the path to enlightenment
A R I S H O K
is paved with ignorance
This would be their kingdom.
At the moment he walked in solitude, a lone soul treading the path of tal-sunnah beneath the relentless glare of the desert sun. This land was neither beautiful nor kind, and its nearly uninhabitable state had evidently been found unappealing to the current residents of the archipelago. Arishok was unconcerned with these facts; those he recruited would be strong of mind or of body, and more than capable of enduring this harsh climate. And for all that they may seem cruel and unforgiving, the Dunes were essentially a fortress without walls - for who would dream of assaulting a land that sapped the very strength of your body? As for the heat...the gray stallion was not unaccustomed to it.
The desert was in his blood, his bones. It was no wonder that tal-sunnah had led him to a land not unlike the one his own forebears had ruled for generations.
Though unaffected by the drastic climate shifts of the nearby mainland and some of the other isles, Salem was not entirely immune to the fitful elements that caused winter. Sandstorms stood in lue of snowstorms, the stinging grit being flung into his eyes so furiously that Arishok could scarcely see to the bottom of the dune he so laboriously descended. There was little hope of surviving such an onslaught for long...however...
As his hooves touched level sand (or at least, the nearest thing to it on this constantly shifting landscape) once more, the gray stallion hunkers down, bending his knees beneath him so rapidly that an onlooker may have thought he had collapsed. Then, exhaling the breath harshly from his nostrils to expel the cloying dust within them, he tucks his head firmly against his barrel. With the eternal patience of one desert-born, he settles in to endure and outlast the very sands, unmoving save the shallow rise and fall of his sides with each breath that is drawn.
a bloodstained gray stallion
standing proud at 16.2 hands and
following the ways of his warlander ancestors
for nine years and counting
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