Gerada, the Great Leader of the Emifolk Alliance

About thirty years ago, Gerada, son of Tomane of the Painted Hills, united the tribes and villages of the Emifolks in one nation, the Alliance.
Many leaders and warlords tried to rule the Armageddon peninsula, but all attempts were incomplete and temporary. Even the other nations quickly put aside any desire for a land conquest, limiting themselves to small colonies and settlements, and even those had short lives.

Gerada is still alive, but his story has already been weaved into myth, making it hard to know where the legend ends and history begins.
For sure, he was born around 910 in a tribe of the Painted Hills. The hills are called so for the colored rock stripes that surface on their sides, intense blues, greens, and purples, probably the aftermath of the powerful magic spent in the Armageddon Battle. Like most centaurs, Gerada and his family had a semi-nomadic life: they had a village that worked as a home base, but they would go away for months, sometimes even an entire year, following their cattle, pursuing ripening fruits, and looking for prey to hunt. Some of these trips were on one of the few colonies that existed at the time, a place where to sell furs, herbs, and curios the “outsiders” were inexplicably fond of.

The colony Gerada saw as a child whose Forneus when it was still under the rule of Baron Baphomet and the pirates. He was mightly impressed by all the wonders coming from the rest of the world, as he was unsettled by rambling and chaotic urban life: Forneus, with its 1500 inhabitants, looked like a metropolis to the young centaur used to live among just his extended family. He was a young adolescent when, in 924, he witnessed the execution of Baphomet, his wife, the pirate Rahdamantus, and his companions. It is said this experience was crucial in shaping Gerada, making him understand the power that the spectacle of violence can have.

Soon after, when Gerda’s family returned to the interior, the young centaur had his Initiation Dream. Emifolks give great importance to dreams, and centaurs believe that having an intense and vivid dream marks the passage from childhood to adulthood. If such a dream doesn’t come by the 15th year, the child has to ingest the hallucinogenic Oracular Saffron, but Gerada didn’t need it. He dreamed of the Lamia, a spirit that looks like half a woman and half a lioness: a powerful omen, appearing only to people destined for great things. The Lamia brought Gerada to a lake with a black and naked tree under its surface: the shamans agreed that the young man must go on a quest to find the place shown to him by the spirit.
Gerada’s quest lasted four years, and what happened during that time is already sung in ballads and written in epic poems, with many embellishments and licenses obfuscating the facts from the fiction.
What we know for sure is that Gerada found the lake he dreamt of, one of a group of crater lakes at the center of the Armageddon Penisula. A community of merfolks lives in these lakes, and Gerada spent months with them, becoming familiar with the land. He eventually discovered a cave that led him under the lakes, where he found something incredible.
Legend says he found the skeletons of an angel and a devil: their bones turned obsidian and entangled like a bramble. There was a spear made of shining black metal piercing those remains, and when Gerada extracted the weapon, the eidolons of the two divinities, their godly ghost, spoke to him. What they said has never been fully revealed, we ony know they were three secrets and a blessing.
Gerada remerged and soon understood he was wielding a magic weapon of the time before the Cosmic War, a relic of immense power. He spent years looking for the wisest shaman and most visionary sybils to understand what destiny had in store for him. The Spear, an angelic artifact mutated and twisted by the devil’s blood, has many powers, or some say it has the power to shape history. First of all, people understand the wielder truly, making misinterpretations and incomprehension impossible, also those who speak to the spear wielder are compelled to tell the truth from the bottom of their heart. This gave an incredible charisma and sway to Gerada and, as he wandered the land in search of answers he helped to settle conflicts and bring harmony. Even more extraordinarily, the spear seemed to make him invincible, bending luck and misfortune to shield the wielder from any serious harm. Those who could be conquered with words were humbled by the indomitable prowess of Gerada.

The young centaurs, now beloved by many tribes, learned that the war in Axam was affecting the land of the Emifolk. He first went to liberate Forneus, showing that he could be fair and gentle with his people while being ruthless and merciless with the invading outsiders.
After Forneus he liberated all the other colonies, claiming the heads of an angelic high priestess, a dwarven grand admirals, and a gnome pasha. He spared only the monks of the Blue Pagoda, a pilgrimage site for the Spirits’ Way devotees (but he cut all their pinky fingers as a sign of their submission).
Gerada also went to claim back part of the verdant hills, the region where the peninsula meets the continent, cleaning them of the dwarven and gnomish outposts.

By 942 the Emifolks got control of all their ancestral territories and the nation known as the Alliance was born. Gerada was appointed the title of Great Leader and all the local authorities followed his vision: for the alliance to survive it have to be united and to present united to the world. The centaur wanted the Emifolk to interact with the other nations as peers, keeping the ex-colonies as places of trade.
Now the court of Gerada moves from city to city on a seasonal schedule, giving to each place equal time.
The Great Leader is unanimously beloved even if wielding the Spear has made him fragile and tired (such powerful relics are a drain in life force and it’s already incredible he could use it for such a long time).
The most imminent threat to Gerada is the angelic agents decided to get back “their” relic with any eans necessary.