#'WORTH MORE THAN ALL THE GOLD IN A KINGS RANSOM OR ALL THE SALT IN THE SEA'

[scatterbrainedbot]

Awooga??? New Year new mutual???

👀👀👀

hi kredena!!!!

[iwriterpstarters]

200 sentence starters

part 5

“I gave them the city, and most of them were too frightened to take it.”

“I told them they were free. I cannot tell them now they are not free to join me.”

“Woman, you bray like an ass, and make no more sense.”  

“Woman? Is that meant to insult me? I would return the slap, if I took you for a man.”

“I say, you are mad.”  

“To be sure, I am only a young girl and know little of war. What do you think, my lords?”  

“I would call that proof of his sincerity.”

“All loyalties are uncertain in such times as these.”

“And I shall be betrayed twice more, once for gold and once for love.”

“But that was the tourney when he crowned Lyanna Stark as queen of love and beauty!”

“Princess Elia was there, his wife, and yet my brother gave the crown to the Stark girl, and later stole her away from her betrothed.”

“How could he do that? Did his wife treat him so ill?”  

“It is not for such as me to say what might have been in your brother’s heart, Your Grace.”

“The Princess was a good and gracious lady, though her health was ever delicate.”

“But I am not certain it was in him to be happy.”  

“You make him sound so sour.”

“Not sour, no, but... there was a melancholy to the Prince, a sense...”

“A sense... of doom.”

“He/She was born in grief, my queen, and that shadow hung over him/her all life.”  

“It was the shadow of Summerhall that haunted him, was it not?”  

“And yet Summerhall was the place the prince loved best.”

“He/She would go there from time to time, with only a harp for company.”

“Even the knights of the Kingsguard did not attend him/her there.”

“He/She liked to sleep in the ruined hall, beneath the moon and stars, and whenever he/she came back it was with a song.”

“It is Ghiscari, the old pure tongue. It means ‘Mother.’”

“Fire consumes.”

“It consumes, and when it is done there is nothing left. Nothing.”  

“Sweet friend. What are you saying?”  

“Nothing I have not said before.”

“Six times, ___? Six times is too many.”

“I dreamt a wolf howling in the rain, but no one heard his grief.”

“I dreamt such a clangor I thought my head might burst, drums and horns and pipes and screams, but the saddest sound was the little bells.”

“I dreamt of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs.”

“I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow.”[<- probably sansa] She turned her head sharply and smiled through the gloom, right at Arya.

“You cannot hide from me, child. Come closer, now.”

“I see you, wolf child. Blood child. I thought it was the lord who smelled of death...”

“You are cruel to come to my hill, cruel.”

“I gorged on grief at Summerhall, I need none of yours. Begone from here, dark heart!”  

“My lady? You have a baseborn brother... ”  

“He’s with the Night’s Watch on the Wall.”

“Maybe I should go to the Wall instead of Riverrun.”

“___ wouldn’t care who I killed or whether I brushed my hair...”

“___ looks like me, even though he’s bastard-born.”

“He used to muss my hair and call me ‘little sister.’”

“Just saying his name makes me sad.”

“I wanted to be alone, away from all the voices, away from their hollow words and broken promises.”

“Once, at the Citadel, I came into an empty room and saw an empty chair.”

“Yet I knew a woman had been there, only a moment before.”

“If we leave our smells behind us when we leave a room, surely something of our souls must remain when we leave this life?”

“There’s the wench I remember.”

“You gave her a tourney sword.”  

“I’ll pay her bloody ransom. Gold, sapphires, whatever you want. Pull her out of there.”  

“You want her? Go get her.”  

“Well, what in seven hells do I do now?”

“I ought to lop my left hand off as well, for all the good it does me.”  

“And I’ll serve you the same if you give me trouble.”

“We’re taking the wench.”  

“Her name is ___.”

“I am grateful, but... you were well away. Why come back?”  

“I dreamed of you.”

“First I anger Brother, and now my son, but all I have done is speak the truth.”

“Are men so fragile they cannot bear to hear it?”

“My lord husband is dead, as is my father.”

“Two of my sons have been murdered, my daughter has been given to a faithless dwarf to bear his vile children, my other daughter is vanished and likely dead, and my last son and my only brother are both angry with me.”

“My children sons are dead and daughters lost. What could possibly be amiss?”

“She-bears, aye. We have needed to be.”

“The men would be off fishing, like as not. The wives they left behind had to defend themselves and their children, or else be carried off.”  

“Is this my punishment for opposing him about his brother? Or for being a woman, and worse, a mother?”

“I left my wife at Riverrun. I want my mother elsewhere.”

“If you keep all your treasures in one purse, you only make it easier for those who would rob you.”

“After the wedding, you shall go to Seagard, that is my royal command.”

“That had ended when father decided it was making me soft as a girl.”

“But if you’re stupid enough to try again, I’ll hurt you.”  

“Why don’t you just kill me like you did Mycah?”

“The next time you say that name I’ll beat you so bad you’ll wish I killed you.”  

“Even a fish might have trouble in this river.”

“Still, drowning might be better than King’s Landing.”

“Don’t even think about it.”  

“Then I’ll take as much gold as I can carry, laugh in his face, and ride off.”

“If he doesn’t take me, he’d be wise to kill me, but he won’t.”

“Too much his father’s son, from what I hear.”

“Fine with me. Either way I win.”

“So stop whimpering and snapping at me, I’m sick of it.”

“Keep your mouth shut and do as I tell you, and maybe we’ll even be in time for your uncle’s bloody wedding.”

“Be gentle with yourself.”

“It is good that you have woken, but you must give yourself time to heal.”

“We drowned the wound with boiling wine, and closed you up with a poultice of nettle, mustard seed and moldy bread, but unless you rest...”

“If we are offered refreshment when we arrive, on no account refuse.”

“Take what is offered, and eat and drink where all can see. If nothing is offered, ask for bread and cheese and a cup of wine.”  

“I’m more wet than hungry...”  

“Listen to me. Once you have eaten of his bread and salt, you have the guest right, and the laws of hospitality protect you beneath his roof.”  

“I have an army to protect me, Mother, I don’t need to trust in bread and salt.”

“But if it pleases Lord Walder to serve me stewed crow smothered in maggots, I’ll eat it and ask for a second bowl.”  

“Keep your eyes down and your tone respectful and say ser a lot, and most knights will never see you.”

“They pay more mind to horses than to smallfolk.”

“He might have known Stranger if he’d ever seen me ride him.”

“No one sang the words, but I knew ‘The Rains of Castamere’ when I heard it.”

“I will kill the old man, I can do that much at least.”  

“It hurts so much. Our children, all our sweet babes.”

“Please, make it stop, make it stop hurting...”

“Mad. She’s lost her wits.”

“No, don’t, don’t cut my hair, ___loves my hair.”

“Come with me. We have to get away from here, and now.”

“We have to go get my mother.”

“I am sorry, my lord.”  

“Why? Some cook should be sorry. Not you. The pease are not your province.”

“They are green and round, what more can one expect of pease? Here, I’ll have another serving, if it please my lady.”

“That was stupid. Now I have to eat them all, or she’ll be sorry all over again.”

“I won’t intrude. Dress warmly, my lady, the wind is brisk out there.”

“Kings are falling like leaves this autumn.” “

“It would seem our little war is winning itself.”  

“Write to Lord Frey and tell him. The king commands. I’m going to have it served to ___ at my wedding feast.”  

“Sire, the lady is now your aunt by marriage.”  

“A jest. He did not mean it.”  

“He was a traitor, and I want his stupid head. I’m going to make Sansa kiss it.”

“She/He is no longer yours to torment. Understand that, monster.”  

“You’re the monster, Uncle.”  

“Perhaps you should speak more softly to me, then.”

“Monsters are dangerous beasts, and just now kings seem to be dying like flies.”

“Aerys also felt the need to remind men that he was king. And he was passing fond of ripping tongues out as well.”

“When your enemies defy you, you must serve them steel and fire. When they go to their knees, however, you must help them back to their feet.”

“And any man who must say ‘I am the king’ is no true king at all.”

“When I’ve won your war for you, we will restore the king’s peace and the king’s justice.”

“Oh, my, hasn’t this gotten interesting?”

“___, apologize to your grandfather.”

“Why should I? Everyone knows it’s true.”

“My father won all the battles. He killed Prince Rhaegar and took the crown, while your father was hiding under Casterly Rock.”

“A strong king acts boldly, he doesn’t just talk.”  

“Thank you for that wisdom, Your Grace.”

“I don’t want any dreamwine.”

“Father, I am sorry. Joff has always been willful, I did warn you...”  

“There is a long league’s worth of difference between willful and stupid.”

“‘A strong king acts boldly?’ Who told him that?”  

“Not me, I promise you.”

“The part about you hiding under Casterly Rock does sound like ___.”

“And what were you telling him, pray? I did not fight a war to seat Robert the Second on the Iron Throne.”

“You gave me to understand the boy cared nothing for his father.”  

“Why would he? Robert ignored him.”

“He would have beat him if I’d allowed it.”

“That brute you made me marry once hit the boy so hard he knocked out two of his baby teeth, over some mischief with a cat.”

“I told him I’d kill him in his sleep if he ever did it again, and he never did, but sometimes he would say things...”  

“It appears things needed to be said.”

“Not Robert the Second. Aerys the Third.”  

“The boy is thirteen. There is time yet.”

“That’s unlike him; he’s more upset than he wishes to show.”

“He requires a sharp lesson.”  

“Wars are won with quills and ravens, wasn’t that what you said?”

“I must congratulate you. How long have you and Walder Frey been plotting this?”  

“I mislike that word.”

“And I mislike being left in the dark.”  

“There was no reason to tell you. You had no part in this.”

“No one was told, save those who had a part to play.”

“And they were only told as much as they needed to know.”

“You ought to know that there is no other way to keep a secret - here, especially.”

“My object was to rid us of a dangerous enemy as cheaply as I could, not to indulge your curiosity or make your sister feel important.”

“You have a certain cunning, but the plain truth is you talk too much.”

“That loose tongue of yours will be your undoing.”  

“You should have let Joff tear it out.”  

“You would do well not to tempt me.”

“Oh? Is this something I’m allowed to know, or should I leave so you can discuss it with yourself?”

“A tool for every task, isn’t that how it works? My tool is yours, Father.”

“Never let it be said that my House blew its trumpets and I did not respond.”

“I was made to suffer my father’s follies. I will not suffer yours. Enough.”

“Very well, as you ask so pleasantly.”

“It might serve, but the Snake will not be happy.”

“Far be it from me to question your cunning, father, but in your place I do believe I’d have let Robert Baratheon bloody his own hands.”

“I grant you, it was done too brutally.”

“The Princess need not have been harmed at all, that was sheer folly. By herself she was nothing.”  

“Then why did the Mountain kill her?”  

“Because I did not tell him to spare her. I doubt I mentioned her at all.”

“I had more pressing concerns.”

“That was the thing I feared most.”

“Nor did I yet grasp what I had in The Mountain, only that he was huge and terrible in battle.”

“If Lorch had half the wits the gods gave a turnip, he would have calmed her with a few sweet words and used a soft silk pillow.”

“So Lord Walder slew him under his own roof, at his own table?”

“Slain as well, I’d say. A pair of wolfskins.”

“Frey had intended to keep her captive, but perhaps something went awry.”  

“So much for guest right.”  

“The blood is on his hands, not mine.”

“Explain to me why it is more noble to kill ten thousand men in battle than a dozen at dinner.”

“I had not forgotten, though I’d hoped you had.”

“I am not seeing the body, no, Your Kingliness.”

“Yet in the city, the lions prance and dance.”

“The Red Wedding, the smallfolk are calling it.”

“I was sick unto death of this wretched boy before he was even born.”

“His very name is a roaring in my ears and a dark cloud upon my soul.”

“He is mine own blood. Stop clutching me, woman.”

“And small men curse what they cannot understand.”  

“So tell me why you need this boy to wake your great stone dragon, my lady.”

“Only death can pay for life, my lord.”

“A great gift requires a great sacrifice.”

“Even an onion smuggler knows two onions from three. You are short a king, my lady/lord.”  

“He/She has you there, my lady. Two is not three.”

“A certain Lysene pirate once told me that a good smuggler stays out of sight.”

“Black sails, muffled oars, and a crew that knows how to hold their tongues.”  

“A crew with no tongues is even better. Big strong mutes who cannot read or write.”

“But I am glad to know that someone watches your back, old friend.”

“Will the king give the boy to the red priestess, do you think?”

“One little dragon could end this great big war.”

[squirrelwrangler]

Self-Indulgent Writing, More Mermaid Side-Story

More long post WIP original story, directly continuing off of this post. Stopped at a point so the post would be shorter than the first snippet (five pages is not a snippet, I know).

...

“I enter the dry hall of the king, my shell dress still dripping wet, which is a faux pas, and I could not describe to you my hair. All my journey I fret that I must make a good impression, and here is how I arrive. The dry hall is wood, semi-open to the elements, unlike other portions of the palace complex which are of coral and stone. Had I been escorted to one of those rooms, my anxiety would have overpowered me. But I was tired from swimming and determined to have this position at court, to learn under Queen Gara, so the magnitude of what surrounds me is deadened. So dark is it, I cannot not see the details of wealth around me. There are curtains of sea-wool, like gold made into mist, hanging from the ceiling. Just enough of that cloth to make a pair of lady’s gloves is worth a lord’s ransom in your land. Metal objects, which are more rare and precious in the islands, decorate the room, and the hinges and furnishings on the doors are made of brass. The first time I saw one of your temples with doors of solid bronze, every carving cast in metal and not carved, I sat on the steps and just stared for hours in sheer wonder. But the palace of Iro was the first wonderful and wealthy place that I came to. What else can I say to describe it that morning? Flowers are grown around the outer walls to provide a sweet scent to combat the scent of salt. The winds bring it in through the open panels. I have found only a few perfumes that come close to matching those flowers. And how strongly a smell is, or its qualities, is highly dependent on my current form. Scent memory is therefore strange for me. Alas, it would have been nice to stand there for while and dry, but I am immediately shuffled onward.

“The king himself, not any master of servants, is the one to collect me from the guard escort. He wears no crown; King Isore rarely did, but he did not need to, for how recognizable he is.” Amabel paused. “The man that Great Lady Manon spoke to in Stonegift, her banker with the stupid feathered hat, you recall him?”

“I liked his hat,” Gislin said.

“You have terrible taste in colors,” Amabel snapped. “Well, not him, but the bodyguard accompanying him. You remember how tall and broad that man was, with the scar on his eyebrow and the pale eyes and short beard. Man who looked as if he could bend steel without a taint-gift to give him strength- that is the picture of a man who looks like King Isore when he walks on two legs. Under the waves, my king is green with bands of brass and gold, sometimes dulled, and somethings the colors so vibrant as to be garish to the senses. His tail as long and powerful as a pilot whale, with a row of short spikes down his back.”

“Is that big?” Rohese whispered to Great Lady Manon. The old lady riding beside her shrugged her shoulders.

“Child, I have never seen the ocean. Ask the priest.”

Amabel continued to describe her first meeting with her king, offering the token and name-dropping an institution that Gislin thought might be the name of a school. “Now what I did not know at the time was that Iro was anticipating an attack soon from one of its enemies. Not Seal Rocks, one of the corrupted men. They aren’t the plague that they are in the farthest reaches of the Rim, but if they reach the inner currents of the Navel, then the forest-taint is strong indeed and their allies terrible. And one does not tempt to call anything connected to ghosts that close to the Doors of the Rat Queen. May mites eat through your skin!” Amabel swore, then turned in her seat to holler at their driver. “Foul enough that you ventured into the Shadow Forest, Urwin. Fool priests, thinking your songs will keep you safe from the iron rats, and that you would not stir up something to follow you back into the living lands.” Urwin silently accepted her abuse, playing dumb and mute. Her reprimands were nothing new to him. “Never for me, that place. Too akin to the abyssal depths of the ocean, where no sunlight can reach. The void-taint is strong down there, stronger than the furthest ends of the earth, for the same reason, and only evil stirs it up to the surface waters.

“King Isore was expecting reports of their movements from spies sent earlier that week, including the premier students of Queen Gara. Sweet boys, the pair of them. There was a time when they were both enamoured with me, and I may have married one of them, had I stayed in Iro. An odd thought, nowadays.

“The King looks me over, mistakes my token for the pyrite shells in which we embed sound to send messages instead of writing letters, and shouts that I follow him to give my report. “You’re early!” he shouts. I think nothing of it until he asks for status updates from the Queen’s prized student, Gawne, or if Claren thinks his errant human father, a notorious pirate, is involved in this. As of yet I did not know these young men. We confuse each other, for the king brings up spells that the queen will teach me, ones that I would have known had I been whom he thought I was, ones I thought that I was here to learn.

“Queen Gara is on the neighboring island. I do not meet her this day or their son, Prince Ias. Had she been the one to greet me, no confusion would have arisen. Though I do meet everyone else. Yes, you could say I get an introduction to the majority of the royal family that morning. Quite an introduction.” Amabel giggled. “Meeting the royal family. Yes.” Amabel giggled some more.

“So, King Isore bids me follow him, and I can discern that he is irate, though not with me, which is the sole reason I followed and didn’t try to escape. He was very genial in person. Oddly mercurial of moods, in that unlike the rest of his family his temper was not hot and quick to rise, at least not since the days of his youth, and when he wished, he could be boisterous company, enough that you would forget that there was a shrewd mind behind that smile. But then prone to fits of solemn melancholy and self-isolation. Still, my story is not solely of him.

“King Isore starts bellowing for his brother, Prince Res. This is early in the morning, only the second chime, the sun has barely begun to lighten the horizon. He marches to a separate wing of the palace, low tide rooms, shouting for his brother to wake and explain my presence. I continue to stammer that I was from Blue Island, sent to be a student to his wife, Queen Gara, for the talent I promised. Not a similarly named operation that their scouts were tracking for a reason that was never fully explained to me even long after it happened, but that’s life. One mixup in communications and for some reason that morning King Isore mistook me for one of his brother’s war spies. And I was a skinny girl child, no muscle tone, a shell dress of cheap cockle, weaponless, but he must have mistaken the veneer of courage on top of my fear for the mettle of a warrior.”

“Oh how ever could anyone mistake you for a secretly vicious sneak?” Gislin teased, and Amabel raised her shifted talons in mock outrage.

“These teeth have killed far more men than you could ever dream to, little wolf child. Hush and listen.” Amabel continued her story as if without interruption, and Gislin was starting to wonder if she had imbued wine earlier, for there was a quality of drunken ramble to her animated storytelling. “Thankfully, King Isore stops to listen to me, realises his error, and takes it with good humor. “Oh, you’re that girl,” he says to me. “This is fine. I need to take you to see my brother anyway. Part of your new tasks.” Waves his hand airly and keeps charging down the hallway, and I’m stumbling after him getting my heels wet until we get to the proper half-submerged part of the palace and swim through the final set of doors. He flings open the doors to what is obviously a private bedchamber with a splash -I would try to explain to you proper architecture another time- and shouts for Prince Res to wake.”

[thekingsmanscycle]

Karlemon’s Lands: Valarre (continued)

Geography of Valarre

River Alard. Hurley of Crownisle’s ‘Almanac’ describes the great river Alard as ‘the course along which runs the ancient life blood of a nation’, referring to a great quantity of iron and copper to be found in the rocks along the banks. In today’s reckoning the Alard, with its source at Mont Piaget and mouth at the Bay of the Tempest is a booming trade channel running to the heart of the country. It also once served as the divider between Deucalion and Karolin aligned lands during the Period of the Two Brother Kings.

River Harlan. A river along which Hurley saw barges filled with coal and salt headed north and south from Lake Lauzon, now near empty as the coal dried up and the salt mines lost workers to the Underdark. The Harlan meets the Osirian Sea at the little town of Giltavon, where the playwright Lavaud set his horror-tragedy ‘The Wreckers’, a drama about a family of cannibalistic robbers that lived in the rocky outcroppings in the bay, preying on the victims of shipwrecks until the return of an itinerant soldier to the town of his birth nearby.

The Verley Highlands. This natural fortress of hills and glens was used by the Segolatar as their staging ground for their conquest of Valarre in the earliest days of the nation. It was often said at the time that the lords of the Verleys would hold them until the waters that flooded Ynen flooded them as well. In current terms, that refers mostly to crown-owned lands under Alberic II’s stewards and rangers, but a sizeable portion of the southern range holds the lands of House Etienne, a younger and ambitious house in Valarre.

The Forest of Hyrne. Named for a cognate of Keverne, the great king of the woodlands in Valarris folklore, the Hyrne oak forest covers a great area of eastern Valarre and has been inhabited for centuries. It is said to be the home of great spirits of the natural places, and to be infamous for the disappearances of children and young couples. Oft this is blamed on wolves or hags or other wandering monsters but some attribute it to the faery rings that dot many of the forest clearings.

Ysére Lake. This picturesque body of water on the southeastern border of Valarre with Cosima is one of the largest in Karlemon’s Lands and is said to be home to a variety of monstrous creatures including but not limited to; an escaped hydra from the War of Tears, a colony of naiads for whom the lake is named, a gigantic catfish by the name of Mona Grandis and a warband of trolls pursuing a witch who promised to give them godhood.

Isle of Ramsar. A small island in the Nolin Sound between Valarre and Tylia, Ramsar has been a possession of Valarre for the past four hundred years following victory at the Battle of Mont Judual. This right was reaffirmed in the Treaty of Clannet in 1295 and the Ramsarii, the island’s natives, hold Valarris citizenship. The island’s economy is mostly agricultural, with cattle farming, mussel fishing and apple orchards being the main businesses. It is however home to the first known temple to Meseret, the goddess of the seas.

Landmarks of Valarre

Ebronante. Reportedly destroyed by the Tarrasque of legend, the great citadel of the Guyony dynasty was famed for its thick walls and iron forges that supplied the northern human realms with all manner of cast iron items over four centuries. As the Guyony left with their treasury, there are no tales of gold or jewels, save that of Hervé II’s crown, said to be the first purpose-made crown in Valarre and worth a king’s ransom.

Valarre Academie of War. Originally a subsidiary of the Arcanum Nobilite  dedicated to the education of the aristocracy, the Academie was expanded some two hundred years ago to include the merchant classes and peasantry of sufficient skill and merit. The arts of war, according to its founder Albertine I Karolin, include training in at least three weapons, classical strategy, unit tactics, provisioning, camp organisation and moral training in the treatment of noble prisoners of war, including interrogation and either execution or ransom.

The Marnberg Temple. Built over six hundred years ago by devotees of the Lydian pantheon, it is the first temple to include sections dedicated to all nine canonical deities and the lesser Vanathes. The centrepiece is a twenty-foot tall statue made in the likeness of Jocasta the Dawn-Captain standing in the central archway and holding the doors open during the day for worshippers to enter. Its continued patronage by the baronial house Sylvestre is as a result of their own devotion to their faith. 

The Karolingian Library. Founded by Sigismondo I Orsini of Cosima, the library, which is the largest in the human world, passed into Valarris state hands some three hundred years ago. Its immense buildings serve as the campus for the Valarre chapter of the Arcanum Nobilite and its collection rises into the thousands of book and hundreds of thousands of scrolls and parchments. Seen as one of the state’s greatest triumphs, it is held in prestige as far away as Sinhal.

Wildlife of Valarre

Enfield - A winged scavenger that pesters farmers and hunts birds through the fields of Valarre, known for its cunning and mischievous nature.

Griffon - A rare and proud creature, famed in Valarre as the loyal companion of the legendary hero Caradec Grall, who rode the griffon Alcatraz into battle.

Cave Lion - A dangerous hunter most commonly found in the Verley Highlands, it is a current and present danger to those hiking in the mountains.

Bequise - A small avian creature with bright plumage and reptilian features, it defends itself with a foul-smelling paralytic saliva.

Ungaris Deer - A breed of white furred deer seen by many hunters as a swift and worthy adversary, formerly sacred to Bromos, god of hunting. 

Tobar - A large green predatory freshwater fish common to the rivers and canals of central Valarre, hunted yearly as a centrepiece for the Midwinter Festival.

Valarris Folklore

Keverne, Lord of the Forest. A popular and well-known spirit of nature, Keverne is given offerings by country folk to ensure the virility of their sons, fertility of their daughters and luck while hunting. Thought to be the son of lords of the archfey, he is depicted as a half-man, half-stag centaur and has been revered in Valarre for more than a thousand years. 

Caradec Grall, the Man Who Would Be King. A legendary figure of Valarre, he was said to be a royal heir who forsook his throne to serve the common people atop his war-griffon Alcatraz. Known as a kind and shy man in his youth, he was emboldened to fight by the plight of his manservant, the brave but tragic Gwylum, who was killed by his liege lord as penance for not paying his taxes. In more recent tales, he fights the elves across the sea and will return to rule Valarre justly and with honour once the line of his friend and comrade Morgane Le Bal has faltered and been exitnguished.

Morgane Le Bal. A mythical contemporary of Caradec Grall, she is a queen of great magical power who protects the kingdom from dark forces through cunning, intelligence and strength of will. She is seen as a dark figure, but undoubtedly good and beloved by her people, who gifted the name the ‘Le Bal’ as a warning to her enemies of the misfortune and tragedy that would befall them should she feel the need to unleash her wrath. Any child of the Valarris royal family born with great magical power is lauded as a member of her bloodline and is known as a ‘Morganiste’ in her honour.

Tarrasque. A folktale from the west of Valarre tells of the existence of a sleeping monster that inhabits the mountains outside Martillac which destroyed each of the Seven Bright Cities so thoroughly, that now there are only six. The titanic creature was said to be so powerful and destructive that it destroyed the great glaciers of the Verleys, flattened the terrain of Valarre and left great channels of earth upturned so that they became the great rivers. 

The Beast of Bornau. A story two centuries old concerns the terror of crimes perpetuated by Gudwal de Rais, a lesser noble of Valarre, who embraced a dark cursed form and feasted upon each of his six wives a year after their wedding night. The seventh, a beautiful redheaded prostitute known only as Jeanne, killed him with a single blow from a silver candelabra. Her name is lauded throughout the barony of Courzon, the lands of House Leclerc.

The Winter Father. Said to be a god of nature whose name is long forgotten, the Winter Father is a happy, kind and soulful entity who delivers gifts to children upon the winter solstice. To defend himself from the cruellest winter spirits he carries a mace and his oak staff, which helps him to walk through the snow. He walks through every town, accompanied by the sound of tolling bells and the smell of hot wine.