Arachas (concept)
The now infamous warlord of the Eastern Isle, Arachas has gone down in history as a notorious villain thanks to his place in the story of early Wardenism. Even the Ritualists have done little to rehabilitate him, as his misrule and apparent inability to comprehend the true magnitude of the threat posed by the The Great Uprising is often cited as having allowed the Wardenite faith to entrench itself. Arachas was slain after five years of fighting in the year 302 IS. It is said that his own followers saw fit to bury him in an unmarked grave, and the exact location of his death is now completely lost to history.
Exactly why Arachas imprisoned the First Warden has been the subject of much speculation by historians and religious scholars. Two major stories have emerged to explain this:
The first, popular among romantic storytellers and poets, claims that Arachas was riding through one of his towns, returning from a hunt in the countryside, when he spied a beautiful young woman and fell madly in love. He conspired to have her husband - the soon to be first warden - imprisoned. In brave defiance of Arachas' advances, she proceeded to stab herself to death, either during her husband's arrest or shortly thereafter in the market square.
The second, more popular amongst serious historians of both the Wardenite and Ritualist faiths, tells that the man who was soon to become the First Warden was unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Arachas' frequent campaigns for the throne of Sarradon left him constantly on the brink of bankruptcy, and he saw the virtuous (though this descriptor is disputed by many of the Ritualist historians) young man's properties and assets as yet another resource he could leverage in pursuit of his political ambitions. The young merchant's defiant response to Arachas' demands for "tribute" earned him a trip to the darkest dungeon in the warlord's citadel. His later release was likely a ploy by Arachas to lure him into revealing where he had hidden some of his money and jewelry, as the warlord expected the man to try and flee the island with as much as he could carry. Instead, he initiated the Great Uprising and sealed Arachas' fate.