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World of Ruins
Theirs was an enlightened world, wherein they spent generations levelling the wilds and in their stead erecting immense cities that stood, tall, as not a series of walls and rooves to shield its occupants from the wind and rain, but instead, as monuments to the heavens. There, the walls stood unfathomably tall, with each stone etched in symbols and language of which the meaning is now lost. Statues lorded over their cities, casting all those beneath in a deep dark shadow. They loomed, stern, stone faces downturned and forever watching those who stood at their ankles.
There is a lost history in these places that litter Astyria. Still, they stand, but those once cleared wilds have reclaimed the walls and archways. Dirt shrouds the etchings that lay buried and unseen on now crumbling walls. Vines crawl up the weather pocked faces of temples, whose Gods now go unnamed. Those statues still stand, stern, but with no one left to stare down upon. Instead, they watch as nature stretches past ancient gates and reenters hallowed grounds, trespassing and sprouting between cobblestones and up pillars.
Some say that these places are haunted and that whatever still sleeps at these ancient sites steals the souls of those unfortunate travellers who enter. Some say that ghosts wander the sundered streets of these forgotten cities, and some few elders might still retell old fables of the great diviners who built those walls to honour the Gods with who they communed.
—but it is only tall tales. It's all stories woven to either frighten wide-eyed children into staying within the bounds of their towns or to enrich their imaginations.
Few relics remain from those ancient civilisations—a handful of books whose thin pages crumble to the touch, written in lost languages, that sit on display in the world's most revered libraries—relics that are left hidden and scattered across Astyria—they are the fingerprints of those long-dead societies.
Strangely, as all of the world's scholars would agree, these places predate the historical record. They existed, it seems, before time itself.
Ours is a history that begins with a calamity.
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At the end of the great hall in Arendor keep sits a throne with a square, stone back longer than the spines of the many great men who have sat it. It has survived many Kings who have been burdened with its cold, unyielding seat.
The house of Arrendius has held the throne for generations, and those dead Kings now live in the portraits that line the hall's walls. They watch from that same cold, ruthless chair as heir after heir accepts its weight and, later, they welcome each successor into a portrait of their own.
The Arrendius Kings have held the capital for hundreds of years, each boasting a litany of accomplishments and each leaving their Kingdom better in their death than it was at their birth.
—and for generations, they have been revered by their people. It seemed, many would agree, that theirs was a blood of Kings. Greatness was in their being. They were born to it—they were lions in the shape of men.
Erasmus Arrendius inherited a peaceful kingdom, and under his reign, he reinforced a thriving economy, bolstered the intimidating forces of Anhaldors armies, and maintained the delicate unification of the provinces only recently achieved by his own late father.
His reputation was built on his charisma and his compassion. None who met the King felt they went unheard, and many did meet him, for, to the dismay of his personal guard, King Erasmus had a penchant for travel. Often, he ventured into the far reaches of his Kingdom, where he'd mingle with commoners and listen as they aired their grievances. Accessible and charismatic, the King exercised a gentle, charitable hand with his allies and public and a clenched, firm fist with any who would threaten the peace he and his forefathers had cultivated.
His life honoured the bloodline, but it was wasted, for his reputation is now tarnished by his death. Those same mouths that once whispered praise for their King soon condemned him. The Mad King, they called him, for when he'd appear in his cities and towns, he appeared as a ghost—pallid and gaunt—and he'd speak in incoherent insanity.
Eventually, he'd disappear entirely and retreat into the confines of the Arendor Keep. The crown explained his changed behaviour and sudden, inexplicable disappearance with illness.
When King Erasmus finally perished, no explanation was given to his Kingdom. There was no funeral and no viewing of the body.
As the King wasted into his keep, so too did the province of Alsenae. Alsenae, an island to the southwest, was saturated with those storied ruins and—once a hub for Anhaldors scholars—has since seen tremendous destruction. Those unfortunate inhabitants of the province, its nobility included, began spouting the same incoherent insanity that the King uttered before retreating into the keep that would later serve as his tomb.
Some regions locked themselves away within their homes and starved themselves, eventually succumbing to disease and malnourishment.
Others, though—in some strange, otherworldly mass sacrifice—brutalised their settlements and themselves, set fire to their homes, and calmly, in peaceful ecstasy, waited for the flames to chew them through to their bones.
Some few survived the hysteria—those who lived far from the ruins were unaffected, and—so long as they could escape the island without passing through affected regions—were able to escape the strange ailment that gripped their kin and kith and retreat to Issiadrus.
Even fewer survived the cities themselves, those rare survivors standing sane as all around them fell into hysterical fits.
Alsenae's impoverished refugees have sought asylum on the mainland. They litter the streets of towns and cities.
The Anhaldorian Captain-General Hrodick Castillon—a dear friend and trusted ally of the late King—called a public hearing in Arendor shortly after King Erasmus' untimely and tragic death. There, he reminded the Anhaldorian people of the Prince's unfortunate reputation for misbehaviour, mischief, and a hot-headed temper that had, recently, sparked a violent dispute between he and his ailing father. He had witnessed the Prince, stated Hrodrick, break down the King's door and attack Erasmus so fiercely that the guard had been forced to intervene. Some, he recalled solemnly, had required the attention of a healer after the Prince's outburst.
—and, it was with a broken heart—Hrodrick had continued—that he called for the Prince's arrest. There was, unfortunately, reason to suspect that the Prince may have had a hand in the death of the revered King Erasmus.
There would be, of course, due process. No one in Anhaldor wished to witness the end of the Arrendius legacy, and with the Prince as the sole heir, it would be a true tragedy to see his head sliced free from his shoulders. If it were true, though, that the Prince had killed his father, it could not be ignored, and thus there, within the gathering crowd, the Arendor guard attempted to apprehend him.
The Prince escaped the capital gravely wounded.
Hrodrick Castillon has since acted as the King Regent and has led a kingdom-wide search for the accused heir for nearly half a year.
Notices for the Prince's arrest are plastered throughout every town, along every road, and every guard in every province has been instructed to, at all costs, apprehend him. Additionally, a steep reward—enough coin to allow a commoner to live out the rest of his meagre life in luxury—has been offered to any who might be able to secure the Prince's return.
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