Post by Bippwatt on Feb 12, 2017 20:06:49 GMT
This is the story of King Viktor Vahlan's great-great-great-great- great-grandfather, the legendary Prince Tremaine, united the planet when hunting down a Fey Maiden, who had gone on a ramapage in a fit of insanity.
Prince Tremaine is known as both Tremaine the Terrible and Tremaine the Caring, primarily due to the fact that, on the battlefield, none could hope to match him. He was a terrible whirlwind of destruction. Yet in the council chambers, he was a gentle, but firm, soul.
Said Fey Maiden had gone insane due to having fallen in love with a mortal, who (as mortals are wont to do) died.
Said mortal was, in fact, Prince Tremaine.
This Maiden tore apart many worlds searching for a way to bring him back...and eventually succeeded. However, she had become too crazed, fallen too far. And when Tremaine saw what had become of his love, he wept for her. He could not be with her as she was, for she was insane, even by Sidhe standards. But he couldn't bring himself to end her suffering there.
He tried to encourage her to go home, to her family, such as it was.
But she refused. Driven by her insanity, she began to ravage Validor, fueled by madness and sustained by rage.
Tremaine despaired, but his councilors told him to have faith and courage and to persevere. So he did. And he united the world of Validor behind his banner and his amassed armies marched on the Maiden's stronghold on Validor, where she kept herself when she wasn't causing chaos and destruction.
Eventually, though the death toll was high, Tremaine fought his way to the Maiden's personal chambers. There, Tremaine found the Maiden. And a small child, no more than five.
It was his child. His and the Maiden's. Suddenly, the immensity of what had happened made sense. Except that, if it truly was his, this child ought to be twenty by now, at least. The Maiden nodded, for he was correct. The child was twenty. And speaking to the child, Tremaine confirmed this. His son had the body of a five year old, but the mind of a twenty year old.
The Maiden explained that this was his fey blood to blame for this...he would develop normally mentally, but his physical development would be slowed to a quarter of what it should be.
And, of course, the Maiden knew that she could not leave her stronghold alive. Her insanity had taken too high a toll on her body and her magics. Also, not being in the fey realms for years had not been good for her at all. She would never be able to return there, even had she been mentally healthy after all that had been done. She would have been stripped of her mantle and likely thrown in a dungeon.
At least her love could give her as peaceful an ending as she could hope for. The Prince-now-King had taken the dagger that the maiden had given him, though not directly, for she could not touch it herself. It was a cold iron dagger, with poisons deadly to fey forged into it. It promised a quick and painless death if the heart was pierced with it.
Prince Tremaine held his love one last time, held her close...and pierced her to the heart with the dagger. As he carried her body to the bed, he could feel the ripple of power as her mantle of Maiden left her and returned to the Queen, most likely, for her to chose a new Maiden.
The Prince stayed in that chamber for a day and an hour, his spirit shattered, until his son, named Nathanial, came to him and coaxed him from the room and out to his army, who were cleaning up and awaiting with baited breath word of their leader.
And that, as they say, was that. Prince Tremaine ruled for another hundred years, eventually stepping down two years before his death.
Nathanial, now appearing no more than twenty, took the throne and continued his father's work. The line of Vahlan is strong and blessed with a large portion of fey blood, which had a tendency to not be weakened through the generations. Now, Viktor Vahlan is one hundred and twenty years old. For comparison, Nathanial lived to the ripe old age of seven hundred and forty two...while looking no more than fifty.
The Maiden had been wrong, for Nathanial's growth had actually been faster for the first fifty years of his life, then it began slowing down, until around three hundred, it effectively stopped at an appearance of about thirty...the visual aging still occurred, but few noticed it for it took literally decades and centuries.
The strong blood of the House of Vahlan has been remarked by many historians to be the principal reason they are able to keep the entire world united, even through some of the darkest ages of the Realm of Validor.