taken over Ne-Kiian. Adro had planned this from the beginning, and long before the first battles, had prepared a continent away from the Kii for us to set up a new home, putting the hand-obssessed Shulli between us and our deceived enemies. The continent was not deserted. Before Adro had met Johoret, she had won a race of monsterous creatures to her side, the race of the Mazormed. Though she had left them for a long time, they still flocked to her on her return. She divided the continet in half, one half to the Mazormed, the other half to us, setting up her bastion in the centre.
As soon as we had entrenched ourselves, Adro took Johoret, the elite of the Ban, and a small army of Mazormed, and returned to Kii. As she predicted, her brother And, the War God, had come down to Tey to try and reunite the Kii and the Ne-Kii. Feigning sorrow at the situation, she tricked And into a marble cave, where she and her followers ambushed the War God, stripping him of his skin, and sealing him in the heart of the mountain. Adro donned And's skin, and summoned the Ban and the Mazormed to swarm and overwhelm the Kii and Ne-Kii, both exhausted from their terrible wars.
As Tey stood on the brink of submission to Adro, her father Harrafor came down and tried to sway Adro from her quest. Adro saw through her father's lies and defeated him, preparing to take his skin to add to her own. But the wars had grown to such an extent that And was empowered as never before, and erupted from his prison. He suprised Adro with his return and his new power, and Adro finally fell. Now that Adro was vunerable, her father suddenly found the courage to inflict the worst possible punishment. Adro's mother, Pelijea, opened a wound in the world itself, on the other side of the Teyn Ocean, and cast Adro into it. There, the Kii Gods intended Adro to suffer an eternity of isolated loneliness, forever cut off from her followers, the only ones who had ever shown her love.
Johret's grief raged. As the Gods left, he took the Ban's finest ship and sailed to the closing Tear in the world. He left final instructions for the Ban - to nuture Yalei and his descendants, so that they could continue Adro's work, and to keep our belief and love in Adro alive. He then hurled himself into the Tear to join Adro, leaving the Ban in Dia's hands, and promising that in the future, the Ban would re-open the Tear, and that his return would herald the return and final victory of our beloved Adro.