Ciron

Centaur Chieftain
Ciron the Wise traveled the war-torn plains teaching ethics and brotherhood. He and his disciples were welcome in every tribe, but while the elders revered his brilliant mind, they ignored his arguments for peace, begging him instead to serve as a tactical advisor. In his search for a benevolent leader to instruct, Ciron came one morning to a village ravaged by fire. Smoking bodies sprouting arrows and broken spears littered the ground. His disciples found only one survivor in the wreckage: a soot stained foal who had spent the night shielding a group of ducklings from the flames. Moved by this display of compassion, Ciron resolved to raise the foal as his own son. The bloodshed deepened as the years passed, but his son was a light in the darkness, growing to become his most gifted pupil. Ciron taught him medicine and poetry and mathematics and always stressed forgiveness and peace until one day, his great heart broken by the incorrigible fighting, he finally accepted the necessity to teach war. His disciples rebelled, but in his son he sensed only a twisted sadness. They discussed their differences over a poisoned meal. The venom Ciron selected to contaminate their food was the antidote to the toxin laced in the wine presented to him by his son. There was no burial. Nor was there further dissent, only fear. Under Ciron's remorseless tutelage, his disciples fought a campaign of unprecedented brutality that spread across the land and swallowed every tribe in the span of one winter. The lifeblood of thousands fed the cold hard ground, but come spring the grassy plains of the new centaur nation knew only the innocent hoof beats of playing foals.