Archive for July, 2018

The city of Aideldon

Posted in Rehland on July 31, 2018 by coyoteandthunder

The Hall of the Nediam Knights inside the Bailey of the Aquian Throne

Aideldon town square beside the Smithy

Aideldon has a population that fluctuates seasonally between 8,000 in the summer when the fields are being tended and 15,000 people in the winter when the snows come.

Aideldon has a army that fluctuates between 500 and 2000 conscripts. Service is mandatory for all young, strong adults of no less than two years. Soldiers are specialized as bowmen, heavy infantry, swordsmen, and pikemen.

There is a standing force of 200 armored cavalry.

Bedogolin is the lord-assist to Queen Eyssa. No one has ever seen him draw the sword he always wears. A zealous and dogmatically conservative, religious man, it was Bedogolin who negotiated the peace with the Eladrin of Syrwood.

Ulma is Queen Eyssa’s everpresent handmaiden and most-trusted friend. She often acts as the queen’s spokesperson on political matters of the day.

Lord Argass is the general in charge of Aideldon’s military at the Golden Garrison. Argass takes orders directly from the Knights of Nediam.

Rehland, For Queen and Country!

Posted in Rehland on July 20, 2018 by coyoteandthunder

REHLAND

FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY

It is said that everyone whose eyes are blessed enough to know the visage of the mystic, good queen Eyssa II has no choice but to love her.

The Egyptian Colonization

Aideldon, the capital of the Rehland, was founded nearly fifteen hundred years ago by the enslaving Egyptos (called Abyssinia in contemporary Rehlish) culture over the native population of a few thousand, stone-age humans. The dominant civilization at that time was the Eladrin, Nedium Elda Raelfaenii, the people of the liquid stone.  Decimated by the invading force of dinosaur-mounted, demon-worshipping Egyptians, the fay kingdoms were scattered and arcanely masked from one another for centuries in what is known as the Fay Diaspora of Rehland. Today, there are three distinctly different fay kingdoms: The Eladrin of Syrwood, the Wood Elves of Amnessa, and the Shadar Kai of Ninomar. The Egyptians came for the Nedium. 24 ingots of metal infused with the original, draconic magic of the world – a completely lost, and absolutely powerful arcane technology called the Bonasas. From those original ingots, some have be lost, some have been remade, but all call to one another across space and time. Egyptian culture is still evidenced in Aideldon by three pyramids and the lasting presence of the patron mother of the city, Isis, queen of life, who betrayed the occult Egyptians to free the human population from their rule. The Oni lord Romado, once an ally of the free people, in turn betrayed Isis and took the city for himself after the Egyptians, sending Isis and her people into exile.

Despite the truce with the Eladrin, the Shadar Kai still relentlessly attack the city of Aideldon, on their undead steeds, the legacy of their infernal queen Zariel.

The Time of the Ogremage

In that time, the time of Ogremage, a period of one hundred years, Isis founded and united the five counties of Wellwyr, Tigdale, Ydledyr, Pyrsmith and Oromyr. She then had two children with the Eladrin Lord Alobal Lorfiril, a son Dian and a daughter Brigan. Armed with Nedium weapons, and united under one banner, they retook Aideldon from the Ogremage and founded a new kingdom on the virtues of honor, faith and family. After nearly eight hundred years of rule, over 30 generations of men, the family ruled with undying grace and were loved and Rehland prospered. Then the Faydark crept into the hearts of the Eladrin, possessing their wine and madness followed. There was no assuaging their wrath and their evil. Isis and her children were betrayed, and it was told that Isis fled with her children to behind the moon, where they remain, granting divine magic to druids and priests of men.

No human has ever been permitted to pass into Sheni Laht, the heart of the Eladrin Syrwood

The Murder of Isis

In truth, on the winter moon one hundred years ago at the dawn of the war, Isis was killed by her own brother, a demon named Fraz-Urb’luu with an Eladrin Nedium blade. Up until then, Fraz-Urb’luu had been an immortal knight in the court of his sister the queen, having had always hidden the true nature of his terrible heart. The murdered body of Isis was found by her son, Dian. Fraz-Urb’luu, appearing on the scene there following, convinced the enraged prince that she was murdered by her own husband, who himself had disappeared and not been seen since, even unto this day. Madness followed; Dian and Brigan went into the Syrwood to avenge their mother and have not been seen since. A terrible and bloody, century long war between the Eladrin and the humans erupted. All of it, based on a lie.

The hell queen Zariel appeared to the Shadar Kai as a vision of victory as she proceeded to cut immortality directly from the heart of Aideldonian royalty.

 

The Curse of Zariel

Soon after the flight and disappearance of the Aideldonian rulers, The Fallen Angel Zariel, queen of Avernus, cloaked herself as a Shadar Kai queen and stole the immortality of the family of Isis, cut it, as it is said with her own stolen Nedium blade, the Queen Slayer. There have been four queens, now human and mortal, in the time since (as it is called) the retreat of Isis.

The need for military prowess and to defend themselves from the human war left the Eladrin open to the forever twisting seductions of the Faydark.

The Revelation of Edmyr

It was four years ago that the truth of the murder of Isis was revealed to the court of the current queen on the Aquian throne, Queen Eyssa II, the great-granddaughter of Brigan. It was the account by the mystic-swordsman and lord of the Nedium Knights: Edmyr The’ed. Until then, Edmyr had lead his five knights on countless, heroic campaigns into the Syrwood to combat the ever-wrathful Eladrin, who had become a society of war, having taken to mounted combat on fell beasts from the Faydark. Strafing, offensive runs from Shadar Kai and Eladrin had become common, weekly occurrences, made to harass and wear down Aideldon, the walled city of men. Edmyr claimed that the vision of this truth came to him from the moon, a power remade from the Bonasas, and a word lost to the minds of men, signifying a power to come, or to return to Urunon – that word is Dragon. Upon this final revealing of the truth of the murder of Isis, the queen made peace with the Eladrin by marrying the lord Rillafane Rillathil, an Eladrin king, who has now come to live in the garden in the middle of Aideldon.  The truce in tenuous and incomplete. Edmyr himself has gone missing, for nearly two years now, the order of the Knights of Nedium have been without their lord. Goblins and Shadar Kai continue to besiege the beleaguered city and the future is far from certain, but will no doubt be writ in the blood of the righteous and the noble.

The wood elves of Amnessa have always stood with the men of Aideldon against the combined forces of the eladrin and the Shadar Kai.

Aideldonn & the Eladrin Wars

Posted in Rehland on July 17, 2018 by coyoteandthunder

That last one hundred years have been defined by the Eladrin wars and the cities defenses are built around defending their strafing attacks. Amnessa is the city of the elves, an allying force against the Raelfaen in battles past. The Pel Moors are the land of the Shadar Kai, the third of the elven races in Rehland, and no friend to mankind are the Shadow Elves.

Rhialiah is the queen of the Eladrin, the Raelfaen and in the past, has wished to see the humans driven from Rehland on a wave of blood. Now is a time of tense peace, where veterans on both sides remember all too well, the wars of yesterday.

Rillafane is of the Seelie Court, a child of Corellon. His marriage to the human queen, Eyssa II, three years ago ended the century long war between Aideldon and the Eladrin of the Syrwood. Rillafane resides now in Aideldon.