Holy Books: The Life of Orlandus -- Part 3

See Part 1 and Part 2.

Our Lord Orlandus sought for a blade with which to slay the Weeping King. He knew there was one place where he could find such a sword for certain: Hârnholme. The ancient kingdom of the dwarves was the one place where a man could earn himself a mighty blade, laid with magics that might slay an immortal tyrant like the King of Tears. For three years he worked and lived as a gestr to the dwarves. He abandoned his goodly works and there our lord of Sunhome shoveled coke and pumped the bellows of a forge. He worked as a drover, a carter, and a woodsman. All these things he did without the comfort of a place in the dwarven halls, a worker without a home.

In the deep winter of the third year, the Mountain Smith Magnr Smokebeard came to the rick wherein our lord slept and said, "For three years you have lived on scraps, as less than an apprentice amongst a people who have no love for you. For three years you have toiled in the workshops of my forge, smelting ore and moving fuel. Something must have brought you here. Why have you come?"

And when Orlandus our Lord told Magnr Smokebeard his quest to slay the Weeping King, Magnr brought him into his most intimate workshops, beyond the secret vaulted doors which only the Master Smiths could open; lo, our Lord was was shown the very heart of the Mountain Smiths' forges, where the ancient and mighty keys that are the patrimony of the dwarves must undo the mightiest locks ever devised. And in this place, Magnr Smokebeard told Orlandus, "You will learn to work steel and gold, balglamr and aedr. Only when this is done will we forge your sword."

For ten years, Orlandus studied under Magnr Smokebeard, and he learned only the most meager of the dwarf's secrets, for the Mountain Smiths rarely share their powerful art, and even in the aid of such a worthy cause this Smokebeard would not reveal to Orlandus the most mighty of arts. Yet even so, when the ten years were complete he spent one final year under Smokebeard's tutelage to forge the blade he would carry for the rest of his life; the holy sword, blessed by Haeron the Hammerer, which is called Angurvidal.

So, too, did Magnr Smokebeard forge for Orlandus our Lord a suit of armor in the old Milean fashion which is called Peaceward; a misericord called Heartpiercer; a hammer named Thalmung; and a spear called Atgir. With these weapons and harness, Roland of Sunhome ventured forth to confront the Weeping King.

North, he went, and northward, until at last he came into the Kingdom of Aedeion, within the mist-girdled forests. With him, too, was his sacral destrier, Lightning. As he went, the Weeping King's people flocked to his banner, eager to, at last, overthrow their awful lord. A great battle was joined before the gates of Lakra, the eternal city. The lieutenants of the Weeping King could not give battle or ride forth beneath the blazing sun. Thus, the armies of the vampire-lord were defeated without their leaders, and the city of Lakra was stormed. Hundreds of vile servants were woken from their enchanted slumber, and hundreds more who served willingly driven to the edge of the Red Lake and executed there until the waves ran with blood.

At last, as the sun set, the Weeping King came forth from his palace, flanked by his vampiric children. But our Lord Roland was a knight pure of heart and mighty of arm; seven of the eldest vampiric princes died by his hand in that bloody sunset, and then, at last, with lance, shield, and blade, he brought low the Weeping King.

Holy Books: The Life of Orlandus -- Part 2

Also see Part 1.

At the end of his third year fighting for Metropolitan Timarus, the old man met his end; at last, age claimed what leprosy and the decaying dome of the Vectedréan temple could not. Orlandus went to his bedside dressed in the garb of a temple knight. Timarus spoke to him one last time, reminding our lord of his duty to the Hammerer, who had graced him with such wonders. But the last thing that Timarus said to Orlandus was not to bind him to Vectedréa and the Kingdom of Byrne. Timarus the Leper told our lord "You must spread your light to the places in the world which are the darkest. This is the destiny the Hammerer had in mind for you."

Now, in those days, there were many evils that still haunted the world. The Alchemist had yet to wake from his necromantic slumber, but our lord would fight against that villain in his later years. This was at the end of the Red Age, when Craftsman's Reach was unified under the Lords of Calantheas. No, the great evil of Arunia, when Roland of Wilderlund was a young man, was none other than the Weeping King of the Adeion.

The Weeping King was a figure out of nightmare legend. There were those who claimed he had served Rho'anir the Shapeless One in the Wars of High Sorcery, and those who said he had been a serjent in the armies of Tallëor Twice-Born during the War of Shadows. None, now, can say what the truth was. But amongst those barbaric peoples of the wide open spaces there rose a single power, fusing together the eight warring clan-folk of men and the three nations of wood elves beneath his borders. This man was called The Weeping King.

It was certain that he was long lived. He ruled his kingdom Adeira for five generations of men. The peoples of that land, who knew not how to build like the men of the south, and so tunneled, burrowed, and made their squat towers, were called upon to construct an elaborate castle for the Weeping King, made of stone quarried from the Dragonback range. He made treaty with the Old Soloth, and his nation was flooded with Solothen slaves to do his bidding.

Now, you must also know that our lord did not set out simply to depose a tyrant. There were countless tyrants in his time. No, for there were even greater ills perpetrated by the Weeping King. This monarch made it custom to slay who he would, and there are those accounts which whisper that he would then bathe in their blood. In his might, he challenged even the borders of mighty Tailimisiä, and the elves were forced to make treaty with him to keep his armies at bay. He gave places of high honor to Frost Giants, ogres, and other unclean children of Ulagos' wheel.

Suffice to say, the Weeping King was no mere mortal, but a demon in human form. Orlandus had been told of this monstrous ruler since he was a boy, and he set out now to end the creature's rule once and for all. Indeed, it is set down in his own hand that the Weeping King was a "vampiric spirit of evil humor, puffed up and gorged with blood, and stuffed into the body of an ill-tempered, squat, white-haired man, whose eyes perpetually oozed sickly tears."

To slay the Weeping King, Orlandus knew he would require something more than his native strength and cunning. It was said that an elvish emissary to the king's court had, after being rudely insulted again and again, challenged the foul creature to a duel. There, in the courtyard of the great castle, the king obliged, only to prove that each stroke of the elvish blade made cuts that closed as of their own accord, or else could not even pierce his pale gray flesh.

This, then, was Orlandus' task: our lord must needs seek out a weapon capable of destroying the Weeping King, and bring justice to the north. Though he still nursed a private grudge in his heart against Queen Mir, he could not trouble himself with her reign—though she had seized the throne with violence, she had, in his years abroad, ruled the Wilderlund well.

Holy Books: The Life of Orlandus -- Part 1

The following text is from the Life of Orlandus, a hagiography of the founder of the Order of the Forge Divine, which is revered as one of that sacred knighthood's most holy writings.

Orlandus, Lord of Sunhome, founder of our Most Beneficent and Mighty Order, was born to a humble country knight. It is from beginnings such as these that the Smith forges into the greatest of heroes. By alloy and tempering, the High God reaches out and remakes his chosen. Such are the blessed strictures of the Golden Bands of Law! Joyous are our hearts, as he gives us joy.

Orlandus was born near the end of the Eighth Age of men, in the Kingdom of Wilderlund. His father was a knight minor who served the house of Queen Evandyn the Just. They were an impoverished family, granted only a single estate near the ancient city of Toleiere. At court, Orlandus learned the measure of cruelty and barbarism when Queen Evandyn was murdered by her sister. The coup cost Orlandus' father his life, and Orlandus was expelled from the royal court after the accession of Queen Mir.

This is where the extraordinary Life of the blessed knight begins. Until that time, he was merely a boy, but after he escaped the Night of Tears and the Hall of the Drawn Knives, Orlandus would be a boy no longer. No, for he watched his father die defending Queen Evandyn, and saw the queen herself cut down by none other than Ghuron the Butcher. Friendless and hunted, Orlandus fled the palace into the city, seeking refuge.

Refuge, he found, in the form of a temple devoted to the Hammerer. Our lord fled westward, passing ever farther from the danger of Queen Mir and her faithful right hand, the Butcher. So it was that he came at last to the kingdom of Byrne upon the Rootwood. After many long months of travel, our young lord entered the service of Timarus the Leper in the city of Vectedréa, who was then the Metropolitan of that place.

Though he had been noble-born, Orlandus feared to speak his father's name, for the agents of Queen Mir roamed far and wide, and the Kingdom of Wilderlund was one of the mightiest of its day. So he called himself Roland and served as an acolyte in Timarus' temple. But there came three signs of his fated destiny.

The first was the touch which healed Timarus of his leprosy. The ancient priest had suffered from the wasting death since he was a young man, but one afternoon in the enclosure our lord placed his hands upon Timarus and they prayed together to the Hammerer in the way that Timarus had taught him. When they rose, the old man suddenly found that he could feel the fire in his joints, the pain in his fingers, the cold in his toes. Lo! They thanked the Hammerer for the display of a miracle, and Timarus turned his eye to watch our Orlandus, who was called Roland.

The second sign came when a storm collapsed the ancient dome of the Vectedréan temple. It had been built long ago by the Milean emperors, and a stroke of lightning sent from the vault of heaven smashed the stone and sent it tumbling to the earth within. Several acolytes were cleaning the temple hall during the storm, and one among their number was our lord Orlandus. He saw an acolyte struck by falling stone, felled like a cow hit with a pole-axe. He rushed to his companion's aid, and where his hands touched the bloodied head, they came away clean; the boy was healed, and he survived to become a smith in the city.

The final sign came in Roland's sixteenth year. Ghuron the Butcher had been dispatched by Queen Mir to find and murder all the exiles of Wilderlund that they might not form a league abroad and convince the king of Byrne to make war. Ghuron's assassins fanned through the city, seeking many who had come with our lord Orlandus. When the Butcher arrived at the temple, he came in the guise of a penitent, but he concealed a sword beneath his cloak.

Roland, he recognized amongst the acolytes at once. He drew his blade and lay into the boy, who was struck by the poisoned edge; the blow, which should have split his skull, merely ripped open his scalp and sent him plunging to the floor. Ghuron escaped before the temple guard could apprehend him, certain that Orlandus of Wilderlund had been slain. For three days and three nights, Roland lay in fevered dreams. No medici of the city could help him. Even Timarus did not have the power to put the poison out of the boy's body. But lo! On the third day, Roland awoke, saved by the grace of the Hammerer, a scar upon his brow.

Thus, after the third sign, did Timarus tell Orlandus that he had been chosen by the Hammerer for great things. The boy was given arms and armor from the vaults of the temple. Timarus told him: "Go forth, boy, and bring his light into dark places."

Books of Arunia: On Alth'is and the Wild

This book was found by Fenrus' Very Best in the rooms of the Red Lances after their slaughter at Stock. It was first written in X.439 under the reign of King Lucas by the scholar Theodosius of Elborg.

IN THE SIXTH AGE the northern reaches of Craftsman's Reach were the location of a new revival of half-elven ancestry; the kingdom of Al'this, in response to the formation of Calantheas and Teraspis in the central Reach. The Althissan state encompassed the southern portions of what are now the Untamed Lands and the northern portions of the Reach, particularly around the Aelfwater. Rulership was confined to a number of families that grew up in and around the borders of the elven kingdom—many of the Althissan rulers were trained magicians and sorcerers who learned their craft in the haunts of Tailimisiä. This, of course, set the stage for the later antagonisms between the Thessalian lords and chiefs of the Reach and the elves of Talimisiä.

The Althissan capitol was built south of the Low Plain, straddling a number of small hills. It is, today, a windswept moor. Unlike other great cities of the past such as Temeros and Cathadria, the old city of Altem has no treasures, no secret caches of hidden gold, and no mysterious vaults. The rain and acidic soils have reclaimed most of the stone, leaving only a few great plazas of mosaic stone exposed to the bleaching sun. Perhaps it's because the kingdom was tenuous, small, and only lasted for a brief time. Perhaps it's because old Altem was never a city of any great size.

For a few brief centuries, Al'this clung to the north and its roots as a heritor of Ys. Part of that connection rested in the Al'thissan requirement that, like the later-to-follow Protectorate of Dorlinum, its supreme leaders and highest levels of functionary must all be magic-users. Wizards were the order of the day in Al'this, and a number of sites were chosen to serve as magistracies throughout the north of the land.

Contest with the dwarves of Mount Sirune and the foemen of Hard Heath and the Untamed Lands further north was inevitable. Battle rocked Al'this almost from its very first days, and Calanthea and Teraspis gave the Al'thissans no quarter along their southern border. It was with great perspicacity, then, that the Al'thissan rulers, who were known as Altharchs, made bargains with the remaining populations of stone giants throughout the Reach, drawing them inexorably northward, and awarding individual giants with generalship of the Al'thissan armies.

Even within Al'this, there was an intrinsically dangerous tension: the subjected Thessalians of the Reach, who thought of themselves as a noble people descended from the Spear-bearer, and resented the presence of Al'thissan sorcerers, who considered themselves to be descendants of the half-elves of Ys. The Thessalian retaliation that emerged in the centuries after the fall of Al'this was, of course, a concerted hatred of the Elvish powers, which ended with the war between Tholnia and Tailimisiä.

Books of Arunia: On Tyreth and Its Foundations

This book was first discovered by Fenrus' Very Best in the inn rooms of the Red Lances. It was first written in X.501 by the scholar Ambrosius of Kjellos as a gift for King Magnus. This is a summary of its contents, eliding a great many chapters.

TYRETH CASTLE is constructed upon a rise overlooking the Aelfwater, one of the few fortified natural formations in that region that was not built upon in some past age. In the time of Tholnia, the very northern stretches of the Reach were not fortified at all. The Tholnian seat was located in old Ambar, and the Reach was known as a land of barbarians, unfit for habitation save by the tribesmen, the gnomes, and the halflings. The most powerful force during the early Xth Age was the dwarf-prince at Aella's Hall, also known as Mount Sirune.

After the war of the Elven League in the 3rd century, the White Harts of Tyrnen Wood, fearing an elvish invasion of the Reach from Talimisiä, surveyed their land and decided to move their hall to the shores of the Aelfwater upon a hillside. This began the dynasty that, in X.285, captured the Kjellan peninsula under the leadership of Lord Valyn Karhart.

King Valyn was the first of the Kjellan kings, made so by fire and sword, after conquering the war-torn peninsula and its nobility. King Valyn left his daughter Alina behind to care for the manor and the lands from whence they came. This, my king, is where the first Lady Protector of the Reach came from, and by the 5th century this position was solidified as the place from whence the heir should come.

The procession of Kjellan kings went thusly: King Valyn, who ruled until X.319; Queen Alina, who ruled until X.355; King Baldur, who ruled until X.398 and who brought the Order of the Forge Divine to Kjellos; King Solyce, who ruled until X.415, and who moved the seat of power to Elborg and its ancient castle, resulting in being poisoned by his own high advisors; his younger brother, King Lucas, who ruled until X.459, after slaughtering those who plotted against his brother and committed the regicide; and lastly you, my lord, King Magnus, third son of King Lucas, and lord of Elborg, Kjellos, and the Reach until this very day.

THE HEIRS of the great kings improved the fortified manor at Tyreth little by little. Queen Alina built a motte upon the hilltop and surrounded it with a palisade of wood. In her day, there was no such silver trade along the Silverlode, and the elves were considered to be an enemy of the Reach. The town of Stock did not exist, and the empty elvish temple of Nunianor was filled with darkness and shadow—in the days of King Valyn, a powerful sorcerer inhabited it and made it his home. Thus, there was no threat of elvish armies approaching along the fords, but merely from across the lake.

When King Valyn died and his daughter was called from the exile of the Reach, she placed her own son in charge of the manor house. This was Baldur Dwarf-friend, who often abandoned Tyreth to reside for long stretches at Mount Sirune, in the shadow of Aella's Hall. To his credit, he reinforced the manor and established the first houses of Tyreth town upon the slopes of the hillside. He, too, extended an offer to the dwarves of Effningas to take up residence at his castle, and for a time a small band of such mercenaries did.

Baldur ascended to the throne and signed a lasting treaty of peace with the elves of Tailimisiä. He was known as a bridge-builder, throwing new constructions across the many rivers of Kjellos and the Reach, as well as a diplomat and peacemaker. When the Ambarites threw the Order of the Forge Divine out of the Bay of Ahrain, it was Baldur who gave them a permanent home in the Five Hamlets of Kjellos.

Prince Solyce fortified the manor further, erecting its outwalls and building up the town. It was during Baldur's reign that the position entitled Lord Protector was created, precisely for Solyce himself. The modern structures that we know on Tyreth hill are courtesy of Prince Solyce, who was later killed in a plot surrounding his reclamation of the ancient imperial castle at Elborg and identification of himself with the imperial pretender Thesus Spear-bearer.

You, my lord, increased the might of the Reach, and made it a true colony of Kjellos.