Dzree

Dzree
Status:	Dead
Race:	S'Kra Mur
Gender:	Female
Type:	Dragon Priest
Relatives:	Hhrsaraa

Dzree was the founder of the modern fanatical Dragon Priest Empire.

Beginnings

Born the fourth daughter to a famed Ru'atin Peri'el of great repute, Dzree was considered lucky from birth in the small Reshalian village she grew up in. Fourth daughters in particular are thought to be blessed by Peri'el and tend to join the ranks of highest ranks of the Ru'atin Peri'el in time. Due to such an auspicious birth, much was expected of her and through her childhood, she was taught that her destiny -- her very reason for existing -- was to help keep the World Dragon asleep.

It should come as no surprise, that after a life of being told thus, when Dzree came of age and failed her entry test, it did not leave her young heart light. The test given to daughters of the Ru'atin Peri'el is perhaps the easiest of all, but Dzree was completely unable to sing. She was not simply an average singer or bad, but quite terrible. Her failure brought an overwhelming amount of shame upon Dzree, her mother, their family, and the community. Many in her village called her cursed and directed loathing and mistreatments upon her. Loving and kind-hearted, her mother refused to turn her out, but the abuse from everyone else was enough to drive Dzree to flee.

Dzree found a new religious purpose when she met Sh'kial, the first Dragon Prriest, and heard his ideaology. Here was someone offering her what the Ru'atin could not: the ability to keep the world safe. A true convert, Dzree became Sh'kial's most eager and exceptional student when he had little more than a dozen Dragon Priests in his ranks. As she grew more and more engrained in the dogma, she became more and more disdainful of Peri'el and was convinced of the rightness of dragon worship. By this ideaology, the Immortals WOULD fail and the Dragon would wake. This assurance of their eventual failure led her to hate them all, and in time, to hate those who placed their hope in them.

Over time, her hate only grew and her beliefs became more twisted -- from awe-filled fear of the Dragon, to an outright worship of it -- she was no longer seeking to placate an angry being that was held in awe in fear, but she was seeking to worship a being she viewed as a true god. More and more priests came to see things her way, and as Sh'Kial grew older, he was less capable of persuading others and became weak and reliant on Dzree.

Thus were the new Dragon Priests born. Dzree believed the Immortals were faud gods and that their followers were an affront to the World Dragon -- that he would never bring the Golden Age the Priests believed would come so long as as the land was infested with the children of the doomed false gods that sought to hold him captive. She believed that they must subjugate those followers, and began capturing them and offering them as sacrifices.

By the time Sh'Kial learned of this, very few remained that were loyal to his ideals, and when he spoke out, he was named a heretic. His death is often attributed to Dzree, but it was in fact a student of Dzree's that killed Sh'kial as he was bending to pick up a babe from a cradle in 205 BL.

Dzree began to lead a new sect of Dragon Priests. As Leader of the Dragon Priests, she named herself High Priestess and presided over a wide-ranging purge.

Dzree

Dzree's sect of Dragon Priests had built up a strong militant power and became known as the Dragon Priest Empire. The Dragon Priest Empire conquered much of the Five Realms and committed the genocide of Bards and nearly decimated the Ru'atin Peri'el entirely.

While her rejection from the Ru'atin can be blamed as the beginnings of her hatred of Bards, so too, can the fact that the Bards of Elanthia were her strongest opposition from the beginning. The final nail in this coffin of malign was perhaps the famed satirist, S'zella, who thoroughly humiliated Dzree within her own citadel. Dzree quickly had him executed, but the sting of being thusly humiliated twice in her life overwhelmed her with a hatred that twisted her mind further. She blamed the singers, all singers, for the songs that sustained Peri'el and kept her god, the World Dragon, asleep. These singers were, in her demented mind, keeping away the Golden Age she wanted to bring to Kermoria.

While the Bards' Guild of this time was all but destroyed, the Ru'atin Peri'el fled for their lives from the Dragon Priests during the war, as Dzree surely would have had them killed. Today, all sects of the Sisters of Peri'el have been destroyed, save for the group which now lives in Aesry Surlaenis'a. Many of the surviving S'Kra Mur Bards and Clerics at the time fled to Aesry Surlaenis'a and sought refuge among the Ru'atin Peri'el.

As her Empire rose to the height of its power, Dzree soon became known by a few other names such as The Hag and The Nameless One because many S'Kra Mur felt that she did not deserve a name or had a fear of calling out her true name.

Death

A host of crimes of which a list could extend to M'Riss and back, Dzree's most heinous was the crime against life itself and her use of black magic (sorcery and necromancy alike) to unnaturally extend her life. Indeed, she lived far longer than any S'Kra Mur ever had before or should, for she was unwilling to give up power and leave the Empire she had created. She was determined not to leave the world until the World Dragon awoke and ushered in his Golden Age.

It was as she sat hunched on her Blood Throne, old and bony, with watchful amber eyes and white-gray scales after multiples of her armies failed to take Leth Deriel that the mad mage, Sithsia came to the citadel. Sithsia smiled at the hunched, hag-queen Dzree and spoke the words that tormented Dzree until the end, "I prophecy this, fool priest. In a years time, a warrior shall come who shall smite you where you stand and destroy you and your empire. All you have done will be as your former guards there -- ashes to the wind. This I promise, and this I say to be, I, the mage Sithsia." Much like her reaction to S'zella, Dzree ordered Sithsia's death, but the mage laughed and easily destroyed the guards that stepped toward her. Anyone sent after Sithsia met the same fate as her army.

Dzree ordered the remains into the citadel, closed, the gates, and remained there for a year. Dzree sat nervously, slaughtering anyone she suspected to be her killer. Her sermons became more twisted, no longer forseeing a time of golden Peace, but of terrible war, where the Dragon awoke and consumed Elanthia.

One day later, Dzree paced her chambers when a guard knocked on the door to relay a message. Crazed, Dzree drew her knife and mistaking him for the assassin, she stabbed him. She followed this by drawing forth the guard's own sword and removing his head. Old and unused to such exertion, the strain was too much for her heart and she collapsed over the guard's body. Her loyal empaths rushed in to help, but she was long past their help. A victim of her own paranoia, Dzree had died alone.

Additional Reading

Dragon Priest

Dragon Priest Empire

S'Kra Mur Beliefs and Practices

S'Kra Mur Origins

Smozh

Sources

Dzree: Empress of Death

Elanthian Timeline

Forest of Night

History of Mer'Kresh

Kalag's Memoirs

Isth'hhtaw'hhs Shh'oiyvh-ur - (The Traditions/Ways of the Dragon)

Legend of the World Dragon

Origins of the Realms

Religions of Elanthia

Restoration of the Bard's Guild in Our Time

The First Land Herald

The Ru'atin Peri'el

The Singers of Aesry Surlaenis'a

S'zella's Tale

A Tale of HighHold