Alendria, Regent of the Origins Copy link
The Regent Who Was Promised Copy link
There came an age when the peoples of Rhuna had begun to forget why they had ever needed one another.
Old alliances weakened.
Ancient grievances resurfaced.
The Origins withdrew behind borders, traditions, and histories that increasingly defined themselves against those of their neighbors.
Then the portals opened.
And from them came Alendria.
She arrived not as conqueror, queen, or prophet, but as Regent of the Origins—a figure whose very appearance seemed an answer to the growing division spreading throughout Rhuna.
Where she came from remains uncertain.
Religious traditions claim she was sent by Balance itself. Some Astralkin accounts attribute her arrival to divine intervention. Others insist the portals simply responded to a need within Rhuna, as they had during the ancient Call for Balance.
Alendria herself offered few answers.
She simply began the work.
The Regent's Age Copy link
A World Brought Together Copy link
Alendria's greatest power was not conquest.
It was persuasion.
For decades, she traveled Rhuna, entering places where treaties had failed and grievances had endured for generations. She mediated disputes, forged alliances, reopened passages between estranged peoples, and convinced rivals that cooperation did not require sameness.
Under her influence, old roads reopened.
Trade expanded.
Representatives who had refused to share a chamber began speaking again.
Communities separated by Origin found reasons to depend upon one another.
Alendria did not erase their differences.
She made those differences survivable.
Prosperity followed.
Later generations would romanticize this period as a golden age, though the truth was inevitably more complicated. Rivalries remained. Violence did not disappear. Neither prejudice nor ambition vanished because a Regent asked them to.
But something had changed.
For perhaps the first time in generations, enough of Rhuna believed that unity was possible to begin building toward it.
And at the center of that hope stood Alendria.
The Eclipse Copy link
The Crimson Flame of Eredal Copy link
The moment that ended Alendria's golden age began as a celebration.
During a sacred ceremony beneath a rare eclipse, thousands gathered as Sun and Moon crossed one another in the heavens.
Then Eredal answered.
A Crimson Flame erupted across the sky.
Witnesses described a beam of impossible red light tearing across the heavens before disappearing somewhere in the distant wilds.
It did not strike Alendria.
It did not destroy the gathering.
For most who witnessed it, the event was simply an inexplicable celestial phenomenon—beautiful, terrifying, and gone almost as quickly as it had appeared.
But Alendria heard something.
A voice.
Calling from somewhere beyond the horizon.
No one else heard it.
The Calling Copy link
Beyond the Horizon Copy link
In the days that followed, Alendria began experiencing visions and whispers she could not explain.
Something had awakened.
Something wanted to be found.
Rather than alarm the peoples she had spent decades bringing together, Alendria kept the Calling secret.
Eventually, she departed.
She did not go alone.
A small group of trusted companions accompanied her beyond the familiar roads of Rhuna, following clues no surviving historical record adequately explains.
Their journey carried them through forgotten ruins, ancient pathways, and lands untouched by civilization.
Official histories record almost nothing of what followed.
That silence has produced centuries of speculation.
The Secret of Eredal Copy link
What Alendria Found Copy link
Some traditions claim Alendria discovered an ancient treasure.
Others say she found something buried beneath Eredal.
Certain forbidden accounts insist she spoke with a power older than the histories of Rhuna itself.
Whatever happened, Alendria eventually returned.
And those who knew her believed she had changed.
She carried knowledge she would not share.
Questions were answered with silence.
Old allies noticed moments of distraction, secrecy, and uncertainty from a Regent once renowned for her openness.
Yet Alendria refused to explain what she had found.
Not to her Council.
Not to the powers that supported her.
Perhaps not even to all those who had followed her there.
The Regent's Silence Copy link
When Trust Became Suspicion Copy link
For years, Alendria carried her secret.
The longer she refused to reveal it, the more dangerous that silence became.
Rumors spread.
Some believed she had encountered Vel.
Others claimed she possessed a forbidden relic.
Still others feared the Regent had discovered some power capable of altering the Balance she had sworn to protect.
The details changed with every telling.
The fear did not.
The very quality that had once made Alendria powerful—her ability to earn the trust of peoples who distrusted one another—began to unravel.
If the Regent demanded trust from Rhuna while withholding something capable of threatening it, her enemies argued, then perhaps she had become the very danger her position existed to prevent.
Eventually, fear overcame loyalty.
The Council of Sanction Copy link
The Fall of the Regent Copy link
The Council of Sanction turned against Alendria.
Those who had once celebrated her arrival now demanded the truth of what she had encountered.
Alendria refused.
Whether she remained silent to protect Rhuna, protect herself, protect what she had discovered—or fulfill some promise made beyond the horizon—remains unknown.
The Council acted.
Alendria was stripped of her gifts.
Her authority was revoked.
Her crown was taken.
Her name became something spoken with uncertainty rather than reverence.
Then the former Regent was cast upon the shores of Meridia and abandoned.
The woman who had spent decades holding Rhuna together was left to die beneath an indifferent sky.
What History Remembers Copy link
Regent, Traitor, Martyr Copy link
There is no single Alendria in the histories of Rhuna.
To some, she remains the greatest leader the Origins ever shared—a Regent who proved that unity did not require conformity.
To others, her secrecy nearly destroyed everything she had built.
Some religions remember her as a martyr.
Some governments remember her as a warning.
Some scholars believe the Council saved Rhuna by removing her.
Others believe fear destroyed the best chance at lasting unity the world had ever known.
The truth of what called to Alendria during the eclipse remains one of the great mysteries of the age.
What she found has never been reliably recorded.
What she carried back has never been publicly identified.
And what happened after Meridia belongs less to history than rumor.
Because Alendria did not die on those shores.
At least, not in every telling.
The End of Alendria Copy link
The Regent disappeared.
Years passed.
Stories began traveling along roads far from the centers of power.
A red-haired woman.
A wanderer.
A warrior without a crown.
Someone who seemed to know things she should not know.
Someone with old enemies and older memories.
Whether these stories describe Alendria is impossible to prove.
But one quotation, attributed to the fallen Regent shortly after her exile, has survived in countless forms:
“They took my crown. They took my name. They took everything they believed made me powerful. Now they'll learn how little any of it mattered.”
The historical record of Alendria ends on the shores of Meridia.
Another name begins appearing afterward.
Hex.
And whether Hex is Alendria reborn, Alendria transformed, or simply another story attached to a woman Rhuna refused to forget depends entirely upon whom one asks. The Mythos Photobook itself makes the transition explicit: “The story of Alendria ends here. The story of Hex is only beginning.”