XANIESES
Portion of a bas-relief mural of the moments leading up to the
Destruction of Idan.
Dam-al-Yuwah, co-regent to empress Ava-al-Yuwah, was captured in battle with the nearby
Kingdom of Nod (based around what is now al-Nudha), tortured, and starved, before being released out into the deserts of Mesopotamia.
He then came across a mysterious tree, tens of kilometers outside of the city walls of Nod. A snake was in the tree, and it offered him a chance for revenge towards Nod, but only if he would take one of the fruits on the tree, and head back to Idan.
Desperate for any help, and seething with vengeance, Dam took a bite out of one of the fruits on the tree.
At the city gates, the guards of the city walls only saw a man shambling towards them, before dropping down on the ground, convulsing. He was brought into Ava's care, after they realized it was none other than Dam.
Big mistake.
The serpent (now known as "
the Trickster") had been known to Nod for decades as a source of evil, and looking to deliberately collapse Idan from within, they sought to capture Dam in battle and use him as a vessel for a malevolent entity (the
Devil).
And it worked.
Dam woke up, and threw Ava against one of the walls of the room, incapacitating her. He then went into the city's arsenal, using as much of it as he can to kill much of the city's residents (I mean, this hadn't happened before to them). Chaos spread from there, and before Dam was eventually subdued, he had managed to cause the deaths of
1,884 people, including the royal guard of the Empress, and the nation's best soldiers.
When the people of Nod saw smoke emanating from a now-weakened Idan, they took their chance and attacked the city, resulting in its downfall, the massacre of much of the population, and the execution of Ava in Nod's public squares.
One of the few survivors of the massacre was
Set-al-Dam, who would go on to rise as an influential leader within Nod, and cause its collapse after learning of his true heritage from another survivor.
Even today, the tale of Dam serves as a cautionary tale to resist the temptation of evil.
Credit to u/Ahmedimran9062 on Reddit for the image, which was generated using OpenAI's DALLE-2 generator.