In
the olden days, order and righteousness was brought to the land from
the Gods above, granting mankind the divine spark. The divine mandate
of heaven, which gave rise to the rulers, who tamed the savages who
tamed the land. The earth was plundered for its riches in ores and
jewels, laws and writing was made, and seeds were harvested for bread
and ale. The times were good. Now, everything is dying. It's not all
at once, your grandparents thought everything was dying too, and so
will you, and so will your grand children. People still find joy in
the little things, but it's clear that it's all coming down. The
decay will destroy everything, and nothing we can do can stop
it.
The capital city of Arvakus was once the shining beacon of the world, which is now a ruin. The fields and forests nearest to it, once carefully tended, now are stalked by corrupted beasts and the game-warden families who were once sworn to protect it. Now the game wardens look much the same as the animals they are to game. The city itself is a broken cobble, irreparable and ominous, monsters roam the streets and the only “citizens” that remain are the broken shades who go about their daily labors without any thought or understanding- undying and impotent. Nobody knows what is happening within the great castle of the highest King; is he aware of the suffering in his manor, or is it his doing? The corruption within makes the corruption without, so say the Gods.
The capital city of Arvakus was once the shining beacon of the world, which is now a ruin. The fields and forests nearest to it, once carefully tended, now are stalked by corrupted beasts and the game-warden families who were once sworn to protect it. Now the game wardens look much the same as the animals they are to game. The city itself is a broken cobble, irreparable and ominous, monsters roam the streets and the only “citizens” that remain are the broken shades who go about their daily labors without any thought or understanding- undying and impotent. Nobody knows what is happening within the great castle of the highest King; is he aware of the suffering in his manor, or is it his doing? The corruption within makes the corruption without, so say the Gods.
Along
the roads and forts of the land; the once proud Knights are now the
worst terrors of all. Purging all perceived corruption and perversion
from their lands, they too were the worst corrupted. Once their armor
was shining white, now it is pitch black with the pyres they have
made from the innocents. Their eyes are blind towards the great
flying beasts and flayed ghouls who dance along the walls of the
crumbling castle, but a defiant and proper peasant woman will be
accosted and tried as a witch. It is obvious to all that the land and
people are sick, and no one has the cure.
The
great city of Arvakus is the seat of the Holy Lineage, the first and
greatest line. Along with this King, several noble lords were
selected from the primordial pre-men that the Gods chose for their
piety and pagan-righteousness. Among these families were the proud
Camnus, the wise Obligurd, the brave Foreon, and the compassionate
Silovan. These noble lords were given the land to split among
themselves evenly, and each of them elected their favored champions
to be their lords and vassals, and these vassals split their lands
among the low folk, humble yet good, and all was well in the Kingdom.
But
the rules were broken. Time and time again, the men and women of
these noble houses allowed their desires of the flesh to take over
their rational minds and pure hearts; they married commoners or among
the other houses, diluting the holy lines that gave them their power
and strength. The strength and honor of the Kingdom, the house of
Camnus, once measured the average height of five cubits. Now, they
are shrunken dwarves, hiding in holes underneath the ground to steal
the organs from wandering passersby. The wise house of Obligurd, the
keeper of divination rituals, caught heritable blindness and became
fools. The Foreon, who once sailed in ships to the foggy islands
outside of the land of the Kingdom to find new realms and see if
anything would threaten it, retreated to the inwards most parts of
their manor- they became so deathly afraid of water that they
resorted to drinking the blood of their low folk, the vampires they
became. Even the uncorruptable Silovan have fallen; still preaching
purity and truth to the lands, but having become weak and impotent,
their hands shrivel and fall off along with their teeth as soon as
they reach the age to see the evil in the world and wish to stop it.
The only house seemingly unaffected is the Holy Lineage, but none
know or have seen what corruption lies with them, if any.
These
noble families, once the greatest and exemplars for the people, have
become so degenerated that the commoners no longer respected them. If
a noble can lie with a commoner, then a commoner can lie with a
beast. The offspring are twisted, but righteousness was so foreign to
the people of the Kingdom that it mattered not. Half-mutants walk the
streets in daylight now, a sign of our dying times, madness and
melancholy reign over all over emotions and feelings. Children seem
to barely be out of the flush of their youth when their wrinkles
begin to set in, and men begin to cough dust as soon as they turn in
their mid thirties, if not even earlier. Much of this only feeds into
itself; the Lords tire of their wives quickly, and seek young peasant
girls for their fix of beautiful love, only further driving a stake
between goodness and honor and their own personal lusts.
Once,
the steel of the kingdom (mostly made by house Camnus) was the
greatest that could be imagined. Spectacular, immutable, well
balanced and forged without a hint of rust or bend. But now, the
tools and weapons created in the sooty forges are warped and weak;
the blacksmiths sacrifice bone and blood to the fires, a pagan ritual
that only strengthens nature, to improve their blades so they are not
dull right after being sharpened again. The truth is that the steel
is weak because the people are weak; even the most noble of knights
seem to walk around with rusting, patchwork armor.
Still, a few old gleaming forms remain. Perhaps in the old Arvakus castle armory, or perhaps hidden in some buried treasure chest; these gleaming swords are almost blindingly white like ivory, capable of destroying anything corrupted with a single strike. These highly sought after weapons are fewer in number every year, as a careless man will crack it in an awkward swing against a stone and watch the light fade from the alloy.
Perhaps
worst of all, the peoples' despair only mounted greater and greater
as the temples were silent. Those who were humble priests, or the
paladins and priest-kings of Obligurd, found their divinations less
and less effective. The widest spread heresy was that the Gods lost
interest in the corrupted and degenerated people of the Kingdom, but
the church themselves blamed the people. Every sin, every perversion
acted like a cloud of dust kicked up in the eyes of the Almighty, and
it was the fault of the people the rulers and sages could not commune
with the divine. That is when the great purges began, the corpse
fires burning streams of smoke in the sky that never quite fully fell
down from it later on, even now the sky is still dark even during the
day, the sun itself eclipsed by the weight of the sodden Earth
beneath it.
The
Temple-Houses were also once were the money was made; holy money
blessed by the Gods so it was never used and traded to a treacherous
hand. However, a the temples became silent, the money fell out of
favor. Soon, red coins made from the blood of beasts came into effect
and was commonly traded in the Kingdom. Now, no one can tell if the
bloody red coins were made from beasts blood, or the blood of man or
woman. They are too dark and spotty to tell anymore; even giving
money to the poor feels like a dirty act to simply touch such
coinage, and so few wish to dwell on how it is made.
Magic
in the Kingdom, which was too once a tool to better divine and know
the will of the Gods, has been corrupted as well. Taught from the
holy and lofty institutions that once kept it a secret from the
masses, it became too widespread and impossible to control. Each
person could interpret the laws and rules of magic their own way, and
while each had the greatest of intentions slowly they changed from a
tool of learning and communion with the divine to a tool of blind
ignorance and domination. The men of magic now wear tattered
yellowing robes, a far cry from the white healers smock they once
wore, and now command fire and branch to their wills, instead of
staring into the flames or counting the rings of trees to know the
will of their creators.
The
people who still seem to have the most sense in their head are those
who live in the middle lands. Not in the outskirts of the Kingdoms
near the made, treacherous coasts where godless heathen sea-raiders
come from a mysterious land to the south. Nor are those who live near
to the heart of the Kingdom, in their treacherous and decadent cities
overflowing with greed and sewage. No- it is those in the blissful
countryside, free from all outside and inside corruptions, that seem
the most at peace. But even their peace there is strife, as none are
truly free from the taint.
Your village found it- the Old Knight's Head. Still in its helmet, the decaying head can speak. And it did, a simple hammer blow to the unbreakable metal dome and the mouth will split and tell tales of the olden days. It will harken to a time before children were born with split lips and backwards knees, to a time before the greatest knowledge wasn't in books of the past but in the field and learning of the day. The Old Knight's Head fills you with the strangest sense of nostalgia for a time before you were alive.
The
Kingdom is dying. You feel the weight of your years even in your
youth, your split leather shoes and gloves, taken from a calf who
couldn't breathe after its birth, are your most expensive pieces of
armor aside from your rusting and crooked sword. Only a few have
thought to raid the oldest tombs of the Kingdom- not for treasure and
greed as they were raided before, but for wisdom. Speaking to the old
dead, and to the men who made this land great, and learning from them
what has gone so wrong. The corrupted watch may not approve of your
actions, madly declaring your insanity for wanting to fix this broken
land, but you must not ere from the path. But even as you struggle,
you feel the pit in your gut deepen as you know, somehow, deep down,
that no one is watching your struggle and no one will let you
succeed. You fight against forces that can't be beaten. You will
fail. Your effort will only end in an inevitable death and further
slide into barbarism and returning the world to the primordial muddy
chaos from which it can't stray. Still, what else can be done? You
will fail before you begin, or fail after you have tried your
greatest. Is the struggle worth it?
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