Ages of Shireroth: Volume Three

III: Building of a Nation

A Refutation of Other Histories

It has been suggested in times since that the story of Shireroth’s creation as told in the first volume of this work is utterly unfounded, the product of nationalist sentiment and popular myth. Some historians have said that Raynor himself never existed for certain, and that if he did his connections to the ancient Khaz Modanians were tenuous at best.

For the sake of discourse, I will here state that some previous visions of the founding of the nation begin with the assertion that the Technomaezji were not of Khaz Modanian stock at all, but hailed from northwestern Brookshire. These stories furthermore claim that the first few Kaisers of the official lists were semi-mythological, being only chiefs of the Technomaezji tribes of the time, and that it was not till the reign of Erik I that the title of Kaiser came into common use.

Another assertion is that even these earliest certain Kaisers did not achieve the things that this historian believes Raynor to have achieved. The unification of modern Brookshire with the conquering of the southern tribes and the Musicans is said to have occurred in the reign of Trantor I, and the establishment of Shirekeep as the capital in the reign of Trantor’s successor Edward I. The establishment of the ducal system is even pushed forward to the reign of Daniel II, near the end of the First Era!

While this historian could not in good conscience permit alternative views to go unheeded, he believes that they are, ultimately, unfounded. The first great reason for this is that the accounts given above date from a time when historical research was at an ebb; before the revival of the nation by the Metzler-Ly’Technomaezj Dynasty had been completed, many ancient records had been lost or destroyed during war, or otherwise horribly neglected. The most up-to-date ideas of the early history of the nation were taken from the Technomaezji who revived from their long suspension at around that time. Given that they had once existed in a time far closer to those ancient events than anyone else, it was assumed by many that they would know better about early history than anyone else.

But the stories that the revived technomages told were, especially in light of recent evidence, nearly useless for purely Shirerithian historical studies. After all, the Technomaezji went into hiding before the founding of the country! They would have had no knowledge whatsoever of anything beyond the destruction of the Khaz Modanian Empire. The accounts given by the technomages, therefore, were probably meant to smooth their way into acceptance by the new society. It is also not entirely unlikely that there was some level of misdirection, as well; after all, after having seen their Empire destroyed by a horrible catastrophe, perhaps they were not eager to be associated with it, for fear of being taken by the same phenomenon.

Another reason for mistrust of these stories is that of archeological evidence. We know now that the Technomaezji that hid in the last days of the Empire were advanced greatly in the ways of science, far more so than the people in the northwest of Brookshire were at the time. We also know that Shirekeep is far older than the reign of Edward I. As such, this historian has chosen to ignore previous accounts of the nation’s founding, and has instead chosen to rely on a small but growing body of stories that seem to better fit what has been found in the archeological digs. While this historian is willing to admit that they are, in many respects, more fantastic than seems likely, one would be wise to note that stranger things have happened in the past (Yardistan, for example).

And, after all, as far as we can tell over this millennia-wide gap since the days of the founding, they could very well be true.

The First Challenges

Raynor, as he is known to have been from the ancient stories, was a great and unique individual, responsible for many great deeds. But even he, in his greatness, could not escape the troubles involved with founding a new realm; and in fact, trouble began almost immediately after the founding of Shireroth, for Raynor soon had to face a rebellion from unexpected quarters.

Some two years after the founding of Shireroth, the lands of the former Musican Alliance, Brookshire’s old ally, proclaimed their independence from the new nation. This was a great surprise to the new Kaiser and his government, for the Musicans had been Raynor’s closest allies all through the wars, and the Alliance had been reconstituted as a Barony within Brookshire as a reward for their service. As the Musicans began sending raiding parties up the Elwynn and out to sea, attacking Goldshire from the water and retreating quickly, Raynor gathered up his armies and marched south, sending messengers ahead to demand an explanation.

The exact nature of the Musicans’ reply remains obscure, records of it lost to the mists of time. But the most respected theory, and the one that most elegantly explains their actions, is that the Musicans objected to the continued existence of the Duchy of Goldshire, and its incorporation into Shireroth as a functioning unit. Defeated though it had been in war, and now under the control of a Ducal line friendly to the Kaiser, the Musicans feared that their old tormentor would one day turn on them again. Back during the war, they had been among the most vocal supporters of dissolving Goldshire and placing it under Brookshire’s direct rule.

Whatever their reasoning, Raynor would not brook their rebellion. Extensive as the Musican navy was, it was not accompanied by a comparable army. The Shirerithian soldiers marched into Musican territory with little opposition, despite the continuing efforts of the navy to use its superior mobility to deliver Musican soldiers behind their lines. Yet as the army approached the city of Musica itself, it met greater and greater resistance, with rebel units being better-equipped, and sometimes augmented by non-Musican units.

Outraged by the idea of foreigners interfering in the rebellion, Raynor ordered his soldiers to prioritize the capture of these strangers, to discover their origin. When the results of subsequent interrogations came to the Kaiser, it was then that he first heard of the island realm of Yardistan.

A Two-Front War

In fact, the units fighting in Musica were not there in any physical capacity. The leaders of Yardistan were willing to do much for their best business partners, but did not wish to be drawn into a war with a nation they had no other quarrel with. But supplies were shipped to Musica at reduced rates to aid their efforts, and Yardistani mercenaries hired themselves out to the Musican army. Despite an official neutrality, the Yardistani clearly preferred one side over the other, a fact that was to draw the wrath of Raynor in later years.

But their relative lack of involvement was enough to ensure the doom of their allies. Despite facing tougher fighting than anticipated, Raynor’s seasoned troops had begun laying siege to Musica in b2392, with all other former rebel territories already captured. Due to its ability to be supplied by water, the city held out for many years as a sort of independent city-state, using its still-intact navy to keep its supply lines open. Raynor, whose military had until now rested mainly on land-based forces, realized that he would also require naval superiority in order to achieve his purpose. To this end, he commissioned the construction of great shipyards in southern Brookshire. Even today, the once-forested region from which the necessary timber was taken remains mostly open fields, in which much of the Duchy’s grain is grown and harvested.

The naval buildup would last for several decades. But in the meantime, most of Musica’s former territory had been captured, and Raynor, seeking to punish the city for its rash actions, awarded the lands east of the Elwynn to Goldshire. He declared that the rest of Musica would be incorporated directly into Brookshire on the day that the city fell.

But Raynor soon found himself turning his attention away from the Musican conflict. In summer of b2390, as the Kaiser was making preparations to leave the battle to his generals and return north to Shirekeep to resume governing his nation, news came to him of attacks on the capital from the north. Although Shirekeep had adequate natural defenses on the east, west and south, Raynor knew that the northern defenses were not yet complete, and that the city might still fall if the attacks were heavy enough. Rallying all the forces present that could be spared from the Musican campaign, he began marching north along the Elwynn. The siege was left in the hands of a prominent Brookshirian general, Francis Fenrir.

When Raynor finally arrived in Shirekeep in autumn, he found his own city under siege. The invaders were a people called the Elwys, who lived in tribes between the branches of the Elwynn. Although not advanced technologically, the Elwys were organized and disciplined, and protective of their homeland, which included the land upon which Shirekeep had been built. Moreover, they had been staunch allies of the Musicans, with whom Shireroth had suddenly choked off trade.

But their numbers and discipline, while enough to besiege a city with only partial defenses, were not enough to stand up against the forces Raynor had at his command. As the armies returned to Shirekeep across the Brookshire Bridge, some were sent to reinforce the gaps in the defenses, while others went out in forays to help break the siege. Over about a week, the battle raged hotly, with heavy losses on both sides, but a full-scale charge, with Raynor at its head, finally routed the Elwys and chased them back to their villages.

This would not be the last time that the Elwys were to attack the young nation, and neither would it prove to be the most successful. But after their first attack, the Elwys remained quiescent during most of the rest of Raynor’s reign, their activity in Shirerithian lands being reduced to quick raids and border skirmishes. Their war parties were preoccupied with invasions from the west, beyond the West Elwynn, where the precursors to the Machiavellian nations lived. Meanwhile, Raynor chose not to pursue further subjugation of the Elwys, seeing that their attention was elsewhere.

In the years after the breaking of the siege of Shirekeep, Raynor remained in his capital instead of rejoining the armies in the south. Although this may have been due in large part to a perceived need to defend Shirekeep and the north against further attacks, there is little doubt that the Kaiser’s decision was also affected by the morale of his people, especially that of his troops. Raynor had been long at war – uniting Brookshire, then conquering Goldshire, then fighting the Musicans, then fending off the Elwys. His armies were weary, and many soldiers longed to return to a civilian life. Moreover, the Kaiser’s campaigning had left him little time for the governance of Shireroth. Now that the greatest threats to the nation’s existence had been neutralized, Raynor may have seen a chance to let his people rest and grow strong, and to put Shireroth in order.

In any event, he began cycling out some of the longer-campaigning troops and putting them on reserve, bringing in new recruits, and disbanding some of the units least necessary for Shireroth’s defense. But he maintained his siege of Musica in the south, and continued to build his navy.

A Time for War, a Time for Peace

In b2383, the first fleet of the Shirerithian navy was ready for action, and began to engage the ships bringing supplies to the city of Musica. At first, these had only been lightly protected, the Shirerithians being the first significant naval foe they had faced in many years. As such, they were taken relatively easily by the new navy, and Musica itself finally began to feel the tightening of their supply routes.

But after a number of months, into early b2382, the Musican trading cogs began to prove harder to stop, traveling in convoys protected by warships – non-Musican warships. Sailors captured in battles at sea told of an island nation to the south that was providing the escorts and supplies for the rebellious city, clearly the same Yardistani from which the mercenary forces had come earlier in the war. The leaders of the new navy, impatient to force an end to the Musican siege, put forth a second fleet to join the first in stopping the flow of supplies.

By b2379, the Shirerithian navy had finally become powerful enough to overwhelm the convoy guards on a regular basis, and the stream of supplies flowing to Musica had slowed to a mere trickle. The morale of its citizens, already flagging under years of siege, collapsed as food became scarce and the city fell into disrepair. When the warships from the south, having taken too many losses in defending the supply routes, finally withdrew to their own homeland, even the trickle ceased altogether, and the citizens of Musica fell into a deep depression.

In early b2378, with the city on the brink of collapsing from within, the troops manning the walls of Musica were finally forced back under a fierce attack from General Fenrir’s besieging army, and the Shirerithians entered the city. The remaining defenders, weakened by hunger and disease, gave way to the incoming troops, and within a day most of the city had fallen.

The fate of Musica, once a great and prosperous city, was to serve as a lesson to those betraying the trust of the Kaisers. Much of its populace was removed from the city, sent to the surrounding fields to farm the land and produce food for Shireroth. Barely a tenth of the population was permitted to remain amidst the empty buildings and silent halls of the old city, and Musica itself became merely a hamlet nestled amongst crumbling ruins.

Raynor’s honor had been satisfied, and for the time being his realm was finally at peace. He did not forget the interference of the islanders to the south, in the realm called Yardistan, and he swore that their time too would come. In the meantime he did not seek to attack them, being wise enough to know that they would not threaten him in the near future, but he maintained and built up the navy, keeping vigilance over the southern seas.

Otherwise, the decades to follow were a time of peace in Shireroth. Those places in which damage had been done over the course of the wars were repaired and rebuilt, and the capital city of Shirekeep had its defenses completed. At the beginning of the Time of Building, Raynor had been Kaiser for almost twenty years, and was nearly fifty-five years old; yet his Khaz Modanian blood provided him with longer life and slower aging than that of most men. But the Kaiser was still in his prime, even though many of the young men who had first joined him in the expansion of Brookshire were by then too worn down by age to fight.

Raynor spent much of his time ensuring that the developing infrastructure of Shireroth was kept running, for Brookshirians and Goldshirians and Musicans did not yet trust each other so much that keeping them all civil was an easy task. Moreover, Shireroth now encompassed a vast territory, taking up millions of square miles of the Benacian continent; even by modern standards it was a vast territory, but in those days of lesser technology the great distances proved an incredible barrier. New roads had to be built and maintained, and a messenger service established to carry news and other information quickly across the empire.

All this was on Raynor’s mind, but so were things of a more personal nature. For now that his nation had been established, and threats to it defeated, he came to ponder for the first time the taking of a wife, and the continuation of his dynasty. His search for a bride became well known throughout the lands, and princesses and peasant girls alike hoped to gain his attention. But the Kaiser seems to have been a choosy man, for it was not until b2374 that he found the woman he would spend his days with.

This was Nia. Sadly, history tells us little of her as a person; we do not know her background, how old she was, when she died. In those ancient days, women were not regarded as highly as in modern times, and few chroniclers of the time seem to have paid much regard to her. What is known is that the marriage was arranged and involved some transfer of property, so she was at the very least a woman of means; it has been suggested that she was in fact a Mercaja, a scion of the ducal house that had ruled Goldshire before Raynor’s ascension. Such an explanation makes sense; although Goldshire had become Raynor’s by conquest, marrying a legal heiress would also have given him a dynastic claim.

Perhaps this also explains why there are reports denouncing rumors of “troubles” in the royal couple’s first few months. Several observers considered her a fiery and strong-willed individual, and an arranged marriage to the sworn enemy of her family cannot have been easy. Yet it seems that the two came to love each other after all. An old story tells of a nobleman who, upon seeing a fierce discussion between Raynor and Nia, expressed his disgust at Nia’s refusal to submit to Raynor’s whim; Raynor reportedly struck down the nobleman where he stood.

It was in b2373 that their first child was born, their daughter Mira Fola Me’Jiliad. She was instructed in statecraft at an early age, and was evidently a well-spoken child; history tells us more of her than its does of her mother. Although women ordinarily were not eligible to the throne, Raynor seems to have taken a cue from old Brookshirian law in stating that if his daughter were the only child, she would in fact become the heir (just as Raynor’s own mother had been Duchess of Brookshire).Her family does not seem to have doubted that she would have been up to the task; though not as argumentative as her mother, her will was firm and her intelligence was keen.

This, however, was not to be. Three years after Mira’s birth, Raynor and Nia had a son, Brrapa Metzler Me’Jiliad, who became the heir to the throne; and two more years after that, their last child, their son Mortis Raynor Me’Jiliad, was born. But although Mira never attained the throne, she remained involved with the working of the imperial government, and continued to be close to her brothers. And as it would later turn out, not only she, but Brrapa and Mortis, would found bloodlines of their own.

Fire Upon the Water

The Time of Building lasted from b2378 until b2337. In those forty-one years, Shireroth prospered; domestic difficulties remained small in scale and easily controlled, foreign invasions amounted to little more than raids on village granaries, infrastructure continued to develop. Raynor’s children, like himself enjoying the longer life of the Khaz Modanians, slowly grew up into adolescence. Although slowly, the grip of the new nation began to be extended again, with careful expeditions being made into the lands of the Elwys, and to the west among the proto-Machiavellians.

Toward the end of the period, this began particularly to take the form of exploratory missions into the old Khaz Modanian Empire. Raynor had begun to wonder what had become of the other regions his father had once ruled, and about the island homelands he had never seen. Naval patrols began traveling west toward Benacia, and then (more cautiously) toward the devastated ruins of Khaz Modan. Reports of ashen husks of buildings, of vast cities smashed into rubble, of strange mists hanging over the islands by day and terrifying specters appearing at night, began to filter back to the Kaiser’s court.

But Raynor was not the only one seeking the ruins. It was in b2337, lost in the thick mists over the islands, that a Shirerithian squadron came upon another groups of ships in the mist, ones of Yardistani design. The resulting sea battle proved inconclusive, but it was indicative of times to come. The first diplomatic contacts between the two nations, begun in following years, were filled with the same hostility that had plagued their previous encounters.

This was not only a matter of recent history. There were vast differences between the cultures that led to mistrust on both sides. The government of Shireroth, which had access to a few precious Khaz Modanian documents, knew of the Yardistani as persistent and vicious rebels against the old Empire, a usurper of government. Learning about the relatively anarchic conditions on the isle of Yardistan, this view was only strengthened. The perception of the common Shirerithian was that the Yardistani were a criminal mob, a collection of freebooters and pirates. Without government, they thought, the Yardistani were surely little better than beasts, without civilization and seeking to tear down any civilizing influence they could find.

Meanwhile, the Yardistani view of Shireroth was similarly extreme, but opposite in kind. They saw in the Kaiser and his government a return of the old days of oppression and imperialism, Khaz Modan restored to its terrifying strength. Its new feudalism was merely a new means of forcing people into subservience; its aim was to impose the new structure on anyone it could find. Yardistani feared also that the Shirerithians wished to possess all the former lands of Khaz Modan, including Amity, Mirioth, and Yardistan itself.

But even these increasingly polarized perceptions might not have been enough to bring about renewed conflict had there not been a clash of territorial interests. Already, Shirerithian and Yardistani vessels skirmished over fishing rights and naval presence in the Gulf of Khaz Modan and the Shire Sea. But more importantly, both sides were quick to try to establish control the Khaz Modan Isles themselves. The Kaiser claimed the islands through his descent from the Khaz Modanian Emperors, while the Yardistani claimed that Shireroth’s proper sphere of influence was the mainland, while the islands of the sea belonged to Yardistan. Both nations wanted the technological benefits that might await them in the ruins of the fabled city of Ke’Najrad. And although strange mists and sweltering heat made navigation through the island chain near impossible, neither nation wished to allow the other to have the chance to gain ascendancy.

By the year b2331 ASC, tensions had escalated to the breaking point. It was clear in both nations that war was inevitable. But while the Yardistani were largely enthusiastic and convinced of the moral rightness of their stance, Raynor I was beginning to hear reports of unrest in the countryside. After all, Shirerithians had had less time to recover from the wars of its birth, and few sectors of the population felt enough affinity for Khaz Modan to wish to reconquer the Isles.

But Raynor remained resolute, and was determined to regain his father’s homeland; it was a matter of honor, and he felt that any hardship was worth the price to satisfy that honor. Similarly, many in Raynor’s court felt that action had to be taken; many of them were children of the Technomaezji that had fled the destruction of Khaz Modan with Raynor’s father. Therefore, orders went out from Shirekeep for the navy to set up a blockade to prevent Yardistani ships from reaching the Khaz Modan Isles.

That summer, when the mists around Khaz Modan were least severe, a Yardistani squadron attempted to reach the islands. Encountering the blockade, the ships continued forward, refusing warnings from the blockade to turn aside. The resulting battle (usually referred to as the Skirmish at Misty Shoals) resulted in little damage, but was seized upon by both sides as an example of ‘enemy aggression’. War was quickly declared by both the Kaiser and the Anarch.

The First Yardistani War, as the conflict has come to be known in the annals of Shireroth, was a long and vicious struggle, and a problematic one for historians. Many of its battles were fought at sea, and in particular in the treacherous mists of Khaz Modan; many ships in that fog were taken unawares in ambush, or destroyed upon shoals, or simply lost their way, so that an alarming number of vessels on both sides simply vanished. Partly because of this, there were few great battles of note, so much as one continuous oceanic brawl.

The main exception to this trend was an armada launched from the port at Raynor Point near the effective end of the war, in b2328. This fleet was tasked by Kaiser Raynor to invade and conquer Yardistan. This event proved famous in later years as one of the most spectacular military expeditions in Shirerithian history, and it was one that surely would have succeeded, had things gone otherwise. For drawing near to the isles of Yardistan, it is said ( by the Yardistani) that a great wind, summoned by capricious Loki himself, pushed forward the islands' defensive fleet faster than the invaders anticipated, allowing them to surprise and smash the invasion force. (To be fair, however, Shirerithian reports claimed that the ships of their enemies had crashed into the armada due to shoddy piloting.)

Whatever the reason, the armada was sent back to the mainland in disarray, with nearly half its ships either gone, heavily damaged, or having entire Yardistani ships jammed through them, and the disastrous expense of the fiasco prevented further invasions from being attempted for some time to come. Yet the cost for the Yardistani was also quite high, and shortly thereafter their ships near to Khaz Modan were recalled for defense of the home islands. Although neither the declaration of war nor the claim to the archipelago was rescinded for many years thereafter, the war was effectively ended, with Shireroth having de facto control of the Khaz Modanian Isles.

Little did any of them know what they were to gain from their struggles.

The Scourge of Rrakanychan

The conclusion of the First Yardistani War brought a sigh of relief to the people of Shireroth, however unsatisfactory it may have been to the Kaiser. Though years of war had brought victory and glory to the young nation, they had also taken their toll. The forty years of peace preceding the Yardistani War, though fruitful, had been enough merely to begin the process of uniting the vast empire together, and much remained to be done.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the common people of Shireroth might have been less enthusiastic for the war effort than those who ruled them. Disdain for the Yardistani mollified them in the early stages of the war; but few people were left who remembered the ancient Khaz Modanians as anything other than the tales of old grandfathers. They saw no need to spend the slowly growing prosperity of the land on a fight over islands that none of them had ever seen, and might not have any measurable value. Indeed, the fishermen of the southern Brookshire coast considered the Khaz Modan Isles to be haunted by evil spirits. The undignified defeat of the invasion of Yardistan helped matters little.

The end of the war thus brought considerable relief, but many hearts had turned bitter in the meantime. During the year following the end of the war, the historical record shows unrest brewing once more in Goldshire. Local families of prominence, claiming that the Kaiser was neglecting the economy of Goldshire while pursuing mad dreams of conquest, began agitating for an independent Duchy.

But even as Kaiser Raynor deployed soldiers to quell the unrest, reports began coming to him of strange events around the Khaz Modan Isles. He heard tales of the dense mists becoming even thicker and extending further from the islands, of sightings of great gouts of flame far off in the night.

In b2326, Raynor tasked a vessel with sailing to Ke'Najrad, the ancient Khaz Modanian capital, and discovering the source of these strange rumors. A few weeks after setting sail, it returned... but rather than bearing news or the original crew, it instead brought a fearsome passenger.

The sole survivor of the fist killings that followed later reported to the Kaiser what he had seen: a great red beast with a brutish face and eyes of fire, carrying a fine sword that seemed to radiate heat all its own. Even as the beast set foot upon the shore, the vessel he had used for his journey was consumed in flames behind him. The creature proclaimed himself to all that could hear, naming himself Rrakanychan, a great lord of Daemons come to bring ruin and waste to the mortal realms. And wielding the blazing sword in his grip, he struck down all that lay in his path, reducing the people, homes, and landscape to ash.

What Raynor thought of this occurrence, the records do not tell. But it seems certain that he remembered well the accounts of his father's flight from Khaz Modan, and the legend of the missing Sword of Fire that the Emperors had once borne for years uncounted. Whatever the case, it is clear that he did not choose to underestimate his foe; for even as he ordered smaller sorties to hunt down and harry the foul daemon, Raynor began gathering to himself a stronger unit to deliver the final blow.

But Raynor could not have conceived of the problems his men would face. The first sorties to find Rrakanychan's easily visible path of destruction and come upon the daemon himself were utterly vanquished, unable to stand up to the fiery wrath that faced them. And as the daemon traveled, he came upon small groups of people who had heard of him, and feared him, and called him a god of destruction.

Legend says that initially Rrakanychan had simply obliterated these would-be disciples, amused by their foolishness; yet as he travelled, the vanity in his heart overcame him, and he began to accept these dark followers under his harsh rule. They went forth and carried out atrocities in his name, pushed by the hope of his approval and in deadly fear of the punishment for failure. They fought like berserkers, having no thought for their own well-being or for tactics and planning, simply unleashing themselves upon their targets like the throes of the very sea. The followers of this dark cult were never many, and they died by the scores in battle with the forces of the Kaiser; but always they were replaced by new recruits, eager for the power that absolute destruction brings.

The daemon and his followers swept across central Brookshire, leaving a swath of ashen waste in their wake. Although they did not turn on Shirekeep, many other cities fell to the scourge of Rrakanychan, and the garrisons seemed unable to stop them. The people of Shireroth panicked and fled from the unearthly terror walking in their lands, fearing that the end of the world had come.

For two years the daemon trampled all he saw, crossing Brookshire at almost a leisurely pace before fording the Elwynn and crossing into Goldshire. Kaiser Raynor, seeing the need to put a stop to the rampage once and for all, gathered up his terrified forces and marched east from Shirekeep with some five thousand infantrymen. He himself rode at their head, taking up the mighty Sword of Vengeance once more.

Though countless soldiers had fallen to the power of the Sword of Fire as wielded by Rrakanychan, the daemon and his followers found themselves less overpowering against the Sword of Vengeance and the superior numbers of the Kaiser's troops. A running battle forced the cultists and their would-be god higher into the mountains of western Goldshire where, determined not to be defeated, the daemon whipped his followers into a terrified and ecstatic frenzy, throwing them into a zealous battle. Yet even this proved insufficient, and as other legends tell, the cultists were defeated, and Raynor met Rrakanychan in single combat before the mouth of a cave, leading to the very Gate of Balgurd. There was the daemon bested, and the Sword of Fire returned to the hands of its rightful owner.

The Last Years

When Rrakanychan finally bowed in defeat before Raynor, and the threat he posed to Shireroth was eliminated, people across Shireroth sang the Kaiser's praises even as they never had before. Despite the hardships of war, the cost of his nation's tumultuous birth, perhaps nothing sealed the first Kaiser's place in legend so firmly as his struggle with a scourge of Balgurd. The unrest in Goldshire vanished like morning mist in sunlight (though it remained, unseen, in many hearts), and finally, the nation was at peace.

But Raynor knew that he could not govern his empire forever. From his father he carried Khaz Modanian blood in his veins, and the long life that came with it; and for one of that heritage, he remained unusually strong in body and mind. Yet he was over a century in age at the time of Rrakanychan's defeat, and regardless of his amazing weathering of the passing years, he felt the weight of time resting upon him. One day, he knew, Shireroth would have to continue on without him.

His elder son, Brrapa, had already learned much of the art of ruling while growing up in the Imperial household. But over the years that followed the daemon's defeat, Raynor began in earnest to groom his heir for the task of governing Shireroth after him. Raynor placed him in charge of the efforts to rebuild what Rrakanychan had destroyed, to allow him an opportunity to interact with the people, to let him gain their trust and get a sense of their moods.

The many scars of devastation inflicted upon the land would take generations to heal, but Brrapa did what he could, and did it effectively. Though the prince had the heart and bravery of his sire, and was not unsuited to military matters, his greatest strength was his wisdom. The common people of Shireroth came to love him for his ability to organize, to settle disputes, and to direct resources to where they were needed most. Brrapa rebuilt old cities and founded new ones in the devastated wastes to help speed the area's recovery.

Among the largest of the emerging settlements was Broad Plains, situated to the west of Lywind Dale. Both Brrapa and his brother Mortis worked to found the city, and after the main construction was complete Mortis chose to reside there permanently. His descendents, comprising the Imperial Line of Mortis, would rule as lords of the city for many years, choosing to refrain from taking the throne until well into the Third Era. The city came to be renamed Mortis Mercatoria in honor of its famed inhabitants.

By b2305, Raynor had come to believe that his son was ready. And although he remained remarkably hale and healthy, he decided that the time had come to pass on what he had created. He summoned his children to his chamber, and laid himself down upon his bed. Legend says that he laid down his life, over the protests of his three offspring, choosing to pass into eternal sleep in dignity and strength instead of clinging to existence till old age would take him.

In his last moments, he bequeathed to his elder son Brrapa the imperial throne and lordship over Shireroth. Yet he also specified that the descendents of his other two children would be eligible to inherit as well, should Brrapa's line ever become unable to lead. Giving his blessing unto each of them in turn, Raynor closed his eyes and went to his final rest.

It is held true by many that either Raynor himself or his son Brrapa gained a slightest glimpse of the future, and that one of them foretold that Raynor would return one day. For when the End Times come at last, and all else is fallen into darkness, and Shirekeep is besieged and a Kaiser dies in battle, the heir of the line of Raynor shall stand forth to assume the throne. And it shall be revealed that the spirit of the original Raynor, after dwelling so long in the Celestial Temple, will have taken mortal form again in this heir.

So it will be that he who was First among the Kaisers shall also be Last. And when the mighty hosts of the Gods and the Celestial Temple descend into the world to aid the remaining mortals in the last battle, Raynor shall take up the Sword of Vengeance, and the spirit of his father Niglai shall wield the Sword of Fire beside him. And they shall march at the head of the last armies of Mortal Men, leading them onward to whatever fate awaits them.