Khen

This is an interesting story, Nile, but I find it necessary to point this out to you from the start; A long time ago, a group of people, collectively known as the dragon folk, forgot who they are. In essence, that is what this whole story boils down to. Everything else I'm about to tell you is details and background noise.

As with all stories, it can start at any point in the history of this land you call the Ghentii region. However, I'll start it at a place that is particularly close to my heart. When man and dragon became one.

His name was Khen. His mother was a warrior of one of the rural tribes of the Hexis. His father was a cursed dragon. Their union was unlikely yet inevitable in hindsight. Their meeting was what we call a tectonic event; a simple, seemingly random event that changes the face of the world.

Khen was his name. It was his only name, chosen by his mother. The legend says that it came to her in a fever dream. He was the first king of the dragon folk. He united all the Hexis people behind him as well as the local people of the land. He made dragons come back from the mountains and trust people again. But most of all, he created the first collective identity of what will be later known as the dragon folk. 

He reigned for almost 50 years. He had 10 wives, 8 sons, 27 daughters, and 45 grandchildren. He was a shrewd politician and made sure all major prominent tribes and families married into his bloodline. He had a firm belief that his people were all of the dragon folk, not only his mother's tribe. In that sense, he felt as deeply for the dragons as he did for people. Hunting dragons was the cardinal sin of his kingdom.

He opened his kingdom to the world as no monarch ever dared. Under his rule, the kingdom was a beacon of hope and acceptance. The ethnic diversity observed around the end of his reign was unparallelled in the old world. Heaps and heaps of people flocked to his kingdom. The poor, the whites, the sickly. They all came seeking this promise of a generous land, and a king that does not judge. 

I've heard so much about his speech I can almost recite it word to word, as if I was in the audience. I even saw it in my opium dreams. He spoke of land, of identity, of people, of dragons, of the one world, of the one word. "We are all one" he said, "Dragons and people, we are all one. This land unites us, and we are a part of it, like leaves of a tree. Without it, we die. Without us, it is not alive". His words touched the innermost chambers of hearts, and faces wept uncontrollably. Even the thought of that day makes my soul shiver.

At the end of his reign, Khentii was the largest continuous kingdom in the world. It stretched from the sand mountains to the west until the occidental sea at the tip of the old world. bordered by desert from the north and the big blue to the south. It was truly something. 

But, as with all good things, this one must come to an end. Such is the will of God, such is the matrix of Panjia. But that will be a story for another day. Right now, the sun is coming up and we have to pick up the pace. We need to be there by noon. 

Do you really believe that his name came to her in a dream? 

Of course I do Nile! I am a hermit, a patron of romance. Truth and reality are different things to me. What is true is what the hearts of people believe. It manifests itself. It has energy and will. You can feel it. If the heart is not in it, even if it is real, it will always be false. 

Tectonic event huh. I like that. I like that a lot

I'm not surprised.