Naram
The Primordial Dhampire Naram Emalu (a.k.a. SuDina)
Naram of Shekota was an ancient druid, the first Dhampire, father of the creator of Alchemy , and the patron saint of The Shekotan Healing Church. He was hardly the most powerful druid in history, but he sacrificed everything for his love of the land and love for his son, and by chance he was noticed by the Architects.
He now venerated for his strength, his connection to the divine, and his wisdom across many Samvaran religions. His philosophies, based in what he considered "basic decency and fundamental compassion", are the basis for the Healing Church's mission and ideology. While many seek deeper understanding of some hidden wisdom he left behind, the truth is that he was a very simple man in many ways: he loved abundantly, helped where he could, and focused on his immediate present.
His legacy is mixed, as Dhampirism and Alchemy have left behind many wounds over the millennia. Some have blamed him and deemed him a well-meaning fool, particularly in Sonev and Sumaren, where particularly damage has been done by Dhampires. But in those very traditions, he is often seen as an inevitable vehicle of the Gods: he did not choose these gifts, but was chosen for his overgenerosity as a punishment to all mortalkind.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Naram was born in the arid region of Shekota, in the center of Samvara. His parents were herbalists, who prepared medical salves and remedies for local communities and served as informal religious figures. His parents were often at odds with local Pratasam missionaries and druids, who considered them vessels of "witch-based heathenry", but had a kind of fragile peace with these messengers of foreign religion. As part of a policy of compromise and tolerance, the missionary to East Shekota (an Emprian druid by the name of Olbar) offered many of these low-level indigenous religious leaders train their children as druids- and Naram was taught as one such initiate. While his teacher was resentful and often cruel, Naram persisted and flourished as a druid.
After graduating to the status of full-fledged druid, Naram set about in the construction of a small Pratasa temple for his community. He invited his extended family of healers and worked to combine traditional remedies with magical aid. Naram took in the sick and the needy, and worked overtime training other druidic initiates who had fled from their abusive foreign teachers. These fledgling druids helped Naram with his healing mission, and the temple grew rapidly in size and importance. It developed a town of its own, and Naram was overwhelmed with trying to manage this huge project. He asked Emena, the architect who had helped him reconstruct the original temple in stone, to stay on with the community and aid in the planning of this new town. And as he and Emena fostered the growth of the community, they fell in love. They married, and as the community was handed to a council of elders they helped select, they retired to have a child and enjoy the labors of their love.
For some time they lived happily with their son, Eriv. But at age 11, Eriv was bitten by a serpent carrying the terrible Gem Plague, which had begun ravaging the community. Naram struggled to cure the eventually-lethal condition, and was grief stricken both to lose a son and to see his community afflicted but such a horrifying illness. When he heard of a conference of druids discussing possible cures for Gem Plague in distant Pritinam, he raced Westward to join. He found no answers there, but a single hope: a small party of druids would venture Southward to the legendary Healing Tree of Ibith to try and extract a cure for the Gem Plague to save their peoples.
Naram volunteered, along with the young solar Haru. The journey was long and difficult, but after years of travel they arrived. The cure, it turned out, was not replicable: only those who drank from the waters beneath the tree could be cured of their plague. Naram and the others agreed to try to experiment on the tree or its waters with magic, but were set upon by Bobito, the tree's guardian. They fought Bobito and waged war upon the land for days, disintegrating as a group. Naram prayed to the Gods for mercy or answers, and Halycon answered: drink from the water, and Eriv would be cured. Naram did, but was slain by Bobito not long after.
But Halcyon was not content with such a martyrdom and raised Naram as the first Dhampire. And as Eriv was cured of his gem plague, he was magically inspired with the secrets of Alchemy. Naram, unable to find the remnants of his group, set back to Shekota alone to see if his son had been cured. First, Naram stopped in the land of Runeva to try and find his previous party members. He found one: the belligerent dryad named Aspen who had fiercely attacked Bobito and the local Ibithi tree-cultists. Aspen had been taken as an advisor by the Runevan court in exchange for the secrets to druidism and had little interest in returning to Samvara. A fight broke out, and Naram left one of Aspen's bodyguards infected as the second Dhampire on complete accident.
Fleeing Runeva and still not fully aware of his power, Naram left several more accidental Dhampires in Runeva and up the Sonevan coast in Apatov and Rubava. The two in Apatov died before spreading their Dhampirism further, though the Rubavan dhampire began their own outbreak in Northern Sonev. It was only in the far Nothern realm of Kabadi (after a particularly wild bar fight) that Naram realized the nature of his powers. After that fight, Naram infected only two people on his journey: a priest in the realm of Tianar who asked for the power for a religious experience and was voluntarily infected, and an exile in the land of Sumaren who begged to be infected in exchange for acting as a guide back to Samvara. Both would go on to strategically infect others: the priest to form a hedonistic mystery cult, and the exile to forge an empire across the land of Sumaren with an army of Dhampires.
Naram finally made it home, though. He passed dhampirism onto a group of temple guards and was eventually uninfected and returned to being a druid. He was able to spend his final years with Erevi, enjoying the life he fought so hard to live. Disciples gathered around him: he had failed his mission but returned divinely touched. He instructed his disciples and son to keep their powers of dhampirism and alchemy close and safe, but never so close that it could not be used to help others.
Alignment
Neutral Good
Species
Conditions
Life
590 DE
510 DE
80 years old
Spouses
Siblings
Children
Hair
Short, curly, black
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Dark brown
Height
5'7"
Weight
140 lbs
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