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      The HERO WORSHIP of PHOR-ORENTES

"IN EACH HAND HE HOLDS WATER AND SALT,
    PHOR-ORENTES." – DATE UNKNOWN,

It was not so many days ago that a fresh-faced refugee had came to me and said this;
"Is what has been built by the Sultan not grand? This Fortress Ephia, which defies the ash and death of the waste; a young city ready to take it's prime." It was in that moment that I resolved to bring to the people this book, because ignorance is a disease worse than the Red Death. Most men will know what we mean when we say "the Orentids", but how few of you can say you truly understand who they were?

Do you know the names of the divines that Orentes II worshipped? Do you know the origin of the magical works that wrought underneath and all around us? The following text should be your primer in familiarizing yourself with the topic with the words of Orentes I, ...

"And I saw myself there, my arms draped in sleeves of the finest silk;
Attended by wise men whose faces I had not yet known, and who laid a title like a laureate upon my brow,
Orentese Prince.."

The origin of the Orentids as a people is lost to the annals of history, but what we do know is that they came upon the Well in the years after the brutality of the Harrowing; that their people settled among ruin and rock, then much buried beneath the soil, and set to building themselves a home that would survive Pra'raj's lone hateful eye. That among them was a man beset by visions of grandeur and a greater future, who saw himself not as a King, but a Prince of a young, fledgling Principate; who laid the groundwork of all these things and more to come, ...

These people took on a foreign fashion of names in the stylings of Collosi, wherein we first see the accolade of Phor-Orentes; of whom the educated will recognize Phor as the Patron-Father of the Collosi, and mayhaps as the true creator of the Well, many millenia ago; who is known as the Mist-Drinker, for he broke neither bread nor wine. We know him as "a Builder", to whom Ephia is "the Mother Tree;" that which makes the world, and then that which makes life.

Even the King has records of this man and woman, supping at their table together in millenia passed; so the smart man will as "why, then, does Orentes I style himself as Phor-Orentes?", when he is no flesh and blood of the Collosi, three-to-five thousand years detached from the pair of them? The answer is simple. Religious mysticism. Aspersions of grandeur, and oft-muttered of visions;

"And who does this Prince think he is? First he dictates us to take new names,
And now he speaks to us that we must take on new Gods?
We are of the Wheel, and have always been,.." – DATE ESTIMATED 7690s~

And it is here that the aspersion to the inheritance of the Collosi take on new colour; where the mantling of Phor's legacy as has been done across Kingdom and Principate immemorial now seems to metamorphosize into a religious doctrine; wherein as Orentes II is document as travelling below the Well, and bringing forth great riches,

His character and faith itself becomes like hot metal, hammered into someone wholly different by colour as he emerges; and he no longer says praise to B'aara and Urazzir, but instead he says this: "HAIL to PHOR," and more curiously than all before, begins to erect the walls great and high while turning his Court to strange worship; while the Seers and Sages sing of one who will bring back the waters wherein they were stolen in the Harrowing, and see the Well fat and full; but his NEW GODS did not avail them of it; and so his riches and wealth built temples and halls, great and ancient auditoriums and places of learning; but that he was to fail in the coming of the water, left embittered and weary in death.

He was born Enrico, and he died Phor-Orentes;
And with each delve beneath Ephia's Well, he became it more.
By the time of his demise, he no longer spoke our tongue, but the syllables of Erugi;

"And look what these infernal machines have wrought; they bring life from the stars to rock and metal, and I have all but begged them to stay their hand,"

And it is then that his Son, Orentes III, takes up the mantle; and he is gifted by the Gods,
That his people learn of great and ancient secrets. That Machines are made which give life to rock and stone, as their Ephia once breasted life into clay and mud to make men. We know these as the "Anima Forge," and from there birthed the Golden Lions of his reign, while their funds ran dry; and then came Qa'im, who leaned over his shoulder, and whispered softly; "We will make the waters return, if only you allow us below."

We know not what words were shared, but that the Well's coffers began to run dry and fallow; and the promises of Qa'im ran hollow, and the people looked on in reviling, and said this;
"If your Father had seen us now, he never would have raised these great walls,"

But the common man fails to see what is most fascinating. That in their hero-worship and
uplifting of their Princes, that their Prince became endowed with otherworldly knowledge; learning the secrets of the Collosi's tools and great power, and becoming like something else; perhaps, some would infer, like that which the old books say Iistu was the prison buried to contain. That there is one who made Princes, who made men like Phor;

Yet as we all know, the story bookends here, with the daughter of the last;
Ibtihal! And now she like the Collosi is gone, to some a wraith, and the Well both her graveyard and her prison, in her bringing back of the waters. In this, has she not became as Ephia, as her forebears did mantle the namesake and endeavor to take the Powers of Phor, like the Djinn take our own names?

And now we drink from the Well she brought fruit to.
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