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*'''Long, long ago - The nigh-apocalyptic [[Cataclysm]] occurs, killing hundreds of thousands, plunging civilization into an age of darkness, and rending the land itself asunder. While the details are unclear, it is known that it was caused by the epic magic wielded by two warring [[Shadow Touched]] factions.
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*'''Long, long ago - The Cataclysm'''
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The nigh-apocalyptic [[Cataclysm]] occurs, killing hundreds of thousands, plunging civilization into an age of darkness, and rending the land itself asunder. While the details are unclear, it is known that it was caused by the epic magic wielded by two warring [[Shadow Touched]] factions.
  
 
*'''165 BTA - [[Hammon Smith]] Declares War On The Council Of Nobles'''
 
*'''165 BTA - [[Hammon Smith]] Declares War On The Council Of Nobles'''

Revision as of 12:13, 21 April 2011

  • Long, long ago - The Cataclysm

The nigh-apocalyptic Cataclysm occurs, killing hundreds of thousands, plunging civilization into an age of darkness, and rending the land itself asunder. While the details are unclear, it is known that it was caused by the epic magic wielded by two warring Shadow Touched factions.

  • 165 BTA - Hammon Smith Declares War On The Council Of Nobles

The castle on Turtle Rock was the realization of a dream for a stonemason named Hammon Smith.

Smith came from common blood, but aspired to nobility. He built his most defensible fortress before seeking recognition of House Smith by the Council of Nobles - the ruling body in those days before the First Wildling War and the ascent of the Wildcat Crown of House Kahar.

However, the six noble houses refused to recognize the validity of House Smith. So, Hammon Smith declared war on the Council's membership.

Light's Reach was founded on Eastwatch Hill by Fahral Mikin in 25 BTA (Before the Aegis). At the time, Fahral was a pioneering young nobleman of 23, with a wife named Corsara Mikin and sons named Annath and Allal.

Fahral dubbed the high ground - a mesa - upon which Light's Reach sits as Eastwatch Hill. Now, as many Fastheldians realize, this has led to some misunderstanding and confusion with the township of Eastwatch, well to the northeast of the mesa. The simplest explanation accepted by scholars in the Church of True Light is that, when the young duke founded the town of Light's Reach, it was atop the easternmost point of known explored territory outside the Old City.

In 25 BTA (Before the Aegis), a woodsman named Grummlan Path set out to survey the land surrounding Eastwatch Hill on behalf of Fahral Mikin and discovered an ancient castle deep in the woods, downhill on the eastern side of the bluff. Within the vine-choked stones of the keep, Grummlan encountered a pack of Wildlings lurking among the ruins. He fought them, killed them, but sustained a mortal injury from poisoning inflicted by the monsters.

He struggled back to Light's Reach and survived just long enough to tell his master of the castle and the Wildlings found within.

The castle became known as Sheltered Flame Keep, and was established as the headquarters of the Order of the Flame, an organization devoted to the defense of Light's Reach against forces of shadow and evil. The keep remains in use for that purpose to this day.

In 22 BTA (Before the Aegis), Grummlan Path's widow, Sorine, and son, Grummlar, wanted something done to specifically honor the memory of their loved one. They petitioned Fahral Mikin at East Bluff three years after Grummlan Path's death and won the Mikin patriarch's approval for a project to commemorate the sacrifice of the woodsman.

Fahral Mikin commissioned the sculpting of a white marble statue of Grummlan Path by an artisan named Yanim Grove. The sculpture was then erected in a garden at Sheltered Flame Keep.

  • 5 BTA – First “Flamekeeper” Of Light’s Reach Hired

The first Flamekeeper, hired in 5 BTA (Before the Aegis), was a hunched old man named Wun Wood.

The name given to the battle that heralded both the coming of the First Wildling War, and the formation of the Emperor's Blades. After defending the walls of what is now the Shadow District from Wildling attack with the aid of Ulfell Lomasa, Sirion Starkhorn, and whatever men were courageous enough to take up arms by his side, Talus Kahar proclaimed that the people of Fastheld "Stand at the crossroads of history," and sent forth riders to muster a call to service.

The term "darkening" was adopted as a two-fold meaning; the first being that Wildlings would then only attack in the twilight hours, and the second remaining symbolic of the dark taint that such creatures would forever cast upon those who would be born in later generations.

The name for the first declared war between the People of Fastheld, and the creatures known as Wildlings. The First Wildling War took place in the year 4 BTA (Before the Aegis), and was sparked by an event in which Wildlings assaulted the walls of the city that is now known as the Shadow District.

Upon that day, Emperor Talus Kahar I, along with Blademaster Ulfell Lomasa, Sirion Starkhorn, and a handful of comrades, valiantly defended the citizens of the city from the slaughter that the Wildlings would have brought upon them in the battle that is now known as the Darkening of Fastheld.

During the first Wildling War, fought under the banner of Talus Kahar I, Goram Zahir betrayed the Emperor and the Blades, misleading them about the enemy's numbers as they entered the valley. Many Bladesmen were slaughtered.

One of two sons of Fahral Mikin, Allal was forced to joust against his brother for the honor of serving in the War.

Allal triumphed; Annath remained at East Bluff Keep - still under construction but habitable - to help his father manage affairs in Light's Reach. Allal died within a year, in the Valley of the Blades.

The name given to the pursuit of Goram "The Craven Raven" Zahir, following his betrayal of Emperor Talus Kahar I at the battle of the Valley of Blades during the First Wildling War. Emerging relatively unscathed from an event that was meant to kill them, Talus Kahar, along with Ulfell Lomasa and Sirion Starkhorn, swiftly sought furious vengeance against Goram and his loyalists.

After much bloodshed, Goram was finally apprehended, along with an entourage of his of his loyal minions, and promptly hung and left for dead along the Imperial Thoroughfare.


The name given to the battle that took place amidst the high branches of the sacred bloodwood trees in the Gray Forest; one of the few places in Fastheld where Wildlings found they could manoeuvre safely regardless of the hour. Blademaster Lomasa wished to chop down the trees and burn the forest, but the Church held the land and trees as sacred. Bladesmen, along with a unit of Shadowscourges from the Church of True Light, eventually assaulted the forest, though the battle was not deemed a decisive victory for either side of the conflict

Had either Fastheld force tried this battle alone, the Wildlings - even outnumbered - would have wiped them out. As it was, the combined force lost more than half of its attacking 327 soldiers to the dervish-like attacks of the invading savage Shadow creatures, who didn't have to kill a man on the battlefield to leave him dead or dying a short while later. The poisoned claws took many more lives than might ordinarily have been lost against a normal enemy.


The name given to the event in which Blademaster Ulfell Lomasa, along with the scouting party that traveled with him along the western ridge of the Lightholder River, met his demise at the claws of three Wildlings during an ambush in the First Wildling War.

The Blademaster fell under the thrashing claws and teeth of the three Wildlings. His scouts fared little better; only one survived long enough, poison coursing agonizingly through his veins, to return to the encampment and inform the Emperor that his friend and most able warrior had fallen in battle.

"I do not know how we shall persevere without Ulfell's wisdom," the Emperor wrote in his journals of the conflict in the wake of Ulfell’s death, and the promotion of Wayul in his steed, “But we have no choice but to try. We must trust in the Light to see us through these dark times."


It was on the site now known as Aegisport, upon the hills north of the river, that the first Kahar Emperor finally cornered and defeated the Wildling warriors who decimated the Fastheld forces at the Valley of Blades.


Gifted to the family Fionnlagh by Emperor Talus Kahar I for the heroic service of Shawn Kenly Fionnlagh, archer, in the Valley of the Blades. According to legend, an arrow shot from this very bow felled the Wildling that cursed the Kahar bloodline.

Shadowsbane is an Imperial relic, crafted in the courts of the Emperor by the finest bowyers of the age. It is one of the Fionnlagh family's most treasured possessions.


  • 3 BTA – Construction Of “The Twins” Begins

Two ambitious projects devised by Light's Reach founder Fahral Mikin. In despair over the loss of his youngest son at the Valley of Blades, Fahral ordered twin keeps erected on the bluffs east and west of the town proper, to guard the four torch towers.

The first castle, East Twin, was finished before Fahral Mikin died of old age. The second castle, West Twin, would not be completed until eight years later, under the guidance of Fahral's oldest son, Annath.


Returning from the First Wildling War, Emperor Talus Kahar I built this town on the north shore of the Fastheld River, near the site of the final battle in the first Wildling War, where his forces triumphed and smashed the remnants of the invaders.


  • 0 ATA – The Aegis Is Constructed

The hard-fought First Wildling War, a conflict against a race of humanoid, poison-clawed Shadow monstrosities from the wilderness, had just ended. The Imperial Council recommended to the Emperor that a protective wall be erected around the territory of Fastheld to defend against further incursions by the savage creatures. But even a modest defensive wall would take years to construct. The Emperor, himself injured in the war, had pushed the troops of the Emperor's Blades and the Church of True Light to the breaking point. Many able-bodied men had entered service to fight the war. He could not reasonably expect them to now pour themselves into the exhausting, backbreaking work of raising a wall. Nor could the Emperor take for granted that the Wildlings wouldn't try to mount another offensive while the wall remained unfinished. He could think of only one way to accomplish this with needed rapidity: Mages.

He extended an offer of amnesty to any Shadow-Touched denizen in Fastheld: Lend their ability to raising the Aegis in exchange for free passage out of Fastheld, unharmed, each with a horse and wagon loaded with supplies. It was the best compromise the Emperor could offer without sparking a revolt by the noble houses or the Church of True Light.

Dozens of mages took the offer of the Amnesty of the Wildcat Crown, as it was called. Their only real alternative was to live in secrecy for fear of being discovered. If discovered, they might be captured by the warriors of the Church of True Light or the Emperor's own Surrector, and forced to endure torture, maiming, blinding, and muting. They'd become Lessers, forced to live as slaves working in the mines of the realm. Or they might be killed.

So, the wizards took their crown-bestowed wagons, rode out to points along the perimeter designated by the Emperor, and waited for the signal from a courier. When it came, the conjurors used their abilities to rip soil and stone from the earth itself, raising the towering wall between themselves and the territory they once called home.


  • 0 ATA – Emperor Talus Kahar I Declared Sovereign Ruler of Fastheld


Despondent over the loss of Allal, Fahral became reclusive, relying more and more on Annath to manage his affairs. He saw the completion of East Bluff Keep and its twin torch towers, insisting they always stay lit, before finally joining the Light.



According to legend, Talus Kahar II struck down the Viscount Bröselov Vozhd from his warhorse, Arbat, using a Longbow known as the Kingmaker in what history has called the Battle of Red Fields. With the fall of their house leader, the stalwart Vozhd defenders fell into a panic as they tried to recover the body, and in the chaos, were forced to retreat from the field. This route, coupled with the loss of the Vozhd's last great commander, would be the decisive event in the House's capitulation.



As Talus Kahar II grows ill in his final years, Regent Vurrun Lomasa is chosen to rule alongside Empress Vala Mikin until Talus Kahar III is fit to do so. This lasts until 65 ATA.

Once every 45 years or so, starting in about 50 ATA (After the Aegis), bizarre happenings plague the township atop Eastwatch Hill. That first year, scores of horses, goats and cattle were slaughtered, their flayed carcasses left hanging from trees in Mikin Wood.




Talus Kahar III commissions Harlim Nillu, a noble artisan, to sculpt a number of monuments in his Great Grandfather’s honor: A giant wildcat's head to house the constabulary, a giant wildcat with heads and paws on the north and south ends that houses the Riverview Tavern, and a domed mercantile with three attached rearing wildcats. A no-frills, fairly ordinary grey stone temple stands out among the structures.


Aegiskeep was first designed during the reign of Talus Kahar II, but it was not until the ascension of his successor that artisan Harlim Nillu completed the final work on the stone head that now houses the residence.

The great keep was fashioned to look like a luxuriating wildcat, with two massive clawed forepaws flanking the portcullis that leads into the castle below the stone head that holds Aegiskeep's residential quarters.

  • 89 ATA – “Serry Rush” Incident And Landmark Named

The stretch of the Fastheld River that runs broad and green between Darkwater Junction to the southeast and the high cliffs that drop from Sun's Point plateau to the northwest was dubbed “Serry Rush” this year.

Serry Rush, named neither for great heroes of bardic fame nor bloody battles, but instead for a Scion of the Kahar line.

His affections ensnared by a Shadowed freelander mage, he declared undying love to her. Shadowscourges from the Sun's Keep upriver came to free him from the spell by sending Darina through purifying flame but the taint of the magic lingered in his mind. Driven mad by the darkness he lived here on the banks, guarding the place where her body fetched up on shore after its flaming drop off the upstream cliffs.


The murderous brigand Halom Halweir, whose gangs marauded a fair stretch of the Lightholder River, finally received justice from the Emperor's Blades this year. Halweir's Notch – as the stretch became known – has since become a popular refuge for squatters and destitute panhandlers, who dwell in coffin-sized niches carved out of the rock.


In 95 ATA, strange blue and green lights glowed above East Bluff and inhabitants reported ghostly moaning sounds. A housekeeper named Forman Dust went mad and massacred his family before hurling himself over the edge of the bluff.



The catastrophic collapse of West Bluff's north tower occurred this year, sparking a blaze in the nearby woodlands that threatened to spread throughout the entire Forest District.


A foreboding section of the Lightholder River, populated by the weather worn skulls of those who attempted to place themselves above the Imperial Law.

It was not called Brigand's Turn because the area was a favorite haunting ground of Fastheld's cutpurses and river pirates; far from it. Instead, it got the moniker from the fact that it is here that Emperor Talus Kahar III declared that all thieves who murder legitimate citizens would have their severed heads mounted for all to see.

  • 122 ATA - Aurora Janus Removed From Power



In 140 ATA, a dozen infants were snatched from their cradles by a furred beast and carried off into the night, never to be seen again.



  • 174 ATA – Bronze Hall of the Imperial Horsemen Built

The ancestral home of the Imperial Horsemen, this ancient Hall is long and wide, filled with shadows and half lights; mighty pillars upholding its lofty roof.

The legendary shields and weapons of Horselords long passed rest upon the pillars of this domain; at once both solemn and proud and they stand guard over the Hall, and all that walk within it.



  • 182 ATA - Shadow Plague Sweeps Through Old City

A pox that blinded, disfigured, and ultimately killed its victims swept through the cities of Gatetown, Silver Valley, and Halo.


  • 183 ATA - The Quarantine

Emperor Talus Kahar V made the difficult decision to quarantine the Old City, and, using the might of the Blades, slaughtered all of its residents to prevent the spread of the Shadow Plague. Tens of thousands died.


  • 188 ATA - Ayzra “The Black” Zahir Born

Count Ayzra Zahir, Ayzra 'The Black', was a fallen Zahir nobleman and ringleader of the infamous 'Coven'. Obsessed with his belief in the inherent superiority of the Shadow-touched, his short, violent life become synonymous with sorcery and hubris.

Born in 188 ATA with dark and elemental shadow-powers, the young count revelled in his abilities and eventually grew to believe that he was ordained by the Darkness to lead the masses.

Added to this megalomania became a rare breed of erotic perversion: the rumours of Ayzra's vilest pleasures would eventually become too much for even the Zahir to bear, and he was disowned from the family.

In the absence of kin, he would spend his ancestral fortune organizing a secret society of Shadow-Touched brethren - titled the Coven - with the express aim of spreading fear, hatred and chaos.



  • 216 ATA - Ayzra “The Black” Zahir Terrorizes Fastheld

Ayzra and his 'Tickler' – a long black bullwhip - terrorized Fastheld during the 'Long Winter' of 216, leaving in his wake a string of mysterious mutilations and murders. The assaults were similar, yet bewildering: the victim's flesh was contorted with strikes and marks that were burned into form, as if seared and branded with fire itself. With the murders continuing unabated and the noble's constables unable to find a culprit, the Emperor himself dispatched his legendary Spymaster, Baron Billan Lomasa, to solve the case.


  • 216 ATA - First Time of Illumination is declared by the Church

During a time of lasting winter, faith among the people of Fastheld begins to falter. It falls to the then Aurora of the Church, Thalina Kahar, to declare a period of meditation upon the blessings of the Light. Many answer the call and balance is soon restored once more.


  • 217 ATA – Ayzra “The Black” Zahir Dies

For nearly a year more, Spymaster Billan Lomasa played cat-and-mouse with Ayzra until their fabled showdown in the Shadow District, in which - suitably decapitated - Ayzra and his whip met their end. According to the legend, Billan tied the Tickler around a rock, attached it to the Count's headless corpse, and tossed them into a river.






As Emperor Talus Kahar VII dies suddenly, the elderly Chancellor Tilut Kahar is tapped to take his place until Talus VIII is fit to rule. Unfortunately, he dies in 306 ATA.


When Regent Tilut Kahar dies, the burden falls to the thirty year old Watermaster, Drell Mikin, a popular but unimaginative leader. He rules until 311, when Talus Kahar VIII is seen fit to rule.


  • 321 ATA – The Southwatch Tavern and Brewery Closes Down

The first building to have been constructed in the Southwatch Township, it was famously renown for having remained open to all both night and day, all year long. It is rumoured to have closed only for one night in the last five hundred years, and that was during the Storming of 321 when the city was invaded by shadowed creatures from over the wall.


  • 347 ATA – Ceallach Tower Built

An ancient and ill-fated tower, built in 374 by Ceallach Ionhar Fionnlagh, which was eventually destroyed by the Wildlings who inhabited the Woods near which Ceallach defiantly built the tower near. His memorial reads:

"Here rests the brave and noble forester Ceallach Ionhar Fionnlagh who, in the year 347, scoffed at the warnings of lesser men and built this fine tower. He learned of his error shortly thereafter. Beware of Wildlings."



In the middle 300's, there was a fairly renowned Shadowscourge by the name of Sorenn Kahar. During her life, she was known to be extremely powerful with the Sun's kiss, rumoured to even have the ability to dispel the Shadow from an individual and leave them clean of its taint, all with a simple touch of her hand. At the age of thirty two, Sorenn was brutally murdered, and when her body was found, her head and right hand were missing; the hand hacked off at the wrist. The killer was eventually found and disposed of, and the head was recovered, but the hand was never found save for rumours of its use.



On the death of Talus Kahar VIII, Empress Cereline Kahar begins her rule until 370, when Talus Kahar IX is ruled fit to begin.




Jamot Seamel, first master of the Brooding Keep, carved the exquisite sculptures from gray marble taken from a quarry in the River District and, in the third year of marriage to Anae Nillu, had his vassals install the sculptures as a ward against the Shadow's Touch. In the fourth year of their marriage, shortly after Anae celebrated her nineteenth birthday, one of the sculpted gargoyles cracked and fell from its stone perch as she strolled beneath it.

The blunt force of the marble form did considerable damage to her head, but the blow was not instantly fatal. She lingered for six weeks while the healers ministered to her, and while Jamot struggled to keep hope and faith against the misery of realizing that what had been meant to protect his beloved, created by his own hand, had felled her.

A gap exists in the circle of gargoyles - the fallen sculpture never got replaced in this chamber that became known as the Sorrow Vault.


  • 558 ATA – Jamot Seamel Dies

While his loyal vassals maintained the keep and paced the battlements of the Brooding Keep, Jamot survived on meager nourishment so that he could spend each day and each night - in the heat of summer and the chill of winter - in private agony. One day, it is said, Jamot surrendered to his anguish and hurled himself from the tower, crashing through the roof of the stables below.

  • 586 ATA – Hallard Seamel Becomes Horsemaster of the Imperial Horsemen


Aegisport heralds the birth of Prince Talus Kahar XIV.


Considered to have been the turning point in the previously one-sided Second Wildling War, and often cited as the last great charge of the Imperial Horsemen, the Stand of Eastwatch takes its title from the Wildling Siege of the township of the same name.

It was late in the year 611 when Wildlings, carried by the momentum of their attack on Vozhdya, laid siege to Eastwatch and her people. The weight of the assault was mostly fended off by the men of the Emperor's Blades as they struggled against all odds to stem the endless waves of Wildlings, and protect the people of the Township.

The odds were dire indeed until reinforcements arrived in the form of the Imperial Horsemen, who thundered into the Township and decimated the flanks of the Wildling assault, allowing the Blades to push forward their own counter-attack.

The battle was turned, and the Wildlings routed in a such a manner that they would not be able to continue the momentum of the war they raged, and Eastwatch - such as it was - was saved. However, the cost to the Blades and the Imperial Horsemen was high, for the casualty list included Horsemaster Hallard Seamel, father of Freia Seamel, and friend to Talus Kahar XIII, among the dead.

  • 611 ATA - The Cleansing

Late in 611, the Church of True Light was tipped off as to a location of a meeting of a large group of Shadow-Touched, near the northeast corner of the Aegis. The Church used this to their advantage, launching a sneak attack against the magi in a cramped, poorly-defended cave. A bloody battle ensued between the Church and the Shadow-Touched, with the Church emerging victorious, killing hundreds of the Shadow-Touched in the process, and hauling away over a dozen for questioning and lessening.


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