Pronunciation: RAY-eck (rhymes with WAY-heck)
Son of Ingen and Jarrah
Father of Venka
Grandfather of Satreeka
Student of Savah, Timmain and Ekuar
Rayek was a restless and brooding Sun Village youth. He preferred the solitude of the rocky desert mountains to the company of his affable tribemates. Fittingly, his name means “child of the rocks.” He burned to be first in all things and often looked down on the contented Sun Folk as underachievers lacking the will to become something greater.
Rayek’s powers brought him the admiration of his tribe and the attention of the venerable Savah, under whose tutelage he honed those skills. He became the Sun Folk’s chief hunter and protector–and both his magic and his tribal position further fed his pride.
A lifelong friend and lovemate of Leetah, the two spent hundreds of years together before the Wolfriders’ arrival changed their world. His primacy challenged after Recognition struck Leetah and Wolfrider chief Cutter, Rayek’s pride at losing his “destined” (so he thought) lifemate led him to quit the Sun Village. After crossing the Burning Waste to the troll caverns, he found the captive rock-shaper Ekuar, whose mentoring led to significant growth in Rayek’s powers.
Rayek helped rescue the Wolfriders from a troll ambush when they arrived in the Frozen Mountains on their own quest for the Palace, and he fought alongside the Wolfriders and the Go-Backs to reclaim the Palace. After their victory, Rayek studied the Scroll of Colors, helping the elves and trolls learn of their shared origins. He remained there, appointing himself Master of the Palace and dedicating himself to learning all of its magical secrets, determined to restore it.
He eventually left the Frozen Mountains on a quest to Blue Mountain to learn more about the Gliders and entreat them to join his cause to restore the Palace. During that adventure, after manipulating both Two-Edge and Aroree into aiding him, Rayek banded with Leetah and the Wolfriders to help rescue the stolen cub Windkin from Blue Mountain. There, he met and clashed with Winnowill, ultimately causing the collapse of Blue Mountain and the death of most of the Gliders. Holding the spirits of the now-freed Gliders within himself, Rayek led them back to the Palace.
After guiding the Palace to the source of a mysterious psychic cry, Rayek learned that it was the voice of their own starfaring ancestors the High Ones, who once used the Palace as a space and time-traveling craft. He brashly imagined he could return the Palace to the future and thus prevent the accident that marooned the High Ones from occurring in the first place. Rayek stole the Palace through time with Cutter’s family aboard, leaving the mortal Wolfriders stranded. In the future, Rayek set about putting his scheme in motion. But once he discovered the Wolfriders were still alive and understandably uncooperative, Rayek ultimately abandoned his plans.
Though the crush of that failure left him magically impotent, Rayek was comforted by Venka and eventually regained his powers. As Cutter and Rayek resolved their differences in a brutal fist fight, Winnowill attempted to wrest control of the Palace, resulting in it shattering into millions of crystal shards which fell into the hands of the human warlord Grohmul Djun. At the culmination of a battle to recover the Palace shards, Winnowill was decapitated by the Djun. With her disembodied spirit threatening to poison the Palace itself, Rayek drew her dark energies into himself as he once did with the rest of the Gliders. In trapping Winnowill’s this way to save the rest of the elves from her ghostly menace, he cursed himself to an eternal psychic struggle with her. Resolved to withstand this onslaught in his new sense of service, Rayek now wanders the world subjecting himself to Winnowill’s tortures for the protection of all elves — indeed all living things — on the World of Two Moons.
