The Trials of Feranor and the Shaping of Dal'Caeran

Dal'Caeran is a jade dagger said to have been reassembled and reforged by the legendary hero Feranor on the orders of king Othar of the Revensteppe in order to craft the Caeran, a creature of pure nature made of wood and vegetation that would stop the Living Desert, also known as the Everdunes, from taking over Othar's territory.
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Summary

According to the legend, king Othar, the great warlord and unifier of the Revensteppe, has been looking for a way to combat the ceaselessly expanding desert known as the Everdunes, before it would slowly push him out of the territory he had conquered and was now trying to develop into a stable, sedentary society.
By this time an aging man, tired of war, the prospect of attacking the southern kingdoms in order to escape the desert encroaching from the north-west seemed much less appealing than it did in his earlier years and thus he sought a way to stop the spreading of the Living Desert directly.
He used his considerable wealth and influence to gather hundreds of druids, shamans, witch doctors, elementalists, witches, academics and scholars from all corners of the continent to his court in order to find a way to accomplish his goal. The gathering, as grandiose and impressive as it was, yielded little fruit, though - most propositions were mere speculation or downright ridiculous dribble. However, even despite the apparent failure of the gathering, Othar's court wizard, Regeth Numis, had successfully compiled a number of promising leads that should be investigated and pursued, the most prominent being a theory about an ancient zabathine artifact known as the Kris of Nazkan, or, known more commonly on the mainland, as Dal'Caeran, the Verdant Edge.
Dal'Caeran was known as the elemental artifact of life, much as the source of the Everdunes, the Jallethan Sunspear, was the artifact associated with the power of the sun. Following this logic, Regeth believed that locating and empowering Dal'Caeran could make it suitable for stopping the desert's expansion and save the Revensteppe. King Othar quickly became as obsessed with the idea as his court wizard and organized several expeditions south in order to obtain the weapon.
This is where history gives way to legend, as the following turmoil in the Revensteppe has lead to information on the expeditions and the stopping of the Everdunes being scarce.
According to the legend, a young noble son by the name of Feranor was tasked with leading a new expedition after several of them failed. Feranor was supposedly born with yellow eye pupils, signifying a life of success according to Revensteppe tradition. Brandishing the blade of his house, Trenedhal, he would lead the expedition south to the grove of the legendary harvest druid Alliswert, who would inform him that the blade has been long returned to nature and its parts spread accross the continent in order to disperse its power. In order to reforge it, Feranor would need to gather a number of rare and unique materials and items. This quest lead him through the entire known world and a total of 17 trials, including getting stuck in a Sarnian fortress under siege by the Hirmori centaur chief Gerdaras and singlehandedly slaying half the attacking force including the chief; beating the undefeated king of Verren in a game of Tarach; saving the fabled Maiden of Woes from Black Mirror Lake; swimming through the Brilliant Sea to the shores of Zabathia and battling the zabathine snake god Eksiss to prove his worth and be allowed to reforge the dagger, and others.
Accomplishing this, Feranor, a now grizzled and grown man, returned to the Revenhold, the capital of the Revensteppes, only to find it in complete turmoil - civil war, drought and unrest weakened the kingdom and compelled its enemies to slice it up into smaller pieces to be incorporated into their own realms. Feranor hurried to bring the dagger to the king, but was left to helplessly watch from afar as a usurper executed him in front of a crowd of supporters, with the aged and weak Othar crying out his famous last words: "As wretched vultures we fled the eternal sands and as wretched vultures we will be consumed by it!"
Feranor then returned to Alliswert to find out that the usurper was no one else than Regeth Numis, the court wizard who had sent him on his quest. Feranor would immediately start planning his revenge on the treacherous mage, but the wise Alliswert would calm him, insisting that he should focus on the more important task - the stopping of the Everdunes. In order to create the Evergrowth, the natural counter power to combat the Everdunes, the power of the dagger would need to be channeled into a body stronger than human - a construct of wood, vine and stone called the Caeran, built by Alliswert and the late king's blacksmith.
Feranor, although conflicted, finally chose his duty before his revenge and completed the Caeran by plunging the dagger into its heart, bringing it to life and having it grow a thick barrier of forest to stop the Everdunes. However, with the Caeran being a lifeless golem with no soul, its Evergrowth began to consume everything in its path, including the disrupted kingdom, and Feranor was forced to confront it and finally, in a titanic battle, overpower it and pull out the Dal'Caeran from its heart only to use it to cut out and impale his own heart on it and then, with the last vestiges of his will, plunge it again into the Caeran's heart as an act of selfless sacrifice to save the world from another elemental calamity.
It is said that the mighty Caeran, now with the stout heart and purpose of Feranor, still roams the Evergrowth to the north of the Revensteppe and protects it from the tireless Eversands to this day. --------------------------------------------------------------

Historical Basis

The myth is largely believed to be historical fact up until the passage where Feranor first appears and leads his expedition south due to there being only vague hints that the events of the expedition happened.
King Othar truly meant to create a lasting sedentary society in the Revensteppes after finishing his conquest, without the need to raid neighbouring kingdoms for resources or migrate his people further away from the Everdunes. It is known that the king spared no expense to find a solution to the problem and there is a mention in the chronicle of Welchas of Bythne, the personal recordkeeper of king Othar, of the Kris of Nazkan as a highly regarded solution to which a number of mages, scholars, mercenaries and knights were assigned.
This is, however, where the facts end - while the dagger itself is believed to be real, neither Feranor nor his adventures are provable and many of the 17 trials he faced have either no proof or just slight hints pointing to these events happening around the same time, but none decisive enough to confirm the legend.
The Revensteppes' descent into a long period of turmoil and chaos and the consequent usurpation of Othar's throne by his court wizard are where the legend once again returns into the realm of historical fact. The construction of the Caeran and its empowerment by the dagger, as well as Feranor's noble sacrifice are, however, unproven.
This period, did see a rapid growth of flora in the whole Revensteppe region, which lead to the slowing of Everdunes expansion south, although this effort can in no way be linked to a magical nature golem. The most likely explanation can be found in the writings of the Grandmaster of the Worldhealer's guild, Berenhaal, who was born 13 years after the death of king Othar and is believed to have known some of the druids that took part in the renewal. He writes that the druids that have been trying to stop the Everdunes for decades have managed to find a series of caves with underground springs and reservoirs of water underneath the Revensteppe and shaped the ground to allow it to come to the surface, where they used it to reintroduce a lush, forested habitat into the region and stop the spreading of the Living desert.
Another point of contention among scholars is the appearance of the famous harvest druid Alliswert, who acted as a mentor figure to Feranor in the legend. Alliswert was a harvest druid famous for inventing Elsinium, or Silverwheat - a magically-engineered plant that would supplant wheat and lead to an incredible population explosion across the continent in the following two centuries due to its amazing nutritional values. Alliswert is thus a powerful name to attach to a legend, but his involvement in this region at this time is quite improbable, as by the time of Othar's death, Alliswert was merely a teenage apprentice at the Grove of Finna-Del far to the west of the Revensteppes. --------------------------------------------------------------

Spread

The legend is widely known across the settled human societies of the continent, especially in the central regions, namely the Revensteppes, the northern parts of the Southern Kingdoms, in Vilwertic lands and in Consellion and Vesseras.
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Variations & Mutation

As a widespread myth, the legend of Feranor and the Dal'Caeran has several regional variations, mostly painting a region in a better light or attaching local myths and folklore to Feranor's journey.
An example would be a variation of the legend that can be found in the Lower Sarnium region of the Kingdom of Sarnios, where Feranor was supposed to accomplish one of the 17 tasks on his way - find lady Belekos' golden pearl ring - an invaluable family heirloom that was lost in the water-flooded fields during a recent storm - in order to gain passage through lord Belekos' lands. While the original version claims that Feranor had found the pearl on his own through unrelenting effort, the local variation claims that he made a deal with the nymph Eustretia, a well known local myth, who used her powers to locate the ring in exchange for Feranor's promise that he would return when his oath was fulfilled to become her lover.
This also induces an alternate variation of the myth of Eustretia herself - in original folklore, Eustretia goes mad with waiting for her lover Meltoras, who abandons her and never returns despite his promise, whilst with the variation based on the legend of Dal'Caeran, she loses her mind whilst waiting for Feranor, who didn't betray her, but instead was forced to do his duty and sacrifice himself for the greater good before he could fulfill his promise.
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Cultural Reception

The sedentary people of the Revensteppe consider the legend an integral part of their culture and regard it with great reverence. It became especially popular during the Reventine Imperial Period, when the Reventine were looking for myths and stories that would establish their noble ancestry and legitimize their place in the world as a worthy and powerful people with a good foundation for their imperialist policies. Some scholars even argue that the myth was fabricated during this period and use the lack of a comprehensive and sensible timeline to the events in the legend as proof of their claim.
Outside of the sedentary societies of the Revensteppe, the legend mostly evokes indifferent or downright negative or hostile responses, with the exception of the Eastern Twins and some Vilwertic regions to the west.
The nomadic inhabitants of the Revensteppe see the legend as a glorification of the taming of the steppe and an affront to their rightful heritage, which includes the territory of the Reventines. Usumai Khan has even ordered anyone propagating the myth to be beheaded as a traitor and this practice has been in place in most of the non-revantine steppes ever since.
The Centaur tribes that are aware of the legend, especially the Hirmori, who were supposed to be single handedly defeated by Feranor, are even more hostile to the story than the Revensteppe nomads. Their intense hatred for the daring claim and anyone who would spread it is only tempered by the fact, that unlike the nomads, they rarely get reminded of the story as they do not share a border with the Reventines and have more pressing issues to attend to.
Even the Sarnians, who were supposed to have been saved by Feranor from the afformentioned Hirmori centaur, are unreceptive to the story. As a proud warrior people with a long martial tradition, the claim that the siege of Aportoia was broken by a foreigner that there is not even a single record of in Sarnian sources is considered insulting, especially since the battle was won through great Sarnian casualties and the leadership of the decorated hero Herodoras of Pylium.
Most other societies that are touched upon in the story - including the reclusive Zabathians, whose divine trials were supposedly fulfilled by a foreigner - which is blasphemy in their culture - are indifferent towards the myth and either don't know it at all or don't find it important enough to warrant any emotional response.
The legend is quite popular in central-continental countries where the story doesn't take place, most notably the Eastern Twins - the city states of Vesseras and Consellion - and in the western Vilwertic kingdoms. The high entertainment value of the story as well as its great appeal to people interested in history, exploration, heroic sagas or intricate magic - which is a very wide and accessible audience - makes it an incredibly popular story. Feranor is seen as a human hero, without any connotations of Reventine nationalism, and a popular symbol for the heroic nature of humankind. --------------------------------------------------------------

In Literature

The story of Feranor's journey is very popular in consequent literature and even many seemingly unrelated works draw heavily on its motives.
Probably the most important reference to the myth is in the national anthem of the Reventine Federative Republic nearly 800 years after the conception of the story.
In his philosophical work collectively known as The Discourse on Morality and Spirit, Dorchos of Ceilike frequently uses Feranor, who, even though admittedly fictional, is still seen as a worthy example of human virtue, to represent the human ideal throughout his writings.
Morvantis Hergen uses Dal'Caeren in his satirical play Chasing the God-needle to show how far are people willing to go for power even as everything they have crumbles around them.