About her birth there are many myths. I will give here but one.

  There was a legend among Shiwei, a story about how Dheira's mother was ambushed near a river one morning: taken by a great red tiger. Dheira being the result of such an unholy union.

  Of course, being but a mere fragile woman, Dheira needed a well-made story that would help validate her own right to rule. Which is why she herself seems to have propagated the vile tale.

  Her story perhaps truly began with the death of her father. He often heeded Dheira's shrewd advice and their tribe naturally turned towards her for leadership.

  Life in the hyperborean grassnds of Western Equiya was primitive and short, with different nomadic tribes constantly at war.

  Shiwei were always divided into endless tribes, with each having its own chieftain. Blood feuds were rarely forgotten and could st for decades or more. These ancient horse riders used spears, which they would throw at the enemy and quickly retreat, with arrows wicked following not long after.

  Their neighbors to the south, the sophisticated Akti Empire, with its rge cities and rge armies, naturally, viewed the Shiwei and their stratagems with disdain.

  Dheira Zetian's father was a chieftain and after his passing she knew that to secure the future of her tribe they would need an ally. Thus, she married the leader of another powerful tribe.

  In the beginning, this worked well, and more than a few smaller tribes turned towards Dheira for protection. Her husband, whose name she seems to have erased from history, saw how not only her tribe refused to follow him but many of his own kin flocked to her. He eventually arranged for Dheira to be kidnapped and sold into svery.

  After a few months, using her guile and cunning, she managed to escape. Dheira convinced her captor that her husband had hidden vast treasure and buried it away, and that she would disclose its location if he promised to let her go and give her some of it. Obviously, she knew such a promise meant nothing, but it was enough for her captor to believe in her expertly-acted naivety. To avoid sharing the spoils, Dheira's captor only brought two soldiers with him.

  During their journey, Dheira convinced one of the soldiers to not only take the treasure for himself but that her tribe would reward him with many horses and cattle if he brought her back to her tribe.

  During the night he killed the other two men while they slept. But Dheira failed to see the traitor's real motives. As he tried to force himself on her she managed to bite off a rge chunk of his neck.

  She returned to her tribe drenched in dried blood.

  Since Dheira's husband had conveyed to everyone how she was killed while on the steppe, his deceit was not seen with kindness. Marriage was sacred to the people of the steppes, a union blessed by gods and spirits of nature. It is said she ordered for him to be tied, rolled into felt cover, and then trampled over by dozens of horses.

  One might think a new marriage would be far from Dheira's mind, regardless, her te father's closest friend had his own tribe and she offered to marry him and form a new union.

  He was old and it is said he had a heart attack while they were sharing a bed one night. This was less than two years into their marriage.

  After some negotiations, the sources do not specify what these were but one can easily assume she removed any opposition dagger and spear, Dheira became an undisputed leader of both tribes and did something unthinkable in those days. She gave positions of power based on merit instead of bloodline or wealth. Instead of hoarding wealth, she gave most of it away; thus, attracting many more followers.

  She arranged numerous strategic marriages between her family members and potential adversaries. In many blood feuds, she would often support the weaker tribe, possibly giving her the aura of a protector of the downtrodden.

  Naturally, aristocratic elements that existed for centuries, led by the young nobleman Nogai of the Tavkhai tribe, did not take the rise of this demoness lightly. Nogai, supported by these elements, gathered a rge force of tens of thousands of spear and bow-armed horsemen and defeated Dheira's army. However, the victors obliterated any chance of gaining followers after boiling ninety young female captives alive in rge cauldrons; an act viewed as barbaric even by the peoples of the steppe.

  Shiwei had a saying, What is not paid in honor must be paid in blood. Their lives were hard, often brutal, but even the peoples of the steppe had constraints forged over centuries by custom and tradition. When due respect is not given, blood must be taken, their creed.

  Due to the distant age covered here, many truths are lost and during the next few years of her life, nothing is known.

  Next time she is mentioned, Dheira aids the Akti, a rge and wealthy dominion to the south of the Shiwei steppe, during a civil war that threatened to dismantle the Akti Empire completely. Her troops participated in the final battle of this civil war and, after victory, the Akti restored her to power.

  Again she did something that defies tradition and shared the spoils of war equally. During her conquest of rival tribes, she promised any future treasures plundered would be shared among those who follow her. This made her numbers swell and not just soldiers but also many civilians joined her as well. And what is perhaps even more astonishing for the realities of the harsh life on the steppe, some loot was given to the elderly and disabled.

  Among many, I believe one of the main reasons Dheira was successful was that after conquering her rivals she did not sughter the captured soldiers and civilians or exile them, instead, they were offered to join her and she eventually turned former chieftains into many husbands. They were forbidden to fight or lead any men, and in some cases, their legs would be broken if there was even an indication of disobedience to her rule. Such cases were rare since she showered her favorites with rich gifts, sweet wine, fine food, and even many concubines; therefore suppnting their once hardships-filled lives with those of opulence, albeit within a bloodsteel cage.

  Some impossible-to-verify account states that if one of her male pleasure sves did not perform to her satisfaction he would be strangled. This cim is made in one older source, written centuries after she had supposedly lived, and I would give it little to no merit.

  Since she lived her life on horseback, those tribes that became conquered by her did not feel oppressed, as they certainly would if ruled by some foreign invader, but possibly had a sense of being a part of one huge tribe. Dheira would adopt any children who lost their parents during her conquest, bringing them into her care and protection.

  Instead of losing soldiers with each battle, the opposite happened and her might grew. Obviously, such growing power makes one into a rge target and there were scores of attempts to assassinate Dheira.

  Her nemesis Nogai and the alliance gathered around him were back, ready to destroy her and the threat to their way of life, as they saw it. But waves of change could not be stopped and many deserted the aristocratic cause and joined Dheira's forces, and thus the outcome of the conflict was certain. Nogai was killed in this critical battle.

  She ordered for his captured generals and scores of other Shiwei nobles, ninety souls in total, to be executed by having their backs broken. Considered a good death among the Shiwei.

  With no real opposition left to speak of, the next step must have been a thing obvious to Dheira.

  At the kurultai(a grand gathering of her trusted generals, supporters, leaders of tribes, and other people of note), she was procimed ruler of rulers, an empress of all the nd under the blue sky.

  The Shiwei Empire was born.

  So much is lost, I fear forever, and the exact path of her conquest of the entire Western Equiya is unknown. However, we do know certain details which I painstakingly collected over the decades.

  Dheira was brutal. One might argue necessarily so, for there is no such a thing as a crystal clear or sinless empire. It is not known what caused her estrangement with the Akti Empire. Their cities, with walls mighty and taller than even the tallest of our aqueducts, resisted; some for a year or two, while others, perhaps more prudent ones, surrendered to save themselves from fire and iron, giving vast tributes of sves and amarium to the Shiwei.

  Moreover, there are horrific accounts of burned city streets overflowing with human fat and, according to several sources, literal mountains of heads piled for everyone to see and know the price of resisting the Shiwei.

  Tragically, most stories about her life have remained preserved through the oral tradition and were only put into hard words centuries after her death. In addition, the validity and accuracy of even the best sources leave much to be desired.

  Wars, famines, and diseases, just to name a few erasers of history, separate even our best sources from her age; therein lies the problem for any schor in discerning the truth.

  Surprisingly, Dheira ordered the construction of myriad buildings and public works across her huge empire.

  From the nomadic people of the steppe, the Shiwei became sedentary.

  She developed an unquenchable taste for khar-nogoon rock; to not just make temples, grand estates, theaters, w courts, tombs, and other public buildings, but also cd her many paces and most prized structures with it. Floor to summit. So much so that most of the now scarce green rock we see used in our own empire comes from the ruins of the Shiwei one; our distant ancestors requisitioned the extremely durable rock for their own means.

  And it is written in letters ancient that even the magnificence of her grandest of paces was eclipsed by the splendor that was her throne.

  In the nds southern, living in mountain fortresses, a cult of Gehenna(what we would call the Void) worshipers, members of which were said to be some of the best assassins in the world, repeatedly made attempts on Dheira's life. Sometimes even forcing the empress of the world herself to wear commoner clothes or to be cd in the livery of one of her many servants.

  We do not know the exact name of this cult nor the true location of these mountains, for Dheira deleted them from history after destroying even the very foundations of their fortresses.

  After conquering this small mountainous kingdom, Dheira depredated an object from it.

  Deep inside their biggest of temples, the cultists supposedly enshrined a giant dark crystal, which Dheira took for herself.

  The Shiwei sughtered all those who worshiped the forever-bck crystal and burned the temple to ashes.

  The throne of this blood-drenched empress was said to have been painstakingly carved for years out of this huge bck rock, which the cultists called God Crystal(a thing supposedly as bck as the bowels of Gehenna itself, or, as one of the more poetic of my sources noted, almost as bck as the hair of the World Empress herself).

  Her bckcrystal dais was noted to be carved into a rising form of gradually shrinking octagonal shapes that formed the steps; with the throne itself being an inescapable part of the structure and erupting seamlessly out of the center of the wide eight-sided ptform. The vertices of these yered octagonal shapes were supposedly orientated to point toward the eight sides of the world.

  The Bck Throne of Dheira Zetian was the source of many tales, a thing of magnificence, a thing of dread.

  Legends bearing on her death speak about how hers was the victory of light over darkness, in the most literal way. Shadow-flesh, a fog of bck that feasts upon firelight, was slowly spreading across the nds of the West, giving them to chaos. They tell how Dheira obliterated the spreading Shadow(my best transtion for this supposed, malevolent force) in a process that cimed her life.

  We will never know what truly cimed the life of Dheira Zetian.

  Some legends cimed that at the very moment of her death Dheira's body became pure light, brighter than the sun itself, which exploded all over the world, thus ending the Shadow's dominion. Others talked about vortexes made of lightning destroying much of the world. Naturally, my main focus was on the most numerous and retively consistent of accounts, such as they were.

  Her age was a primitive time, before the discovery of Genesis, before crystals were used as a source of light. An old time of torches and horses.

  The beast most noble, wind gained flesh, horse was a friend of humanity before the first scroll was penned. Aiding the unstoppable rise of humanity, useful for warfare and transport, and even, in times of great trouble, a source of food for the desperate, a st resort to save themselves and their families from starvation.

  Surprisingly, the horse still saw use even after the prevalence of crystalborn beasts began.

  I will add that many accounts note she handled unbroken horses with superb skill and was an excellent rider who fought in first lines.

  The histories of Dheira Zetian all agree she was of a keen mind. She united the then many Shiwei tribes, and only after the river of blood her empire was forged, over which she supposedly ruled for centuries. For added stability she encouraged religious tolerance in her empire. Her rule brought prosperity, trade, and a mixture of different peoples led to exchanges in ideas; different communities came into contact, influenced each other.

  Furthermore, she seems to have known to position the most suitable people in all the proper seats of power, often ignoring blood ties and appointing only the most capable.

  One of those rare characters in history that turn everything they touch into bloodsteel.

  After her death, the Shiwei Empire fragmented into several smaller empires. Only after many ages did the West become united again.

  Considering she lived many ages ago it is impossible to say exactly when her story began its slow transmutation into a legend. And when legend turns to myth, truth is but one immacute leaf of a dying sky-tree.

  As stated before, burnt libraries, orally preserved stories that were only centuries ter put into hard words(with small mistakes and mistranstions constantly adding up over many further centuries), all of these factors combined, creating a fantasy with a hidden gossamer thread of truth buried within. A thread which I have tried to bring to light in this humble work of mine.

  Legendary Empress Dheira Zetian features in many old poems, dirges, odes, balds, and surviving epics written during or about the Age of Fire. Coincidentally, or, perhaps rather fittingly, fire and time are what cimed most of them.

  Some historians have referred to the time before crystals became commonly used to light the world as the Age of Fire, and the period of history whenwhich they have been used only for light or adornment purposes as the Age of Light.

  Schors vigorously disagreed over centuries as to the exact dates pertaining to each age's birth and death. It can be a very ambiguous term.

  Here, my dear reader, I have added a summary of all of the ages, to be used at your discretion:

  Age of Fire - considered a very primitive and archaic period of history, which sted for roughly nine thousand years.

  Age of Light - a flourishing period of writing and art, which sted roughly six thousand years.

  Age of Genesis - current age, age of empires, wars, power arcane and beasts evil.

  It is believed, dear reader, that the Age of Genesis started more than two thousand years ago, and that it will never end.