The Camp of Markio

Alicia Niryx de Markian The white ancient Dragon takes their place in the story. Alicia Niryx de Markian is old by any count that still means something, and she does not bother saying how old. She holds herself a dragon, or enough of one that the distinction stopped mattering some time ago, and her scales, where they show, run white as river chalk. She is not at war with anyone. She has been at war, she will say, and she is finished with it. She came to the Surface from the shattered isles folk call the End, or so she says, though the how of that crossing she does not explain and no record corroborates it. She speaks of a place there that she names an empire, something that stood and then did not, and she watched it go. Whether it fell by force or by the slow failures that take everything eventually, she has not said plainly. No record names it. It stands as her testimony and nothing more. She settled in Markio carrying no weapons anyone has seen, a moderate store of patience, and a preference for wine, which she pursues with more dedication than most give to a profession. Calm is the word her neighbors reach for first. Not gentle, exactly, but settled in the way of someone who has already seen what chaos comes to and found the answer unsatisfying. She is still looking, by her own account, for what the meaning is after all of it. She has not found it yet. She does not appear to be in a hurry.

Markio has claimed its first ground — a single stretch of earth, and the whole of its ambition.

Markio was founded this day by LDNF123 — a name the realm does not know yet, and may never forget.