Chapter III - The Srryn

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The srryn are a race of humanoid reptiles. Covered with a leathery skills and naturally gifted with whip-like tails, they are cunning warriors and will often use their natural abilities to good advantage.

Mainly dwelling in the swamps and lowlands of Avendar, the srryn make their living by trading the rare roots that grow in their homelands, along with itinerant raids on whatever settlement lie close to their demesnes. The srryn have little of the formal amenities of government or oganization, choosing instead to live in smal villages in the swamps. Srryn leadership is usually determined by age, predicated on the assumption that no incompetent lives long enough to come to power.

Despite their primitive surroundings, the srryn are one of Avendar's oldest races, with an origin shortly following the Sundering. The earliest written record of the srryn concerns itinerant raids by them on various aelin settlements, and measures taken to combat them.

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For a long period of time, the aelin viewed the srryn as hopeless primitives, and viewed them more a nuisance than a threat. Somewhere near the high point of aelin dominance, however, events began to unfold which would lead to the srryn not only becoming a potential threat, but also potential rulers of all Avendar.

Matters are unclear on how or why the Srryn discovered the magics of fire - perhaps the workings of a mad god, perhaps the primitive rituals of the srryn shamans stumbled upon the right mystical combination to unlock the power of flame. However it came to be, this new magic turned the srryn for a race of primitive and bickering warlords into a force to be reckoned with. Cowing the humans who lived around them with both force of magic and the promise of more power to come, the srryn began a series of campaigns to unite their disparate forces. The srryn and their human allies came against the aelin with the suddeness of an inferno.

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At first it seemed the aelin's might civilization would fall quickly, as one by one their cities were overrun and put to the flame. Once the aelin realized the nature of the threat, however, they rallied their republic to face the srryn. Using the relics and weapons recovered from the ruins of the ancient alatharya, the aelin fought let loose with a swift series of counterstrikes, driving the srryn back to a stalemate.

The stalemate, though, was an untenable one. The srryn and humans were both virile races, swelling in numbers to replace those who fell in battle. Furthermore, their magic was strong and new, and the aelin were slow to renew themselves, and their success depend on the rapidly fading power of ancient weapons and tools.

In the end, the srryn lines did not break until entirely new forces came into play. Humans not under the sway of the srryn, with the aid of a daring minority of the aelin, followed the clues of an ancient prophecy, journeying to the northlands to awaken the god Jolinn.

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Bringing with them the aid of the magics of water, human, aelin, and the newly awakened Titans attacked the srryn warlords in the plains and lowlands of Avendar. A series of cataclysmic battles marked the end of the War of Fire, as the desperate srryn and human forces tapped directly into the elemental plane of fire, often drawing more power than they were capable of safely channeling.

The srryn and their allies lost these great battles, decimating their forces and laying barren many of their homelands. Defeated and hunted, the srryn withdrew to the deepest swamps, hiding themselves from the victorious forces of aelin.

For most of the rise of the humans and during the period in which the Republic of Earendam held sway over most of Avendar, the srryn were a relatively isolated people. Content with the occasional raid or to waylay what travellers who came into their power. In the War of Night, the srryn allied briefly with the shuddeni, but turned against them when they realized the eyeless ones had no intenion of sharing power with them.

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This aid against the shuddeni brought the srryn some measure of respectability, making them a more common sight in the cities of Avendar, most usually as gladiators in fighting arenas, or gaining notoriety as bandit kings with their own small parcels of territory. No longer universally feared, the srryn are still distrusted, and by no means ignored by the other inhabants of Avendar.