Durenna I, First Empress of Alousia

After ten thousand years of nomadic life, some of the ausrani decided to form permanent villages. Five thousand years ago, the tiny settlement of Cinri was founded. Modeled on the oldest cities in the world - the gnomes’ Tanatra and the fey capital of Mathghamein in Cernoa, a small number of ausrani settled on the western coast in certain river deltas. The lush wetlands surrounded by forest and the nearby rivers provided bountiful game, while druidic magic made gardens and crops ripen overnight.
The decision to give up her peoples' traditionally nomadic way of life was made by the followers of a half-elf chieftain named Alousa. For generations, Chieftain Alousa's people had been spending more and more time in what would be Cinri, so it was in the end an easy decision to lead her people into putting down roots where they spent much of the year anyway. Within a few generations of Chieftain Alousa's founding of Cinri, her followers and descendants had founded other settlements up and down the river valleys of the west.
Four hundred fifty years after the founding of Cinri, Alousa's granddaughter Durenna gathered the chiefs and leaders of all the Alousian lands and proclaimed herself Empress. Leader of the greatest military power in the region, and a gifted warrior herself, no one challenged Durenna’s claim.