The End
Prologue to Event X10th moon, 767
The prologue to Event X, the last event of the campaign, told how King Leander was crowned and how Mystvale stood when the four hosts of Oblivion came for it.
Nihil est miserum nisi cum putes, contraque beata sors omnis est aequanimitate tolerantis.
Nothing is wretched unless you think it so; and every lot is fortunate to one who bears it with an even mind.
Þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg.
That passed over; so may this.
The prologue referred readers to the History of the Annwyn, which is now on The Annwyn page. Its tables of buildings and repair costs, its notes for players, and its sections on travel and on where characters could live are left out. The rest appears as it was written.
Recent History
Set down under the seal of Charles Bannon, Seneschal to King Leander, in the 10th moon of 767.
In the 4th moon of 767 the war of the four banners came down to the crossings of the Dread Run river.
At Carran, the Royalists held the stone bridge, where men could stand only three abreast. The Blackhammers pressed at it under the banners of Hardinger until they were spent. Then the Corveaux knights, called Honorem et Gloriam, came down on the Blackhammer line. The Blackhammer center broke, and the host scattered into the eastern hills with the Corveaux horse giving chase. Some who were there say the Dread Run ran red past Carran for three days.
In the south, where the forests yield to broken ground, the Dragon King, Charles Bannon, met the Woodsworn King, Hammond, in battle. In the middle of the fighting, House Aragon turned on Charles and cast its lot with the Innis, who fought for Hammond, so-called Giles the Third. This new larger host carried the field. Charles Bannon survived with almost none of the army he had crowned himself to lead.
The two victors, Hammond and the Royalists, met at Mystvale and by sunset the Royalists had won.
At first light that day, a sword had appeared in a stone in the field near the tavern, none being able to remove it. Shortly after dusk, the would-be claimants met in council beside it under a flag of truce. Lord Alion Cornwall prayed to the Dawn before he set his hand to the hilt, and he failed, as did each of the others after him. While the council argued, Isolde Corveaux, a squire of her house, stepped forward and drew the sword free. It was Auranthis, said to be the Golden Blade of the Wolfsong kings.
Isolde spoke afterward of waking from a long dream. She named herself the daughter of Edryn Wolfsong, once king of Escalon. Lady Ella Falconer knighted her before the whole council and was the first to kneel to her, and before the night was out Isolde was crowned King Leander. Charles Bannon pledged her what was left of his host. In time, she named him her Seneschal.
The same night, the Grand Cirque Obscura came back to Mystvale under a new patron and raised its stage outside the tavern among lanterns and bunting.
The mime Constantina opened the show. Fane the bard, Thierry the tumbler, and Gavron the strongman followed her. In the last act, all the performers froze where they stood, and fog rolled across the stage. Out of the fog stepped a veiled woman hung with gold, and her skin was veined with black. She began to speak to them in a tongue no one could understand, but the audience was held rapt. When her speech ended, those in the audience who had held the town together disappeared.
In that same hour, the dead of every army, left unburned where they fell, stood up out of the mud of the battlefield. The Nether Void came with them, the name folk gave to a strange violet light that would harm those who got too close.
Many died in the first hours, and by dawn, much of the town of Mystvale lay in ruins.
The Crimson Vale
Court of OathsLedger of the Clerk
Entered in the record of the Court of Oaths by the Clerk of the Court, and filed with the Scribe of the Grand Library. The original is unchanged.
Item i.
“On the night the Grand Cirque Obscura last performed in Mystvale, the Blood Queen, Obeah, brought petitioners into her realm using this performance as what I suspect was her own way of softening the trauma one might receive from jumping into a foreign reality. Her word to them was thus: safe passage to and from her realm, although no safety within it.
A witness attested to this account.
Item ii.
The day after the arrival of the petitioners, each who wished to be heard signed the Ledger of Names, and each signature was witnessed. The Court sat on the second night, and those called answered before the Bench. By order of the Magistrate, three sessions of judgment were then held, and the record was examined in the matters of the Night Wars, the Welkin Domains and the Rite of Aeons.
Item iii.
In the matter of the Rite of Aeons, the record as it stood named Obeah the Oathbreaker. The petitioners brought evidence that she had kept her oath, that the oath was broken by Hyperion, that she had been condemned on hearsay, and that the Magistrate himself had betrayed her with his condemnation. The record as corrected holds that she reached to bind an oath that had already been broken. The Magistrate struck the old record from the histories, and the Blood Queen is no longer named Oathbreaker. It is so ruled.
Struck by order of the Magistrate
A witness attested to this account.
Item iv.
At the Shrine of Two Hearts, the red was restored over the black. Some of the petitioners swore oaths to the Blood Queen there, and those oaths were entered in the oath ledger of the Grand Library.
Item v.
The Blood Queen has not sent the petitioners home immediately. She has kept them in a Mystvale of her own making, so that they might prepare for the Rite and the hardships to come.
Item vi.
The Court keeps no reckoning of time outside the Crimson Vale. Those outside it counted six moons, and the Court has no witness to that account.”
The Clerk of the Court, by hand
The Six Moons at Mystvale
From the Seneschal's record.
In Mystvale, those who lived through the first night crept back into the ruins in the weeks that followed. King Leander's host was small, and could only hope to hold part of the town.
The townsfolk took to naming the town by its quarters. The nobles' manors and the Court became the High Quarter. The north of town, where the market roads meet and the forges and workshops stand with the Treasury and the Armory, became Market Cross. The streets around Songbird's Rest and the Chantry became the Nest, because every bird in the vale had come home to roost there.
In the 5th moon, the Bright Company was seen on the road again. It had first come into the Annwyn in blue and gold, in shining plate, though no one had seen it since Emil went over to the dark. Now it kept step and would not answer a hail, and it called itself the Ashen Company. In the same moon, Blackhammer deserters robbed travelers on the quarry road, and a cough began to kill in the Nest.
In the 6th moon, the High Quarter was lost when the battle graves emptied their occupants into it, ravenous and raging. And its people, such as could be rescued, were taken into the Nest.
In the 7th moon, the nearby iron mines fell in, and none of the ore has come down from the hills since. The Richter soldiers at Iron Haven swore to the king and marched for Mystvale with the last supply wagons. Iron Haven was overrun behind them. The soldiers reached the town, but the wagons did not.
In the 8th moon someone befouled the Necropolis, and its dead rose beside the Chantry. The Nest gave up the Necropolis and the Infirmary, and the sick were laid on the Chantry steps. Market Cross was cut off and lost the same night, and every forge and workspace in Mystvale went with it. The redoubts in each quarter kept sending warnings, but the king had no soldiers to spare to answer them.
In the 9th moon the Garrison burned, and the Nest gave it up with the Great Hall and the Training Yard. The king fell back to Songbird's Rest.
Beyond the walls the fighting went no better. The forces of Oblivion made open war on the Annwyn. Harrowgate fell first, then Goldleaf, then Iron Haven, then Arcton, and Moonfall. Dawnhaven and the Rourke port fell as well. Carran held longest under the Bannon Royalists and fell only weeks ago. King Leander gathered what was left of every house into one host, which folk have come to call the Coalition. It has fought a losing war since, and Mystvale is its last bastion.
In the 10th moon, only the Chantry and the Black Market stand as they were.
Current Events
Mystvale
The Nest is the last quarter still standing and the last holdout of the living. It is the last place in the Annwyn where anyone sleeps, and its sick lie on the Chantry steps. A redoubt stands in each quarter of the town, held by what soldiers the king could spare. Some of them have sent no word in weeks.
The Crown
King Leander wears the last crown in the Annwyn, and four hosts have come for it.
The King holds Songbird's Rest, which is under siege. She has fought the dead for six moons and is exhausted by it. Charles Bannon serves her as Seneschal, and Lady Ella Falconer and the Twins are sworn to her. What is left of the Royalists and the Blackhammers now fights in the Coalition beside the Richter soldiers of Iron Haven, who serve under Erich Richter. The king's soldiers are hardened, and there are few of them.
Among the summer's dead are General Vasha Hardinger and her father, Lord Wilhelm Hardinger, Lady Ursula Hardinger and Margarethe Varga, who spoke for House Richter. House Aragon has lost Lady Obara Aragon and Ser Sarrac Vorrel, who spoke for it. Bao Kun of Tian Zhou, hosted by House Aragon, fell with Lady Obara; the other envoy, Tian Yu, hasn’t been seen since. Of those who spoke for House Hale, Lady Thora Coldhill, Lord Grimnyr Coldhill and Tormod Trollsbane are dead. Lord Alion Cornwall is dead, and the Dawnguard died with him.
The Four Hosts
Each host has with it a being that no one has named, and iron does not harm it. Survivors also say that the banner of the Woodsworn King, Hammond, Giles the Third, flies among the dead and has changed. They say he died and now leads Oblivion's armies.
Craxen's Legion of Ruin. The Legion comes in armor and ash. The Ashen Company, once the Bright Company, marches at its head, and the Company's officers still give orders to rotting soldiers who died under them. Behind the Company, come the Children of the Final Flame in scorched robes, with ash worked into their skin. They are said to laugh and pray as they fight.
Xogos's Blighted. The Blighted are heralded by a sickening green light, in cloth stained with rot. The rotting dead walk at the front, moaning indecipherable laments, and the town hears them from the walls long before they arrive. The Calicans follow them and pray to Calico, invoking the blessings of pestilence.
With them, come men in fine coats gone to ruin, with gold at their lips. Where the Blighted pass, wounds fester and the ground goes bad.
N'Glush's Unsworn. The Unsworn come hooded, in the common dress of Mystvale, with no heraldry. The town knows their voices, because some of them were its friends, servants and cousins. Those who have fought them say to watch the left hand, which is painted crimson to the wrist, and to strike first.
Slototh's Black Apocrypha. The Black Apocrypha wields ritual tools and engines of the Nether. Its faithful are said to wear robes of bone and grey, each face hidden behind a veil of pale gauze painted with eyes.
Decisive Moments
Which quarter will you fight for first?
The Four Hosts of Oblivion have Mystvale surrounded, and every quarter of the town is a front. The High Quarter fell in the 6th moon and Market Cross in the 8th. Only the Nest still holds.
What has been lost can be retaken, and the town must pool its resources, choosing where to strike first. Market Cross holds every forge and workbench in Mystvale, and nothing can be crafted or repaired until it is won back. The High Quarter holds the manors of the nobles and the Court.
However the other fronts go, the last battle will be fought for the Nest.
Death in the Annwyn
For those living in the Annwyn, it is no longer a secret that Lirit, the Goddess of Death as she is called, had in the past provided a choice to those who have perished: live again and fight against the darkness for her, or lay to rest forever.
But Lirit’s power is not infinite, and the darkness encroaches ever more upon the world. Nethermancers steal animus and bodies faster than it seems Lirit can reach them. People do still return through the grace of Lirit, if they’re not caught by an undead host first. Sometimes they even return more than once. But unlike before, their bodies and minds deteriorate upon return.
Outside the Annwyn
Those arriving from outside the Annwyn may have heard the following whispers and tavern talk about the state of the Kingdom of Arnesse:
- Every season, travelers name more places where the normal light fails and the air tastes of metal, from the Hearthlands to the southern Marches. Mistwalkers who have come out of the Annwyn call them Nether rifts. Some who went near them were never seen again, and the rest will not, or perhaps cannot, describe what they saw.
- King Giles II has still not come home. Queen Regent Aline Bannon has ruled in his stead since he crossed into the Annwyn. No crown has been placed, and no body has been buried. The court speaks of it in private, but no one has yet put it in writing.
- New saints are still being named in villages that never had one. The preaching of Auron Ezekyle, the Sanctifier, has spread to places where he has never been, and the chantries no longer try to stop it.