Ruya's Legacy - The Crimson Dragon

The following is a word-for-word archive of the original story.

**Ruya’s Legacy - The Crimson Dragon**

**THE PROLOGUE**

Ruya I of Bolinne ruled over his dominion from 879 – 903. Although his reign was relatively short, encompassing only 24 years of rule, he would go on to be named the Second Unifier of Riyad, the grandson of the First Unifier. He was not destined for this greatness, however, as he started as a mere outcast peasant, on the outskirts of Bolinne.

To explain the history and context of Ruya’s reign as king of Bolinne, and his rise as the Crimson Dragon, I must first share with you the history of his formidable kingdom and region in which it resides. Riyad, or Riad, was a vast land, inhabited by 4 main groups. Knot, Flame, Blood, and Rose. The Knot in the southwest, the Flame in the northwest & central, the Blood in the southeast, and Rose in the northeast.

The Knot mainly seek knowledge but are willing to gain power in subtle & sometimes brutal ways. The Flame and Blood are often combative over religious differences, as well as differences in their societal and cultural norms. The Rose, ever peaceful, often do not proactively fight the other tribes as they believe proactive war is unnecessary destruction and avoid it.

For many a century leading up to the 600s, the tribal council was maintained between the 4 groups, primarily held together by the major kingdoms acting as power brokers within the fragile council/confederation. The Knot, specifically, kept the peace between the Blood and Flame, the two groups hated each other, and would constantly try to undermine each other & the council in order to seize more power for themselves.

In 667, a report was written in Alaxia (the biggest Knot kingdom by far), uncovered in 1988, it warned the king’s advisors of an Iridian army to the west that was fast modernizing and a great threat to their safety. The Knot and Iridium are well-known for their rivalry with each other, that boiled over in many Knot-Iridium wars over the centuries. This report would go unheeded by the king of Alaxia, dooming their fate. As Iridium to their west geared up for war in the shadows, in Flame, the major kingdom in their region, Logiru, was repressing ethnic minorities, leading to a flare up of tensions in 717.

In 718, after a year of bitter fighting in Flame, the spark finally fell, as Alaxia armies that were helping Logiru were called away to fight the Iridian armies quickly advancing to Knot’s west. Alaxia’s careful confederation of Knot kingdoms, meant to inspire unity, quickly collapsed as Iridian armies waged a lightning campaign of magic & bribery. Knot cities, especially the ones on the Ankt river (the border between Iridium and Knot) knew the power of this new Iridian army, and submitted quickly to their armies, in exchange for some tribute money (as incentive to surrender, lest other cities feel they can withstand them.)

Alaxia was stunned, their dreams of a unified Knot crushed. Soon their capital city (named Alaxia as well) was surrounded by power-hungry mongrels ready for war. They held out for a staggering 6 years, but in 734, Alaxia itself was felled by Iridium. The shockwaves would ripple across all of Riyad.

The Flame kingdom of Logiru felt the effects of Alaxia’s collapse immediately. The rebels had a new surge, new motivation. If Alaxia’s reinforcements were gone, it meant they had a fighting chance for their own independence.  Blood armies, eager to weaken their rival, quickly funded the rebellions as they realized no Knot kingdom would be available to dole out reparations for the acts of war In 720, Logiru was forced into a bitter treaty following the battle of Crimsongorod, where Blood armies trapped and destroyed Logiru forces, releasing many of their regions to rebel leaders, only to keep their heads. They would never again rise to the heights they saw in 720.

The Rose people did not necessarily coalesce into larger and larger kingdoms like the other peoples. They were stereotyped as “pacifists” however they were always willing to defend themselves if an army came trampling through. This is why no Rose army went to stop Blood or Flame armies while they warred.

Why is this background important? It set the stage for the Fiefdom Era in Riyad, where we pick up our story just 200 years later. After these numerous catastrophes, the tribal council that held Riyad together fractured and faded. Out of Alaxia’s collapse rose a small kingdom, Bolinne, centered around the city of Aixa.

**RUYA’S BEGINNINGS**

This is where we meet Ruya, scarcely aware of the history of his kingdom, and how it was birthed out of iron and blood. He was born a peasant to the eldest illegitimate son of the king of Bolinne, not fit to be a soldier, not least a king. The year was 878, when he received a letter marked “DO NOT SHARE” on the front, in bold, scarlet lettering.

As it had turned out, the king was dead, and as such an heir had to be chosen. However, the king’s brother-in-law wanted to take the throne as only the illegitimate children and their children were male, and the legitimate children of the queen were all daughters. So, his dearest granduncle invited him to a meeting, in Bolai, the capital of the kingdom, just northwest of Aixa, Ruya’s home.

Before he left, Ruya made sure to make an offering to the rain spirits, so that they may bless his travels with dry paths and roads, and to also keep just enough rain to have him fed along the way, a balance one would need on such a dangerous trek through the swamp. The rain priest, however, left an ominous message before he would go, “Your fate is sealed, lest you travel the second road. Find the Inn from the long-dead past.”

Ruya took note of this message, putting in his bags a note, “find an old inn” as a reminder to find the Inn from the “long-dead past” to keep his head, or at least that’s how he interpreted the message.

Ruya set out in a chilly August, as Riyad was in the southern hemisphere. However, he could not miss the meeting in October, so he over-prepared for autumn on the trip. He made it to Bolai within 3 weeks of setting out, through perilous swamp and more perilous still rapids, he made it safely. His parents and wife were still in Aixa, while he set out alone.

While in Bolai, he asked a local where the oldest inn in town was and was pointed to “The Crow’s Inn & Taverns” supposedly founded by one of the first men in Bolai. There he stayed for 2 weeks before a mysterious man showed up at his door.

The man told him that his meeting with his uncle-in-law was a trap, and that he saw his uncle approach the area with guards earlier in the day. He asked Ruya to come with him to a secret meeting of Bolinnai loyalists, those that believed the next king should be a Bolinnai, the same ruling family as the previous king. Unfortunately, he was the only person in Bolai, able to challenge the former king’s brother-in-law directly.

In what would later be known as The Battle of Scarlet Ridge, a loyalist archer stood in the shadows, awaiting the meeting between Ruya and Tomas, (Ruya’s granduncle-in-law.) While perched far away, he made sure to alert Ruya when the trap would begin, and Ruya suddenly become hyper-aware of the danger.

With one bowshot, the battle was over. The archer, named Alasaya, planted an arrow firmly in Tomas’ chest, and the soldiers in the bushes dispersed, not unquietly either. They began preparations to reveal to the public that the grandson of the former king, Ruya, was now the official King of Bolinne.

As the new King, Ruya had an important choice. He could fight his age-old rivals in Iridium, to the west, or he could fight Augoxa, the kingdom to the northeast, and claim Crimsongorod, the seat of the old tribal council for himself. Either would take a long and bitter campaign to win, disregarding the time spent on keeping the conquest within the fold. So, he chose to wait for a while. He invested more into gunpowder, a relatively recent invention in the region, and ramped up arquebus (early firearm) production for his modernizing military.

Ruya’s first objective was to secure his western position and made sure to stamp out any disloyal client states or opposing kingdoms between him and the Ankt, and the southern sea. Both were dangerous crossings filled with unimaginably horrific monsters and terrors, nobody would dare attack him while crossing or landing, as he had a military advantage (the arquebus) over Iridium to the west.

After securing his borders and making sure that there were no active threats to Bolinne’s heartland regions, Ruya turned his eye east, to Crimsongorod, the scarlet city of his dreams. How he wished to stand over it, and rightfully take it for his glorious kingdom. If he could take Crimsongorod, his successor could maybe unite all Riyad, under one glorious banner, Bolinne, an empire!

And so, in 887, Ruya unfurled the crimson banners of Bolinne, and set out from Bolai, to march all the way to Crimsongorod. Yet while he marched, taking town after town in Augoxa territory, he never once actually encountered their main force. Spies said they should have encountered them by now at their pace, yet they vanished as quickly as the wind raging o’er the seas. A breeze always out of reach, always so close.

When he arrived with his 16,000 men in tow, the Crimsongorod defenders numbered only 2,000. A surefire victory, with a couple problems on the way. Namely that Crimsongorod still held full access to a river, which Ruya could not blockade, he had not brought nor built many ships in his reign, and he couldn’t just produce them on a dime.

So, he waited them out. He sent scouts around the river to try and stop, or burn ships, but by the time he had started these spy campaigns, they already had food for 4 years. They would not surrender until 893, if he was lucky.

Yet in the distance swirled rumors, rumors that espoused that maybe that raging wind of an army would return, forcing Ruya into retreat. Rumors remained, for 3 long years, until 891. Ruya’s spies reported an advancing army numbering 12,000. If he turned to meet him, the defenders could sortie and break their ranks. They were stuck.

So Ruya dug in for an even longer siege than planned. He ordered his men to dig, literally. With his arquebuses outfitted to most regiments, he could put rings of trenches and have his men fire out of them. Over the next year, he would slowly but surely train every soldier in the art of firearms. Soon, he had a semi-elite firing force, dug in around Crimsongorod.

In 893, the reinforcements finally made it, beleaguered by a long trip, they were held up by their leader in the north because of raids, not realizing how dire the situation in their southern region had been. Now though, they had seen the destruction. Ruya’s soldiers, while usually well-fed, were running low on some foods, and this decrease in living quality was slowly wearing on them.

However, it was wearing even harder on the defenders, who by now were close to waving the white flag. If Ruya could just hold out for another 3 months until June, he might just win the siege, and fight the 12,000 men from inside the gates.

The next 3 months came and went as the ground turned to snow, and ice, and the land was now barren. Crimsongorod would finally surrender on the 17th of June, 894. However, when Ruya’s forces were trying to hurry in, the reinforcements struck. Everyone was in a panic, and Ruya at one point was sure his army would be routed. He regained control and order just in time for some of his men to take the walls, and begin firing, buying the rest of his men time to hurry in, and they dug in.

Unlike the previous defenders, Ruya’s army successfully sortied out the reinforcement army, driving their numbers and morale lower and lower each time they broke their rank and had to reform again, realizing each sortie was a trick, not a full assault.

By 895, the reinforcement army numbered a meager 8,500 men, and were tired and battered. They raised the white flag, surrendering to the defenders after one final, grand sortie. They were taken as prisoners, and they were allowed to live in Crimsongorod, under Bolinne command. Soon, he forced a peace upon Augoxa, where he kept Crimsongorod as well as land between the great city and his kingdom.

As he stood atop the scarlet palace, which he would soon order renovated, Ruya stood over his kingdom, wishing to return to the breeze and farms he had known only two decades ago as his home. He promised himself that within the next 10 years, he would return to Aixa, and so he did.

The next decade were focused around integrating Crimsongorod into the Bolinne sphere of influence and culture, as well as reequipping the army after the siege that had taken 25% of his men. He also tutored his son, Iodam, who would go on to be the Third Unifier of Riyad. He would not allow a succession crisis like the king prior, he made sure everyone from Bolai to Crimsongorod knew, Iodam was the next king. And so, in the autumn of 903, on a crisp March day, Ruya officially abdicated the throne to his son, who by this point was 31.

When Ruya finally returned home, in May of 903, he was welcomed with a rain festival, as a few days prior there had been a great storm, said to mark his soon arrival. The rain festival was said to be one of the most lavish ever portrayed, with song and dance well into the night, and for many days. They honored Ruya, as in his short two decades as king, he had brough peace and stability to his realm that would continue, past himself.

He returned soon to the life of a simple farming man, Ruya was content with all he had done. While he would remain famous for his exploits, in his later years, he was said to appreciate the solemn quietness of Aixa, remarking in 927 that the breeze felt more like home than the scarlet palace in Crimsongorod ever did. Ruya’s produce shop in Aixa often attracted visitors into the 930s, as the old man with a spring in the step was fabled to have once ruled this land and had peacefully and voluntarily stepped down for his son. Soon he was known in Aixa as “The Friendly Crimson Dragon '' for his exploits and now his neighborly attitude.

Before he passed in 942 at the age of 99, Ruya would get to see what he was always dreaming of. After the last battles in the northeast against Rose tribal uprisings in 931, and a fierce battle against viridian colonialists in the northeast-central areas in 939, in the spring of 940, Iodam II was crowned as emperor, The Emperor of Riyad, alongside his father, who was content watching. He knew he had lived a fulfilling life, from farmer to king, and back again, he could now peacefully pass to the other side, knowing he had lived well.