Darren of the Dream-Speakers

Information
 **Year of Death** | ---

## Summary

Darren is a leonin from the Andalusian state of Hamza. During the Demon Crisis, his pride's belief that the gods were unreliable - if not outright malicious - was reinforced. Once the Crisis passed, Darren was tasked with leaving the pride to explore the neighboring lands, make a name for himself, and find a mate (as is traditional for male leonin). He took this as an opportunity to spread his pride's belief across Avalon: that relying on the gods for strength was folly, and that true strength comes from one's self and one's community.

## Description

Darren is tall - towering well over most humans - lean, and well-built. While he is usually bipedal, he is digitigrade and can drop to all fours to run more quickly. He is covered in short, dense fur that is grayish-tan in the winter and more reddish-brown in the summer. He has a thick red mane, which he adorns with many braids, beads, ribbons, and feathers, and his long tail is tipped with a tuft of hair of the same color.

Darren wears a red, black, and yellow checked cloak that is traditional to the leonin. He also tends to wear blues and greens, as well as a maille shirt with a leather belt. His primary weapon is a short polearm with a curved, scimitar-like blade on both ends, called a panga mbili.

Generally, Darren has an open and warm demeanor, even when he doesn't understand or doesn't agree with what's going on. His default way to bond with others is through physical contests, feats of strength, etc., though he doesn't really care about winning so much as the act of doing.

## Backstory

Darren was born in HE 3098 in the leonin homelands of northern Hamza and Liste. His pride, the Dream-Speakers, were an old and well-respected pride amongst the leonin, and his mother Lungile was renowned as a seer. Like most young leonin men, Darren spent most of his time as a youth training to fight, as it is custom for the males to resolve inter-pride disputes through ceremonial (non-lethal) combat. When he wasn't challenging his peers to feats of strength, he ranged the width and breath of his pride's territory, learning about the landscape and about his non-leonin neighbors, whom he found were odd but generally good people.

He eventually made friends with a human courier named Aziz, with whom he crossed paths multiple times during his roaming. The two would exchange stories from their travels, challenge each other to footraces, and spend the evening carousing at inns together. A common topic of friendly debate between them was the gods, and whether they were deserving of worship. Darren had been raised with stories of how the leonin had been persecuted and abandoned by the gods, forcing them to find strength through community and self-improvement; meanwhile, Aziz swore that the goddess Berei had offered him protection on the road many times, and that while maybe not all gods deserved the adulation of mortals, at least some of them did. While neither was able to truly change the other's mind, Darren did develop a certain amount of respect for the religious beliefs and traditions of others.

In the year 3124, Lungile foresaw a crisis that would threaten the entire country of Andalus - nay, the entire world. The Dream-Speakers quickly sent word out to their allied prides: the Moon-Runners, the Red Fangs, the Swimmers, the White Flowers - they would all have to work together if they were to survive the oncoming attack. At Darren's suggestion, they also sent messengers to the non-leonin settlements in the surrounding area. Darren served as one of these messengers, and he encountered Aziz on the road. He begged Aziz to come back with him to the Dream-Speaker's encampment, but Aziz was skeptical. Lungile's premonition said that the gods would fall, and such an event was too preposterous for Aziz to believe. The more desperately Darren argued, the more defensive Aziz became, and the two parted on bitter terms.

Attempts to convince the other human and yuan-ti settlements met with similar success. Only a handful of outsiders joined the leonin.

The Demon Crisis was just as bloody and brutal as Lungile prophesied. Even with their combined forces, the leonin prides suffered many losses. However, they still fared better than their neighbors. When the Crisis ended as suddenly as it began, the prides were better positioned than most to help lead the recovery efforts. And so, under the leadership of Lungile, the leonin provided food, medical care, and shelter to the countless refugees that they encountered. As Darren helped bury the dead and heal the wounded, his mind kept casting back to the last time he spoke to Aziz. Even though Darren had been correct - demonstrably, objectively correct - the truth alone had not been enough to convince his dear friend. And, when speaking with the refugees he assisted, Darren realized that many of them were *still* unshaken in their faith. Even after their gods had quite obviously failed to protect them!

Darren finally understood that faith is fundamentally irrational; one cannot be swayed by logic out of a belief that one did not use logic to form in the first place. But he also saw that many refugees - not all, perhaps not even most, but many - were more open to the leonin point of view upon receiving aid and comfort from the pride. It was the material reality of the prides' combined strength and generosity that swayed people more than even the most passionate rhetoric.

A few years into the recovery efforts, Darren was summoned by his mother, who told him he was to go on safari - a tradition undertaken by leonin men to travel the world, gaining experience and renown (and relieving pressure on the pride to feed them) before returning to the pride with new knowledge, resources, and perhaps a mate. Darren welcomed this decree; if deeds were the only way to convince others that community and self-improvement were the only way to gain true strength and protection, then he would need to perform good deeds all throughout the land.

And so Darren began his safari, wandering north along the Dragon Spine, helping anyone in need whom he encountered, regardless of their religious beliefs. And as he wandered the roads, he held onto a slim hope that perhaps he would encounter Aziz and be able to apologize to him for being so callous. The further north he went, the slimmer that hope became, but it was never truly extinguished.