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      The sea stretched from horizon to horizon before the man. He stood on the balcony of his home, if one could call it that. The man himself certainly didn't: his home was elsewhere, long lost and irretrievable. But, deep down, he longed for that home, even though one could not have seen it by looking at him. He wanted to return to that home, but all that he had left were the memories and the stories he had heard.

      Eighteen years before the Great Hylian War, eighteen years before Telofir the Grand came to power, something monumental happened.
     Thikebhet of the Gerudo gave birth to a baby boy. A new king was awaited at this time and so the gender of the newborn was of no great surprise. The proper traditions were followed and within a week of the kings birth Thikebhet was announced to be Sefthu, Mother of the King. Some days later she took the infant with her to the outskirts of Gerudo territory, a small plateau which overlooked the fields of Hyrule. There she had her personal bodyguard hold the baby while she planted a tree in the grass. The seed had been a gift from the king of Hyrule, a present with which he wanted to invite the Sefthu to discuss a peace treaty. She had decided the tree would be planted as a kind of companion to her son: Ganondorf Dragmire, King of the Gerudo.

      There is a legend among the people of Hyrule. They say that the land was created by the three goddesses, Din, Nayru and Farore. Upon their leaving of the land they left behind two things: the sacred artefact known as the Triforce but also six Guardians upon the world with the edict that they were to grant any wish made whilst touching the Triforce. Five of these reigned over the realm of the Real and were known as the Deku Tree; Guardian of the Forest and Father of Life, Jabun; Guardian of Water and Lord of the Sea, Darang; Guardian of Fire and Emperor of the Earth, Sheikathul; Guardian of Shadow and Empress of Death, and Dakhabet; Guardian of Spirit and Lady of the Desert. It is said that soon after their arrival the Guardians noticed that Din, in her lack of patience, had forgotten a fundamental part of the world upon its creation. They saw that the land was dark and life was dwindling, for there was no light. Darang quickly volunteered to remedy this, for he had grown tired of the confines of his mountains and wished to roam free. And so he created the first dragon, Volvagia, to take his place as Guardian upon the world of men. Afterwards, he bade the other Guardians farewell and jumped into the sky where he ignited into a gigantic ball of flame, as hot as the fires of creation Din herself had wielded, and became the sun in the sky.
     The eons passed. They say that once every five centuries, when the moon casts its shadow upon the world Darang will step down and confer with his fellow Guardians for a day before returning to his new kingdom in the sky. Once, upon his return, the Deku Tree put forth a suggestion; they would each create a creature capable of thought to populate the world, for the land was empty, and there were none whose wishes to fulfill. They would put together intricate safeguards with both locks and keys to protect the Triforce so that only those who had the ability to overcome those obstacles would ever succeed in obtaining it. They took the sacred relic and hid it in a vault beyond the world, accessible only by those who could best their trials. As the time came to finally bring forth their creations they were held up once again, since Sheikathul refused to create anything that was alive, feeling that it was not for her, the Queen of Death, to create life. Finally, the Deku Tree was able to soothe her, saying that all she would have to do was plan the appearance and limitations of the being she wanted to create; the power of life could only be given by the Deku Tree himself. After much squabbling over forms and limitations the Guardians arrived at some common ground regarding their creations; the creatures they brought forth would all be made in the image of the three goddesses: one head, two arms, a torso and two feet. The Guardians would select Sages from these creatures to represent them on the mortal plain. They would each have both the honour and the responsibility of wielding the power allotted to them by the Guardians. The rules set, the Guardians retreated to muse on what they would each bring into the world.

      When Ganondorf was seven years old he visited the tree his mother had planted. It had grown to be about half as tall as he was. It was of no great significance to him. His mother had died two years earlier, some kind of foreign disease she had contracted soon after planting the tree according to the hag twins who were raising him now. Later he learned that even then there had been whispers of duplicity on the part of the Hylian king, that somehow he had managed to infect the seed with a magical disease, designed to kill the Sefthu. He didn't care about that. After two years there was still a void in his heart which his mother's passing had left. The women had told him to be strong, that only the strong survived the desert. And for a Gerudo to be unable to survive the desert sands meant a dishonor worse than the death such inability brought. It was unthinkable, therefore, for him to be too weak to face the Lady. He was king, after all, and therefore the very embodiment of strength among his people. But for now, he was nothing but a seven year old boy, standing before the one thing, beside himself, that his mother had left behind. He thought of the ancient twins that had taken custody of him. They were the Erfat, the Wisewomen, who had apparently been in charge of his mothers training, the way they were now in charge of his. They taught the basics of scripture, of words and letters. Some, who had the talent, received training in the arts of magic. They had hinted that he might possess such talent and that if he did, they would train him to be the mightiest king the Gerudo had ever had. But he did not care for glory, or for riches for himself. He had an inkling in his young mind of what it was he truly wanted of the world. Power.
     Power to rival that of the king of Hyrule, so that the man would have no choice but to listen to his demands.
     Power to bring the Gerudo into an age of prosperity.
     But most of all, power to avenge his mother. For even though none of the raiders and guards among the Gerudo had told him of it at the time, the Wisewomen had confessed that they did not think his mothers passing had been caused by a natural disease. That was all that he needed. He would find whomever or whatever that had cursed the seed, and he would punish them with all the fury of an orphaned child.

      The Kokiri were the first. They already had bodies made of wood, and all the Deku Tree needed to do was to bestow upon them the gift of thought. To facilitate this though, he had to change them somewhat, and so he turned them into children, sculpted in the likeness of the three goddesses, with pale skin and pointy ears. They were imbued with the very essence of the Tree of Life, and so they would never die of age, but would stay as children for all time to come. In times of need, the Sage of Forest would be chosen from among them.
     Next were the Gorons. Sculpted by Darang from earth and rock, they would be large and strong, able to withstand high temperatures and were to feed off the very rocks from whence they were created. Once a Goron had eaten enough rock in its lifetime, it would enter a complex cycle which would ultimately give birth to another Goron. They would be able to do this several times during their lifetimes, which often spanned more than two centuries. The Sage of Fire would come from the Gorons.
     Jabun created the Zoras of water and fish. They were aquatic beings, capable of using fins to swim faster than the wind and gills to breathe as well under water as they did over it. They had two different sexes and the female would lay a brood of seven eggs once in her lifetime. The Sage of Water would, when called, hail from the Zora.
     Dakhabet offered the Gerudo, a monument to the goddesses in themselves, for they would be predominantly female, with only one male born every century. They would be fierce, with flaming red hair and iron will, born extremely beautiful and capable of surviving in the desert. When times required it, the Sage of Spirit would awaken among them.
     When the Guardians next looked to Sheikathul, they were surprised to see she was not alone; she was accompanied by her sister, the elusive Guardian of Light, the Mother of Existence: Jhutyr. The other Guardians were surprised, some even outraged; the Mother of Existence had no right to leave the Sacred Realm to meddle in their affairs. And she most certainly could not create a sentient creature, for existence must remain impartial, and a parent is never impartial when it comes to its child. Sheikathul explained that Jhutyr had helped sculpt the beings and in return, they would be divided into two different sub-sects: one for Jhutyr and the other for Sheikathul. The two sisters demanded, however, that since they would have only one being together they would be allowed to leave something behind with their creations. The other Guardians agreed, but on one term; the sub-sect of Light would in no way be able to wield the powers of Light or the forces of Existence; only the Sage of Wisdom would be able to do that. Jhutyr agreed, and so, together with Sheikathul, she presented the sculpting they had made.
     It was surprising. It showed no characteristics of either Light or Shadow. They were lightly built compared to the Gorons, they could not, unlike the Zoras, breathe underwater, they lived somewhat short lives and they weren’t necessarily beautiful. They had pale skin and pointed ears, much like the Kokiri, but were able to grow into adults and attain a similar build to that of the Gerudo. The two sisters called these the Humine.
     When Sheikathul received her sub-sect, she named them the Sheikah; Shadow Folk. Behind her she left the teachings of Shadowed Death; a stone containing the knowledge of assassins and warriors. It would teach them how to hide in the shadows and how to kill other beings, including each other.
     Jhutyr left behind the teachings of Civilisation and named her sub-sect the Hylians. The teachings of Civilization taught the Hylians how to organise and build cities long before the others and so they were the ones to name the land Hyrule.
     Thus were the five sentient species of the world created. The Guardians retreated to their respective kingdoms, conferring with each other at regular intervals or in times of great need. Such a time did not come for several millenia, until the rise of Ganondorf, the King of Evil.

      Ganondorf did not know how old he was, but he supposed it would have to be measured in centuries, instead of mere decades. He had been imprisoned in the Sacred Realm for the goddesses knew how long, and now he had finally broken the seal. He would return to the world a new man, a man who had learned from his mistakes, a man with a renewed sense of purpose.
     It had been fourteen years before his death that he had started the raids. Deceived, he now saw, by the Wisewomen, into believing that it was the king of Hyrule who had killed his mother with a magical disease and that the only way to defeat him was to acquire an artefact of awesome power, he had set out on the longest raid in the history of the Gerudo. For six years he had travelled the desert sands to the north, quickly striking into the northern territories and then retreating, leaving nothing but ruins and bodies in his wake.
     But that was not the point of his plan. For with him, as always, was his entrusted bodyguard, Shaluth. She had accompanied him since he was a toddler, teaching him the ways of the sword. And now, when he had learnt all he could from her, she would serve him one last time. For at every village, every town that he had decimated, he left a Gerudo sabre in the ground. The Gerudo were immediately accused of an act of war, but the king was wary of going into one with a people as fickle and fierce as the desert winds, so soon after he had been able to return Hyrule to peace. In the end, it seemed as though the kings hesitation paid off. A man came to Hyrule Castle one day and presented himself as the king of the Gerudo. He had no entourage, which was strange, but he was given an audience nonetheless. He explained to the king that he had, until recently, been travelling far to the south, without knowledge of what had been happening at home. It had taken six years for word to reach him that the woman he had left in charge, once his personal bodyguard, had recklessly started attacking the Hylian settlements to the north. He had returned immediately upon hearing this and had fought with the traitor and emerged victorious. As proof, the man had presented the head of the woman certain witnesses had indeed seen close to some of the raided villages. The man, king of the Gerudo, offered his deepest apologies for this tragedy and requested to act as advisor to the king so as to facilitate a peace between the Gerudo and Hyrule. The king accepted, ignorant to the fact that the woman the head had belonged to had been ordered by Ganondorf himself, shortly before her death, to kneel and to bare her neck to his blade. And that she, in her unquestioning loyalty, had obeyed that final commandment.
     Fourteen months later the king was dead, the princess was gone and the Triforce of Power was his. The boy had disappeared with the Triforce of Courage, Wisdom going with the princess. He waited for seven years until the boy returned. He watched as the boy, Link, became the Hero of Time, and waited for him to come into his arms. That was when he was going to kill the boy. And then, with the complete Triforce, he would wish for his mother to be alive again.
     Alas, he failed. And so he was ripped from the mortal plane and cast into the Sacred Realm, imprisoned for centuries to come.
     But he had seen things. He had read the legends, and he had seen into the past, realizing he had been manipulated by the two hags. He saw that the illness his mother died of had been due to an infected wound she had contracted during a raid. The hags could have healed her but decided not to, wanting to sculpt him into a warlock king who would do their subtle bidding.
     But he had seen how childish it had been to pine for his dead mother, how he had been weak for not being able to accept death as a part of life. He saw also that the hags had not been entirely malicious or power-hungry in their manipulation of him. They had simply wanted to make the Gerudo even stronger, even mightier. He could not fault them this. And so it was that he ascended into the mortal plane with the goal of returning to his people, to lead them as king once more.
     But the sages of the Guardians tried to abolish him to the Twilight Realm, the prison lit by dusk that the Guardians had created so long ago. They tried, and succeeded, but not before he saw what had happened to his home, his people, and his true mother.

      All the peoples have their own stories of their respective Guardians, and the Gerudo were no different. They say the Lady of the Desert soon saw a flaw in her kind: the children the first king had begotten could not hope to birth the next king, or any children whatsoever. She saw that they would need men, but did not know where to get them without completely recreating the Gerudo. Then she remembered the Hylians. They were similar to the Gerudo except for their skin tone and ears. Some of them, albeit few, even had red hair. And so she discreetly planted the thought in the mind of one Gerudo to seduce the men of the Hylians.
     It worked very well, since the Gerudo appeared stunningly beautiful to the Hylian men, being, as they were, used to somewhat less ideal visages of womankind among each other. Thus the line of the Gerudo went on, with the women seducing men when it was time to have a child, the blood of the desert people overwhelming any qualities the Hylian blood might have had. And so things remained for centuries.
     But then one day the Lady saw one of her Gerudo watching her child cradled in her mortal arms. And even there, in the middle of the harshness of the desert sands, the Gerudo's eyes shone with a love brighter than the sun itself. The Lady saw the love a woman can feel for her child, and she decided that she would feel that love herself, regardless of the consequences.
     She walked out onto the desert sands and danced. She danced a dance so alluring and overpowering that both men and women who glimpsed her ran into the desert driven by lust, only to starve and thirst to death amidst the dunes. She danced for one full year, until the sun stood right above her head. It had now travelled around the sky so that Darang had been able to see her from all the corners of the sky. Now his lust had been awakened to such a degree that he left the sun, raising storms so that no-one would notice, and he made love to the lady on the very dunes she had danced upon.
     Afterwards Darang was embarrassed of how he had let his lust take control of him and so he agreed not to tell the other Guardians of what had happened. He returned to the sun, unaware that he had sired a child.
     When the Lady laid eyes on her newly born son she realized that what she had seen in the Gerudos eyes was but a mere shadow of the love she now felt. She felt as if the child were the entirety of existence, surpassing even the three goddesses in importance. But she decided that she must somehow thank the Gerudo for showing her, however unknowingly, this most wonderful of emotions. And so she decided to lend them her son. She would imbue every king of the Gerudo with the spirit of her progeny. This would make them strong, powerful and inclined to have magical abilities. Thus, the Gerudo as a whole would become stronger. After the king died her son would return to her, a little older and a little wiser. These were always very small increments however, the child aging perhaps as little as a month with every period of life spent with the mortals. The Lady was happy, because she knew that watching ones child grow was part of being a parent. The cycle lasted for thousands of years with the child growing and the Lady experiencing the joys of motherhood.
     Until her child incarnated as Ganondorf, and never returned to her from the world of mortals.

      His mother was insane. He saw it as soon as he emerged into the spectral part of the mortal plane, glimpsed it before the sages chained him. He was a spirit now, without fully corporeal form, his body locked away by the Master Sword. But all that mattered little as he saw what his true mother had done.
     He had learnt of the Lady’s deeds whilst imprisoned in the Sacred Realm and knew therefore that she was his true mother. But even that did not spare her his wrath as he beheld her crime.
     The Hero of Time had come through the Gerudo Fortress during his quest to save the land. Once he had earned their respect, he had been aided by them in freeing the Sage of Spirit. The Lady had allowed this to happen, since killing Ganondorf would bring peace to Hyrule as well as the return of her child. And so the Hero travelled to Ganons Tower and slew Ganondorf. But then something unexpected happened. With the Triforce of Power and a tremendous effort of will, Ganondorf was able to change his spiritual form into a monster and engage in combat with the hero once more. Thus, the only thing the Hero and the Sage of Wisdom could do was to invoke all the sages and seal him into the Sacred Realm. But in so doing, they had also imprisoned the spirit of the Lady’s child. Seeing that Nabooru of the Gerudo had aided them in doing this, the Lady unleashed her fury upon the very people she had once sculpted. Few survived, and their blood had now mingled with the Hylians, having not been strengthened by the harshness of the desert. The Gerudo were gone from the land, their desert haunted by nothing but memory and a grieving mother.
     In that instant, Ganondorf came to hate his mother and all of Hyrule for what they had done to him and his people. Enraged, he dismissed trying to reason with the sages for his freedom, knowing only hate and a lust for power once again, a power to end all, the corruption he had fought so hard during his imprisonment taking hold once more. Despite this, the sages managed to send him into Twilight, unwittingly aiding his rise as he pretended divinity and was later reborn into his body in the realm of mortals. But his power was not strong enough, and the Hero defeated him once more. Yet this time he did not descend into the prison that had been forged for him. Instead he latched on to his insane mother, festering within her, drawing of her power like a parasite in a slow feed that was to take centuries.

      When the spirit of Ganondorf attacked Hyrule, it didn’t come as a shock to the Guardians. What did come as a surprise, however, was the ferocity and strength of his attack. He was able to destroy the outskirts of Hyrule and raise a tower for himself in a matter of months. Shortly after that he gathered an army with which he lay siege to the kingdom. When the Guardians discovered that Ganondorf was draining energy from the Lady of the Desert, they opted for a desperate and tragic plan.
     Calling upon the aid of Jhutyr, they encased most of Hyrule in a bubble of frozen time, leaving only the desert outside. Not fast enough with their execution of the plan, Ganondorf was able to slip away while they were moving the inhabitants to the mountainpeaks, changing some and letting others be to aid them in surviving the coming changes. And so, finally, they stopped time within the bubble and flooded all that was left outside beneath torrents of rain. The dunes became a seabed, the Lady of the Desert drowning with her home and kingdom and severing the connection between herself and Ganondorf. Their work done, the Guardians left the mortal plane once more, in hopes that they would soon be able to return things to the way they once were.

      The sea stretched from horizon to horizon in front of the man. He stood on the balcony of his home, if one could call it that. The man himself certainly didn't: his home was elsewhere, long lost and irretrievable. But, deep down, he longed for that home, even though one could not have seen it by looking at him.
     That was why he was here now, after all these centuries. His calling, his ultimate destiny. What he had seen and done, what had been done to him. Because what his life had given him, at the end, had been a singleness of purpose, and end to strive for, however fanatically.
     He would bring about the rebirth of the Gerudo.
     He would raise his people from the grave. He would lay his hands upon the Triforce, that accursed triangular relic, and he would wish the seas away. He would bring the desert back, and he would find the last strands of his people's bloodline, and he would bring them into the desert, and he would make them Gerudo once more, strengthening them with the trials of the desert sands.
     Ge’ru’do.
     Strong in Spirit.
     He would revive the people he had once abandoned.
     He would rebuild the home he had lost.
     And he would be king once more.