He they call “Sikan the Mending”

Born the 2742nd year of the old calendar, Sikan Burima was destined for more greatness than the rest of his already great ancestors. His family had ruled over the Ashelaad mountains for centuries, thousands of clansmen knowing him long before he was born, willing to die for him and dying before he could ever know their names.

Sikan’s clan was amongst the wealthiest of the northlands. Its domination over the ore-rich mountains gave them exceptional power and a target above their heads. Sikan had lost a brother, two cousins and more than two dozen others that shared his blood name by the time he could speak. His parents and all the parents before them seemed to only know war. Sikan once told me that he believed his people, all of his bloodkind, were of exceptional intelligence, a type forged by the necessity of survival. Yet Sikan believed they wielded such intelligence incorrectly.

“How useless is strength,” he told me, “when it is aimed at one’s friends. Friends who miss the forest for the trees.”

The clans of our north knew only an enemy beside them. They fought the clans who raided their villages, dammed their rivers, stole their livestock. Yet they did not see the enemy who forced such battles, the greater enemy. I did not see it for many years myself, and when Sikan spoke of it to me, I thought he himself saw Medos as our true enemy. Even today I feel that hate, and so do so many clans that followed with us to battle, but Sikan saw a different enemy, one that I now see is true.

Hunger.

Our people were forced north from the hunger of Medos, our people fought amongst themselves to fight the hunger, and all peace that has been made and truce that clans have found came to satiate hunger. 

When Sikan grew and began a force in his clan, the promise of forgotten hunger was his weapon. Leniency, his shield. As eldest son to his father, Sikan was quick to leadership and wise beyond his years. When I was a soldier amongst the late elder’s guard, ten years Sikan senior, the boy’s command impressed me. He had a way then, as he always had. A relentless, earnest kind of strength which could not be foiled, could not be undermined, and all that were bound to hear his words by duty instead heard his words by respect. Just in his teens, he could make any man follow, and in his growth, he did. To every clan that warred with him, Sikan made promises. He brought them the idea of a world where the northlands fought for more than the next day. I went to each of those meetings with him, and I remember more than anything the trust he earned. We of the northlands are strong, we’ve had to be, and that makes us stubborn. We do not wish to change our ways, many ways there are in our mountains and plains.

Sikan asked them to follow and promised them their identity, promised that they would keep their ways and promised days without hunger.

“And what if they don’t come?” a clansman once asked. “What if I follow you and you march us to death?”

“Then I will be first to die,” Sikan told him. “I will be first to every battle and last to retreat.”

I remember the looks in the room then. 

This little boy, they would think, he speaks madness, but I believe him.

How many had that thought, I wonder? I’d expect as many that had joined us.

It was Sikan’s quest to create a united north, and it became my quest, the quest of all our clans and the clans we brought with us, and thus, it also became our quest to destroy those who would not join our cause. Many of our allies took joy in such battles, but Sikan never did. There was some part of him that believed his idea was truly right and that a truly right idea could unite all who heard it. But another part of him saw the truth. What called you an enemy yesterday and what calls you an enemy today will call you an enemy tomorrow. 

Some have tried to call Sikan a peaceful man, and he was, but the battles told a different story. He laid waste on many enemies and fought as though all futures stood upon his sword.

He entered the Desolate to gather strength and favor, and when he returned to use them, there was no foe to stop him. It is odd to speak of his walk to the Desolate in so few words, but Sikan had few words for them himself. Little is known of what happened in the ashen winds. Sikan never even told me, but that added to his aura. 

Sikan became immortal in our eyes. He granted his greatest generals the weapons he’d created of the Desolate beasts, and with them, he conquered all. In time, all the northlands forgot some greed and found some unity against the true enemy. In that time, Sikan wondered what to name our great nation of the north, but the many clans that joined us seemed to have already known. “Burima,” they call this place now, and Sikan was its first Lord Keeper. He is gone now, his legacy left to a son. I train the boy every day, try to nudge him to the words Sikan would have said, but I barely need to. Something in that Buriman blood does it for me. The boy wishes to complete his father’s final dream and create a currency beyond Medosi metals. 

“Gold and silver and iron have chained us long enough,” Sikan once said. “We shall find another way.”

I have written this not as a record of all of Sikan’s life, but as the words of a friend who watched him turn from a little boy to a hero to Sikan the Mending. May all his kin know prosperity and wield the same spine that made them.

— Eret Genheart, Head of the Burima family guard circa OCY 2758 - OCY 2802, Written OCY 2798