| Born | Approx. -6019 CGC |
|---|---|
| Died | Unknown |
| Species | Precursor Colossus |
| Known for | Political strife during the Orian end times |
| Other names | Felaji-dr-Othan Felaji ni Dokani The first colossus (informal) |
| Ancestors | Dokani dral Horalros (mother) Old King Dasedrak (grandfather) Iladami al-Relsh (grandmother) |
| Other family | Delzed-dros-Malkran (lover, possible spouse) Thorn ri Renaldi (brother) Last Orian King (uncle) Last Orian Queen (aunt) Dermazd reln Neira (half-aunt) Ainori rel Ores (cousin) |
Felaji ni Ores, alternately known as Felaji ni Dokani or Felaji-dr-Othan in various Orian records from Miouran antiquity, was a young woman that lived in the ancient Miouran nation of Ores shortly before or possibly during the period of Felthren-dro-Dlenruksurd. She is primarily known through the contemporary writings of Falgren-dras-Kethlark, an Orian scholar and archivist whose written works serve in the present as a vast repository of firsthand accounts relating to the bygone world.
Because a good portion of Falgren's surviving works pertain to Felaji directly or at least mention her, Felaji herself provides insight into Orian life and politics towards the end of the nation's existence, and her tragic history has become the subject of historical fascination and fictional reinvention.
Names
As is typical of old Orian writings, depending on the author and even the period of time, Felaji might be referred to by a different name.
Felaji-dr-Othan refers to the occupation she had as a castle servant, literally translating to "Felaji the bonded serf". Felaji ni Dokani, in contrast, invokes her parentage and translates as "Felaji, daughter of Dokani," and follows the naming patterns used in genealogical accounts common amongst Orian nobility. Accounts beyond those of Falgren-dras-Kethlark calling Felaji by her heritage seemingly did not survive, though Falgren makes reference to birth records and letters from Felaji's early childhood that use the moniker. Felaji-dr-Othan as a name is used not only by Falgren before she seemingly discovered the significance of Felaji's lineage, but by other surviving records from the period, generally from the Orian nobility that Felaji served under.
The name Felaji ni Ores is unique to Falgren's records and translates to "Felaji, daughter of Ores".
Early life
While Felaji lived most of her life as a servant to Ores' nobility and monarchy, the reality was that Felaji herself was of royal blood through her deceased mother, Dokani dral Horalros, sister to the Last Orian King. When Felaji was a child, her mother was accused of conspiracy against the crown and was publicly executed. To extinguish the treacherous bloodline, Felaji and her younger brother, Thorn ri Renaldi, were to be hanged, but by fortune or divine providence, the noose frayed and snapped. Rather than face death given the apparent omen, the children instead were stripped of their royal status, and, in time, their heritage was forgotten through deliberate obfuscation and taboo. Thorn, hardly more than an infant, was taken in by a physician that vowed to keep Thorn's true heritage a secret. Felaji, however, would remain as a servant to the crown. Those that knew of the siblings' mother tended to regard Felaji's current status as a manner of atonement for her mother's sins — because Felaji's mother sought to kill the king and put her daughter on the throne, that daughter would serve the throne instead.
As a servant of the lowest class, and known privately to some of the nobility about her significance, Felaji was treated poorly, especially by the Last Orian King. Feudal stratification in ancient Ores afforded little protection to the lower-class, but, as noted by Falgren, Felaji had no kith or kin to rally behind her, as anyone who was at all kind to her risked social ostracism or worse in associating with the pariah. With few exceptions, the best Felaji could hope for was to be overlooked and ignored. In most cases, she instead received all the ire of a vengeful king and those eager to please his wrath or indulge their own cruel impulses.
Conspiracy against the crown
In private, Felaji created plots of her own in alliance with dissidents from neighboring countries that Ores had conquered through military campaigns. Ostensibly, her allegiance was to these groups, and her knowledge of the royal court's inner workings granted them information and knowledge of the castle's defenses for a planned coup. In reality, she was a traitor to the traitors as well, for she told her cousin and sole heir to the throne, Ainori rel Ores, that, not only were the dissidents plotting to overthrow the king, they specifically planned to capture Ainori herself to take as a hostage. When news reached the Last Orian King, he mounted an assault on the dissidents to quell the uprising before it could begin and mobilized his remaining forces to protect his daughter under the belief that she was their primary target. Conflicting information spread about the king and heir's whereabouts, but Felaji, seemingly guided by the same divinity that had spared her life as a child, slipped past the few guards that were left and assassinated the king in his sleep before disappearing into the night.
During the Orian end times
The resulting revolts and chaos ushered in by the king's demise gave Felaji the cover needed to put distance between herself and the capital; the dissidents she had allied with intended to push the advantage the king's death gave them, and the nobility most at risk struggled to muster a counteroffensive in the wake of the sudden succession crisis. The newly-crowned Ainori, although groomed from birth to someday rule, was still young, even younger than her father's assassin, and the nobility became divided on if she ought to rule or if the throne was better suited to another person. The chaos only escalated with the revelation that the deceased king had a bastard half-sister, Dermazd reln Neira, through a shared father. Because Dermazd had connections to the religion devoted to the Orian goddess Neira and its influential priests, major noble families began to throw their lots in with the dissidents. Although Felaji is often attributed as the source of this knowledge in fictional accounts of her life, it is unclear how she would have known it, or if she would have had the opportunity at all to disperse this secret while remaining in hiding.
Felaji originally intended to leave Ores entirely and make for Rethnald, a neighboring nation which remained independent from Ores. However, a chance encounter led her to reuniting with Delzed-dros-Malkran, noted to be her "only true companion," in a village several miles from the Orian capital; Felaji had convinced Delzed to stay far from the capital just prior to the king's assassination, only for Delzed to return after she heard claims that Felaji had killed the king. Though apparently furious that Delzed had come back and put herself in harm's way, Felaji was convinced to stay with Delzed rather than flee on her own into Rethnald. The two returned to the capital at this point in search of Felaji's lost brother to spirit him away before allies to the crown could locate him and harm him in vengeance for what Felaji had done. At this point, their paths crossed with Falgren-dras-Kethlark, as the young archivist was a friend of Delzed's and promised to assist them in finding Felaji's brother.
With Falgren's help, Felaji and Thorn were reunited for the first time in nearly fifteen years, but their plans to now flee into Rethnald were short-lived; crown loyalists led by the royal guard Throntuk-draln-Rialzed discovered the group of four shortly after and implicated Falgren, Delzed, and Thorn in hiding the king's murderer. At this point, Felaji escaped from them seemingly in an attempt to save her own skin, whereupon Thorn claimed that none of them had known who Felaji was and that she had lied about her identity. Falgren corroborated the account, but Delzed, an acquaintance to Throntuk and known to have been close to Felaji, could not deny knowing her, and she was brought to the royal court to face judgment as a conspirator against the crown.
The divisions among the nobility stalled a decision on what would be done with Delzed, particularly as Delzed refused to speak on Felaji's possible plans even when offered clemency in exchange. Many within the royal court felt that Delzed was beneath their attention during a time of civil war and revolt and resented discussions of her fate, suggesting instead to simply imprison her and wait until the chaos had settled. Others intoned that making an example of Delzed could forestall further revolution, as it would show what would become of the dissidents and their allies by executing an accomplice to the king's assassin. After months of debate, the decision was reached to "just kill her and be done with it," as the royal court concluded that Felaji would not be lured out of hiding. If she had ever intended to try and save Delzed, she would have done so already.
On the day Delzed was to be executed, a stone monster broke past the guards and massacred the nobles present, sparing only the still-uncrowned princess Ainori that had spoken out against Delzed's execution. While later accounts of colossi both contemporaneous to this era and in the modern-day would see them as more commonly in the shape of animals, this colossus, first of its kind to be known in Ores, resembled a person, and was identified as being Felaji by Delzed herself upon looking at the colossus' face. It is at this point in Felaji's history that Falgren calls her Felaji ni Ores for the first time — though she does not explain herself, many agree that the intended meaning is that Felaji's lineage, ultimately, was not the mother who had died early on in her life, but was the hatred and despair she was raised by instead.
After the end
The historicity of what happened to Felaji after stopping Delzed's execution is murky and speculative at best, as not even Falgren, the source of most information known about Felaji, seems to have known what became of her. However, Falgren's accounts implicate Felaji's deceased mother in Felaji's ultimate fate in "becoming" a colossus. The incomplete nature of Falgren's surviving works render it unclear how she came to this conclusion or if she had evidence of it beyond the apparent knowledge that Dokani dral Horalros was rumored to be a miracle-worker capable of speaking to the dead and believed that Felaji held that same power to commune with her mother from beyond the grave.