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Hope you enjoyed the tales.

Both have finally been published in a single volume as originally intended--Jorgan's Saga, Book 3: The Sword in the Dragon.

As promised, we have made the new appendix in that volume available here for free to those who may have purchased one of the individual books and would prefer to purchase the other rather than the more expensive combined volume.

Thanks again for your continued interest in Jorgan's adventures!

 

Appendix

 

 The Kindred Annals Abstract: compiled by Dr. Francis Bendalin, translated by G. K. Werner and edited by Virginia Ann Werner

Eternity

 

War rages in the heavenly realms. Beauzival the Bright, first among the Saervan, makes war on the One, coveting His power, His domain, His very being.

And Beauzival falls. He and his followers from among the Saervan (the Saer Host) and the more numerous but lesser Feyhdvan are cast into the Outer Dark, separated from the One True God’s eternal light. The fallen Saer are renamed Nyr (the Damned); and the fallen Feyhd are renamed Feyhd-ru (the Feyhd Fallen). The loyal Saer remain in the One’s presence. However, the Feyhd who do not rebel are set-aside in Alveron, the Twilight Realm, the world between worlds where it is neither bright nor dark, hot nor cold, and where they will remain immortal, though corporeal and subject to death through mischance or an enemy’s hand; for they cautiously chose neutrality in Beauzival’s war. And so, in Alveron, the Feyhd’elth (the Feyhd-apart) learn to their sorrow that immortality apart from the One is worse than mortality. Far worse!

*

And the One creates the world and its creatures, its moon, the stars; and He creates Emen and Emara—man and woman—to enjoy His wonders. And He commands them to multiply and subdue and rule the perfect new world and every living creature he created for it.

Now the dragon, Marmanil Sarnathr, the Father of Dragons, is the most beautiful and intelligent of creatures, and he resents mankind’s dominion. Beauzival the Fallen, renamed Orm, tells Sarnathr that the One had originally created the world for the dragons; but, after creating the man and the woman, changed His mind and gave it to them instead. Sarnathr believes this lie and makes a pact with Orm who seals the pact in the dragon’s blood since he has none of his own to give. And so Orm enters the world possessing the form of the dragon Sarnathr. Lying to the woman and appealing to the man’s pride, Orm precipitates their destruction.

Then the One casts Orm’s spirit out of the dragon, back into the Outer Dark unlit by moon or star, and the Arch-Saer Thealden battles Marmanil Sarnathr in the now fallen world. The dragon breaks its teeth on Thealden’s shield and then its nails before the Arch-Saer slays Sarnathr, spitting it on his long spear and casting it into the Pit where its wings burn to cinders and where to this day the dragon curls in agony gnawing its tail, awaiting the time it will be joined by Orm and all his followers.

With the fall of the first man and woman, creation falls and the harmony between humankind and beast is broken. Emen and Emara’s descendants—the Kindred—toil in weariness, hardships, and pain unintended for them.

And Orm the Deceiver, together with his followers, immediately sets about their utter corruption, even as the Kindred multiply upon the Great Continent that is all future continents.

The First Age

(The Age of Sorcery)

 

As each new generation is born into the fallen world, the previous generations teach them the One’s truth, of humankind’s disobedience, and the One’s abiding, unconditional love. However, some are born who have no ear for the truth, little desire to learn of the One, and no desire to please or obey Him. They do not teach His truth to their children. In time, the truth is lost. Many who harden their hearts depart from the rest, and soon mythologies and false teachings emerge among them to fill the void left by rejecting the One.

Still others listen to Sarnathr’s progeny, the race of dragons, beautiful creatures who, like their father, have now sold their souls to Orm. They listen to their lies, their false teachings. And a nation of sorcerers rises, the Mage Masters, depraved men granted power and knowledge by Orm and his Nyr. The Mage Masters come to rule much of the world through enticement, deception, and fear.

The mightiest among them form a council of twelve – the Magiss – whose influence grows to dominate the First Age. Through Orm’s power, the Magiss makes contact with the Nyr, inviting them into the world. But they cannot control them or bind them; and they find that these fallen Saer cannot physically manifest in the world as do the loyal Saer who visit in the One’s service. Nyr can only possess willing creatures as Orm did Sarnatha, the first dragon.

Now the giants, descendants of Ogren, the first murderer, eagerly make a pact with these Nyr to serve them. And so, a small group of Nyr walk the earth in giant form causing themselves to be worshipped as gods. They raise stone circles throughout the lands, places of power to which they summon the Kindred and deceived them with false teachings and false prophesies—thus supplanting the Magiss who now seek alternative allies through which to accomplish their ends.

Pretending to serve their Nyr-gods, the Magiss enslave kindred followers as laborers to help them construct power centers, links designed to draw the Lesser Fallen, the Feyhd’ru (the Feyhd-fallen) into the world and bind them to their will—mammoth spheres half beneath and half above ground, citadels hewn of enormous black stones the Mage Masters’ arcane science quarries from the bowels of the earth, cavernous citadels, empty as the Mage Masters’ souls and cold as the Outer Dark to which the One banished their masters. Within these Black Citadels, the Magiss seek to conceal their work from the Nyr—even from the face of the One, as though such a thing were possible.

They recover Marmanil Sarnathr’s spilled blood and the teeth and nails he lost fighting against Thealden. Sarnathr’s blood has formed a pool that they scrape into twelve glass globes, one for each of the twelve Magiss – potent talismans into which Orm poured much of his power. They come to be known as the Dragon Globes or Blood Orbs. With them, they hope to quicken and bind the Feyhd’ru.

*

Now, all things were created by the One, all creatures and all beings. Nothing was created that was not created by Him, neither air nor sea nor land creature, neither Kindred-kind nor any other intelligent being. The One even created winged horses to carry the Saervan who have loved the young world since the days of its creation, and unicorns to carry the Feyhd’elth who often accompany the Saervan when they cross the Rainbow Sea, (sometimes called the Flat Sea or the Straight Sea that touches the world’s curved sea), to wander the world’s surface and explore its wonders, to delight even in its now veiled beauty and tragically brave inhabitants. All these beings and creatures were created by the One, and all were good.

But by Orm’s power, the Magiss warp creation and mock the Creator. They fabricate vessels from the lava of Tep Attl, the ‘High Cauldron’—unnatural bodies drawn by the Dragon’s teeth and nails (‘tooth and nail, tooth and nail’ as the old poem goes), and by Sarnathr’s blood (‘blood calls to blood’)—grown from Marmanil Sarnathr’s substance, his atomies, siphoned through Tep Attl’s lava flowing through deep, subterranean veins into their Black Citadels—an imitation race with hellish grey bodies and glowing red eyes and lava-like blood pumping through their veins—soulless bodies, possessed and quickened by the Feyhd’ru. For these reasons the embodied Feyhd’ru are also called the lava born, the children of the dragon, dragon-spawn, dragon’s teeth, or the Grey—false beings designed to pollute creation, pervert humanity, and drive away the heavenly hosts. They are of two kinds: squat, massive creatures with crusted, rock-like skin and stone-like, gnashing teeth who favor caves and cave like places such as bridges, who in the Fifth Age will come to be called trolls in the North, teklos in Cor and Panthia, and septok in Bartabia and Ptyah and among the tribes of the Southern Continent—and leaner, angular creatures with severely pointed ears, noses, and chins, wide mouths with shark-like teeth, and scaly serpent-like skin, who favor swamps, marshes, and forests and in the Fifth Age will come to be called goblins in the North, necralin in Cor and Panthia, and feez in Bartabia and Ptyah, and among the southern tribes. Feyhd-ru who serve the Magiss where the Nyr will not.

The One sends prophets to warn against following the Nyr called pre-men, naming them, not gods, but the Fallen, the Damned, daemons and arch-daemons, and denouncing their servants, the Magiss. But the unrepentant Kindred rejects His prophets and persecutes His Chosen, handing them over one by one to the Magiss for torture and execution, sacrificing nearly all who stand fast in worshiping the One.

The Saer return to their heavenly halls, and the Feyhd’elth to Alveron, troubled and in deep sorrow.

*

But at the right time, the One rouses them.  In righteous anger, He commands the Saer to destroy the Magiss’ work.

Eagerly hosting and joined by the Feyhd-elth (in hopes of redemption), the Saervan and Feyhdvan cross the Rainbow Sea in their ships of light and divine wind and sweep down upon the desecrated world to purge it of Nyr, Feyhd-ru, and Mage Masters alike in the One’s name and in His might.

Warfare follows. Harrowing battles blast the great deserts and the vast Deadlands into existence before the Saer at last cast the Nyr out of the giants and back into the Outer Dark. The giants flee to the Forever Ice where they are trapped, frozen in icy caverns. The Magiss and all the Mage Masters perish in devastating supernatural warfare. Nothing remains of their works save their doom rings and their massive citadels of black stone – but were the dragon globes, teeth and nails destroyed or lost? Sarnathr’s descendants, the dragons, burrow deep into the black citadels to hide. The Feyhd’elth slay legions of Feyhd’ru in pitched battle and hunt down a thousand more. All are cast into the Cauldron to be unmade, the Feyhd-ru that possessed the lava bodies likewise cast into the Outer Dark where the Nyr dwell. Satisfied, the Saervan and Feyhd’elth hosts withdraw from the world.

Then the One unleashes the Greater Cataclysm, his judgment upon a disobedient and corrupt humanity, steeped in evil and depravity, saving only his prophet Namar together with his wife Namara and their family and with His creatures, two of each kind—preserving the last of those through whom he sent his warnings, last of those who stood firm in his strength and love. The Greater Cataclysm shakes and reshapes the world’s foundations. The seas rise. Mountains shift and fall beneath the waves. New peaks thrust above the watery plain. New oceans form. The Great Continent breaks asunder to form smaller continents and myriad isles rise above in-rushing waters. And, the Black Citadels are buried beneath land and sea, or swallowed by wide fissures that open and close like jaws of vengeance.

Thus ends the First Age in worldwide earthquake and the Great Flood.

 

The Second Age

(The Tribal Age)

 

The maelstrom subsides, and the world’s jewel-like face brightens. The waters recede and Namar and Namara’s barge comes to rest on a high mountain he names Taj Meer. Beneath gently swirling blues and whites, the lush green of forest and field, the rich gold of grain and sand, and the turquoise of sea and lake teem with life, the land blossoming with fruits and vegetables once again. Many Feyhd’elth households reenter the world to observe the unfolding of humanity’s salvation—but only from a distance, seldom mingling, never interfering. In this age, Alveron borders the Kindred Realm along the fringes of the Everwood in the North and in hidden places throughout the Kingdom of Isles, and the Feyhd-elth secretly open gates and smaller doors between the realms to bypass the Rainbow Bridge and be unobserved by Saer in their comings and goings.

Namar’s sons father the Six Kindreds that multiply and divide into tribes, clans, and houses. (Ogren’s giant descendants are wrongly named the Seventh Kindred, for they are not Namar’s descendants—banished and cutoff before the Greater Cataclysm.) Quatha’s kindred remain settled where Namar and Namara’s barge has landed there on a mountain in the center of an isle at the world’s center. But the other five kindreds multiply rapidly, spreading civilization across the three continents: Zimba’s kindred cross to the shores of the Southern Continent and explore its dense jungles and fertile plains; Shallabah’s kindred wander into the Middle East’s deserts; Kodan’s kindred still further to occupy the Far East’s mountains and rolling plains; and Valdir’s kindred and Burradin’s kindred trek into the North’s snowcapped heights and deeply forested valleys. Thus, the Tribal Age witnesses the beginnings of humanity’s exploration and the flourishing of her individual cultures. But peace does not last.

*

For history repeats itself in the Second Age. Two empires rise to prominence: Taj Meer, the Empire of Light at the center of the world whose people worship the One; and Styx, the Dark Empire to its southeast, whose lords remain secretly dedicated to Orm, and whose priests seek Orm’s power.

*

The island of Taj Meer remains peopled by tribes of every kindred and folk descended from Namar and Namara and thus Emen and Emara, those who have remained at world’s center and those who return to Taj Meer’s culture as she prospers. Unlike other parts of the world, they freely intermarry. The Quatha alone keep to themselves on the isle, a separate people called out by the One; and, from the Quatha, Wiseman or Sages are chosen to guide the people in politics and economics. A Council of Judges, chosen by the people, serve in matters of justice. A prophet emerges among the Quatha every generation or so—the Elder Patriarchs—and through some of these the One writes his Great Book revealing his past, his purposes, his truth, his love for all humankind, and the Savior Who is to come. Taj Meerians do not raise temples, but frequently worship the One at spontaneous Gatherings in homes or parks, where they rejoice in the One with singing and dancing. The isle of Taj Meer from which her empire grew is a land of majestic mountains, frothy cascades, pure streams, open woodlands, flowering meadows, honeyed grain-fields, rose-quartz cliffs above crashing surf and pools with pink coral floors; a land of un-walled cities, elegant marble and onyx towers rising to dramatic heights. From her natural harbors, folk embark in her bird-shaped vessels with wing-shaped sails to ply the known seas and return with wealth beyond imagining.

*

Styx contrasts sharply with Taj Meer, its people a mongrel horde composed of tribal outcasts, the barren souls of its Priest-Kings reflected in its geography, a rocky island in the midst of emptiness – the Deadlands, a once fertile plain that had received the brunt of the Saervan’s assault and been consumed in their fiery wrath. Its wind-battered mountains and sun-parched deserts are broken only by the River of  Blood’s richly cultivated valley wherein the Styxian people gather into cities and farming communities that pay tribute to the lords of the dread acropolis, Necra.

Necra—where a Black Citadel is found and unearthed, where a man named Bohl Tavar finds The Book of the Magiss, also called The Book of Twelve, and immerses himself in the art of the deceased Master Mages. Entering into a pact with Orm, he exchanges his soul for power. And Orm the Devourer honors the pact—at the outset—transforming a lowly tavar of a rural province into Styx’s Priest-King, the Arch-Sorcerer Boltavar. The Magiss’ ancient citadel becomes his stronghold in the heart of Necra, the city in the heart of Styx from which his hordes emerge to carve an empire that stretches across half the world.

The Arch-Sorcerer’s Orm-inspired scholarship reveals many things to him previously lost – Orm’s so-called ‘hidden knowledge’. Boltavar proclaims that an advanced, god-like race of benevolent beings inhabited the world prior to humankind’s coming, and that the One unjustly cast out these Pre-men lest humanity be enlightened by their knowledge – Orm’s lie!—the god-like race in reality the fallen Nyr. He locates the site of Sarnathr’s battle with the Ach-Sorcerer Thealden and unearths the stratum at which the Magiss had acquired the dragon’s blood for their blood-orbs. Through Orm’s enabling, he gathers the remaining blood—scattered atomies that he draws into a thirteenth orb. Determining that Tep Attl, the High Cauldron, is the very Pit into which the Arch-Saervan Thealden cast Marmanil Sarnathr, Boltavar uses his new blood-orb and applies his knowledge from the Book of the Magiss to regenerate and muster legions more Feyhd’ru directly from the Cauldron, the Magiss’ race made in imitation of men and Feyhd’elth. They pour forth from the Cauldron’s mouth, hordes of them. He mounts the thirteenth blood-orb atop a scepter he forges to symbolize his world-emperorship.

The Arch-Sorcerer’s armies conquer many lands and enslave many peoples. One of Orm’s dragons rises from Necra’s black citadel to do Bohl Tavar’s bidding. With it, he subdues the Far East where he discovers a second Black Citadel with its dragons. Male and female, they spawn more dragons. His armies conquer and enslave the Southern Continent, the peaceful lands of Zimba where he finds and unearths yet another Black Citadel at the source of three rivers, high in the Skull Mountains. 

Loosing the Feyhd’ru to west and north, the independent continental kindreds fall to him one after the other, cutting off and threatening fair Taj Meer herself. His conceit knows no bounds and his hunger for power waxes with every conquest. He frees the giants from the Forever Ice and revives them to harry the North. He mutates some goblins into bat-winged creatures called winged-ru (gargoyles in the North and Harpies in the South). But still he is not satisfied. He covets power beyond that which the Magiss had wielded. He craves Nyric power for himself, convinced he will find a way to bind and control the Nyr where the Magiss had failed.

The peace-loving Taj Meerians have steadfastly resisted the wars that encroach upon their borders, but now they arm themselves for a battle to the death—and the world is torn by the struggle. The war between Taj Meer and Styx, its carnage and bloodshed, the maneuvering of vast armies and mighty navies, lasts generations and shatters all outlying civilization. Warfare becomes a way of life, century upon century, the citizens of Taj Meer, a people bred to war—an un-winnable war they come to fear, despairing of their freedom in a bleak future. No longer do they trust the One to deliver them but beg of Him an Emperor-King to lead them. And the One grants their request to demonstrate the fatal results of trusting earthly authority above Him.

At first, it does not seem to them a bad thing to be ruled by an absolute monarchy. Their Emperor-King makes alliance with the Feyhd’elth. The Kindred Alliance it is called though the Feyhd’elth are no kindred of humankind. Men and women name them the Twilight Folk, but the Feyhd’elth name themselves the Faded Ones, for their memory is long. Little do they care to interfere in humanity’s affairs, but they fear the Nyr, the so-called Pre-men of Boltavar’s false teaching, and despise any who seek to restore them. Little do they care for war, but well have the Feyhd’elth learned the consequences of neutrality in spiritual matters.

And so, at last, the Kindred Alliance forces break the Arch-Sorcerer’s Feyhd’ru hordes and free Taj Meer’s island-capital. Its siege broken., the Emperor-King and the Feyhd’elth earls lead their warriors in a rout, driving his trolls and goblins back to the Dead Lands of Styx, back to the High Cauldron. Those they catch they cast into the lava from which they were formed, there to burn and be unmade like those of the past age, releasing the Feyhd’ru to the Outer Dark. Not all are caught but the Feyhd’elth then seal the Cauldron and, with Taj Meer won, the Arch-Sorcerer’s centuries-long world-rule comes to an end.

The ragged bands of Styxians who escape flee into the deserts. The giants who had fought for the Arch-Sorcerer flee back to Frostwold and escape into Alveron’s Ice Border. And so too, scattered remnants of goblin and troll armies, escape into the dark corners of the world, deep into the earth’s shadowed passageways, some even slipping through the doors the Feyhd-elth had inadvisably made, fleeing into Alveron, the fabled Twilight Realm itself.  

But the Arch-Sorcerer has fled back to Necra, and the Alliance now lays siege to his acropolis, his Black Citadel. Yet even at bay, trapped within his mammoth fortress, the Arch-Sorcerer cannot be taken, and he remains a deadly threat to free peoples everywhere. His massive, towering gates hold fast.

Finally, at the Feyhd-elth’s insistence, the allies seek the One’s intervention.

And the One hears them.

Inexplicably, the Kindred forces break camp and depart from Necra, even the Dead Lands. The Arch-Sorcerer marvels at their sudden cowardice. Then the reason for their departure becomes clear to him.

The One unleashes the Lesser Cataclysm. The Dead Lands, Styx’s barren plain, collapses. Necra, the City of Power, crumbles, its acropolis splitting asunder. Blood River widens to become an ocean, and the Arch-Sorcerer’s Black Citadel sinks beneath the purifying waves of in-rushing seas. And Boltavar falls, his shattered body lost to the depths.

Thus ends the Second Age in earthquake and flood.

The Third Age

(the Age of Taj Meer)

 

However, with the Arch Sorcerer’s fall, humanity’s true corruption is revealed. Over the next century, it is neither Orm nor Bohl Tavar nor Nyr nor Feyhd’ru, nor any manifestation of Styxian sorcery that brings about Taj Meer’s doom—but the very heart of the Quatha, having grown cold and turned from the One. Ruled by kings of their own choosing, they worship science now as God.

Taj Meer grows corrupt from within. Her rulers become seekers of power and wealth, power for its own sake, worshipers of self – greedy, immoral, and overbearing. Within a generation, a new emperor-king has become a tyrant, leading them into still further transgressions. And each succeeding Quatha emperor-king grows more depraved and power hungry than the last—all but Jahaire, the only woman to reign, and the only emperor to seek the One.

With internal peace comes scientific advancements, transforming Taj Meer into a realm of unparalleled marvels—not a nation of sorcerers such as the Magiss had arisen from—Oh no!—but a realm of science, and the Quatha pride themselves upon their achievements, trusting in human knowledge and technology rather than the One through whom they received such knowledge and ingenuity. And Taj Meer’s greatest conceit is commencing the construction of a Spiral Stairway to Heaven by which humanity might reach the stars and become gods.

And so, the One determines that Taj Meer will be no more, forever.

But first, yet again, he sends his prophet to warn the people – Beneniah, last of the Elder Patriarchs. Tirelessly, Beneniah strides the cobbled streets exhorting the people, time and again crying out to any who will listen, any who will hear of the One’s love, and heed the One’s warning, be they Quatha or other kindreds or mixtures of kindreds. Beneniah speaks in households, before assemblies, finally before Taj Meer’s emperor-king himself, issuing the One’s decree. But the people, all but a few, will not hear him.  They scoff at him, spit upon him, and beg their leaders to remove him from their sight. The emperor-king orders Beneniah imprisoned. Without trial, his execution will take place the following day.

That very night, the One sends Brand, his Saervan warrior, to open the door to Beneniah’s prison; and he sends other Saer to guide the One’s own from the city—the Quatha who remained true, trusted Him, or turned to the One, heeding His warning. Down to the docks they pass unhindered to board ships of light and wind. And the Saervan transport them across the Inner Sea to the shores, where Feyhd’elth stand with their pole-lanterns waiting to escort them to safety in Bartabia’s deserts where they will wander—a people without a home. And the marvel of it is that no prince or ruler or captain or guardsman see the Remnant Quatha go, neither the emperor-king nor his high priest. For the One had blinded them all. Since the Taj Meerians refuse to see his truth, neither do they see his Chosen escaping Taj Meer’s doom.

For when this has been accomplished—on the very morning upon which Beneniah had been sentenced to die—even as the Saervan sail home across the Rainbow Sea, the One loosens Taj Meer’s foundations, and the once graceful isle sinks beneath the waves—as did Necra—never to rise again.

Thus ends the Third Age in earthquake and flood.

The Fourth Age

(the Age of Migration)

 

With the fall of Taj Meer the Once Golden, civilization collapses.

Throughout the world, tribal kingdoms fragment into warring factions harried by barbarian forces, the outcasts and banished houses and clans of various kindreds in the northwest plus Styxian refugee bands along the Inland Sea’s southern coastlines and rivers. Chaos reigns. Arts and sciences are lost. Pre-men worshipers establish the first man-made false religions—druidism in the north and astrology in the south—people worshipping creation rather than the Creator, denying the One’s sovereignty.

The Quatha still follow the One, but they wander Bartabia now, nomadic tribes and clans dispersed throughout the deserts.

Similarly, Burradin’s folk disperse throughout many lands, seeking markets for their metal arts.

The Feyhd’elth, however, also withdraw completely from human affairs following Taj Meer’s fall. Dismayed by humanity’s depravity, they seclude themselves mostly in the Everwood and the vast forests of the Far North where they are called elves, but also in unchartered isles in the Major Inland Sea, and in hidden vales and groves among the Island Kingdoms where they are called nim’phae (female) and nym’phaun (male). They become the stuff of legend and myth.

*

When the Kindred Alliance broke Styx’s power on the Great Continent, Slaegon, who had been Arch Sorcerer Boltavar’s captain in the north, fled to the Black Citadel in the maw of the Worm’s Bed Mountains at the eastern most end of the Great North Sea. There, over the century it takes Taj Meer to fall into corruption and then into the sea, scattered remnants of the Arch Sorcerer’s Feyhd’ru armies, including the winged-ru (called gargoyles in the north and harpies in the southern climes), along with other foul creatures have steadily flocked to him. The Warlock King, they call him. And he labors to unearth and decipher the Magiss’ eldritch legacy as his minions, the Feyhd’ru, grow in strength and numbers, spreading west across the Northland. Seeing this threat to their own mountains and forests, the dwarves of the Mineral Mountains and the Feyhd’elth of the Everwood arm themselves and go to war together once again. They drive the Warlock King’s fell servants into the Dread Doom Mountains, where they hold them in check. For a time! Meanwhile, Slaegon gains strength and increases his knowledge.

Out in the wide world among Namar and Namara’s descendants, heroes emerge to spearhead the battle for law and order, leaders who establish a variety of independent kingdoms.

Zimba’s descendants – Kabba, Shunda, Takka, Tufi and Tonga who have settled into river-based villages and hunting communities across the Southern Continent’s magnificent terrain—found the fabled Black Kingdoms.

Of Shallabah’s descendants: Kur, Ana, and Masubi father nomadic tribes in Bartabia; Pty fathers the river-based tribe of lush Ptyah; Tarkas takes the Steppes and Table Lands to Bartabia’s north; Mottchek crosses into the Grasslands where his descendants split into Vosh and Goffic tribes; and Hendi and Nesh cross the firth onto the Eastern Continent to found cities in Hendia.

Kodan’s descendants—Py, Nan and Ho—drive the dragons out of the Far East and found Tambin, the Morning Kingdoms; and Tanonga crosses vast water to the Lonely Continent where his tribal descendants later revere him as Great Father.

Of Valdir’s descendants: Coris maintains lands throughout the Peninsula and Central River Lands; Arcadins sails into the Inland Sea’s archipelago to build city-states that become the Island Kingdoms; but Pallae migrates into the forested plains and green hills of the Crescent Mountains’ northwest, Tuthar into the Forest Wilds above the Crescent Mountains, and Beorn’s Folk, Langdon’s Folk, Kell’s Folk, and Mak’s Folk sail into the far north.

Quatha’s descendants, now called the Lost Kindred (though in reality having only been hidden, scattered, and wandering), secretly re-gather in Bartabia’s deserts to which their forebears had fled from sinking Taj Meer, renaming themselves the Quatha bak Shee, the Quatha in Exile. They build the Citadel of Goldensand on the Edge of the Desert Night—their only permanent home, its location a guarded secret. Despite the One’s pronouncement to the contrary, they build in imitation of Taj Meer’s architecture, longing to see the land of divine grace restored to its original height before corruption and depravity set in.

In many parts of the world, prejudice against the Burradin has increased along with their wealth and their metallurgy’s prestige, so too does jealousy of the dwarves’ long lives undiminished from the First Age when members of all six kindreds lived nearly a thousand years. The secretive dwarf folk are accused of plotting incursions with brigands or barbarians, or blamed for economic collapse, even crop-failures and plagues. As a result, dwarf folk begin departing their adopted lands, in ever increasing numbers, journeying north to join their cousins in the Crescent Mountains, and still further into the mountains of the far north, the Delvings and the Mineral Mountains, where they withdraw deeper into their mines to advance their art and find peace. In time, they find and tunnel through doorways that lead into Alveron, doorways the Feyhd’elth thought to be locked safely in stone. Over the centuries, like the Feyhd’elth, Burradin’s folk fade in kindred memory, relegated to the realms of legend and children’s tales

*

Now the folk of Beorn—seafarers Langdon, Kell, and Mak—sail into the far north, reaching islands that had remained half-mythical till the day of their landing—a large, fair island and a smaller equally green one northwest of the Great Continent. They name the larger isle Brythland, the Bright Land, in memory of Taj Meer; for though its early morning fogs and frequent rains might belie its name, there is truly no brighter, crisper realm in all the world when the clouds part and golden sunrays slant down to bathe its flowered hills and dales, its leafy green forests and purple moors in bold relief. Langdon’s Folk choose its southern rolling downs and the virgin forest fringes of its midlands for their steads and villages. Mak’s Folk choose its northern highland wilderness. Kell’s Folk choose its southwestern peninsula where their Prince Weyl dies, giving it his name—Weyl’s End. His clan crosses over to the smaller isle, settling that hilly, emerald, cliff-walled land and naming it Kel’ire.

But Beorn’s folk, who had made their ships, choose to sail on, to see what lies beyond. Crossing the Great North Sea to the steep, mountain walled waterways of the far north, battered and driven by a fierce sea-storm, they make landfall at a place they name Fiordhaven.

The Brythlanders prosper, farming the fertile valleys and profiting from timber and wool they export across the channel to Pallavarre. Tuthlanders prosper in the fur trade. And the Northlanders prosper because it is their ships by which all trade goods change hands. Harassed occasionally by Feyhd’ru that evaded the Feyhd’elth-Dwarf Alliance’s net, Northlanders and Brythlanders grow into a hearty and determined folk out of which heroes and knights arise to battle the evil remnants of the past. Unknowingly protected as well by Buradin’s Folk and especially the Feyhd’elth, Brythland and the Northland, like many kingdoms to the south, spur humanity forward on its long climb back toward civilization.

The Fifth Age

(The Age of Empire—Part One)

 

Ptyahns have built their cities on the border of Styx’s cursed empire, a river-based people, growing in power to become the first of the new empires, its political power center established where the River of the Gods empties into the Inland Sea like a snake with its mouth open as though ready to strike northward and swallow the Island Kingdoms’ archipelago whole.

The Dead Lands, which lie to Ptyah’s east, are now called the Sunken Lands, or more often the Daemon Sea, the reason forgotten by many. The barren and forbidding shelf-land bordering the Daemon Sea is now called the Dead Lands, and the Ptyans build their tombs and monuments in the ruins found there—Tierapid, a center of religion, a place of pilgrimage and worship.  The priests and cults of Tierapid, descendants of the Styxians who survived the Lesser Cataclysm will not rest till they have uncovered and mastered all the Magiss’ arts.  They gain possession of a dragon globe and finally succeed in summoning Pre-men to inhabit creatures warped to their own designs—half-man, half-beast hosts for Ptyah’s gods – Hset, the serpent god, chief among them. Tep Attl, they name the Cauldron of the Gods, and Ptyahns come to believe it is where the beast-gods created all life. Hset’s priests come to exercise powerful influence upon Ptyah’s royal house. It is not long before Styx has re-emerged on the Southern Continent in the form of a Ptyahn hierarchy, led by the beast-gods’ priesthood.

Ptyah—the oldest of the empires.

*

To Ptyah’s southwest, the loose confederation of Black Kingdoms in Shundaland and Tongaland join to form a tribal league—Zimba Ka—the Black Empire ruled by Zimba’s direct descendant—an empire to rival Taj Meer.

*

The dragons proliferate in the Far Reaches, descending again upon the peaceful Morning Kingdoms. Like Orm’s Marmanil, they deceive Kodan’s descendants into believing they are beautiful, wise, benevolent, gift-bearing creatures. They choose a power-hungry man to empower as their emperor, uniting Tambin for the first time, forging the Morning Kingdoms into a mighty empire—the Xaichen Empire. The people support each new emperor because they believe the dragons are divine ‘powers’ whose favor rests on these chosen. The Dragon Emperors build and expand a Sub-Palace in Do Ming, imitating the Black Citadels. They dig tunnels leading out and up into the Dragon Mountains – secret tunnels (the existence of which is lost to future generations) through which they consult with their dragon-masters and through which the dragons whisper their lies. Corrupted by Orm, the Dragon Emperors overreach themselves, sacrificing to Orm and preparing to conquer the world in Orm’s name.

But rebellion takes place, preventing the dragons’ scheme. Ty Tan Shing, a heroic warrior, arises to unseat the Dragon Emperor and drive Orm’s dragons into the north. He becomes the first Sun-Emperor, so named for bringing light into Xaichen’s darkness.

But Artiman Jezaar appears as Tzao the Sun-Prophet and plants his All-Is philosophy, replacing the dragon’s beast worship that had replaced World Mother Ria’s nature-worship. He takes the Magiss’ circle works, found in ruins or impressions beneath the surface, for his symbol, claiming that they are still power centers. Jezaar convinces a later emperor that he is divine like him—a Divine Sun-Emperor and his Divine Prophet.

For a long time, Xaichen, the Sun-Empire does not look to the west or seek to interfere in its affairs, content to nurture its own culture and peace between its people in the aftermath of Boltavar’s destructive rule.

*

The independent city-states of the Island Kingdoms prosper. Their mountainous isles make inland travel risky at best, and so their people become shipbuilders and sailors the likes of which the world has never known. Their art and learning spread rapidly. Their knowledge of the world’s geography increases.

Though not an empire, their democratic city-states, roving spirit, and burgeoning trade monopolies, grow to challenge and provoke the Ptyahn Empire while instilling envy among her enslaved masses—until a tyrant named Kah’laam gains power in Arachne and forms alliances with other city-states to consolidate governments, unshackle judges from the laws of the land, and limit freedom—a ruthless would-be world-emperor who transforms the Island Kingdoms into the unified Kingdom of Isles.

 

This is the world of Dallus of the Isles, a hero among heroes during the Island Kingdoms’ Heroic Age.

 

 

The Fifth Age

(The Age of Empire—Part Two)

 

And so, Kah’laam, the Tyrant of Panthia is at last overthrown by Prince Wakeesa, heir to Zimba Ka’s throne, and Dallus of the Isles, slaves who gathered the heroes of their day into a band of warriors to free the isles of his brutal grasp.

Kah’laam flees back to Ptyah to lick his wounds and study more deeply Styx’s arcane knowledge in the Magiss’ Book of Twelve. He reverses his name to Malak, and from that day forth will work only from behind the world’s thrones—his Game Within.

Soon, Malak wreaks his vengeance on Prince Wakeesa. Shapeshifting with his father’s chief advisor, he learns Zimba Ka’s defenses. Next he mutates Frostwold giants into imitation Ptyahn beast-gods, weir creatures possessed by Nyr which he summons from the Outer Dark—a snake-god, hawk-god, crocodile-god, and feline longfang-god—then sets them loose on the peaceful kingdom, decimating its people and driving the rest into exile.

King Wakeesa and his spear-slayers make a stand in their cliffside capitol against Malak wier-gods, giving his son, Prince Wakeesa time to lead his people out. They slay all but one of Malak's creatures--the longfang that takes his life.

Malak sends remnant bands of Feyhd-ru raiding throughout the Land of Three Rivers, creating the myth that septok and feez infest the realm. Renamed Zimba Ru, the Land of Three Rivers becomes uninhabited--Malak's first behind the scenes manipulation a success.

Meanwhile, Dallus, the One’s choice as Panthia’s first high-king, rules justly—a scholar and patron of the arts, a man of peace, unafraid to fight evil. He restores worship of the One, personal freedom thrives, individual isles retain their authority, and the Kingdom of Isles establishes peace with its neighbors. He founds the Great Library on Arachni, and commissions Zippopolus to draw the first world map.

It is Panthia’s Golden Age and the Kingdom of Isles, along with the new King Wakeesa’s Tonga-Shunda-Kabba League, remain unconquered until threatened by Cor.

*

But to the north, Brythland’s and the Northland’s peace will soon be destroyed by the Warlock King’s aggression.

Between the twin peaks called Worm’s Teeth, Slaegon the Warlock King has made the Black Citadel his palace-fortress—the Citadel of Daemons, it is called by those who come there to serve or come there to die. He controls the ancient order of Druids through his apprentice-sorcerer, the Chief-Druid Smirnal, and the druids in turn make deep inroads, controlling many of the northern peoples. Blocked to the north of his Daemon Citadel by the Feyhd’elth—Dwarf alliance, he covets Brythland and conspires to rule it as the first step on his road to world dominion. Leaving Smirnal and another of his servants, Kveldulf the Evening-Wolf—a wier—to hold his palace, command his trolls and draw the north under his sway, the Warlock King sails to Brythland undetected by Feyhd’elth or dwarf.

Slaegon lands on a shale beach at the foot of a high escarpment called Fellskar on the north coast of Pucland, Brythland’s unsettled western peninsula. There, beneath a barrow—a nameless Third Age Taj Meeran sea-lord’s tomb—he uncovers another Black Citadel that has been buried by the Greater Cataclysm and gathers his goblin armies to him. And there, Clionastra comes to him, Malak’s ex-lover, Malak’s betrayer, now calling herself Morrigan, Old Mother Crow, so that Malak will believe he succeeded in slaying her. She and Slaegon become lovers, she his Witch Queen; and with the knowledge she has gained from Malak combined with his own, Slaegon waxes powerful.

Together, they devise a new evil. Mutating wicked men into human mockeries, they use a dragon globe Clionastra has stolen from Malak to summon Nyr from the Outer Dark to possess them – twisted shells the northern folk name ogres.

His goblins rapidly infest Pucland, spread along the mountainous spine of Lands End, and soon become the scourge of Brythland’s countryside, raiding the Farafields and Heath Lands that border Pucland on the east, and the more populous Forest Lands and High Lands beyond the Purple Mountains, making travel impossible except in large companies. The first prong of his assault on Brythland begins with marauding goblin bands destroying crops and stealing or slaying livestock. Soon, men are being slain in their fields, women in their homes and children stolen from their cots. Before long, goblin armies, led by ogres begin taking strongholds and fortified towns. Trade comes to a standstill. And a treasure pile, the size of a low hill, rises within the cavernous barrow above Fellskar’s Black Citadel—his minions ill-gotten gains—an inexhaustible resource financing his nefarious plans.

*

Meanwhile, Smirnal had been busy bending Tuthons to his will in behalf of the Warlock King, organizing their wild, constantly quarreling tribes into a druid-ruled kingdom, and rousing them to war against the Brythlanders. When Slaegon deems the time to be ripe, Tuthon warriors will form the second prong of his assault on Brythland.

And Kveldulf has been no less busy, setting the trolls of the Dread Doom Mountains to burrowing beneath their blockaders. They emerge into the Delvings where the dwarves have mined the deepest.  There they slay many of Burradin’s Folk. Then Kveldulf leads a troll army out into the Northland Dales, burning villages by night and driving Beorn’s Folk back to the fiord.

But the Northlanders are made of sterner stuff than the Warlock King or his lieutenants had anticipated. Led by Veylan Smith—a famed forger of bronze and steel, and trusted friend to the dwarves of the Mineral Mountains—the Northlanders make their stand on Beacon Hill and the Tumble Downs. Turning the tide, they press the troll army back through the Dales, herding them against the hammers and axes of the rallied dwarves, and onto the naked blades of their allies, the Feyhd’elth.

For a time, there is peace in the Northland, but little safety. The dwarves and elves (for so the Northlanders have named Burradin’s Folk and the Feyhd’elth) melt into their mountains and forest, leaving the Northlanders alone to defend their own. For, though the troll army has been broken and scattered, wandering troll bands waylay travelers, and lone trolls hide beneath bridges or fallen stones, in haystacks or lonely woods to molest the unwary. Even winged-ru, called gargoyles, become a threat as they were in Brythland, swooping out of the night sky to snatch livestock and children up in their talons. Veylan’s son, Ander Smith, leads the newly established Watch, its riders ever on the alert.

*

Across the sea in Brythland, a mighty warrior arises—Cedric Redbeard. A band of determined knights forms around him, expert horsemen, unmatched with spear and sword, to stem the tide of death, destruction, and fear—the Knights of the Realm. They banish the few druids their people have tolerated and, with Cedric at their fore, herd the goblin bands from the countryside, re-take the ogres’ castles and towns, and rescue many women and children from horrifying slavery. As the One gives them victory upon victory, knights and kings alike eagerly lend Cedric their sword for the honor of being dubbed his vassals.

Enraged by Cedric Redbeard’s lightening-swift victories, Slaegon marshals his Fellskar forces and sends word to Smirnal (who has instilled an iron discipline in Slaegon’s Tuthon subjects), and commands him to rouse their ire against Brythland. Three hundred and seventy-two Tuthon ships set sail, prepared to invade their neighbor’s island as Slaegon unleashes his Feyhd’ru hordes upon Brythland in a wave of terror, swarming across the Netherbarrens and onto the Langdon Plain—the Warlock King’s two-pronged invasion begins.

But Northland long ships have kept watch along the Tuthon coast, and Smirnal’s armada sails into ambush even as Cedric’s Knights of the Realm together with those of his vassals and allies ride down the Purple Mountain’s eastern slope to meet Slaegon’s hordes on the Langdon Plain—a nightmarish clash of tooth, nail and cruelly notched blade against the clean steel of Brythlander spear and broadsword.

It is the Battle of Brythland, later called Brythland’s First Defense. The Battle of Langdon Plain lasts a day and a night, but at sunrise the Warlock King’s forces give ground, and Cedric’s forces drive them steadily back, pressing them toward Pucland, even as the Tuthon ship carrying Smirnal turns tail and runs from the sea battle. The Northland fleet sinks the last of the Tuthon transports at sea off the isles that comes to be known as Sea Grave.

That evening, on the other side of Brythland, the goblin armies rally to make a stand at the Doom Ring, hoping the cold black monuments of the Magiss’ age will somehow empower their victory. Many a knight and soldier die in the Doom Ring’s moon-shadow. Like the Battle of Langdon Plain, the Battle of the Doom Ring lasts all night and into the morning hours, but the One gives Brythland a resounding victory that day. Cedric’s knights break Slaegon’s lines and battle becomes rout as the Fellskar hordes disperse, fleeing into the Nether Barrens of Pucland, frantically seeking the safety of the Deathdrum Mountains and the Withering Wood.

On the bluffs above Pucland’s barren plain, Cedric Redbeard is hailed as Brythland’s first high king. The kingdoms of forest, highland, peninsula, plain and isle unite beneath his banner. And at Land’s End, deep in the Black Citadel, Warlock King and Witch Queen tremble.

*

Cedric commissions a wall to be constructed along the low line of cliffs separating Brythland from Pucland, and strongholds to be raised—Castle North and Castle South on the coasts to north and south, and Kiranhold, the Twilight Castle at the wall’s midpoint. A Marshall is appointed who will guard and maintain the enormous wall and keep its strongholds—Sir Alden, an old and dear friend of the high king’s—and the office of Marshall will be handed down generation upon generation within his family. His knights patrol the line of demarcation as the work begins, and eleven years later, with the Great Wall’s completion, ride its length—the Kiran Riders, riding their steeds along its wide allure (walkway), so massive and thick is its stonework. Any troll, goblin or ogre caught in the Bright Land after that is cast from its height. Any gargoyle flying over its wall falls to the Kiran Riders’ deadly arrows.

*

Now Cedric knows that only the Warlock King’s death will ensure lasting peace for Brythland. However, in his desperation, he fails to seek the One’s will. And so, Cedric Redbeard makes a grave error, one that might cost him his life and send his immediate descendants to early graves. Instead of trusting the One to bring him victory, he looks to his own strength, deeming he needs a weapon to match the Warlock King’s sorcery. He calls a Counsel of Three—Feyhd-elth, Burradin, and Brythlanders—which Burradin’s Folk and the Feyhd’elth reluctantly attend. Cedric appeals to Zimzom, the Dwarf King to have his people fashion a sword of great strength and flexibility, using their most advanced tools and skills. And he appeals to Eldric, the Elf King, and to Earl Corrigan, the Highlander Feyhd’elth ruler, to use the ancient runes of power to make the sword both deadly and invincible.

Needless to say, the Dwarf and Elf lords refuse—Burradin’s Folk because they guard their techniques and abilities, ‘not for the likes of men’ (for they have come to think of themselves as a race apart with their tunnels connecting the Kindred Realm with Alveron—and the Feyhd’elth declare the use of runes prohibited by the One. Neither will become the enemy they loathe. Cedric the High King returns to his realm embittered and frustrated.

Here Orm the Power Seeker sees his opportunity. He sends two of his own to the high king of Brythland, a dwarf and an elf—Illugi and Skirnir—traitors to their folk. They offer Cedric that which he seeks in return for riches. Together they will forge a sword, its molten metal the contents of a fallen star mixed with mighty spells, forged on sorcery’s anvil. Illugi designs and forges it—a two-handed, double-edged longsword, its pommel and both sides of its hilt set with sapphires each the size of a man’s fist, the star-shaped knife-pronged hilt made of jet-black metal inlaid with red lettering—Skirnir having dared apply the forbidden Runes of Orm. The blade glows silvery blue, even in the dark. And so, Cedric obtains his powerful weapon. Frostflame Cedric names his sword for its bright, cold beauty—though King’s Bane will be its name for generations to come.

His sword!—That is Orm’s doing, of course, sowing the seeds of future disaster, planted against the day of Orm’s incarnation, Orm’s personal rule.

*

Deep within a mammoth black citadel far below the Daemon Sea’s surface, a broken, misshapen, black-robed form sits an ancient onyx throne. Still as death, he has sat there down the long corridor of centuries.

Then one day, from the ever-night at the bottom of the sea, Belis, a Nyr in mer-creature form enters the gloomy, lichen-lit hall bearing a sword—Frostflame’s twin, cut from the same fallen star as Frostflame. Dripping seawater, Belis crosses the wide stone floor and places the sword before the dark figure so that it spans the throne’s massive arms pommel to point. And then the Nyric mer-thing vanishes, leaving no sign of its coming save the sword and the wet prints of webbed feet.

A twisted, sinewy hand emerges from dark robes to haltingly caress the glowing, blood-red blade. A rasping sound that is almost laughter rattles within the hood’s deep folds. Cedric does not know of Firefreeze—Frostflame’s sister-sword—forged and rune-carved by Illugi’s and Skirnir’s skill from the same star-metal upon the same forge; Cedric does not know that the twin swords link their owners mind to mind; nor that Firefreeze has been delivered to Boltavar on his throne in the deeps.

For, the Arch-Sorcerer, Bohl Tavar, had cried out to his master as he fell, begging Orm to spare his life—and the Deceiver had heeded his servant’s cry. His body all but shattered—Boltavar has survived the fall of Styx and the sinking of his Black Citadel—physically paralyzed yet terribly awake to all that Orm promises him as he plots Styx’s restoration, biding his time there at the bottom of the Daemon Sea—waiting, waiting.

*

Again hosting his Knights of the Realm and their liege warriors, King Cedric Redbeard launches his assault against Fellskar Keep. They ride out of Kiranhold like an avenging wind, across the Nether Barrens, skirting the Deathdrum Mountains and thunder down the coast of Lands End. Slaegon sees their coming from his Black Citadel, and flees by ship taking his Witch Queen, Morrigan, to his Daemon Citadel.

Cedric sends to Veylan who gathers his fleet once again, and together they sail across the Great North Sea to slay the Warlock King. The Tuthons meet them on the rocky coast below the walls of Slaegon’s palace-fortress but cannot stand against Frostflame’s onslaught. His trolls desert the walls, so great is their panic at the whirling might of the giants’ blue flaming sword. They fling open a side gate and pour up the mountain slopes.

Thus, Cedric and Veylan gain entrance to Slaegon’s citadel. Cornered in his daemon-haunted palace, the Warlock King makes his stand against Cedric’s Frostflame—and loses his head in the effort. But Morrigan slips deeper into the Black Citadel, descending into its uttermost depths, sealing doors at her back. She has used too much of her sorcery. Weakened, her age showing and taxing her, she must sleep her sleep of restoration. Kveldulf slinks off, and Smirnal disappears, deserting their master in the carnage and confusion.

Thus ends the Warlock King’s reign of terror.

*

Boltavar reasons that Slaegon was a minor piece to sacrifice to bind Brythland’s high kings in his bid to enter and rule the world. A horribly twisted hand caresses Firefreeze’s blade, Frostflame’s twin. Grotesquely crooked lips smile.

*

But war against the Tuthons continues, Pallavarre taking the brunt of their assaults. Having acquired a taste for conquest, thanks to Smirnal’s influences, and left un-satiated and mortified by their armada’s misadventure,(never again will they go to sea), the Tuthons begin by harrying Pallavarre’s northeastern frontier.

LaFinnda is Pallavarre’s legendary heroine embodying all the virtues and beauty of that fertile countryside. She and Cedric meet on the battlefield when he comes to aid her kingdom against the Tuthons who have reached Pallavarre’s throne. Together, they press the Tuthons back into their vast forestland.

He falls in love with her and, flush with victory, means to annex Pallavarre to Brythland and march on the road to empire for a worthy cause—the restoration of Taj Meer—a thing against the One’s will, having decreed ‘It shall not rise again’. Orm has whispered to him.

LaFinnda begs him not to. She suspects the sword’s influence in such madness. She loves him in return and wins him to her, telling Cedric he may possess either the sword or her.

He sheaths Frostflame, pledging only to draw it again if Brythland or Pallavarre are about to fall, forsaking the sword Frostflame—an answer to her prayers. Thus, Cedric Redbeard eludes his doom through her love.

LaFinnda marries him, Pallavarre remains independent, and their son inherits Brythland’s throne. Their daughter marries a Pallavarren prince, and she inherits Pallavarre’s throne from her mother, establishing the tradition of a ruling queen and prince-consort. The people name Pallavarre’s capital city after her.

And so Brythland and the free folk of the Northland enter a time of peace and prosperity. Their High-King, Cedric Redbeard, builds Califax, the Rainbow Keep, where, as in Pallavarre, scholarship and the arts flourish.

Many of his descendants, however, do not avert Frostflame’s curse, succumbing to the sword’s allure; time and again wielding it in battle against their foes—time and again falling to the fate the first High King had avoided by heeding LaFinnda and turning to the One for his kingdom’s safety and protection, Seeing fellow Brythland lords as rivals, enemies to be controlled or vanquished—betrayal, madness, or death mark their end. Each king after Cedric Redbeard

 

*

Cor, greatest of the Fifth Age empires, rises in the west at the Great Continent’s center. Soon Cor has united her neighboring tribes along the peninsula. At first Cor is a republic, rapidly expanding its borders through trade and alliance. The Coren Senate annexes the Central Princedoms to one by one become Coren Provinces, establishes colonies on the Southern Continent’s northern most shores, and expands Cor’s merchant fleet to rival Panthia’s own. Ivory and exotic furs and foods flow into Cor, endless waves of grain from Sishkan’s wide plains.

But the Coren Republic and its vast territories are not at peace. Trade wars constantly bring Cor and Panthia to the brink of war. North of Cor, beyond the Crescent Mountains, lies the vast and mysterious Tuthon Forest. The semi-barbaric Tuthons have fallen back into divided tribes led by various chiefs and petty kings, periodically crossing the mountains to raid the fertile Central Provinces for cattle and slaves. To the east, the Goffs and the Vosh, mongrel horse clans composed of a mix of Py and Tarkas descendants, roam the vast plains stretching south through the Grass Lands to Hendia and as far east as Xaichen where they harry the Sun-Empire when not sweeping down out of the Far Reaches and crossing the Sea of Grass above the Minor Inland Sea to raid Cor’s vast grain fields and terrorize Sishkan.

From her self-imposed isolation deep within her dead lover’s Daemon Citadel, Morrigan’s astral presence whips Goff and Vosh into a united frenzy. She  gathers their reins into her own hands in an attempt to conquer Xaichen and Hendia, hoping to carve out an empire of her own. But the Sun Emperors keep her in check and later, with Malak’s covert assistance, drastically weaken her minions, shattering the Goffs and the Vosh back into rival clans.

To the west, Cords—descendants of outcasts from the Ana and Kur tribes who over the centuries migrated west across the Southern Continent, crossing deserts, jungles, mountains, and finally the Great Rapids to turn north onto the Great Continent—now harry Cor’s western frontier. To the south, the Pirates of Jallapoint, a loose confederation of freebooters, have grown powerful enough to threaten Cor’s shipping in the Major Inland Sea. In addition, Cor’s colonies, strung out from Aradh in the east to the Sugaan River in the west, are in constant danger from the jungle’s head-hunting tribes and the desert’s brigand-bands. Cor maintains an uneasy alliance with Prince Wakeesa’s descendants, the noble Chieftains of the Tonga tribes beyond the Sugaan River, but they are warriors who do not entirely approve of so-called civilization and the uses to which their people are put on Coren plantations and deep inside Coren mines. Then Ptyah, coveting Cor’s rich and diverse trade, begins making encroachments, encouraging jungle and desert tribes to raid Cor’s holdings, inciting violence and dissension within Coren colonies and protectorates, and expanding her empire by conquering Aradh coastlands and adjacent territories.

In times of heightened pressures on her borders, the Coren Senate elects an emperor-general, an Imperiator, with absolute power to wage war against her enemies, each imperiator wielding more delegated power and authority than the last. Cor’s standing army is divided into five parts: the Central Legion to the north, the Boarder Legion to the west, the Crescent Legion in the foothills and mountains to the east, the Colonial Legion which together with the War-Fleet, patrols the seas and supports Cor’s colonies along the Southern Continent’s coast, and the Flying Legion called to where the need is—each with its own coequal general, all five of whom come under the elected imperiator’s absolute authority to wage war when Cor’s security is at greatest risk. Though still a republic, the stage is set for Cor to emerge as the mightiest empire the world has seen since Taj Meer.

Cor and Ptyah go to war, a clash of powers not unlike Styx and Taj Meer, though on a lesser scale. Coren citizens fear for their republic, and not without good reason, their legions spread across the world, their neighbor Panthia, the Kingdom of Isles, still unconquered. A stalemate exists between Cor and Panthia—Cor’s superior legions held at bay by Panthia’s superior war-fleet – and Ptyah, Panthia’s old enemy, poised to crush them one at a time.

But the hero of the day is a young senator, Tacit Arillian, who brokers peace with Cor’s rival—an alliance signed by Panthia’s Philosopher-King (as her rulers have been called since Dallus’ time).  Panthia’s classical art and architecture is spared, and Cor left politically dominant—Panthia’s culture saved at great cost to her independence.

With Panthia’s support, Cor defeats Ptyah, but her legions do not occupy the ancient empire’s fertile valley. Tacit Arillian, now Imperiator, binds Ptyah in a treaty subjecting the empire to the republic’s over-lordship – an uneasy peace no one, not even Tacit Arillian suspects has been manipulated by Malak in the guise of Nil Set, the Ptyahn Septeth’s high-priest and advisor. Through his Hidden Circle, a network of personally trained spies, Malak has worked to preserve Ptyah’s existence, sustaining the ancient centers of Styxian power vital to his plans. The treaty with Cor, a temporary measure, will ensure Ptyah’s autonomy, though the annual tribute, fattening Cor’s coffers, causes the Septeth and Hseti Priests to chafe in subjection to Cor’s Senate.

Cor has become the center of the world.

*

But far to her north, an evil long thought dead or dispelled has awakened to re-gather its power, refocus its efforts.

The Chief-Druid, Smirnal, now comes to Pucland. Within Fellskar’s Black Citadel, using the sorcery he learned from the Warlock King and the Witch Queen, he generates a huge ogre and summons a Nyr to possess it – the Bammy. It gathers goblins and gargoyles to harry Brythland. Then Kveldulf, the Evening Wolf, having recovered Slaegon’s headless body, comes to Pucland, offering it to the Sorcerer of Fellskar—for so survivors name Smirnal—a peace offering, for since Slaegon’s death, they had bickered and worked at cross-purposes. Smirnal lays the body atop the Warlock King’s ancient treasure-pile in the barrow above the Black Citadel, welcoming his former rival to Land’s End.

The marshalling of evil in the north is nearly complete.

*

Cedric the Second is born, Cedric Redbeard’s direct descendent, born into turmoil and unrest, a time when Brythland, through Frostflame’s influence—Boltavar’s machinations—is fragmented into rival kingdoms ruled by petty, mutually distrustful kings, and plagued by Feyhd’ru, the locust of Land’s End. Reavers raid her coasts, northern pirates in their high-prowed dragonships—the Reavers, ever growing in numbers, ferocity, and daring, raping and pillaging Brythland’s towns and villages, even extending their forays up rivers to despoil the Bright Land’s heart.

The Reavers have made the Warlock King’s abandoned citadel their home. They find Slaegon’s skull and, believing it to be a talisman of power, the Reaver King fashions a scepter topped by it—little suspecting that Slaegon’s nightmarish Witch Queen shares their residence, whispering to him in his dreams while her body rests and her power grows once again. Soon, Smirnal again becomes their high-priest, and they worship the Saervan as though they are ancient gods.

Cedric the Second blames his father, the High King Cernac, for Brythland’s condition. Cernac refuses to use Frostflame to reunite Brythland or destroy the Reavers and Feyhd-ru as Cedric Redbeard, their ancestor had done. He dies naturally.

“Brythland dies with him,” newly crowned King Cedric the Second of Califax proclaims, drawing Frostflame against the advice of his counselor—his foster son, Rathsegin the Wise.  Marshaling his Knights of the Realm, he takes an oath to rid Brythland of the Sorcerer and his minions once and for all.

Learning of this, Smirnal dispatches Kveldulf, the Evening Wolf, with goblin armies at his back to storm Kiranhold, the Twilight Castle, the Great Wall’s central stronghold. Within days, Kiranhold is overwhelmed and brought to ruin. Sir Arn Aldenson barely escapes alive with the remnant of his Kiran Riders.

But Smirnal, inexperienced in war, makes a fatal error. Kveldulf drives his Pucland army forth from Kiranhold to take the Doom Ring on Langdon Plain and march east with the intent of swarming over the Purple Mountains to come at Califax.

They are met by Cedric and his Knights of the Realm in a disciplined charge of horse and lance, a tactic honed to perfection by Brythland’s high kings. Then, in a pincer movement, the Highland’s king descends on them from the north, his knights and Highland warriors at his back; the Kings of the Lakelands, the Marklands and the Farafields, and those of Kel’ire and Weylsend attack from the south; and the rallied Kiran Riders retake Kiranhold. Not a single goblin escapes the bloodbath on Langdon Plain. The Evening Wolf alone limps off in bloodied, human form.

Cedric, like most recent Califax kings, has been Brythland’s High-King in name only.  Now, however, the kings of Highland, Lake, Forest and Down, Peninsula and Isle bow the knee and offer their sword to their liege lord – an alliance forged by the diplomacy of Cedric’s foster son, Lord Rathsegin – a heartfelt swearing of fealty now made by Elder Knights and Barons to their brave High-King.

But Cedric is not satisfied. Like his namesake, Cedric Redbeard, he would march on Fellskar and then sail to the Daemon Citadel to rid Brythland of all her enemies.

Rathsegin warns against this: “Not with Frostflame in your hand,” he says. “Lest you seek your ancestors’ fate. Your father and Cedric the First were the only two who escaped Frostflame’s curse, the sword known as Kings’ Bane, handed down father to son till it is yours. Brythland’s high-kings, honored by the world for their battle-prowess used it and thus Orm ensnared them. They died young. Your father, King Cernac and Cedric the first before him walked with the One, keeping it sheathed above their mantle—longer-lived kings, escaping the sword’s curse.”

Cedric responds in rage: “How dare you presume to advise me in the wielding of Frostflame, my family’s inheritance?”  He glares at Rathsegin—his foster son—with unaccustomed hatred. How could he have raised this mongrel as a high-king’s son—this tall, lean, dark-haired, olive-skinned foreigner—a foundling, shrouded in mystery—the only survivor of a Bartabian shipwrecked on Brythland’s rocky coast? Though they had been close once, Cedric now utterly despises Rathsegin’s scholarship, his lack of a warrior’s skill, his lack of even a desire for knighthood. Suddenly he despises everything about him and wishes he had never witnessed the shipwreck in which Rathsegin’s parents died, that he had never brought him home to Califax to raise as his own. For the first time, Cedric wishes he had no foster son. “My family’s inheritance!” he repeats. “Not yours, Doomsayer.” Doom Sayer—a name that others would call him from that time on.

“Even now, you fall under its spell,” says Rathsegin. “Sheath Frostflame and live!”

Many of Cedric’s new allies urge him to do the same, swearing to follow him to the ends of the earth against their foes, if only he will.

But Cedric will not. He returns to Califax to brood, gainsaid by the son he respected and now loathes, humiliated before his knights and lords.

*

Then, in vengeance, Smirnal works a mighty sorcery, summoning the dragon, Skayaknair, out of the Far East to Lands End. The beast makes its bed of Slaegon’s headless bones atop the treasure mound, crawling from the ancient barrow to terrorize Brythland’s countryside, raze crops, destroy livestock, and slay all knights who come against it.

And Rathsegin sees his opportunity to free his foster father and their descendants from the sword. Rathsegin has learned a secret from Earl Corrigan, his friend among the Highland’s Feyhd’elth—that Frostflame is capable of slaying the dragon, but that it must be left standing in the dragon’s heart lest the beast rise again.

Cedric is already set upon slaying the dragon, his knights and under-kings now willing to follow him to Land’s End with or without Frostflame. But and Rathsegin persuades him to take him along on the quest—and no other. Cedric agrees, unwilling to risk more of his knight’s lives.

Together they track Skayaknair to its lair at Land’s End. There, while Rathsegin battles Smirnal, Cedric buries Frostflame to the hilt in the winged serpent’s breast. Then Rathsegin tells him what the Feyhd’elth told him. Only half believing him, Cedric pulls Frostflame from the dragon’s heart. The creature’s wings snap open, but Cedric is quicker, burying the sword again in its breast. Enraged at being thus tricked, Cedric leaves the sword transfixing the dragon on its deathbed of Slaegon’s hoarded treasure.

Cedric’s anger does not last, however. The sword no longer unsheathed in his hand, he soon returns to himself, the father Rathsegin once knew and always loved. Coming in sight of Califax’s breathless view, Cedric embraces his foster-son, and earnestly thanks him. “I did nothing, Dragon’s Bane,” says Rathsegin. “My thanks to you and the One who strengthens your arm.”

And so, at last, Frostflame passes from the possession of Brythland’s High-Kings, and the family name of Dragonsbane is originated.

Lord Rathsegin formally becomes King’s Advisor and works side by side with his father to defend Brythland, re-establishing Califax as the center of a re-united realm. Cedric the Second is only the third high king to die of old age, and Rathsegin oversees the transition of power to his son, Cernac the Second.

*

During this time, another hero arises. Smirnal’s summoning of Skayaknair (typical of his less than precise spellcasting),  has had the unfortunate side-effect of drawing additional dragons into the West and North. But a Knight of the Realm, Sir Torrlaine, has the good fortune to nearly be killed by a falling star. He soon stumbles onto the happy discovery that the star contains an alloy that is impervious to dragon-flames, and a flame burning in its interior that draws dragon-souls out of dragon-bodies. A gift from the One? The knight fashions the star’s metal and flame into a lamp and proceeds to collect the invading dragons’ souls, trapping them in his lamp. Working his way into the East, even into the Far Eastern Dragon Mountains, he becomes the legendary Dragon Catcher. With every last dragon imprisoned in his lamp, he anonymously retires to the peaceful kingdom of Nonamar.

Meanwhile, Smirnal recoups his strength. Spurning the den of Warlock and Witch he previously occupied within the Black Citadel, but wanting to keep control of the barrow-treasure, the dragon-body draped over it, the sword of power in it, and the Black Citadel beneath, Smirnal uses the Bammy to raise a black tower, made from the stones of the Black Citadel. It becomes his high-place and is named the Dragon’s Tooth by those who glimpse it from afar and tremble. The Bammy becomes its Keeper, and Smirnal bides his time till he can discover a way to free the sword and enslave the therefore revived dragon.

*

Now, with Brythland at peace for the time being, Rathsegin departs on a quest of his own—to learn of his parents, his kindred, and his heritage. He will not return till the children of that day’s children have become very old men and woman. For, though Rathsegin is a man in his sixties as he takes ship from Luddwick and watches Brythland’s coast fade in the mist, he retains the look and vigor of a man in his late twenties. Some claim that he is a wizard, but he has never referred to himself as such, nor has he meddled in the occult. The lost science of Taj Meer is his passion, and he continues studying the books and scrolls from a crate that had been found beside him on Brythland’s shore—scientific inquiry and insight, his gift from the One. He vows to use Taj Meer’s science only in the One’s service and not let the corruption of its later uses contaminate him. He fashions his staff based on this science and what the Feyhd-elth remember of it—a defensive weapon only. He will not let Taj Meer’s science do to him what Frostflame did to Brythland’s kings.

Rathsegin journeys into the Far East to secretly study staff-fighting with a priest of Tzao who has turned to the One, discovered the falseness of his man-made religion, and fled into the Mystic Mountains to which the ancient hero, Ty Tan Shing had retired. With diligent study and practice he becomes an adept staff-warrior that would have made Cedric, his father, proud.

Over the reigns of three Brythland kings, Rathsegin wanders the world’s length and breadth. He learns that his parents were Quatha bak Shee, bringing him to the Isle of Brythland in fulfillment of prophesy and for safety against persecution—only to lose their lives in an offshore storm that cast him ashore on Brythland’s coast. He discovers that he is a descendent of the Elder Patriarchs through Emen and the Younger Patriarchs, those who were sages or wisemen to the ancients, prophets of the One. He explores the world and is given much wisdom by the One, the source of all wisdom and knowledge.

With deep prayer and diligent investigation, much is revealed to him concerning Orm’s rule. Great power and authority have been permitted Orm who enslaves men’s minds, even through seemingly benign religions, cults, and philosophies. Rathsegin learns that the Feyhd’ru have manifested physically both here and in Alveron; that the Nyrvan can only manifest themselves in the world by possessing creatures or humans and occasionally inanimate objects, or by appearing as disembodied spirits—that Nyr had manifested themselves as giants called genii in the mid-east, elementals in the far east, and pre-men by those who believe them to be the builders of the gargantuan citadels and doom rings. He witnesses Nyr speaking through seers, claiming to speak with the voice of the Old Gods—the Oracle of the Kingdom Isles, a priestess of the Pantheon, being the most well regarded. Royalty, even from foreign lands, regularly consult her.

He witnesses much—enough to blast human minds: sorcerers summoning Nyr and using their power; necromancers raising the dead or communing with their disembodied spirits, mistakenly believing these Nyr-inhabited corpses or ‘ghosts’ to be the deceased, worse yet believing their Orm-inspired proclamations; druids and other false-priests teaching Nyric lies. Conjurers pretend to fabricate something from nothing, but merely change its shape or vanish it—illusion or transmogrification through Nyric power. Enchanters and enchantresses cast spells to charm humans and even animals into behavior contrary to their nature or desire: sorcerers all—whether called Warlock or Witch as in the north, or other names in other places.

Rathsegin commits himself to battling such evil in the One’s strength.

Disguised, he visits the Temple of Celestial Observation and Interpretation in Bartabia, where Zoda, the Master Reader, Sign Giver, and Grand Cabelin claims descent from the Star-Master Mage and Taj Meer’s Master Scientist who designed the Spiral Stairway to Heaven, destroyed by the One in the Third Age fall of Taj Meer. Like the Oracle, hundreds are drawn each season to have their futures cast by this star-worshipping sorcerer. But Rathsegin concludes that his grandness is more parts fool and charlatan than deadly sorcerer.

Likewise, he identifies and wastes no time on magicians who imitate all these sorcerous abilities for entertainment purposes.

But he battles Mumba, the ageless Witch Doctor of the Shunda Tribes on the Southern Continent who enchants victims or produces illness and death from remote distances.

And, wondering what became of Morrigan, Slaegon’s Witch-Queen—a venomous loose end whose Far Eastern attempts at conquest remain unknown to him—Rathsegin tracks down Kveldulf, the Evening Wolf, hoping to find her, alive or dead. But in the end, he is forced to slay the weir without an answer. Though at least freeing the Northland of Kveldulf’s ferocious grip, he is left wondering if other sorcerers could use the same Nyric power as the wier to shape-shift from one human likeness to another.

Legends grow along Rathsegin’s path, whispers of a contemporary sage with the life span of the Elder Patriarchs, a magician or sorcerer, perhaps a Saer in human form. He is called by many names in many lands and only hints and fragments of his doings reach Brythland ears. In the North, he is called Wolfsbane, for he alone had slain Kveldulf.

Little does he suspect Malak’s existence, but during his wandering years he does begin to suspect a behind-the-scenes presence, a force at work in the world manipulating events in subtle ways, acting through unseen, often unsuspecting agencies—a human presence imitating Orm’s manipulations in the Kindred Realm. Later, he meets and befriends a young book collector and talented linguist who becomes the Great Library’s youngest ever Chief Archivist—a youth who has come to many of the same conclusions as he.

*

Then, abruptly, and secretly, Rathsegin returns to Brythland.

Cedric the Third’s parents have been killed by Reavers who hold the infant for ransom. But, miraculously, Knights of the Realm rescue the child, locating the dragonship along the Brinymist coast. Cedric Dragonsbane’s great grandson is safely returned to Califax under the young Lord Marshall’s guardianship. Marshall Aldenson will serve as regent, ruling Brythland till Cedric comes of age to assume the throne. The kingdom is in good hands, its future stability assured. Or so everyone believes.

With the discernment Rathsegin has gained through his walk with the One, he soon discovers that the child is a changeling, a Feyhd’ru, sorcerously disguised as a human child in the exact likeness of Cedric the Third. Immediately, Rathsegin goes in search of the true king.

He tracks Cedric’s abductors over the Purple Mountains, across the Farafields and Netherbarrens and into the Withering Wood of Pucland, through the foothills of the Deathdrum Mountains, all the way to Land’s End. There, atop Fellskar, he again battles Smirnal who is about to sacrifice the infant to Orm in a druidic rite.

Weakening Smirnal for the second time, but again unable to slay him, Rathsegin slips away to his hidden skiff and sails off with Cedric, seeing no point in returning him defenseless to Califax where unknown enemies undoubtedly lurk. Even if he could slay the changeling and quietly switch the infants, Rathsegin knows that Cedric would not survive childhood to become high king. Instead, Rathsegin takes the infant to the Feyhd’elth of the Highlands where Earl Corrigan raises him in safety, teaching the child much lore, and training him in sword play. He gives Cedric the Whistling Sword, the legendary sword forged by Veylan Smith, the Northland hero.

Later, he sends Cedric to the Old Bard in the Northland to be trained as the next Northland Bard—a grounding in the northern kingdoms’ history and knowledge indispensable to a wise high king.

Rathsegin bides his time awaiting the day Cedric might win back his throne and be able to hold it

*

Meanwhile, to the east, the last of the Fifth Age empires, the Tarkan Empire, rises to threaten Cor and Panthia. As though he were Cedric Dragonbane’s dark side, Murath Raad, the self-fashioned Supreme Tark raises his banner above those of the numerous tribes inhabiting the Tarkan table lands and makes war on his neighbors. Swiftly – with the help of Yatus Karapan, his advisor and High-Priest of the Cult of Belis the Fire Demon – this dread war-chief of the Tarks assumes the over-lordship of his mad dreams. And with all Tarkistan united under his bloodthirsty reign, the Supreme Tark does not rest, but challenges Cor’s power to the north and east, seeking to control the Narrows, vital to world trade.

South of Tarkistan, small desert kingdoms called sakhdoms, each ruled by a sakh, control the increasingly lucrative east-west trade routes between the Firth and the Major Inland Sea. Ships can only navigate the Caravan River inland as far as the East-West Bazaar, a pavilion the size of a city, located several leagues below the wealthy city of Bathshah, ruled by a simple-minded sakh who, through the shrewd negotiations and ruthless profiteering of able administrators, has become Grand Sakh, Menhir of all Bartabia (more a self-delusional title than an actual over-lordship). From the East-West Bazaar, caravans carry goods and slaves to and from the port of Neshibah, crossing and re-crossing the Masubi and Samorah deserts, cautiously buying protection from Bartabia’s nomadic tribesmen.

Across the Firth from Neshibah, on Hendia’s west coast, the city of Neshipah, Hindig the Elephant King’s capitol, is the other link in east-west trade. Xaichen’s exotic goods travel by oxcarts through the Mystic Mountains’ southern passes to be carried on Jade River’s current to Neshipah from which they cross the firth to Neshibah.

Now the Grand Sakh, Menhir of all Bartabia, and Murath Raad, the Supreme Tark, are bitter enemies, each vying for control of the east-west trade routes, the Tarkan leader insanely jealous of Bathshah’s wealth, beauty, and opulence. This rivalry and the intermittent warfare it causes are all that keep the Supreme Tark from fulfilling what he believes is his destiny and seizing the West while Coren legions are spread too thin.

Panthia, the Kingdom of Isles, has prospered under Cor’s protection, the eye of the storm in a world of turmoil. Though her political power has waned with her military might, Panthia is the trading capital of the world. Her culture, arts, sciences, and philosophies peacefully lead the rest of the world. Her influence will be felt in western civilization down through the centuries. At peace for generations now, her Philosopher-King and Queen conspire against one another to relieve boredom. They are lusty, passionate lovers in the royal bedchamber, but deadly earnest opponents in island politics—their gamesmanship and intrigues respecting no bounds in bed or out.

While, across the Major Inland Sea, Ptyahns rally behind their new Septeth—an arrogantly scheming youth named Phyzon the Great—rearing to eye their ancient enemy’s prosperity.

*

Cedric the Third, Dragonsbane comes of age, and the day of his crowning draws near. Smirnal’s changeling will enter into full suzerainty.

As the coronation comes to its long-anticipated climax amidst pomp and ceremony on the steps of Califax’s Great Hall, the real Cedric Dragonsbane arrives with Rathsegin at his side. Lords and ladies, knights and clergy, retainers, and servants, visiting dignitaries and Brythland’s common folk are astounded, shocked, and confused witnessing legend and the impossible side by side. Could this be the very Rathsegin of whom their grandparents spoke? A man, for all appearances, in his early sixties with long still jet-black hair bound at his back and only a streak of white at each temple? After his long absence, few are willing to accept Cedric’s twin on his word alone.

Opposed by the Marshall of Kiranhold, Rathsegin consults with the loyal Knights of the Realm and Council of Elders. A trial by combat is decided upon to determine the truth of Rathsegin’s claims. The One will render a verdict—a long abandoned form of justice, but somehow appropriate in such desperate, supernatural circumstances.

Cedric and Cedric, mirror images, draw their swords and do battle. The clangor of steel-on-steel lasts into the night—a contest of might and right between Veylan’s skillfully wielded blade and a spell-enhanced goblin blade. The magical disguise fades as Cedric’s blade finds the changeling’s heart, and the crowd draws back in horror to see a goblin’s body bloodying the throne’s dais.

The Lord Marshall slinks away unnoticed. His body is discovered some hours later in his study, dead at his desk. Rathsegin has his suspicions, but it will be some time before he fully understands and identifies the clandestine Malak who, working for Boltavar, had made a pact with Smirnal who sought a royal child to sacrifice to Orm in return for greater power—that Malak had combined his shape-shifting with Smirnal’s powers to change a goblin into Cedric’s likeness, (a very great sorcerous spell that would continually modify itself as the babe grew into manhood—a mighty sorcerous spell—certainly the greatest spell of sorcery Smirnal had ever cast in his entire life, mightier than Bammy or Dragon)—and it will also be some time before Rathsegin deduces that Malak himself had taken the Lord Marshall’s place all those years, an imposter ruling Brythland as the High King’s regent.

Cedric is crowned high king to great acclaim, and a lavish feast and kingdom-wide celebration follows.

Smirnal, enraged, launches assaults on Brythland by Reavers and Pucland Feyhd’ru. Cedric leads Brythland forces in defeating them all, proving his prowess and ability to lead, and the One’s blessing on him.

The three Cedric’s’ victories down through the generations have so reduced the number of Feyhd-ru in Brythland that, after this, it is no longer possible for Smirnal to raise an army sufficient for war in the North.

Together, Cedric and his Advisor, Rathsegin, and his Knights of the Realm lead the ‘Bright Land’ into a golden age of which songs and stories still tell, a legendary time of deeds and quests, chivalry, and romance.

*

Disappointed in Smirnal and mortified by his own failure in Brythland and the North, Malak enters into a pact—the Council of Three—made between himself, the Arch-Sorcerer Boltavar, and Orm’s high-priest, his Appostiss of Light—Artiman Jezaar—the Mouth of Orm. For, mind to mind, Boltavar has reached out to those who serve Orm, those capable of working in the world pave the way for his return  to power.

Boltavar’s age-long wait in his grotesquely shattered, supernaturally preserved body nears its end. His dark plotting beneath the Daemon Sea will begin bearing fruit in fulfillment of Orm’s promise—a ‘resurrection’ for the Styxian Arch Sorcerer. For Orm has told the Council of Three that the Emperor of Peace who will rise from the sea at the end of the age will be Boltavar, rejuvenated and immortal. Styx will be restored in the guise of Taj Meer’s rebirth.

Artiman Jezaar sews his lies with new purpose and a new façade—the Luminous Ring—more religion than philosophy now and taking the mysterious circle works of the Pre-men, the doom rings in the north, as its symbol.

And Malak, having experienced the frustrations of personal rule, the futility of revenge, and the false hope of personal alliances with weaklings and betrayers, plans his Master Manipulation.

He needs a worldwide threat sufficient to drive the kindreds into a conquering savior’s arms, an emperor-god of world-peace. But supreme as the Supreme Tark may be, Malak does not consider him sufficiently supreme for Orm’s purposes. Xiachen’s Divine Sun-Emperor Oshiimin Tu on the other hand, would serve admirably. Though a degenerate descendent of Xaichen’s mighty hero-emperors who ages past defied the Arch-Sorcerer himself to defeat dragons and free their fabled land, is never-the-less the world’s most proficient warlord. His Har’rad Jiidahm, his Holy Conquest of the West would serve Orm’s scheme for Boltavar’s rising far more convincingly than Murath Raad’s petty dreams and ragtag warrior tribes.

Malak goes to Do Ming to rouse the Sun-Emperor with dreams of world conquest.

*

But for now, Cor reigns supreme. Senator Janus Arillian, the legendary Tacit Arillian’s descendant, has been elected Imperiator an unprecedented five consecutive times. His military genius and clever diplomacy bring victory upon victory till Cor’s dominance is unquestioned from the Cordish frontier to Sishkan’s eastern territory, from the Crescent Mountains to the Southern Continent. Provincial warriors enlist in the Coren legions in droves, drawn to Arillian’s personality. Arillian’s enemies in the Senate blame him for corrupting Cor’s legendary legions—building legions loyal to him above Cor. In the west, the northern most kingdoms of Pallavarre, Brythland, Tuthland, and the Northland alone remain independent, beyond Cor’s reach for the moment.

Although, northwest of Cor, beyond the Crescent Mountains, Pallavarre, a feudal kingdom rich in grapes comes at last within Cor’s grasp. Pallavarre is ruled by two brothers, princes who have rebelled against their mother and father, abolishing the rule of a queen and prince-consort in favor of the rule of two princes each generation. Following the tragic death of those wise and gentle parents, they divide Pallavarre into two kingdoms, weakening her traditional alliance with Brythland and halving the number of warriors that guard her ever-threatened border with Tuthland. Arillian seizes the opportunity to force the princes into a treaty with Cor by which, in return for military support, much of the finest Pallavarren wine finds its way into Coren goblets.

But while Malak puts the final touches on his Master Manipulation in the Far East, Ptyah waxes powerful and belligerent under their ‘Great’ Septeth. Phyzon makes war with Cor, severing their old treaty and cutting off their tribute payments—all the better for Malak’s plans for Oshiimin’s massive invasion of the Coren Empire whose armies are now stretched thinner than ever across many fronts, strained to the max.

However, as Malak’s Master Manipulation in the Far East begins to unravel, Arillian puts down the Ptyahn rebellion. Peace is imposed on the western world at Coren sword-point, the sword presently held in Janus Arillian’s fist—his other hand open in friendship. But peace will not last. Arillian knows this.

So does Malak, back from the Far East, Oshiimin dead. His new pawn will be the Imperiator Janus Arillian as he works behind the scenes to establish an archetype for a benign hero-god-world emperor—destined to die tragically, destroying Cor’s Republic in the process—the same game, but an expanded world-wide manipulation this time. When Malak lets loose his Feyhd-ru armies, the world will plead for their true ‘god emperor of light’.

Meanwhile in Panthia, Artiman Jezaar’s Luminous Ring has made inroads among the elite. Jezaar has moved on from propounding his Deity Within philosophy to heralding an age of peace and enlightenment to be inaugurated by a wise and benevolent god-emperor who will rise from the sea. His Inner Circle priests serve Orm knowingly enticed by Jezaar’s promises of knowledge and power, while his White Circle priests enthusiastically spread Jezaar’s prophesies, ignorant of the reality behind them.

And back in ancient Cor, the city from which the empire sprang, Julius Ajear, Janus Arillian’s arch-rival in the Senate, plots Arillian’s downfall. Many citizens flock to Ajears’ loyalist cause, fearing the charming, charismatic Imperiator they themselves had elected who is now flaunting their republic’s laws and institutions with impunity.

*

To the far north, beyond the shores of Pallavarre, Tuthland, and Brythland, even beyond the Great North Sea, the Northland realms remain secluded—Burradan’s Folk and the Feyhd’elth unknown to southern and eastern folk; Beorn’s Folk known to them only by the Northland long ships that ply their ever-growing trade routes throughout the world.

 

This is the world of Jorgan Anderson. This is the age in which the Arch-Sorcerer resumes his World Throne, and Orm the Power Mad rules.

 

Cor’s first god-emperor, Janus Arillian, dies—betrayed by his friend, the captain of his personal guard—or so the tale is told.

The Mad-Emperors succeed him, reigning in absolute power, supported by their legions, harassed on every border by Feyhd-ru hordes—

—Till finally, humanity gets what it has clambered for and so richly deserved—the Arch-Sorcerer Boltavar rising from the sea and claiming his Dragon Scepter as Lucus, the Emperor of Light, Artiman Jezaar’s prophesies fulfilled, the culmination of Malak’s work in the world, rescuing civilization from chaos, Nyr, and Feyhd-ru forces alike, not to mention further mad-emperors. He promises to restore Cor’s greatness, a new Taj Meer. And the world embraces him—mankind’s savior, the god of a new age.

But Boltavar is no longer present. Orm lied to his vessel. Lucas the god-emperor is none other than Orm incarnate. For Boltavar, contrary to the face he presented to the world upon his return, considered himself the lord of daemons as well as Kindred. The true daemon-lord, Orm the Fallen, allowed him this conceit to swell his ego, but when Boltavar dares to usurp Orm’s power for himself, the Deceiver—long denied access to the Kindred Realm, passage across the Rainbow Sea forbidden him—immediately possesses Boltavar’s restored body, propelling the Arch-Sorcerer’s soul into the Outer Dark.

 

And Orm rules the Kindred Realm till he faces the Sword of God.

Copyright © 2009, 2023 by Geoffrey Keith Werner and Virginia Ann Werner

All Rights Reserved.