The longest-lived Maahes of the chapter, and the one who saw the golden age. Dedun-Meri took the mantle at a time when Meroë was becoming the capital of a rich and confident kingdom, with iron furnaces smoking on its outskirts and caravans arriving from every direction.
He used the age to expand the Pride's reach. His first act was to establish the Pride's house in the heart of Meroë, a great courtyard beside the forges that became the Pride's main seat. His second was to send out the first caravans of the Savanna Road, a route that ran west from the Nile along the belt of grassland south of the desert, linking Meroë to the cities and markets of the interior. The caravans carried iron, cloth and salt. A handful of them carried something else: Pride couriers, scouts and watchers, quietly making contact with the peoples they met.
He founded no seat on the road. He only opened it. But every later expansion of the Pride toward the west, including the great crossing of the Sahara a thousand years later, followed the path of his first caravans.
His 76 years in the mantle, powered by a full supply of resin, let him train three generations of watchers himself.
What he left behind: the main house at Meroë, and the Savanna Road.
