In the sixth century after the Cataclysm, Robert Annis was an ironworker touched by God.
Goaded the Wells family of Crosspoint and blessed them as they went into battle.
In 1697 AD, Boaz fled into the mountains and possibly over the mountains into the Deep Forest, after liberating some of the treasure of the tyrant Prince Stomroy of Bordonne, a northern principality in South Bend. Hidden in the mountains, Boaz’s reputation drew to him an army of farmers and merchants dedicated to the overthrow of Prince Stomroy. Boaz led his rebel armies out of the mountains to skirmish with the Prince until the Prince was finally captured and imprisoned. Boaz and his armies placed a young cousin of the Prince on the throne, who ruled with far more wisdom and compassion, and who took Boaz’s lieutenants as his own.
Boaz himself disappeared into the mountains, to return whenever he is needed to shatter the iron fist of tyrants.
The last seated Earl of the House of Lisport, Elroy Courlander defended West Highland in the early years of the Goblin wars. The charismatic Colonel Courlander raised an army from his lands and the towns along the Leather Road, successfully defending Brightwood Crossing (where the Earl had holdings) and Black Stag in great battles during the summer of 896. In the winter, he returned to give the sad news to one of his three daughters that her fiancé had died in the (First) Battle of Brightwood Crossing. Melody Courlander brooded the whole winter, and in the deeps of 1897 she murdered her entire family, including Colonel Courlander and his two trusted lieutenants.
Only Melissa Courlander’s son by John Alegar (and Alegar himself) survived. Their descendants manage Lisport House in Fork, the last of their holdings. Lisport itself is one of the many abandoned towns of the Fawn River, having been overrun by a Goblin army following the murder of Courlander and his lieutenants.
Elroy’s brother, Lieutenant Aaron Courlander, is presumed to have died with the Astronomers, the lost Order south of the Leather Road, which he joined as a young man.
Hanthur was a convert from the far north who came south to Crosspoint in the late fourth century after the Cataclysm. He aided the Order of Illustration in the thirteen-eighties, in 1385 blessing their golden staff of the dove during the battle of North Haven Hill, against the mountain Goblins.
Alazar of the Night, Measure, and Taurus lived in the late sixth century after the cataclysm. Taurus was a great warrior of the Astronomers and was instrumental in clearing the area around Kristagna of evil creatures. But he was seduced by the servants of Satan: Alazar of the Night appealed to his pride and drew him into the service of these two powerful sorcerors, Alazar and Measure.
Measure is known for several spells, such as the legendary Fool’s Magic (now lost to the lost Astronomers) and Secret Message (known to the world as Measure’s Secret Message). Measure was a close friend of Taurus in the Order, and worked to make a great weapon of power to advance the Order’s cause in the rough wilderness. Alazar twisted the weapon, and twisted Measure as well, so that the two great heroes of the Astronomers turned to shadow and the night.
We are now in the age of Earth. Nearly a thousand years ago, the second cataclysm destroyed much of the world as God looked down upon the degeneracy of the Ancients, and destroyed their power. The first cataclysm was flood. The second was fire. The third was earth, of which we are currently within the age of, and the fourth and final cataclysm will be air. The cataclysm of air will bring us to the age of Air, and mark the return of God to the world. This world of trials shall become the world of heaven.
Long ago, and far away across the High Divide, the village of Twin Trees lived and grew on Verdey River. Farms prospered, with crops fed from the clean water of the river, by complex irrigation designed and maintained by the town leaders.
One year, after a long and dry summer, the river dried up. The next spring a trickle appeared, but that dried up also. For many days the villagers prayed and prayed for water for their river.
One morning, everyone awoke to discover mud at the bottom of the river and their irrigation canals. They were amazed, for it had not rained that night.
The next morning, the same thing happened.
On the third night, many villagers tried to stay awake, to see the water come. Eventually, all fell asleep. When they awoke, the water had come and gone again. They decided it was a gift from God, and they were not meant to see the water come.
But one man was determined to see the river come to life. He slept all day, and when night arrived he awoke and walked along the river, towards the mountains.
Early in the morning, a couple of hours after midnight, water came rushing down the river bed. After an hour, the water stopped. The man continued walking until dawn. Then he want to sleep. At dusk, he continued walking. Once again, a few hours after midnight, the water burst down the river, ending an hour later. This was repeated for weeks as the man followed the river further and further towards its source.
Finally, weeks after he had started his night journey, an hour or so after midnight, he came upon a hole in the mountain, and the river ended there. He looked around, and saw some Pixies playing about in a nearby meadow. He hid and watched them for a while, and then decided to have some fun with them. He took some small pebbles and began flinging them at the flying creatures. They ran away.
He returned to the hole in the mountain, but no water came out that night, nor the next, nor the next. After a week of waiting, he started back towards the town. Back over his shoulder, he noticed storm clouds gathering. Before he returned, it started raining. The night he came into town it rained, and the next day it rained, and the next. The next day a great flood burst from the river, washing the town away and destroying it forever.
(Some storytellers end the story without the storm: after weeks again of traveling back downriver, with no water coming down the river at night, he returns to a dry, deserted ghost town.)
Hundreds of years ago, when the Druids still walked the forests of Highland, one of the strongholds of these evil men were the Houses of the Wise. Here, in the midlands of West Highland, the Druids cast their spells and spread their lies across the lands. Their alliance with the underworld gave them infernal knowledge of the future, and some of weak heart even went to the Houses to hear--or change--their own future. All for a fee, of course, and the treasures of the Wise were rumored beyond measure.
The people of West Highland, aided by the Knights of the Stigmas di Cristo, took up arms to drive the crones and warlocks of the Druids out of their stronghold forever.
With God on their side, they succeeded. But in his death throes the Great Druid lay a curse upon them, a curse that they would never leave the forest alive. When a lone survivor arrived in Stone Goblin weeks later, he swore that the trees themselves carried out the Druid’s curse.
When the goblin mage’s armies came north, one general, hearing the rumor of the great treasures, diverted his army of goblins to search for the ancient Druidic temple. That army disappeared, to the relief of west Highland’s defenders.
And the treasure has never been found.
They were all dressed in clothing so out of fashion I thought I was in Black Stag. The captain of the guards had a beautiful daughter. I stayed with them for a week.
When I returned to Biblyon I found that seven years had passed.
To sailors, the south sea is called “the path of God”. According to stories passed among them, there is land on the other side of the storms, and when the storms abate, sailors too far out of the Bend can see the hard, rocky, unforgiving coast of the other side of the tumult.
Legends abound of the strange, painted, human-like creatures that live in that dangerous land, and also of the treasures of gold and emerald which they wear as if it were leather or dyed cloth.
So vague and sparse is knowledge of the quadrivium that only the eldest Elves, the wisest sages, and the most persistent wizards know of its legends. Alternately located in the Great Mountains or in some higher mountains further west, all agree that to reach it one must travel many miles and defeat or evade legions of horrific creatures.
The Elves regard the caverns, which they call vestelerivel, as that which brought about the cataclysm. The caverns, they say, then spread throughout the world in a great burst of life, throwing everything out of balance before contracting upon itself as an empty snake leaving its skin. They believe that the caverns are centered across the great sea. They have a story of a great Elf, Terelesanmor, who was lost in a battle with night trolls in the time of the Goblin Mage. He was later found coming out of the Great Mountains, naked, shivering, and crazed, raving about having crossed a great sea, some horrible humans (melelesieroe) and huge peaks extending as high as the arch of Tirtalien’s stars and as low as the vestelerivel. Terelesanmor died of his travails, and never regained his sanity.(Terelesanmor also figures in legends of those battles, and of something powerful and secret stolen from the Goblin Mage.)
The Ancients speak only rarely of the quadrivium, a source of great power and an entrance to many lands, it is also connected with suicides and the dead--or the almost dead.
“I smell you,” growled the beast. “And I smell my gold.”