Seriticus Broadbane
Lord of Gwendor, Overseer of the Gwendorian Fleet, Custodian of Fellthorn Forest
"A cold face with steely eyes, a stern jawline and fierce stare. Seriticus still swings from his rope across the gorge- royal in his posture even in death."
When Seriticus came to the Lordship after his father's untimely assassination, Gwendor was a regional power of minor acclaim, and by the time he died, it had become the lumbering military behemoth it is today. The Iron Lord, as he was known, began as most Lords-in-waiting did during the expansionary period: on the frontline fighting against the roaming bands of barbarian tribes that were yet to be absorbed into the growing nation. He distinguished himself from an early age as a strong-willed leader to whom surrender was a foreign word, leading three notable slaughters of tribes in the Wandering Territories, and taking on an ogre with only his bodyguard, Deopedes for help.
When his father died, Seriticus was left a complex inheritance of a Lordship that had strayed from the central authority of the Lord and his Council, and was instead more akin to a flea market of competing trade interests all jockeying for positions of power in a power-sharing Regency. Seriticus was in the North Fold when he received the news, and made his way south with his small army at once. As soon as they had reached the outer walls of the Gwendor, Lord's Redoubt, Seriticus was faced with a perplexing and concerning obstacle: the factions that had dominated the Regency of his father had taken up arms against each other in his absence. Small skirmishes were erupting across the city, but the militia was no match for Seriticus' professional soldiers once they arrived, and within two days the Magnate Regents and their militias had fled the city, been arrested or killed. The three who were arrested were brought to trail at the docks in Lanternard, where they were accused of disturbing the Giritath and crimes against the people. They were all predictably found guilty and put to death by gibbeting over the river jetties. The road near the gibbets has since been renamed Regent's Row.
This response was well-received by the general populace, who had suffered 80 years of merchant in-fighting and corruption: streets were littered with vagabonds, pressgangs roamed the taverns, and halls and plazas had become territories in a guild turf war. The guildhalls were looted in the weeks of anarchy that followed the execution of the Magnates, but Seriticus saw an opportunity for expansion in the fury of the poor. He ordered barracks to be built across the City, and recruitment offices to be erected in place of guildhalls. The Iron Lord saw that he could harness the anger and restlessness of an entire generation, and use it to form a fighting force that could conquer the known world.
After a year of the public policy reforms taking effect, order had been fully restored to the City, and the army that Seriticus had brought with him had grown four-fold. As Gelid and Girith II had done before him, Seriticus then spent the next three years on campaign across Gwendor putting down regional uprisings and rebellions both in the hills and on the coast. Unlike the Lords before him, however, he was not keen to maintain the old traditional power structure of chiefs the outer regions, and the first five years of his rule were spent organising a more central unified government: the Astraticus.
Seriticus inherited the Lordship at 19, and by 25 he had established peace across his lands. No sooner had the last rebellion been quashed that he began planning his expansions south. Seriticus was of the opinion that the March peoples were ripe for conquering, after all, there had been a longstanding conflict on the southern borders which had remained a local issue for generations. Seriticus decided once again to harness the anger of the masses, and began recruiting en mass south of Fellthorn with the view to march further south to flush the dwarves from their holes and drive the 'gypsies' and 'dog-worshippers' from the hills. He began the campaign with an army of four thousand: 3,000 infantry, 500 light cavalry and 500 archers, most of whom came on the promise of plunder and land. Regardless of motive, it represented the largest organised army the West had seen, and this fact combined with its lumbering pace made its reputation far precede it, made many of the nomadic folk simply flee, while others took their opportunity to build defences and ready their weapons in defiance.
Among those who resisted were the dwarves of The Siege of Crow's Crest Keep. This siege marked a low point of the campaign, and the casualties were never counted so as not to dishearten the troops, but the number has been rumoured to be around between 800 and 1,000 killed or wounded. Apart from this major setback, the campaign was a success, seeing the whole west side of the Marches fall within a year, with every mine from the coast to Crow Crest being plundered for Gwendor. After the necessary garrisons and forts had been built to maintain order, Seriticus was keen to maintain momentum and set the army's sights of the east Marches, and what lay beyond the River Bœdok.
This conquest however, was more challenging as the people who'd fled previously were left with nowhere else to go, with the mountains to their backs, and Seriticus' army to their front. They were forced to take up arms in a battle for survival befitting legends, and though there was not a soldier among them, they were fighters to the last. As a result, the latter part of the campaign saw a dramatic drop in pace, and a remarkable spike in casualties as the Faeün people led horseback hit and run attacks accompanied by their infamous war-dogs who struck fear into the less experienced recruits. It was during this period that Seriticus' qualities as a fierce leader were put centre stage as he led an unwieldy army through hostile lands, but very few deserted.
It was only when a captured nomad by the name of Brarkus gave the location of the mother-camp that the tide turned. Barkus died of his wounds after his confession, and legend has it that his ancestor's tears fell as the next days rain. So it was that Seriticus led a small force of 150 to the camp, and laid waste to the unprepared Faeün where they slept, women and children alike. This attack broke the spirit of those who remained, and the Faeün elders sued for peace the week after, thus ending the conflict.
When not in battle or orchestrating these reforms, Seriticus spent his time hunting and reading poetic sagas of the past. He was a proud romanticist and fantasist to whom the prose and lore of past times were a source of inspiration for coming conquests. The idea of a united West intoxicated Seriticus from an early age, and many of the conversations he had with scholars were recorded by Deopedes. Seriticus would often push against the established ideas of tribal factionalism, and challenge the accepted harmony of Gwendor's subject tribes. To him, a homogenous Western people was a powerful vision, and the diversity and fractured nature of the regions under Gwendorian rule was meek by comparison.Relationships
The most famous moment of Seriticus' life is by far the climactic speech he gave to his troops before he was hanged. He was a soldier to the end, accepting his fate with fierce dignity. He had discovered what all Lords after him now remember: no Lord is a King amongst men, much less a God amongst them. Nevertheless, his legacy lasts as a warrior poet, though to some a brutal one who in one hand holds a blood soaked quill and a whip in the other.
"I stand before you now as the man who led you from the banks of the Twelvellian to the foot of the mountains that once marked the boundaries of our known world! Do I not garner respect from those I led? What do you have if not those over whom you now rule: I gave you the tribes of the Fells, the dwarven relics of the Marches, the waters of the Gulf! Have I not proven to you that we are a blessed people? A people destined to rule over all the sun touches, and for all darkness to fear!" - an excerpt from Seriticus' final speech to the mutineers at the ravine
Parents
"The idea that the peoples of this realm remain fractured perplexes me in the extreme. But to defend the coalition as tradition is to dismiss the possibility for greatness in favour of old comfort. We stand on the edge of that choice, surely it is the task of the greatest amongst us to seize it?" - Seriticus aged 16 on the matter of the Cairn Pact and tribal harmony, recorded by Deopedes, then aged 20
"The boy certainly shows a zeal that worries the cynic and comforts the contented idler as they both see the sparks of youth kindled again in one so gifted." - Seriticus' tutor, Ploretti the Wisened, concerning Seriticus aged 17
Current Location
Date of Birth
4421 MRE
Date of Death
4450 MRE
Circumstances of Death
Military Mutiny
Spouses
Miya Volkmar
(spouse)
Siblings
Children
Pronouns
He/Him
Gender
Male
Aligned Organization
Comments