The Wind Riders

by Kris Kramer

On the Assarin people…

  The people of Assar are unlike any other in the world. They are known throughout Leranon for one thing, tattooing themselves with symbols that represent major life events. You can sometimes find elderly Assarins with every last part of their skin covered with these markings, each of which tells a captivating story. It’s an amazing trait, and I am to this day fascinated by the effort they put into it.

  Of course, Assarins have more than their share of stories to tell. When the White Horsemen came to their nation, they put up a tremendous fight. Even though they were outmatched, they battled for days in their capital city of Assar, fighting from building to building as they retreated. They finally had to surrender the city, but the majority of the survivors regrouped in the northern part of the country and moved en masse across the Lore Mountains, a trek later called the Great Journey, hoping to find a place to settle on the other side.

  They lost a large number of their people on that trek, and when they reached the lands near the Trin Lake on the north side of the mountains, they were greeted with hostility from the Anzarins in the area, and were attacked. The Assarins were scattered and driven back into the mountains, an event in Assarin lore that came to be called the Breaking.

  Again, the Assarins faced the end of their nation and their people, but again, it was not to be. Young Maradin Dumon, the son of the former great general Andurain, began rallying his people. He spent three years roving the hills and mountains, attacking the Anzarins in small, easily winnable battles. He eventually gathered so many of his people that they were able to attack and conquer the Anzarin cities around the Trin. They captured the largest city, Keramos, and renamed it Assar, remaking the former Assarin kingdom into an empire, though one now sitting on borrowed Anzarin lands.

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  Maradin Dumon came to be known as “the Ghost” in the fighting against the Anzarins because in all his battles, he never once suffered so much as a scratch.