Pirate Toast
06-14-2007, 12:17 PM
Approved by Maid Mia
I finially recovered the first version of the RPG so this is the original Yay!))
The Gift and the Riddle (based off the books called The Gift and The Riddle)
B. History of RP Story
The difficulties of dating the extraordinary civilization of Edil-Amarandh, or even of pinpointing its exact geographic location, are well known. Estimates vary wildly, dating its mysterious disappearance from 10,000 to 150,000 years before the beginning of the last Ice Age. Initail theories, which saw the Annar Scripts as confirmation of the persistent accounts in Plato, the Mabinogion, and elsewhere of an Atlantean nation overwhelmed by flood, have generally been discredited, since Edil-Amarandh appears yo be far older than these texts suggest and has sharply divergent cultural differences. Some people, however, have suggested that the continent of Edil-Amarandh may be sunk beneath the Atlantic, west of Africa and European coasts, as was theorized of Atlantis. However, despite these arguments, the voluminous records available make it possible to elucidate a detailed history of Annar and the Seven Kingdoms .
The Age of the Elementals
The Age of Elementals ended approximately a thousand years before the founding of Afinil, that is, about 5,000 years before the time of this story. Thus by the Restoration, much of its history was lost, and the little that remained was partial and fragmentary. However, after the founding of Afinial, the Elementals who remained recounted many of the events of that Age, and so many stories and songs were preserved through the Bardic tradition, although again only scraps of the lore were preserved after Afinil was razed by the Nameless one.
Elementals (or the Elidhu) were immortals and were so called because they bore affinities with the natural forces such as fire, water, earth, air, the sun, the moon, and the tides. They were often associated with particular places or regions, such as rivers or mountains. After the Elemental Wars, many of the Elidhu retreated into their pure forms and were not seen again as sentient beings, although some still remain visible spirits. They could take different forms at will, and in the days of Afinil often visited that city in the guise of humans and learned from the Dhyllin the arts of speech, song, and music, in which they especially delighted. The Lady Ardina was the most celebrated of those Elidhu who became part of the human world. After the dominion of humans and the estrangement between the two races for which the Nameless was in large part responsible, most withdrew into their elemental forms and were rarely seen. Their number was not known.
The Age of Elementals was marked by the dominion of the Ice Witch, Arkan, who came from the North and covered Edil-Amarandh with a perpetual winter. At this time the Elementals threw up some of the mountain ranges of Edil-Amarandh, the Osidh Elanor (the Mountains of the Dawn) and the Osidh Annova, in an attempt to bar Arkan’s approach. All living things at this time suffered greatly, and it was said that humans at this point almost disappeared from the face of this Earth. . The Ice Witch was resisted and finally overthrown by the alliance between some of the Elementals and the peoples of Edil-Amarandh, led by the Elidhu Ardina and the King Ardhor. The final war against Arkan convulsed the entire continent: “The sea poured in over what had been land, and the lands rose where had before been sea” When the war ended the coastline was entirely different, and became the shape presently mapped.
Human history and songs are recorded from that time-the legend of Mercan, for example, which was preserved in the Scrolls of Lir at the library of Lirigon-but the years were not logged. Small communities of men and women lived in settlements east of the Osidh Annova, and there was a strong and proud people who lived never what is now Lir River , the descendants of whom later became the Dhyllin.
The Dawn Age
After the wars, the Dhyllin settled the areas to the north later called Lirion and Imbral, and it is said in this time the Dhillarearë first appeared in Edil-Amarandh, but little is recorded until Afinil was first founded. This time is called the pre-Dawn, or Inela.
The Dawn Age dates from the Founding of Afinil, about a thousand years after the end of the Elementals Wars. Afinil was the first city founded and settled by the Dhillarearë, although they were by no means the only peoples who lived there. The city was founded by the great Bard Nelsor, who among their things invented letters, and was the first to write down and formalize the Speech. The script he invented was still the one most commonly used by Bards more then four thousand years later.
Afinil was never a city of Kings, but of Bards, and it was built between Lirimal and Inchan, the major cities of the realms of Lirion and Imbral. Its site is long lost, but it was on the shores of a lake that was so deep the stars were reflected there even in the daytime: The Ilimican, or Mirrormere. Afinil was reputed to be the most beautiful city ever to have been built in Edil-Amarandh, and it became a center of high learning and culture. There were established great singing halls and libraries, and it was famous for its gardens and terraces, which were said to perfume the air for miles around.
This was the first great flowering of the Light. Afinil prospered for many years and as it prospered, so did its surrounding lands. Bards began to travel widely, and found their kin in many places: most notably in Turbansk to the south, an ancient city founded before the end of the Age of Elementals, and also in the lands to the west, along the coast of Edil-Amarandh . People moved east as well over the Osidh Annova and established the Kingdom of Indurain in the fertile lands they found.
The first sign of trouble occurred in A1567, when Sharma, the King of Dén Raven, a small mountainous realm to the south, traveled to Afinil and demanded tuition, offering gifts of gold and jewels. The Bards, who valued such things only for what beauty they found in them, laughed and gave him tuition for nothing. “What light of a gem next to the living Light?” asked Gel-Idhor, the First bard of Afinil, when Sharma approached him. “Nay, keep Thy jewels.” Sharma, who was proud and quick-tempered, was deeply offended by the Bards’ gentle mockery; but he concealed his anger and bent his mind to study.
Very soon it was apparent that Sharma was the most precociously talented bard seen in Afinil since the days of Nelsor. He studied in particular the making things of power, and also the mysteries of binding, and he was very curious about Arkan, the Ice Witch, and spent much time speaking with the Elidhu who came to Afinil of the history of those wars; but he concealed his intent. It only became clear later that Sharma was interested in making himself immortal and as powerful as the Elidhu, who could not be killed. There were those in Afinil, including Lady Ardina, who were disturbed by Sharma’s questioning and did not trust his ambition, and who counseled against him education; but the Bards did not see why their Lore should be kept from such an apt pupil, and such disquiet was brushed aside.
When Sharma had made himself the most powerful Bard in Edil-Amarandh, he returned to his own kingdom; and it was then that he made a Spell of Binding that cast aside his secret Name and ensured that he would never pass through the Gates to the Uncircled Open of Death. This was a great blasphemy; for a bard to so challenge the Laws of Balance was unprecedented. The casting away of his Name and his abjuration of Death signaled the beginning of the grievous wars that ended, five hundred years later, in the overthrown of Afinil and the utter defeat and destruction of Lirion and Imbral and all the Lore and beauty that had existed there.
After he cast off his Secret Name, Sharma was called the Nameless One. He attracted followers, to whom he promised unending life and absolute power, and many Bards went to his side, betraying the Light and there became Black Sorcerers, and were known as Hulls, for they were but the shells of Bards. The Nameless also made alliances with the remnants of the Elidhu who hated and feared the Light, most notably the Elidhu Karak, who held dominion over the realm of Indurain, east of the Osidh Annova, after the armies of the Nameless had destroyed it and slaughtered or enslaved those of the Dhyllin who had lived there.
The campaign of the Nameless One to overthrown the Light in Annar succeeded in A2041, when his forces overwhelmed the last desperate alliance of Lirion and Imbral on the Firman Plains near the Findol River . That defeat was the end of the Dawn Age, and the beginning of the Great Silence.
The Great Silence
The Great Silence lasted from A2041 to A3234. At this time the Light retreated in hiding to the areas that later became known as the Seven Kingdoms: along the coast of Edil-Amarandh , and to the south. The Bards did not build cities or towns, and lived in great hardship, working always against the Dark; but they did not succeed in overthrowing the Nameless until the coming of Maninaë, heir of Laurelin, in A3157. Maninaë, a Bard, united resistance in the Seven Kingdoms and after many years-a story too complex to even begin to relate here-he succeeded in casting the nameless off his throne and restoring Light to Annar. He then became the first King in Norloch and the first to rule over all of Annar.
A new year-count, the Annaren Calendar, was then introduced. It was also called the Norloch Reckoning.
The Restoration
When peace was restored, Maninaë founded the citadel of Norloch and the system of Schools, twenty-five Schools were founded across Annar and the Seven Kingdoms , and roads were built across the country to allow free movement between all of them. At this time more areas of Annar were settled, although there were large regions of wilderness in the center of the land, and Edil-Amarandh was always a continent more thickly populated near its coast that at its center.
Once again there was a great flowering of Bardic culture, and the tenets of Afinil were restored. But Maninaë also gave thought to martial strategies, and the culture of Norloch was warlike, unlike that of Afinil. For Afinil had never been a city of Kings , and although all Bards were routinely trained in the arts of the sword, they never gave them especially high honor.
The restoration lasted 300 years. After that came a period of consolidation, called the Middle years, in which all the Arts flourished in peace and harmony. At about the year N720 came the first promptings of disquiet, and also the last King; for the heirs to the throne made war on each other in an argument about succession, and in the strife ruling line of Norloch was destroyed. The seven Kingdoms at this time revised their alliances with Norloch and restated their autonomies.
After this, the bards ruled along in Norloch, incorporating into the authority of the White Flame the triple scepter of the Kings of Norloch; and after the destruction caused by the rivalries of Kings, it seemed to some this was better, and that the bards, constrained by their vows to the Light and the Balance, would rule more wisely. But there were others who said this was distortion of the balance; and they also pointed out that women were no longer placed in authority in Norloch, as they continued to be in most other Schools, and saw this as another symptom of imbalance.
Gradually, over the next two hundred years, it became clear that things were amiss in Annar. The fortresses in Dén Raven were rebuilt and the sorcerer Imank made war on the Suderain, although he was fiercely resisted. There were other signs of imbalance: the White Sickness, never seen before, began to ravage parts of Annar, and some schools began to be estranged from their people, demanding high tithes and begrudging their services, which caused an enormous loss of the bards’ prestige in many parts of Annar, and sometimes outright and violent resentment. There were more frequent sightings of wers and other servants of the Dark, and for the first time since the Restoration, Hulls were seen in Annar. More disturbingly, some Bards began to report a disturbance in the Speech itself, which they found impossible to express, but which troubled them deeply; they said that it seemed to them the Speech was losing its ancient virtue. However, it was not until the School of Pellinor was sacked and burned to the ground in N935, followed by Baladh and Jerr-Niken in the south within the next four years, that a few Bards began to suggest that the Nameless One had at last returned.
The Speech
The Speech, the defining attribute of a bard and the central mystery of the Knowing, is a topic that exercised many bard thinkers over many centuries. Much therefore might be written about it, of which only the barest sketch can be given here.
The Speech behaved like a language, with a certain differences, and could in fact be learned; it was, for example, spoken by the Dhyllin people as their first tongue. But in the mouths of those who learned it, rather in those with the Gift, it had no Bardic virtue.
Bards used it when speaking of matters of gravity and importance, because it was considered impossible to lie in the Speech. This was, in fact, not accurate: Hulls used the speech and were able to lie, although this usage was not considered to be the Speech proper, and was sometimes called Dark or Black Speech. There was also the question of those who attained the speech but were never taught the Knowing of the Light and, more crucially, never came into their Bardic or Secret Name (also known as their Truename). This was a circumstance that usually had tragic consequences, since such people were unable to properly understand or channel their powers, and were never able to enter their full Gift. This, generally, was rare, if more common as the Schools fell into disrepute after the demise of the Monarchs of Annar. There were sloe cases of those who had only a slight Gift. Such people might have been village witches (hence the expression “witchspeak”), and they generally spoke a truncated and bastardized version of the Speech, with no more then a few words of potency, although sometimes they could attain considerable, if limited, power; but they were not considered to be Bards, since they did not attain the whole Speech, nor sis they know their Names. Consequently, they were sometimes referred to as unnamed which is to be distinguished from the Nameless, who had rejected his Name.
This clearly makes possession of the Speech less straightforward than it might at first appear. The fact that the Speech could be learned by those without the Gift suggest that the virtue of the speech was not inherent in the words themselves, as was argued by many Bards in the Middles Years, but that it expressed the mysteries of the cosmos itself within its syntactic relationships and the vibrations of its utterance, from which were drawn its unique powers. The chief reason given for the argument that potency was inherent in the words themselves was the priority and importance given to Names in the Speech, and to Bardic Names. The truth quite possibly resides in an amalgamation of both arguments, as was pointed out by other bards.
Bards were the only people who bore Secret Names, and s Bard’s Name was and remains a central mystery that can only be partially discerned and puzzled over. The only complete written record of an instatement and Naming ceremony occurs in The Riddle of the Treesong, which confirms rather then negates that the most important mysteries were not written down but kept in the “rings of living memory.” In the Treesong text the authors felt compelled to defend their choice to record it, remarking that since entire forests of knowledge had been hewn down by the Dark, “it is necessary to preserve, even in such a crude way, such Secrets as are known to us, in case the Knowing vanishes from the earth.”
It appears that a Bard’s name was much more than a mere appellation or signifier of status or origin: it was a Bard’s being, and its achievement was a sign of Bard’s maturation into full power. One who knew a Bard’s Secret or Truename had power over him or her, and thus names were guarded closely and given only to intimates as a sign of ultimate trust. Rejecting one’s Name was unheard of until Sharma’s Spell of Binding, and was regarded as the ultimate blasphemy. Sharma of Dén Raven, however, remained the only Bard to successfully do so. Hulls did not use their Names, but were unable to reject them completely, and those who possessed the Names of Hulls could still destroy them.
Because the Speech was not learned in the normal way, and so was not subject to the same forces of change or cultural variety, it remained more constant than other human languages. Bards from vastly different regions had no difficulty understanding each other if they used the Speech, despite the gulfs in tradition and culture that separated them. Nevertheless, the fact remains that there were variations in the Speech; although is sprouted, as it were, always from the same stem, different environments encouraged its growth in differing ways. There was, for example, a noticeable , if slight, difference between the Speech of Afinil and the Speech of today.
Those with the Gift used the Speech for all the Arts of the Knowing. The use of the speech was central to healing, to song-which was held high as an art of wisdom-and to all spells, as well as to investigations-such as astronomy or natural science- we would be accustomed to thinking of as scientific. The Bards made no distinctions, as we do, between art and science, considering them parts of a single Knowing. The Speech also enables those with the Gift to converse with animals and, less frequently, plants. The Speech did not need to be physically spoken to be potent; bards could use it effectively merely as a mode of thought. This raises the most important and difficult differences between the Speech and other languages, which are the subtleties of its registrations as a mode mental communication. These, crucial as they are, cannot be explained, and here must be glanced over by reference to the Bardic paradox that the “center of the Speech is Silence.” It is also why, despite the fact that Bards had a very sophisticated written culture, orality, and the mnemonic arts that go with it, still held precedence.
Plot
Maerad is a slave in a desperate and unforgiving settlement, taken there as a child after her family is destroyed in war. She is unaware that she possesses a powerful gift, one that marks her as member of the School of Pellinor . It is only when she is discovered by Cadvan, one of the great Bards of Lirigon, that her true heritage and extraordinary destiny unfold. Now she and her new teacher must survive a journey through a time and place where dark forces they battle stem from the deepest recesses of otherworldly terror.
Map of the Seven Kingdoms
C. Sample Character Sheet
Name:
Bard Name(if you are a Bard only, if you are a bard Student then you do not have a name yet):
Bards School/Village:
Age (if Bard you could look 30 and actually be 90. Bards live 3 times longer then Humans, Hulls are immortal unless killed by blade, Bard Student will look 12 and be 12):
Gender(if hull you have no gender):
Bard, Bard Student, Hull, Human or Elidhu(if you want to be an Elidhu you must consult me first):
When you came into the Speech(do not answer if you are a Bard Student, or Human):
Appearance (you have to look human unless you are a Hull or Elidhu. Hulls can be deformed and looks like creatures out of horror movies. Elidhus can take the form of anything. They are shape shifters) :
History:
Personality:
d. Sample Character(s) (the more that you have in mind the better)
Name: Maerad
Bard Name: will find out later in story but her Bard name is Elednor meaning Fire Lily
Bard School/Village: Pellinor
Age: 16
Gender: Female
Bard, Bard Student, Hull , Human or Elidhu: Part Elidhu and Part Bard
When you came into the Speech: Not yet
Appearance:http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/KRPrincess24/pellinor.jpg
History: She was taken with her mother, Milana, to Gilman’s Cot where she had spent most of her life. Her father was behead right in front of her when the Burning of Pellinor happened and her brother was killed....or so she thinks....she and Milana were transported to Gilman’s Cot to work as salves for the rest of their lives. Milana died shortly after they got there and left Maerad a lyre. Milana and taught Maerad how to play before she passed away. Maerad plays the when she is sad or needs comfort. She is known as a witch at Gilman’s Cot because if you get her mad enough something will happen. Having long black hair doesn’t help her any but her reputation keeps the men away from her.
Personality: She doesn’t talk to people much. She keeps to herself and gives off and dark air. No one talks to her after her mother had passed away and she resorted always depending on herself and no one else.
Name: Cadvan
Bard Name: unknown
Bard School/Village: Lirigon
Age: looks 20 but real age is unknown
Gender: Male
Bard, Bard Student, Hull , Human or Elidhu: Full Bard
When you came into the Speech: 6
Appearance:little dude in back
History: He is a great Bard with a great healing ability and a lot of power. He had once went to the Dark because he had a rival and want to defeat him. Instead of killing his rival, he killed his lover. He regrets it till this day. He keeps to himself and is serious unless he meets up with old friends. Not much is know about Cadvan because if he doesn’t want you to anything out you won’t find it out.
Personality: Cold and serious. He never laughs and rarely smiles.
I finially recovered the first version of the RPG so this is the original Yay!))
The Gift and the Riddle (based off the books called The Gift and The Riddle)
B. History of RP Story
The difficulties of dating the extraordinary civilization of Edil-Amarandh, or even of pinpointing its exact geographic location, are well known. Estimates vary wildly, dating its mysterious disappearance from 10,000 to 150,000 years before the beginning of the last Ice Age. Initail theories, which saw the Annar Scripts as confirmation of the persistent accounts in Plato, the Mabinogion, and elsewhere of an Atlantean nation overwhelmed by flood, have generally been discredited, since Edil-Amarandh appears yo be far older than these texts suggest and has sharply divergent cultural differences. Some people, however, have suggested that the continent of Edil-Amarandh may be sunk beneath the Atlantic, west of Africa and European coasts, as was theorized of Atlantis. However, despite these arguments, the voluminous records available make it possible to elucidate a detailed history of Annar and the Seven Kingdoms .
The Age of the Elementals
The Age of Elementals ended approximately a thousand years before the founding of Afinil, that is, about 5,000 years before the time of this story. Thus by the Restoration, much of its history was lost, and the little that remained was partial and fragmentary. However, after the founding of Afinial, the Elementals who remained recounted many of the events of that Age, and so many stories and songs were preserved through the Bardic tradition, although again only scraps of the lore were preserved after Afinil was razed by the Nameless one.
Elementals (or the Elidhu) were immortals and were so called because they bore affinities with the natural forces such as fire, water, earth, air, the sun, the moon, and the tides. They were often associated with particular places or regions, such as rivers or mountains. After the Elemental Wars, many of the Elidhu retreated into their pure forms and were not seen again as sentient beings, although some still remain visible spirits. They could take different forms at will, and in the days of Afinil often visited that city in the guise of humans and learned from the Dhyllin the arts of speech, song, and music, in which they especially delighted. The Lady Ardina was the most celebrated of those Elidhu who became part of the human world. After the dominion of humans and the estrangement between the two races for which the Nameless was in large part responsible, most withdrew into their elemental forms and were rarely seen. Their number was not known.
The Age of Elementals was marked by the dominion of the Ice Witch, Arkan, who came from the North and covered Edil-Amarandh with a perpetual winter. At this time the Elementals threw up some of the mountain ranges of Edil-Amarandh, the Osidh Elanor (the Mountains of the Dawn) and the Osidh Annova, in an attempt to bar Arkan’s approach. All living things at this time suffered greatly, and it was said that humans at this point almost disappeared from the face of this Earth. . The Ice Witch was resisted and finally overthrown by the alliance between some of the Elementals and the peoples of Edil-Amarandh, led by the Elidhu Ardina and the King Ardhor. The final war against Arkan convulsed the entire continent: “The sea poured in over what had been land, and the lands rose where had before been sea” When the war ended the coastline was entirely different, and became the shape presently mapped.
Human history and songs are recorded from that time-the legend of Mercan, for example, which was preserved in the Scrolls of Lir at the library of Lirigon-but the years were not logged. Small communities of men and women lived in settlements east of the Osidh Annova, and there was a strong and proud people who lived never what is now Lir River , the descendants of whom later became the Dhyllin.
The Dawn Age
After the wars, the Dhyllin settled the areas to the north later called Lirion and Imbral, and it is said in this time the Dhillarearë first appeared in Edil-Amarandh, but little is recorded until Afinil was first founded. This time is called the pre-Dawn, or Inela.
The Dawn Age dates from the Founding of Afinil, about a thousand years after the end of the Elementals Wars. Afinil was the first city founded and settled by the Dhillarearë, although they were by no means the only peoples who lived there. The city was founded by the great Bard Nelsor, who among their things invented letters, and was the first to write down and formalize the Speech. The script he invented was still the one most commonly used by Bards more then four thousand years later.
Afinil was never a city of Kings, but of Bards, and it was built between Lirimal and Inchan, the major cities of the realms of Lirion and Imbral. Its site is long lost, but it was on the shores of a lake that was so deep the stars were reflected there even in the daytime: The Ilimican, or Mirrormere. Afinil was reputed to be the most beautiful city ever to have been built in Edil-Amarandh, and it became a center of high learning and culture. There were established great singing halls and libraries, and it was famous for its gardens and terraces, which were said to perfume the air for miles around.
This was the first great flowering of the Light. Afinil prospered for many years and as it prospered, so did its surrounding lands. Bards began to travel widely, and found their kin in many places: most notably in Turbansk to the south, an ancient city founded before the end of the Age of Elementals, and also in the lands to the west, along the coast of Edil-Amarandh . People moved east as well over the Osidh Annova and established the Kingdom of Indurain in the fertile lands they found.
The first sign of trouble occurred in A1567, when Sharma, the King of Dén Raven, a small mountainous realm to the south, traveled to Afinil and demanded tuition, offering gifts of gold and jewels. The Bards, who valued such things only for what beauty they found in them, laughed and gave him tuition for nothing. “What light of a gem next to the living Light?” asked Gel-Idhor, the First bard of Afinil, when Sharma approached him. “Nay, keep Thy jewels.” Sharma, who was proud and quick-tempered, was deeply offended by the Bards’ gentle mockery; but he concealed his anger and bent his mind to study.
Very soon it was apparent that Sharma was the most precociously talented bard seen in Afinil since the days of Nelsor. He studied in particular the making things of power, and also the mysteries of binding, and he was very curious about Arkan, the Ice Witch, and spent much time speaking with the Elidhu who came to Afinil of the history of those wars; but he concealed his intent. It only became clear later that Sharma was interested in making himself immortal and as powerful as the Elidhu, who could not be killed. There were those in Afinil, including Lady Ardina, who were disturbed by Sharma’s questioning and did not trust his ambition, and who counseled against him education; but the Bards did not see why their Lore should be kept from such an apt pupil, and such disquiet was brushed aside.
When Sharma had made himself the most powerful Bard in Edil-Amarandh, he returned to his own kingdom; and it was then that he made a Spell of Binding that cast aside his secret Name and ensured that he would never pass through the Gates to the Uncircled Open of Death. This was a great blasphemy; for a bard to so challenge the Laws of Balance was unprecedented. The casting away of his Name and his abjuration of Death signaled the beginning of the grievous wars that ended, five hundred years later, in the overthrown of Afinil and the utter defeat and destruction of Lirion and Imbral and all the Lore and beauty that had existed there.
After he cast off his Secret Name, Sharma was called the Nameless One. He attracted followers, to whom he promised unending life and absolute power, and many Bards went to his side, betraying the Light and there became Black Sorcerers, and were known as Hulls, for they were but the shells of Bards. The Nameless also made alliances with the remnants of the Elidhu who hated and feared the Light, most notably the Elidhu Karak, who held dominion over the realm of Indurain, east of the Osidh Annova, after the armies of the Nameless had destroyed it and slaughtered or enslaved those of the Dhyllin who had lived there.
The campaign of the Nameless One to overthrown the Light in Annar succeeded in A2041, when his forces overwhelmed the last desperate alliance of Lirion and Imbral on the Firman Plains near the Findol River . That defeat was the end of the Dawn Age, and the beginning of the Great Silence.
The Great Silence
The Great Silence lasted from A2041 to A3234. At this time the Light retreated in hiding to the areas that later became known as the Seven Kingdoms: along the coast of Edil-Amarandh , and to the south. The Bards did not build cities or towns, and lived in great hardship, working always against the Dark; but they did not succeed in overthrowing the Nameless until the coming of Maninaë, heir of Laurelin, in A3157. Maninaë, a Bard, united resistance in the Seven Kingdoms and after many years-a story too complex to even begin to relate here-he succeeded in casting the nameless off his throne and restoring Light to Annar. He then became the first King in Norloch and the first to rule over all of Annar.
A new year-count, the Annaren Calendar, was then introduced. It was also called the Norloch Reckoning.
The Restoration
When peace was restored, Maninaë founded the citadel of Norloch and the system of Schools, twenty-five Schools were founded across Annar and the Seven Kingdoms , and roads were built across the country to allow free movement between all of them. At this time more areas of Annar were settled, although there were large regions of wilderness in the center of the land, and Edil-Amarandh was always a continent more thickly populated near its coast that at its center.
Once again there was a great flowering of Bardic culture, and the tenets of Afinil were restored. But Maninaë also gave thought to martial strategies, and the culture of Norloch was warlike, unlike that of Afinil. For Afinil had never been a city of Kings , and although all Bards were routinely trained in the arts of the sword, they never gave them especially high honor.
The restoration lasted 300 years. After that came a period of consolidation, called the Middle years, in which all the Arts flourished in peace and harmony. At about the year N720 came the first promptings of disquiet, and also the last King; for the heirs to the throne made war on each other in an argument about succession, and in the strife ruling line of Norloch was destroyed. The seven Kingdoms at this time revised their alliances with Norloch and restated their autonomies.
After this, the bards ruled along in Norloch, incorporating into the authority of the White Flame the triple scepter of the Kings of Norloch; and after the destruction caused by the rivalries of Kings, it seemed to some this was better, and that the bards, constrained by their vows to the Light and the Balance, would rule more wisely. But there were others who said this was distortion of the balance; and they also pointed out that women were no longer placed in authority in Norloch, as they continued to be in most other Schools, and saw this as another symptom of imbalance.
Gradually, over the next two hundred years, it became clear that things were amiss in Annar. The fortresses in Dén Raven were rebuilt and the sorcerer Imank made war on the Suderain, although he was fiercely resisted. There were other signs of imbalance: the White Sickness, never seen before, began to ravage parts of Annar, and some schools began to be estranged from their people, demanding high tithes and begrudging their services, which caused an enormous loss of the bards’ prestige in many parts of Annar, and sometimes outright and violent resentment. There were more frequent sightings of wers and other servants of the Dark, and for the first time since the Restoration, Hulls were seen in Annar. More disturbingly, some Bards began to report a disturbance in the Speech itself, which they found impossible to express, but which troubled them deeply; they said that it seemed to them the Speech was losing its ancient virtue. However, it was not until the School of Pellinor was sacked and burned to the ground in N935, followed by Baladh and Jerr-Niken in the south within the next four years, that a few Bards began to suggest that the Nameless One had at last returned.
The Speech
The Speech, the defining attribute of a bard and the central mystery of the Knowing, is a topic that exercised many bard thinkers over many centuries. Much therefore might be written about it, of which only the barest sketch can be given here.
The Speech behaved like a language, with a certain differences, and could in fact be learned; it was, for example, spoken by the Dhyllin people as their first tongue. But in the mouths of those who learned it, rather in those with the Gift, it had no Bardic virtue.
Bards used it when speaking of matters of gravity and importance, because it was considered impossible to lie in the Speech. This was, in fact, not accurate: Hulls used the speech and were able to lie, although this usage was not considered to be the Speech proper, and was sometimes called Dark or Black Speech. There was also the question of those who attained the speech but were never taught the Knowing of the Light and, more crucially, never came into their Bardic or Secret Name (also known as their Truename). This was a circumstance that usually had tragic consequences, since such people were unable to properly understand or channel their powers, and were never able to enter their full Gift. This, generally, was rare, if more common as the Schools fell into disrepute after the demise of the Monarchs of Annar. There were sloe cases of those who had only a slight Gift. Such people might have been village witches (hence the expression “witchspeak”), and they generally spoke a truncated and bastardized version of the Speech, with no more then a few words of potency, although sometimes they could attain considerable, if limited, power; but they were not considered to be Bards, since they did not attain the whole Speech, nor sis they know their Names. Consequently, they were sometimes referred to as unnamed which is to be distinguished from the Nameless, who had rejected his Name.
This clearly makes possession of the Speech less straightforward than it might at first appear. The fact that the Speech could be learned by those without the Gift suggest that the virtue of the speech was not inherent in the words themselves, as was argued by many Bards in the Middles Years, but that it expressed the mysteries of the cosmos itself within its syntactic relationships and the vibrations of its utterance, from which were drawn its unique powers. The chief reason given for the argument that potency was inherent in the words themselves was the priority and importance given to Names in the Speech, and to Bardic Names. The truth quite possibly resides in an amalgamation of both arguments, as was pointed out by other bards.
Bards were the only people who bore Secret Names, and s Bard’s Name was and remains a central mystery that can only be partially discerned and puzzled over. The only complete written record of an instatement and Naming ceremony occurs in The Riddle of the Treesong, which confirms rather then negates that the most important mysteries were not written down but kept in the “rings of living memory.” In the Treesong text the authors felt compelled to defend their choice to record it, remarking that since entire forests of knowledge had been hewn down by the Dark, “it is necessary to preserve, even in such a crude way, such Secrets as are known to us, in case the Knowing vanishes from the earth.”
It appears that a Bard’s name was much more than a mere appellation or signifier of status or origin: it was a Bard’s being, and its achievement was a sign of Bard’s maturation into full power. One who knew a Bard’s Secret or Truename had power over him or her, and thus names were guarded closely and given only to intimates as a sign of ultimate trust. Rejecting one’s Name was unheard of until Sharma’s Spell of Binding, and was regarded as the ultimate blasphemy. Sharma of Dén Raven, however, remained the only Bard to successfully do so. Hulls did not use their Names, but were unable to reject them completely, and those who possessed the Names of Hulls could still destroy them.
Because the Speech was not learned in the normal way, and so was not subject to the same forces of change or cultural variety, it remained more constant than other human languages. Bards from vastly different regions had no difficulty understanding each other if they used the Speech, despite the gulfs in tradition and culture that separated them. Nevertheless, the fact remains that there were variations in the Speech; although is sprouted, as it were, always from the same stem, different environments encouraged its growth in differing ways. There was, for example, a noticeable , if slight, difference between the Speech of Afinil and the Speech of today.
Those with the Gift used the Speech for all the Arts of the Knowing. The use of the speech was central to healing, to song-which was held high as an art of wisdom-and to all spells, as well as to investigations-such as astronomy or natural science- we would be accustomed to thinking of as scientific. The Bards made no distinctions, as we do, between art and science, considering them parts of a single Knowing. The Speech also enables those with the Gift to converse with animals and, less frequently, plants. The Speech did not need to be physically spoken to be potent; bards could use it effectively merely as a mode of thought. This raises the most important and difficult differences between the Speech and other languages, which are the subtleties of its registrations as a mode mental communication. These, crucial as they are, cannot be explained, and here must be glanced over by reference to the Bardic paradox that the “center of the Speech is Silence.” It is also why, despite the fact that Bards had a very sophisticated written culture, orality, and the mnemonic arts that go with it, still held precedence.
Plot
Maerad is a slave in a desperate and unforgiving settlement, taken there as a child after her family is destroyed in war. She is unaware that she possesses a powerful gift, one that marks her as member of the School of Pellinor . It is only when she is discovered by Cadvan, one of the great Bards of Lirigon, that her true heritage and extraordinary destiny unfold. Now she and her new teacher must survive a journey through a time and place where dark forces they battle stem from the deepest recesses of otherworldly terror.
Map of the Seven Kingdoms
C. Sample Character Sheet
Name:
Bard Name(if you are a Bard only, if you are a bard Student then you do not have a name yet):
Bards School/Village:
Age (if Bard you could look 30 and actually be 90. Bards live 3 times longer then Humans, Hulls are immortal unless killed by blade, Bard Student will look 12 and be 12):
Gender(if hull you have no gender):
Bard, Bard Student, Hull, Human or Elidhu(if you want to be an Elidhu you must consult me first):
When you came into the Speech(do not answer if you are a Bard Student, or Human):
Appearance (you have to look human unless you are a Hull or Elidhu. Hulls can be deformed and looks like creatures out of horror movies. Elidhus can take the form of anything. They are shape shifters) :
History:
Personality:
d. Sample Character(s) (the more that you have in mind the better)
Name: Maerad
Bard Name: will find out later in story but her Bard name is Elednor meaning Fire Lily
Bard School/Village: Pellinor
Age: 16
Gender: Female
Bard, Bard Student, Hull , Human or Elidhu: Part Elidhu and Part Bard
When you came into the Speech: Not yet
Appearance:http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j315/KRPrincess24/pellinor.jpg
History: She was taken with her mother, Milana, to Gilman’s Cot where she had spent most of her life. Her father was behead right in front of her when the Burning of Pellinor happened and her brother was killed....or so she thinks....she and Milana were transported to Gilman’s Cot to work as salves for the rest of their lives. Milana died shortly after they got there and left Maerad a lyre. Milana and taught Maerad how to play before she passed away. Maerad plays the when she is sad or needs comfort. She is known as a witch at Gilman’s Cot because if you get her mad enough something will happen. Having long black hair doesn’t help her any but her reputation keeps the men away from her.
Personality: She doesn’t talk to people much. She keeps to herself and gives off and dark air. No one talks to her after her mother had passed away and she resorted always depending on herself and no one else.
Name: Cadvan
Bard Name: unknown
Bard School/Village: Lirigon
Age: looks 20 but real age is unknown
Gender: Male
Bard, Bard Student, Hull , Human or Elidhu: Full Bard
When you came into the Speech: 6
Appearance:little dude in back
History: He is a great Bard with a great healing ability and a lot of power. He had once went to the Dark because he had a rival and want to defeat him. Instead of killing his rival, he killed his lover. He regrets it till this day. He keeps to himself and is serious unless he meets up with old friends. Not much is know about Cadvan because if he doesn’t want you to anything out you won’t find it out.
Personality: Cold and serious. He never laughs and rarely smiles.