King Ispi

In the ancient days of the Divine Era, the mortal aristocrat-scholar Orchid of Blue fell in love with a petty human sailor. He was handsome, witty, and kind, though he lacked any formal education or literacy. This was Ispi - a man chosen by the Architects to act as Orchid's divinely inspired love.   Ispi was low-status in ancient Runeva's caste system and was born to very poor parents. He was more or less sold as a ship servant in his youth, in the hope that it would give him a better life. And, by great effort, Ispi was able to rise to become a sailor, then a ship officer, and then a captain. Ispi suffered greatly over his rise to leadership but he had an unrivalled optimism and good cheer that some others mistook for confusion or stupidity. But Ispi's relentless cheer was a survival strategy - and one that led him to making many friendships and connections among the higher-caste dock administration. It is thanks to these that he was able to meet Orchid of Blue.    Orchid and Ispi had been struck with divine romantic attraction even before they secured their first meeting. Years before, when Ispi was an officer, he had been overseeing the transport of parchment and ink to her tower when the two laid eyes on each other. The Masked One and Halcyon struck them with instant infatuation, and the two yearned for each other for years before Ispi was able to secure access to the tower once again as a ship captain. She requested that he become her attendant, fetching her items and knowledge from distant lands. She helped teach him to read and they began an illicit romance.    Orchid and Ispi eventually came to lead a reform faction that opposed the caste system of Runeva. This faction was targeted for destruction, but Halcyon guided them away across the sea to the distant land of Miuta. They landed in what is now Kalturi, where they set about building a new utopian society. Ispi fathered the first Half-Dryads with Orchid there. Ispi blossomed into a charismatic leader of people, a figurehead monarch who brought together the various factions of ancient Kalturi through careful diplomacy. He died of plague in his old age while visiting a foreign tribe in the North and was buried in Kalturi with honors. When Orchid ascended to become a Lunar God she quickly Delivered Ispi from Purgatory to Paradise.