Taranis the Great

-Transcribed From the lessons of Talome, Philosopher to the Royal Court of Tetracapolis

     “Now as we gather my children, what shall I tell you of today? What lesson is fit to impart to you as the sun slowly descends over the western walls of this city? I know, I shall tell you of the greatest warrior to ever walk among men. We call him Taranis, the Great. The Great? Hah, as if there would ever be another like him in this wide world. What kind of man was Taranis? Was he a god or a colossus, a titan among lesser beings? Of course he wasn’t, only a fool would believe so. Men idolize their heroes; make them more than what they were. They turn them into more myth than man. The titles and honors given to him after his death only prove that. To the people of Kaliden he is “Megas-Taranis”; to the elves of Darandor he is the Great Eagle ever flying toward the sun. And to the barbarian tribes of the northern tundra he was the hammer of the gods. He was the Lord of the Morning and the first and greatest paladin to ever set foot on the world. His life was as glorious as it was brief and every man that now calls himself knight and paladin is judged by his example and ideals. It is said that when he was born a great eagle flew high over the city and circled his home and when he died an eagle yet again flew high over he and his men and letting out a loud call it then flew toward the rising sun and was never seen afterward. Volumes have been written about him and yet little beyond the legends is really known for the great library of Empyrea was destroyed in a fire not long after and all official records of him were lost. The names of his parents, how he had grown strong in body and mind into the maturity of his later years, who he had loved, all of it passed into only memory and song.

     What is known is that he was born of a slave girl, and the son of the high priest of the temple. His father, having little regard for such a bastard child, turned him out of his home when he was still a boy and that proved much to Taranis’ benefit fore he came to the knowledge of Talamane, the seven-fold dragon and one of the Guardians of Aerth. For years Talamane had walked among the people in the guise of man, teaching young boys the virtues of life and death, he was known among the people of Empyrea at that time as Mastageer. The beast took Taranis in and taught him the noble paths of right and honor and before long he far outshined any of the other children his age in knowledge and determination. It was from Talamane that he would receive the title of Paladin one day, the word meant “defender of heaven”. And when the boy grew into a man, he put on the armor of a warrior and went off to seek what fate had in store for him. In the time in which he lived, men lived in scattered communities. Each one trying to gain what the others had. Only in Empyrea itself was this not so, and more than anything that shaped Taranis’ vision for the future. A future of all mankind living under a single unified banner and a people united against the darkness of the north. Now all that he did during this time, even if it were all known, would probably fill whole volumes of books, but as it is his legend among the people grew and in a time when the priests of the temple had fallen out of favor, the people clamored to Lor to give them a mortal king as the other tribes of men had. At last Lor relented and much against his will the very man who had shunned him years earlier anointed Taranis king. But from that time forward, the temple was dark and cold, the light of heaven no longer emanated from the grand altar. Lor had left the people of Empyrea to their own devices. And Lor decreed that since it was a human king they preferred, that Taranis and his bloodline from that time on would rule all men. Even until the ending of the world.

     For a brief shining moment, Empyrea was the center of the world and Taranis busied himself with gathering the other human tribes under his banner. Some came to his side willingly, others did not, but in all things and in all his vast campaigns spanning those early years he treated everyone who came into his life with fairness and generosity. Some would have said too much generosity. He also took a wife who bore him a son and the thought of being king no longer troubled him as it use to because in time the wars ended and all the tribes of the north now swore allegiance to him; peace reigned at last. And above all things in his life, he loved his son. But when the boy was only five years of age, the lad died in a tragic accident that was of no ones making when a stallion fell on the lad and a cloud of grief consumed Taranis and all around him. His wife, blaming Taranis for the accident, turned her back on him forever and went to live with what remained of her family. She would never see or speak of him again it is told. And Taranis? Forgetting his lordship and turning his own back to the people, he took the boys body to the temple and there for sixty days he prayed to Lor to restore life to the boy. But as ever, the temple remained silent and still and the people grumbled against him. For the boys body never showed any sign of decay and it only appeared to those few who saw him that the lad was only sleeping. Thus those who were ignorant and superstitious called him a sorcerer and consorter of demons. This is how it remained for those sixty days of sorrow, until Talamane, in the guise of Mastageer once more, came to the temple and at last persuaded Taranis, after much talk, to let go of his son and take up the kingship that was rightfully his again. And Talamane took the boy from the temple and where he was finally laid, no one knows. Though many believe that Talamane flew straight into Alysium and there took the boy to the Elysian Fields, the bosom of heaven itself to await his father.

     Now, with his wife despising him and his people whispering behind his back, Taranis sought some comfort as could be found in the arms of another woman. It is said she was one of the daughters of one of the other ruling families of Empyrea, a young and lovely girl by all accounts whose gentle nature perhaps might have led her to pity her king to the point of moral blindness and in so doing conceive his illegitimate child. But Taranis made certain that she was never made an object of public ridicule or scorn and hid both her and the child away in solitude and safety. Of course the people reviled him even though they never knew her identity. Whore monger and worse they called him; how soon people forget. Many turned against him after that, but still more remained.

     Was Taranis wrong for doing what he did? Who can judge him? What man walks the earth and dares say he would have behaved differently? Loneliness and regret are two wines that when mixed together can lead men to act outside themselves. But through it all Taranis was still king and when he once again took up his mantle, his men followed him as they had always done no matter what the people were whispering. What was it like to be among them, those young men who had sworn an oath to their king? To know that when mighty Taranis looked you in the eye you could believe you were capable of anything. It is said that there was not a man in his army that he could not call by name, clasp them by the hand and remind them of some past pride that would make them think they were in the presence of not a man but a god. When one is young, such a person can easily seem immortal when compared to lesser men. The dreams of the young, may the gods save us from such as them. Inevitably the price of those dreams is blood, and too much of it.

     So, what exactly was this dream that Taranis had? Was it that both civilized men and the barbarian could live together in the same world in peace? His belief that all men should live by the meat of their honor and the drink of their word was unlike anything the world had seen before. Did he believe that the world could truly tolerate having only a single king? Who can say exactly what he envisioned the world to be when he was gone. But when his time to grasp glory came he took it. Even though he was king for only a short while. For after the death of his son it was only a few short years before the vast armies of Mortigern swept down from the ice-covered lands of the north, full of hatred at the mortal races for his long imprisonment, and besieged Empyrea. And the great steel dragon, Galamadrix, burned and destroyed all in his way until Taranis drove the sword Impyratalix itself into the creatures black heart and the dragon fell to earth with a force that shattered the ground beneath him. Oh Taranis was wounded that day, but the greatest heat of the battle was yet to come and he drove his way through the ranks to face Mortigern himself on the stone bridge outside the city gates. How can we, mere mortals know what it was like to be standing by the wayside on that day, to see him charging through his enemy like a god walking through the tides of the ocean as if they were but a pool of water in the road? His favored black stallion, Arkor, it is said took arrow after arrow and yet he never stumbled or faltered, not until his master had mortally wounded the dark one and the battle had been won, for the armies of Mortigern saw their commander fall from his mount and their hearts were filled with fear and they fled.

     Taranis’s men managed to save him from where he fell, hastily they lifted him up on his shield and bore him away to the rear of the column, but the damage had already been done, and as the sun rose over the field and he regained some of his senses beyond his pain, he commanded them to set him up against a nearby oak tree. Healers and holy men attempted to attend him but he only sent them away to look after those of his men who were still bloody on the field. That was above all the kind of man he was, the man who truly lived in that golden armor that had been crafted for him. To himself he was nothing, and the people he commanded were everything. He died there against that tree of course and before long the jackals were already fighting over his corpse, trying to decide who would receive the lion’s share of his kingdom. In the grief and madness of the moment, some feared that his armor would be stripped from him and his most loyal and strongest servant, Heaton, a strong bull of a man originally of one of those numerous barbarian tribes, pushed his way through the throng and gathering up his master’s body, carried him back to the city to his own house. And there he laid until Talamane came for him, as he had for Taranis’ son. And as he carried Taranis away, the glory of that entire grand city went with him.

     I have lived a long life, my little ones. What I have seen of the world has proven to me that much of it is of no more worth than a dog lying dead on the street. Even today after all this time, men invoke Taranis’ name little caring how they dishonor the memory of him with their petty ambitions. Boys putting on armor and reveling in bloodshed. Such a thing he would have never approved. Some say that in all its measure his life was a failure. Failure? Then so be it. His failures towered over other men’s successes. He showed the world a way of life that had never come before, a way that few can say they have the courage to live up to. Was this vanity on his part? No, it was simply the belief that men can be more than what they are. I am just a man and I do not know everything and in my old age I find I know less and less as my knowledge slowly slips away. But one thing I do know my young students, is that the glory and the memory of man will always belong to the ones who follow their great visions. And the noblest of these belonged to the one we now call Megas-Taranis, the greatest of them all.”