Edit: Managed a typo in the title. d’oh! It’s now correct.
The Ascension is the rite by which promising draphen shadecasters are tested by ingesting a poisonous tea brewed from the salivary glands of an uocari. The rite is used to select Narthrall’s leader. the Ascended. Normally, leadership passes by heredity, as the current Ascended is given the right to choose who is to be tested. Most Ascended bear many children in order to assure that at least one of them will be able to survive the test and ascend to leadership.
The Ascended rules until death, or until they voluntarily cede leadership, at which point the Ascendant becomes the Ascended. The Ascendant is the current Ascended-in-waiting. By law, there must always be an Ascendant to prevent the Ascended from dying without having a successor in place. If this does happen, anyone can opt to take the test, and the first survivor is ascended directly.
The Ascension rite came about in order to fight the threat of the Voidborn, creatures that lurk in the shadows and exist in the grim periphery between life and death. They haunt every corner of Narthrall, threatening the draphen constantly. In AY 206, their emperor and all three of his heirs were killed by a Voidborn wraith while hunting. The people of Narthrall were left without leadership, and created the system of ascension in order to ensure that their leaders would be strong against the Voidborn. Narthrall went without real leadership for two years, during which time the Black Temple ruled. They worked out the details of the Ascension while they awaited a challenger. Many accused the Temple of trying to gain permanent control by making the Ascension impossible to survive.
In AY 208, Demiar Ebonblade became the first to survive the Ascension rite. His twin sister Demira became Ascendant, and ruled for twenty years after his death in AY 349. In AY 360, she relinquished her rule to Ascendant Uona, who ruled until her death in AY 480. As you may note, draphen have long lifespans. They routinely live two or three hundred years when not killed by one of the many hazards of their homeland.
An Ascended or an Ascendant is properly referred to with the title used as a prefix to their family name, e.g. “Ascended Ebonblade,” or simply the title itself. The proper way to refer to a former Ascended who no longer rules is with an ordinal suffix followed by the title, e.g. “Demiar Ebonblade, First Ascended” or “Culari Uona, Third Ascended.”
The Ascended has authoritative command over much of Narthrall, but social and economic issues are handled by delegates whom the Ascendant, not the Ascended, appoints. Powers are divided to a degree, but generally the government is kept small and simple as Narthrall is a small city-state and large governmental structures would not be of much use. Instead, Narthrallians prefer a small, agile government that moves well with the people’s needs, and they are not hesitant to dethrone a tyrant at swordpoint.
The Ascension rite itself is fairly simple. The Ascended and Ascendant-hopeful gather at the Black Temple, where the tea is brewed by the high priest. The tea is made by drying the salivary glands (where the Void Aether poison is produced) of one uocari and steeping them in a special obsidian bowl used only for that purpose. After a certain amount of time, the glands are removed and the entire bowl must be drunk to ascend. Most turn back at the last moment. Many others die instantly. Others suffer for hours before death comes. The few that survive skirt the boundaries of death for weeks. They are free to seek medical aid, as it is well-known that there is nothing that can reverse the effects of the Void toxin, but they all suffer.
All but one, anyway.
In AY 1270, the current Ascendant, Uodar Hecal, drank the brew as though it were ordinary water, and walked unaided to the Palace to the astonishment of all except Ascended Mela Nightshade, who knew Uodar had lived in the deep caves where the uocari breed all his life, and had already developed the tolerance the tea provides.
Today, Ascended Nightshade and Ascendant Hecal hold fast the traditions of Narthrall set down by the Ebonblade twins over a millennium ago, and Narthrall is well-equipped to continue its constant fight against the Voidborn.
Fun facts:
Draphen surnames are sometimes rendered as English words when they are modern Narthrallian, e.g. “Ebonblade”rather than Old Draphic constructions like “Demiar”.
This is deliberately done to parallel Western names, e.g. “Jane Smith” in which “Jane” is not an English word but “Smith” is. For the curious, Demiar and Demira’s surname in Narthrallian is Utenancuor, which more literally translates to “slient black sword”. “Ebonblade” is rendered artistically ’cause, hey, it sounds cool.
In fact, “Narthrall” is itself a combination of these two kinds of names; “thrall” is the English word referring to slavery and “Nar” is an old Draphic prefix for an empire. The Narthrallians (a word which also incorporates English suffixes) took that name because they felt enslaved by the threats of the world around them. Hence, “slave-kingdom.”
So no whining about naming inconsistencies, you hear?