Ad aspera

Auto-translated

Ardor

The history of Ardor is the history of the Church. What came before its founding, the people of Ardor themselves likely do not recall now, nor do they wish to recall.

More than three centuries ago, on a land washed from the southeast by the Dead Ocean and to the north of which stretch barren, still uninhabited wastes, lived a warlike people in perpetual discord. That land was poor in harvest, the winters were long and cold, and the sea was so turbulent that fear of open waters lives in the Ardorian people to this day; not a single fisherman will risk going more than a kilometer from the shore, fearing both an unexpected storm and the monsters hidden in the water. Sometimes the carcasses of these monsters would wash ashore: at first, people marveled and feared the unseen creatures, even dead, but later they grew accustomed and rejoiced that the sea brought them fat and meat.

Besides that, they obtained sustenance through hunting and cattle breeding, but they were also deprived of game and pastures, and always lived in a state of near-starvation. The land endowed them with only two riches: iron and stone, and the people themselves, in their resilience, were like iron and stone. They had no great wealth, and therefore there was no great inequality among them then: all lived poorly, enduring hunger, cold and need, but most of all – enduring each other.

The people were divided into clans, the clans gathered into communities, some communities could found cities, but there was never unity, either in faith or in authority; every alliance was short-lived, and every man plotted against his neighbor. They warred incessantly, and only in war did they achieve great success, mastering smithing, steelmaking, and the art of building fortresses.

Three hundred and twenty-six years ago from the present moment, a man emerged from the northern wastes, terribly thin, in rags, clutching a large tome with bony fingers. No one knew him, and his appearance was pitiful, but he walked with his head held high, as if everyone were his acquaintance. Coming to a city, on the first day he spoke of the people and praised them, praised their strength and resilience, and said that such a people were pleasing to the Almighty and chosen for a great purpose. On the second day, he rebuked the people, rebuked their strife, wars, and plunder, and said that such behavior was displeasing to the Almighty. On the third, he spoke of the Almighty, His will, and the laws that reign in heaven, and of how one ought to live on earth. On the fourth day, he spoke of the world around, of the monsters sent to men as a warning, and of the end of the world, of other lands, and that it was fitting for the people to set out on a journey to the West for salvation, and to save other peoples as well, who languished in ignorance and fratricide.

Thus he went from city to city, from village to village, and never spoke his name. He answered any question about the God of whom he spoke, but when asked who he himself was, he fell silent.

Once, one of the chieftains, unwilling for this man to stir up the people, and unable to reason with him, approached and ran him through the heart with his sword. Blood gushed from the wound like a fountain, the preacher fell dead, and the people dispersed. The chieftain did not wish to burn the body, leaving it to be eaten by crows and dogs, to further humiliate the insolent one. The next day, people saw him in the same place, preaching again, with a scar on his chest. Stricken, the chieftain asked in confusion: "What am I to do now?" and the preacher answered only: "Listen." The chieftain heeded the preacher, and on the fourth day asked again, and the preacher said to appear in a week at the place where the chieftains customarily made peace.

He said the same to the other chieftains, and many came. At that place, the chieftains swore an oath of eternal peace; there were nine of them, and to this day the Church is led by nine bishops. They renounced their families, their wives and children, so that nothing would hinder them in serving the Almighty, and so that they would be fathers not to their own children and chieftains not of tribes, but fathers and chieftains to all the people. And they cast their idols into the Dead Ocean and united the tribes, and those who did not submit to the Word and Scripture, they subdued with sword and fire. And, as was foretold, they gathered the people for the great march to the West. On the first day of the march, the nameless preacher disappeared.

And so that no one would wish to turn back, the chieftains ordered all possessions except the bare necessities to be thrown away, and set fire to their villages. The people, from the elderly to the children, moved westward, subduing other peoples equally by word and by force. Guided by faith, accustomed to war, and having no possibility of retreat, they swept through the lands of the West like an irresistible force and founded the Ardor Empire.

In accordance with Scripture, Ardor became the first and only kingdom where slavery is forbidden. The colonate system, of course, no one abolished, but Ardorian coloni still live easier than those in the West—they are forbidden to be bought up or in any way torn from the land. Supreme authority is vested in the council of bishops, who appoint their proxies over land allotments and city administration. The council also appointed the Emperor, the supreme commander of the army, but during the period of heresy, the Emperor achieved the right of hereditary succession to the title.

Formerly, missionaries would go before the armies to the West, preparing people to accept the new, better order. Sometimes they managed to convince individual settlements or even small kingdoms to surrender without bloodshed, but history knows of far more missionaries who met a very sad end.

Fifty-eight years ago, the empire had grown so large that it reached the borders of Yaragat in the north and Divef in the south, but no one intended to halt the expansion—Ardor had already swallowed and digested its former rivals; the outbreak of heresy that had stopped the conquest sixty years prior, though not forgotten, the empire had recovered from its consequences. By then, the Paladin Order had long been created—modeled after the knightly orders of the West, but devoted to the Church, not to secular lords. By the start of the war, Ardor was at the height of its power, while the West was weakened by internecine strife, and the first to receive the blow of the Ardorian war machine was Yaragat—within a year of war, almost all the eastern lands of the princedom were lost, and the princes were forced to retreat to the barren northern lands together with all their people. The Yaragatians, despite their numbers and bravery in battle, could not achieve any successes, but they gave the kingdoms of the West enough time to create an alliance against the conquerors. The war lasted forty-nine years; both sides suffered enormous losses, and during this time Ardor advanced only slightly further than during the year of war with Yaragat, subjugating only a few small kingdoms vassal to Fenderin and part of Divef's lands.

Finally, reaching the borders of Fenderin, Ardor was ready for the final blow—if they could take the capital of Fenderin, at once the treasury and forge of the West, the armies of the Church would prevail. At the Battle of Lagrein, a border city at the foot of the mountains, the Ardorian troops defeated the knights of the West—the superior discipline and training of the Ardorians gave them an advantage over the enemy's superior heavy cavalry, but there was no one left to capture Fenderin—less than a third of the army remained. Riding the wave of the West's confusion after the defeat, Ardor hastily concluded a peace, under the terms of which it retained all captured lands, gained the right to establish churches in Divef, Rotheri, and Fenderin, and had all its prisoners returned. As a gesture of goodwill, the Ardorians also released their prisoners without ransom.

This war changed people far more than the map. After the triumphant march through the East, the Ardorians for the first time encountered peoples who were ready to fight for their ideals and their faith. Perhaps this campaign will not be as victorious as the prophet said. Perhaps they will not be able to unite the whole world. Perhaps they misunderstood something... or understood nothing at all.

The kings and knights of the West also look at Ardor differently. Now they see not a strange, not-quite-kingdom, not-quite-overgrown sect establishing its peculiar order somewhere far away, in foreign lands, but a dangerous, close, and worthy opponent. The Ardorians did not burn peasants out of whole villages, did not cut off the fingers of captured archers; they did everything strangely, not like everyone else, but the more the knights saw, the more they recognized in the Paladins a reflection of those ideals they followed, or, at least, wished to follow.

Divef

They say that Divef is the soul of the Northern Kingdoms and the heart of knighthood. Its history is a history of feudal wars, a history of the chieftains of many tribes who finally united under the rule of one man four hundred years ago. All noble families trace their roots from this period; they are the descendants of those warriors who once followed the victorious chieftain, the future King of Divef, Philip.
But even after the creation of a unified kingdom, wars did not cease. King Philip was overthrown by his brother Gilbert; the war between the brothers gave rise to new alliances and new discords. Land disputes among feudal lords are still resolved by clashes of armies to this day.
The knights of Divef are not limited solely to internal strife: raids by Yaragat and rivalry with Fenderin keep the kingdom constantly ready for a new war. This has defined a peculiar culture of knighthood, bizarrely combining the ideals of equality among noble warriors and personal freedom with the ideals of loyalty to one's lord; the ideals of aesthetics, poetry, and courtliness that would distinguish them from the "savages" of Yaragat's war bands, simultaneously with a cult of brute force, violence, and aggression that elevates them above the "burghers" of Fenderin.
There are few cities in Divef and they are small; the majority of the population are peasants living in villages near the castles scattered abundantly across the country. The lands of Divef are fertile, but eternal wars and plunder prevent the peasants from escaping poverty. In recent decades, the lesser knighthood has also been impoverished; the major aristocracy is buying up the lands of their less wealthy brothers-in-arms.
But although the property gap between the landed feudal lords and the rank-and-file is growing ever wider, traditional ideas about relations within the estate remain unchanged, and a landless knight speaks to a baron or count as an equal. First and foremost, they are both warriors and noble men, and only then—vassal and lord. A man's worth is determined by his nobility, not his property, and the poorest of knights stands on an unattainable height above the richest burgher or peasant. Within the knightly circle, the centralization of lands only gave new strength to knightly ideals, shifting the emphasis from nobility to martial spirit. The image of the knight-errant exists alongside the image of the knight-vassal, and personal honor becomes more important than the honor of one's lord.
Knightly orders originated in Divef, and their supreme chapters are also located here, although the actual role of the orders is small and serves more for the prestige of knights than for war or politics. Currently, three of the old orders remain. The Order of the Guiding Star emphasizes the spiritual path of the warrior and is a brotherhood of knights who consider not land holdings and a warhorse, but courage and nobility of soul—which distinguishes him from mercenary rabble—to be essential in a knight. Joining it is possible only upon the recommendation of a person no lower than a Junior Magistrate. The Order of the Golden Spur is a secular brotherhood of major feudal lords; membership requires a family nobility of at least baronial rank and a donation of one thousand gold coins to the order. The Order of the Black Dragon is a brotherhood of knights of the corresponding religion.
The war with Ardor was a test both for the entire West and for Divef, whose king led the alliance against the invasion and became the first Grand Master of the Order of the Shield, a brotherhood of the military aristocracy against the invaders. The knights of Divef won several significant victories, and although after the defeat at Lagrein the peace was signed in Ardor's favor, without the courage of the knights, the expansion likely could not have been stopped at all.
However, Divef failed to prevent another victory for Ardor. Just as the knightly ideals of Divef were appreciated by Ardor, so too did the new teaching find many followers in Divef, and if the Church of the Almighty in the other Northern Kingdoms is a religion of the poor and the mad, in Divef its ideas found a place even among the knights. The ideals of sacrifice, asceticism, and the higher purpose of fighting evil in the world and in men's hearts coincided with the beliefs of knight-errants and landless warriors, while the Church's rhetoric about selfless submission for the common good appeals to major feudal lords who wish to see such devotion among their vassals.

Fenderin

Whoever the true gods of this world may be, one thing is clear for certain—they favored Fenderin. The modest territory of this country, at the foot of the Dragon's Ridge, absorbed two trade arteries of the continent, the southern and the northern, fertile fields and pastures, but above all—iron deposits. It is believed that it was on the territory of Fenderin, a thousand years ago, that the knight-god Theodor appeared to men, teaching them to work this metal and ushering in the Iron Age. Legends of the first Fenderin kings speak of defending the kingdom from mountain tribes, wars with elves, battling dragons and evil spirits. The true chronicle of Fenderin, however, describes expansion to the East, a centuries-old rivalry with Divef, and the terrible fifty-year war with Ardor, which bound former enemies in an alliance and deprived the kingdom of all its eastern vassals.
Today's Fenderin is more a land of cities, artisans, merchants, and mercenaries than of feudal lords and knights. The greatest cities, Ariotso and Tirren, pearls of the northern kingdoms, trace their history back more than six hundred years, and the population of one of them can be compared to the population of all Arkhaimar. The townspeople, however, value above all not the wealth of their cities, but their freedom: since the adoption of the Charter of Urban Liberties one hundred and eighteen years ago, Fenderin is the only place in the North where a burgher can call himself free and can choose both where to live and what trade to pursue. The cities are not ruled by aristocrats, but by city councils composed of the heads of craft guilds, merchant and mercenary guilds. And although taxes are high, it is not easy for artisans to rise to the top, and the wages of mercenary-townsmen are meager, the burghers live easier than the peasants.
The current King of Fenderin, Fernando II, ascended the throne after the death of his father Fausto III at the Battle of Lagrein, the last battle of the fifty-year war; the prince himself was wounded in the battle, taken prisoner, and returned to his homeland only two months later, but despite his fairly young age—he was not yet twenty-five at the time—he managed to cope with the chaos that arose after the unfavorable peace. Now the king is renowned as a mighty warrior, a tournament champion, and a paragon of knighthood, and many believe that it is he, and not the King of Divef, who should lead the West in a new war with Ardor—and that war will come, the majority have no doubt.
The aristocracy, however, holds a different opinion of the king, considering him an insufficiently decisive ruler who panders to the burghers and is the cause of the oppressive peace. Although Fernando II was a good ruler during peacetime—cautious, prudent, with the first principle of "do no harm"—many knights doubt that he can lead the country in war. Meanwhile, the king has no brothers, nor does he have sons.

Rotheri

"Everyone is ready to discuss the rules of honor before a battle; few will remember them in the heat of battle; to reproach the victor for dishonor is like shooting arrows at a stone."

Fate was never kind to the Kingdom of Rotheri. King Roger I, the founder of the dynasty, united these impoverished lands, equally deprived of fertile soil and good iron, wishing to bring prosperity to his family and give his heirs long centuries of a comfortable, if modest, life; instead, he left them rebellious serfs, proud vassals, and long centuries of unending rivalry with the then still powerful Yaragat, where knights on their spirited horses roamed the rich fields, mockingly gazing upon the lands of their western neighbor, which they had not conquered only due to lacking the need, and with the warlike Fenderin, from whence armored men set out northward, seeking to break it as they had already broken the east.
And every lord of those lands thought their fall was inevitable, and many did not answer their king's call when he demanded they fulfill their duty. When the king was ready to give battle to the army of Fenderin, he saw only his two brothers beside him; opposite him, he saw an army that outnumbered his own by double.
His soul was filled not with sorrow nor fear, but only with anger. The armies clashed, and the army of Rotheri was victorious then, and many Fenderinians fell, and no one escaped, for the rest were captured. The king said before the prisoners:
"Every one of you has seen my valor and strength with his own eyes. Let everyone ready to acknowledge me as his lord and receive many rewards step forward; and those who are not ready—let them return to their king in shame and receive only punishment."
And many stepped forward, and those who remained were led into the forest and killed there, for they were strong warriors, and it would be bad if the enemy had them at his disposal. And the warriors of Rotheri plundered the lands of Fenderin and captured many slaves, and when they returned, they executed the disloyal lords and distributed their lands to the defectors. And the king elevated no one to baron or count, for it was precisely their wealth and power that had already bred disobedience, but there were many humble knights, and no one was left out.
The king fought many more battles, and his heirs fought many more, and there were no more vassal rebellions, but the warriors stood united in defense of their holdings. There was no rivalry other than that of tournament between warriors, for the kingdom had to be unceasingly guarded against numerous enemies.
Nowhere else is the king held in such high esteem by warriors as in Rotheri, and nowhere else does he draw so many curses from coloni and slaves, upon whose shoulders the burden of eternal wars falls, and where a knight can strip a peasant to his last thread, and the king will listen to no one but his warriors. Other kingdoms reproach the king and knights for a lack of nobility, and they have reason to. Cunning diplomacy, spies and assassins, devastating raids, tricks and foul play in war—these are things used by all sovereigns, but the kings of Rotheri have particularly excelled at them, and they could hardly have preserved their lands and power for three centuries. And yet, they remain kings of the West, and stand against Ardor in the same ranks as Fenderin and Divef.

Yaragat

Before the last war with Ardor, Yaragat was a great power, rivaling Divef and Fenderin on equal terms, despite internal fragmentation. The princes shared among themselves the rich eastern fields, the forests were full of game, but each had too little of everything available, and the princely war bands raided as far as the walls of Fenderin's cities.
Proud princes would never acknowledge anyone as the chief, only as first among equals, and these first ones remained on the grand princely throne only as long as they were the strongest. The knightly ideals of loyalty to a suzerain were always alien to Yaragat—a war band serves one clan, and if one prince, in order of succession, yields the best throne to a kinsman, the war band will not follow him; instead, should he rise higher, the war band will join the prince in a richer place.
For a peasant in Yaragat, there is no more enviable lot than to join the foot militia, distinguish himself in battle, and earn the rank of "warrior serf," a soldier on permanent paid service to a druzhinnik or the prince himself. Although free Yaragatians look upon such as people of the second or third class, although they will never sit at the prince's table or hunt together with the war band, they still engage in the most worthwhile occupation for a Yaragatian—war—and their annual salary constitutes a fortune that an ordinary peasant slave could not accumulate in a lifetime.
The Yaragatians are renowned neither for piety nor diligence, and their victories in peace are far more modest than in war. Neither in the arts, nor in crafts, nor in sciences has this people reached heights, and besides warriors and hunters, they are famous perhaps only as travelers and merchants. Now, having lost their lands and grown tired of war, even druzhinniks and minor boyars seek fortune in foreign lands. Some become mercenaries, some rob in Divef and Ardor, others go even further, traveling as far as the western and southern archipelagos.
The Yaragatians are, admittedly, not the smartest or most talented of people, and certainly not the most businesslike, but they are strong as bears and, more importantly, stubborn as mountain rams from the Dragon's Ridge. Such traits make them ready for any hardship. They are difficult to get along with and very hard to cooperate with, but when it comes to risky business—be it a raid, a merchant venture, or an expedition—it is hard to find better people.

Eger

A wooded region, south of Bradan Or and west of Rotheri, inhabited by a warlike and once sovereign people—centuries ago, the Egerians held lands from Bradan Or to the current borders of Ardor. The proud Egerian chieftains, unable to unite then against the rising Yaragat and Divef, suffered a series of defeats at the hands of knights from the south and warriors from the east and were forced to retreat with their people into the inhospitable, wild lands on the right bank of the Mortlach River.
Among the Egerians, traditions of blood feud are strong, and they sometimes treat matters of clan honor with extreme seriousness—if a neighboring clan killed an ancestor of a free Egerian two centuries ago, he remembers it, and will make peace only after cutting down all the descendants of the killer... or receiving a very, very good compensation. Gold works on the Egerians no worse than on any other people...
It is precisely the attachment of the Egerians to their clans, rather than to their people, that is the cause of their disunity, which they themselves consider their freedom—no chieftain could keep them in check, and even now, exiled from their native lands, living semi-wild in the forests, no foreign ruler has ever managed to enslave them, although both the kings of Rotheri and the kings of Fenderin have encroached upon their lands. They took the Egerians for easy prey—perhaps warlike and brave, but completely disorganized people, no more difficult to deal with than a handful of bandits. Knights came, plundered, took women, placed governors, but the Egerians had no king, and therefore no one through whom these lands could be controlled at once. In the end, the kings abandoned their attempts to subjugate Eger.
However, life for the Egerians cannot be called easy—for Northerners and Barbarians, fragmented Eger remains a vulnerable target for raids. The people are growing poorer and slowly dying out. Some clans overcome their ancestral habits and unite; occasionally, chieftains powerful enough to protect their domains appear, but this happens too slowly to change anything.

Bradan Or

Bradan Or, whose very extensive but sparsely populated lands lie on the right bank of the Mortlach River, southeast of Akhramain and west of Divef, is not without reason called the "Forest Kingdom" by other powers—forests make up most of its territory, but the few meadows are fertile, and the Mortlach River carries its waters from Fenderin to the northernmost sea, making coastal cities favorable places for trade... and for raids by Northerners and Barbarians inhabiting the left bank.
The inhabitants of these lands are accustomed to defending themselves from both the former and the latter; the coastal fortresses are nearly impregnable, and the people of Bradan Or, accustomed to hunting, are reputed to be excellent archers. Merchants load their ships with furs, wood suitable for bows, and honey, and sail up the river, bartering with the eastern kingdoms for iron, linen cloth, and wine.
They have no large cities at all, only numerous villages scattered throughout the forests and meadows, paying tribute to their feudal lords, and fortresses that serve as residences for lords and as refuges for peasants in times of danger.
The "Immortal" King of Bradan Or has ruled for over a hundred years, is loved by his subjects, and is reputed to be an excellent warrior. Some of his vassals tend to blame their sovereign for sluggishness and excessive love of peace. "We could have conquered Rotheri and Yaragat long ago, if only you would lead our warriors," their reproach is often heard. "We could conquer Yaragat and Rotheri, and perhaps Divef itself, if we needed any land other than our own. We own forests that provide plentiful food and furs, meadows where our subjects graze cattle, a river that brings us wealth from other countries, and no one will reproach me for being insufficiently zealous in their defense. Did I not stop the raids of the Northerners? Was it not I who built the fortresses, the very sight of which instills terror in the Barbarians of the left bank? Was it not I who defeated the army of Yaragat, which not so long ago was great in the east and now advances from the barren north, hoping to seize our rightful domains? What do you seek in foreign lands?"
Some knights and barons go into the service of other sovereigns, but their number is negligible, and most of the restless nobility seek glory and profit in raids on neighboring kingdoms; the most desperate cross the river and set off into the barbarian lands, from which they return with strange trophies and great honor, or, more commonly, do not return at all.

Arkhaimar

In the northwest of the continent, bordering Bradan Or and reaching the northern seas, lie the lands of Arkhaimar, half covered with forests, another quarter scarred by mountain ranges, and only a small part of these territories, usually coastal, is suitable for habitation and cattle breeding. A harsh people lives on this harsh land, and they live not least at the expense of others. The Northerners sail up the rivers, plundering their southern neighbors, reaching as far as Fenderin itself; they sail west by sea, into the lands of Yaragat and Divef; they also sail south by sea, along the barbarian coasts and as far as Turan. Once, several centuries ago, the fierce jarls and konungs of Arkhaimar were the richest people in the world, but their time has long since passed. The settled peoples grow stronger, the armies of kings grow larger, and the walls of castles and cities provide reliable protection against the raids of the Northerners. The Arkhaimarians sail west in search of new lands, but life on the islands of the northern seas is little easier.
Various konungs have repeatedly attempted to unite Arkhaimar, and some have succeeded, but never has a new kingdom outlived its founder for long. The isolation of settlements from each other, strong traditions of popular power, the warlike and individualistic nature of the people—all this makes unification hardly possible without the intervention of an external, more powerful force. In the eyes of the Northerners, a leader is a man who leads warriors on a plundering campaign, not a king who dictates laws to the country during peacetime.
Life in a harsh land should teach one to act together, but the peculiarities of religion, worldview, and character of the Arkhaimarians do nothing to promote this. Life is a prelude to death and nothing more; life is hard, and people around will try to make it easier for themselves—at your expense. Duels for profit, slaughter of kinsmen, robbery of neighbors—if the Northerners are not sailing off to war in foreign lands, they will fight each other.
The Northerners are reputed to be excellent warriors, and the war bands of Arkhaimarian jarls serve both in the Northern Kingdoms and in distant Turan.

Tritalar

Elves were considered an extinct race for centuries, until the Paladins of Ardor discovered Tritalar—the last elven stronghold, previously hidden from human eyes in the northern forests. The Paladins, resistant to all deception, found this city, entirely protected by illusion, and established with the elves what has so far been an armed neutrality—humanity still harbored a strong fear of more perfect beings, and the elves understood that any aggression on their part would this time result in their complete extermination.
During the time of their isolation, the elves have become hopelessly weakened and have lost faith in their own strength. They know their era has passed irrevocably, and most of their older generation quietly fades away without leaving the walls of Tritalar. No one even knows who their king is now, or what is happening in the human kingdoms—a sad fate has united the people, and they have no need for rulers, and no need for the outside world. The younger elves, usually hiding their appearance, would sometimes venture out into the outer world, but rarely stayed long—humans are too alien to them.
From the elves originate the magics of mind and matter control. Anyone who masters them can be sure—among the teachers of his teachers were elves.

Attachments 7

7 files attached • Total size: 697.1 KB

Reading content in

Interface language