Terunael in Axos

Overview

Siân Eternal, Advisor on the Vallorn, commissioned Eleri Sweetwater - a civil servant with the department of Historical Research - to travel to Axos after the Autumn Equinox 381YE. Eleri traveled with a small group of companions, and visited the Towers of Kantor with the support of both the Ambassador to Axos, Tarquinius of Ankarien, and the Axou advisor on foreign affaist Ilarch Maxatious. She was to investigate the descendants of the people of Terunael in Axos, but her travels took her much further afield. What follows is her account of her time in Axos.

The document is in two parts - the first part focuses on the vallorn of Visokuma, also called the Cavan vallorn. The second part focuses on her follow-up investigation into the wherabouts of certain descendants of the Terunael people in Axos.

Part One

'A Report from the Forest of Visokuma
For Siân Eternal the Advisor on the Vallorn'

It has been a long three months. I am going through my notes, marveling at how far we have come. Collecting my thoughts while torrential rain pounds against the canvas above my head. Back home, it would be a cold Winter night but here... here the nights are warm. Warmer than Therunin, heavy and humid and oppressive. It is hard to sleep, even without the constant sounds of the forest beasts. Forest? Jungle more like – but with the abhorrent fecundity of the vallorn it is sometimes hard to be certain.

To Axos

We left Crown's Quay shortly after the Autumn Equinox on the black sailed vessel “Grace of Kantor” as guests of captain Hristina Vezantios. South through the Bay of Catazaar in the company of two Highborn vessels – together for safety from the Grendel pirates that prey on Axou vessels as eagerly as they prey on Imperial ships. Then west, and north along the forbidding coast of unknown lands. The captain was vague about what lies along these shores – orcs and monsters and the arid desert of Xira.

The journey to the Towers of Kantor was long, and tedious, and uneventful. I spoke with the captain, and with several of her crew, about what waited at our destination. They were happy enough to speak of politics and the doings of the citadels – how the Gates of Ipotavo had recovered since the Druj invasion, how there was work underway to rebuild the Tunnels of Kaban in the west. Of disputes between Ipotavo and the Chamber of Issyk over their respective attitudes to the Empire – Ipotavo unsurprisingly favours the Empire, while Issyk argues that Axos would be better served to ally with the Grendel. Of the enthusiasm of the Grand Ilarch of Kantor for trade with distant Jarm and wealthy Sarcophan. Of the fourth citadel, the Halls of Maykop, they spoke little save to say that it was a place of learning and wisdom.

Of the vallorn, and of their ancient history they either could not or would not speak. Confirmation that there is indeed a vallorn in Axos, and a few tantalising comments about the Sorceror-Kings who founded the nation and built the citadels. But on the subject of Terunael they were silent. Were there ruins in the heart of the vallorn? I would have to speak to scholars, not sailors.

Impressions of Kantor

Kantor itself is impressive. You must have heard the citadels described as League cities where the buildings are piled one atop the other? It does not do Kantor justice. Great sprawling docks to rival the quays of Sarvos, and great urban sprawl built covering the foothills beneath the sky-scraping mountains of southern Axos.

The Axou call the place the Towers of Kantor and it is easy to see why – almost every structure we saw in the city was three or four storeys high, many much taller. They leaned against one another, and great sweeping stone bridges connected them one to another creating a twisted maze on many levels. Amid the towers and the bridges are grand viaducts and three great aqueducts that bring water from the mountains – rivers in the sky - a wonder of the world!

White granite is everywhere here – Kantor controls some of the richest deposits of that material in the world. It is said that some wealthy citizens spend their entire lives without once setting foot on the ground, though I would wager that is fancy rather than fact.

The people are an odd combination of sobriety and exuberance. Their clothing is almost uniformly dark, and funereal in aspect. Yet there are splashes of colour everywhere – in the delicate jewelled pins they wear in their hair, in the rings and medals they adorn themselves with, in the banners and even in the graffiti that covers many of the stone walls – often in places it is inconceivable a human can reach without scaffolding.

The hills above the city are pocked with entrances to labyrinthine tombs, guarded by both the living and the dead, where lie the ancestors of Kantor - and where the ghosts of sorcerers and merchants alike can be found. Yet it is only the poorest who are interred in the hill-tombs. The revered dead are interred in chambers beneath the city. Yet the weight of the towers means that unlike other cities (so we are told), the dead are stacked one-below-the-other in great vertical mausoleums that delve as deep into the earth as the towers of the living reach into the sky. Sephulver after sepulcher stretching down, down, down into the rock beneath the city linked by narrow passages as the towers are linked by bridges. Its in these chambers that the living go to speak with the dead. I questioned this a little, and all those I spoke to told the same tale. The dead are ever-present for the Axou. They speak of their dead forbears with reverence, but this is not simple ancestor worship. The dead are ever present. It is no minor matter, but many citizens recounted tales of seeking the wisdom of the dead by speaking to the spirits of those who had gone before in the catacombs, or in the mausoleums and shrines that stand side-by-side with the shops and apartments and rich estates.

Two things stay with me about Kantor. The first is the smell – it is like nothing I have encountered before. It is the smell of a city, surely, of unwashed bodies and refuse and the stink of sewers. Yet that smell is overlaid with the strong, almost overpowering, smell of spices and of myrrh. Incense is burnt everywhere, both for the mundane purpose of masking the stench of the busy city, and as a memorial to the dead. In Kantor, they mourn those who have passed from life into the Labyrinth, and express sorrow that they will forget themselves and be lost forever to reincarnation and the cruelty of the creator. Even the birth of a child can be a sombre experience, in Kantor, for it is a reminder that someone who once lived a full life has been reborn as a mewling baby, forced to begin again.

Then there is the eerie green light that comes at night. Kantor it seems rarely sleeps. Day and night alike, they busy themselves at the business of acquiring more wealth for themselves and their extended families. The transition from day to night is marked only by the unveiling of dim lightstones across the city – some peculiarity of the local rock means that almost all the lightstones in Kantor glow green. Indeed, where poorer citizens hang torches or lanterns they often place them behind panes of green tinted glass in echo of the green light.

At sunset and sunrise, great leaden bells toll in towers and belfries across the city. The largest, which rests atop the tower-palace of the Grand Illarch, tolls first and last. People pause in their business, and listen to the bells toll, and then continue as if nothing has happened. I was told that the bells are rung to remind everyone that time is passing, that the hours of their lives are slowly draining away like sand through the hourglass, and as a reminder of all those generations that have gone before. Macabre, and sobering.

Of History

For the first few nights in Kantor we stayed at the Imperial embassy. It was a little cramped, but at least familiar. The diplomats there have adopted the Kantoran (Kantorian? Kantorn?) clock, living and working in three overlapping shifts so that the embassy is open at all times. They reported that the citizens are cautiously friendly – neither suspiciously enthusiastic nor rudely standoffish. There was some talk of a Jarmish embassy, and of a major presence of Sarcophan representatives occupying several levels of one of the grand towers that stand at the heart of the city.

According to my fellows, there is some growing interest in the vallorn and the wisdom of the Navarr. The Axou, it seems, largely ignore the green horror that lurks at the heart of their nation. They pick around its edges, and bemoan the fact that the great wealth of the interior is denied to them. Even before our arrival there were invitations waiting for us to visit some of the mercantile families of Kantor to talk about “ways to free the wealth of the vallorn”. We declined them all – they felt more political than scholastic in nature. After we had settled in, however, we were invited to visit with Ilarch Maxatious, who advises not only the Grand Ilarch of Kantor but those of the other three citadels as well. He is a thin, pale man with a neat goatee beard and dark eyes that sparkle with a grim, mordant humour. His welcome was warm and professional, and he was at great pains to ensure we felt welcome and were well treated.

He had arranged a small banquet in our honour – ourselves, several civil servants and expatriate Imperial citizens, and a double handful of Axou from influential families in Kantor. There was also a woman I was very keen to meet – Istacia of Maykop, an apparently well-known and respected historical scholar who has made something of a study of the history of the vallorn.

History of the Axos vallorn

Istacia of Maykop bears her age well. She makes no bones about the fact she was born in 287YE, but even allowing for her changeling blood she is remarkably youthful for a woman of ninety-four summers. She travelled here from Maykop by sea, and grumbled often about the journey, and the seasickness that plagued her trip.

I apologised, but she waved it away. It is easier to get to the vallorn from Kantor than Maykop, she said, and anyway she doubted I would find the Halls as exciting a place to visit as the rich city of Kantor. To hear her talk – with a mixture of love and gentle mockery – where Kantor is a bustling centre of industry and trade, the Halls of Maykop are a tomb – just one where some of the inhabitants have not quite accepted that they are dead yet. I think she was mostly joking.

She is a necromantia – a practitioner of ritual magic that deals with the spirits of the dead. We talked about the topic in vague terms only – she is an adept at raising and communicating with ghosts and it is with their aid that she and her peers study the history of Axos. I confess to being particularly intrigued by her accounts of objects she called lekythoi – urns specially prepared by artisans that preserve the ashes of scholars and important individuals so that their ghosts can be more easily reached by necromantia. Istacia claimed that it was through one of these lekythoi she had actually spoken with the shade of someone who had lived at the time the vallorn overwhelmed Terunael! She cautioned me that what she had learned was unlikely to make me happy, and urged me to remember that these events happened centuries ago long before the formation of the Empire. To her credit she seemed perhaps a little ashamed of what she had to tell me.

Of Cavan and it's fall

The Terunael came to Axos last, Istacia said. They were already well established in the bay but they were drawn here by the wealth of Axos. The citadels already stood, and the Sorceror-Kings had long since transcended mortality, but the Axou were merely a shadow of their current glory.

They came by land, she said, from the north-east, down through Kabanja. At first they came as merchants, seeking trade routes for their cities of Béantal Dol and Tharunind. When they saw the wealth of Axos, however, they coveted it for themselves. The people of Béantal Dol and Tharunind made war on Axou, overwhelming them with magic and steel. In the end they threatened to unleash powers the Axou feared – powers of Spring that would devour the bones of the ancestors on which all the citadels were built.

A treaty was signed, and land ceded to the Terunael. They built a city on the edge of the rich forests of Visokuma – central Axos – and named it Cavan. The Grand Ilarchs chafed under this enforced peace, but they lacked the resources to oppose the Empire of Terunael. They would not risk the spirits of the hundreds and thousands who had evaded the Creator's cruel Labyrinth.

Istacia interrupted her narrative here to explain that the threats of the Terunael would be less effective today. In the centuries since, the necromantia had taken great pains to build permanent wards over the catacombs, mausoleums, ossuaries, and tombs that would defend against the threat of the hungry power of Spring. At the time, however, the Terunael threat was very real – a threat to the very foundation of what it meant to be Axou.

For a century and a half, the Terunael built Cavan amid the great weirwood forests at the heart of Axos. The Axou paid tribute to the Terunael, but they also learned from them how to build their citadels even larger. The three aqueducts of Kantor, said Istacia, were originally based on a design the Terunael used to bring water to Cavan, and with innovations such as these the Axou were able to grow their citadels to a size many had never dreamed of.

In the end, though, things began to go awry. The orcs of the Mallum attacked the roads that connected Béantal Dol and Tharunind to Cavan. They pressed south into Kabanja, threatening Kaban, Soloha, and Ipotavo. The Axou called to the Terunael of Cavan to aid them, in accord with their treaties, but the inhabitants of the city refused. The treaties were cast aside. The Grand Ilarchs of Issyk, Malykop, and Kantor came to the aid of their fellows and a terrible war raged. The orcs were held but it was only a matter of time before they ruined the three western citadels.

Some Terunael warriors disobeyed their leaders, however, and came to the aid of the Axou. They helped to keep the orcs at bay. They earned the respect of the people of the citadels. This served them in good stead when the catastrophe occurred.

There was some warning – the Terunael had withdrawn into their city and prepared a great work of magic. The Grand Ilarchs watched with great trepidation. Then, horribly, a great power bloomed in the centre of Cavan and raced like water along an aqueduct to all parts of the forest of Visokuma. It was unfettered life, an all-consuming force of abhorrent fertility and fecundity that drove the forest mad. Terrible creatures rose in Cavan and began to devour the people. The trees of the forest warped and twisted into unnatural shapes. The air itself became heavy with death and decay. The people of Cavan tried to flee before the madness they had unleashed.

Here Istacia became somber, and ended our discussion for the evening. That night I was plagued by nightmares, I confess, of lurid green lanterns and writhing vines, and shambling vallornspawn husks clambering up the stairs of the embassy tower to devour me.

When we took our tale up again, Istacia spoke a little haltingly. She was not proud of what she recounted, unsurprisingly.

The Axou were angry, she explained. When they had called out to the Terunael for aid against the orcs they had been refused, ignored, denied. Instead, the people of Cavan had unleashed madness in the heart of Visokuma, twisting the forest and its bounty – the bounty they had stolen from the people of Axos.

When the Terunael fled Visokuma they were turned back. Those who would not go back into the hell of Cavan were slain, and their bodies reduced to dust. Only those few who had stood alongside the Axou against the orcs of the Mallum were spared – and many of them fought to try and defend their people and were regretfully killed by their prior allies. In recognition of their aid, a small handful were allowed to leave Axos, heading north and west through the Mallum in a desperate trek to try and reach Béantal Dol or the shores of Tharunind. The Axos assume they were taken by the Druj before they reached the heart of Terunael.

A very few of the survivors of Cavan – those who had fought to defend Axos, or who had come from families of blended Terunael and Axou blood, or had been shown mercy and given succour by those more gentle, were brought into the citadels.

In Kantor and Issyk, some survivors were given a different choice – turn back to the vallorn or become slaves. Some chose to die rather than serve, but it is recorded that as many as a thousand survivors became slaves of the Axou they had previously disdained. Over time, as the practice of slavery fell out of favour, the descendants of there slaves became free citizens of Axos or left the nation in pursuit of their own destiny.

In the end, regardless of how they survived, the children of Cavan met one of two fates. Most disappeared into the blood of Axos, leaving behind the memory of Terunael and being Axou in all things. Their blood mingled with the blood of the Sorcerer-Kings, and they are simply Axou. A small handful of families maintained some of the traditions of Terunael-in-exile, working to try and discover a way to reclaim Cavan. Today they are gone as well – they lived in Soloha which was destroyed by the Empire in the reign of Emperor Nicovar.

For my part, once Istacia had completed her lecture, I shared with her what is commonly known about the cities in the west. Some of this was known to her, but much of it was new. She was fascinated to learn that Béantal Dol was lost to our memory as Cavan was, and to hear of Miaren, Liathaven, Brocéliande, and Therunin. She cursed her old bones – she would not countenance a trip to the Empire but it was clear she greatly desired to look on Seren at the very least.

Her story was grim, but she told it dispassionately, and truthfully as near as I can tell. It seems likely that she has only one side of it, but I have expressed it here as clearly as I can from my notes and memory.

The Axos and the Vallorn

After discussion with Istacia, I also spent some time speaking to Ilarch Maxatious. He had little interest in the history of Visokuma, but a great deal of interest in the vallorn. To him, and to the Grand Ilarch of Kantor, it represents a lost opportunity. The taint of the vallorn keeps them out of the woodlands, but they represent a vast source of untapped wealth. Not only are there potentially great reserves of ambergelt, dragonbone, and beggar's lye in Visokuma but there is apparently a great forest of weirwood trees.

We know from the liberation of Miaren and Therunin that the Vallorn does not taint Weirwood trees. The great forest spoken of a thousand years ago, that Istacia says brought the Terunael here in the first place, almost certainly still exists – but choked by the miasma and crowded with husks and abominable spawn.

There have been attempts to destroy the vallorn in the past, of course, but they have been fruitless. The Axou quickly discovered what the Navarr already know – that even fire will not permanently harm a vallorn infestation. That while the spawn may be slain, they are numberless and any that are not killed dead quickly recover and return more savage than ever. That the air itself brings death and makes fighting in an infested area next to impossible. Unlike the Navarr, the Axou had no great vow to drive them. In the end, said Maxatious, the Nikitis Axou simply gave up trying to find a solution to the Vallorn, and turned their efforts to keeping it contained.

Some attempts were made to use magic to destroy the Vallorn. They had some luck with a ceremony that the Ilarch vaguely referred to as the “Invocation of the Throne of Maykop” which apparently “weakens” the vallorn when it becomes “too aggressive” but he was loathe to provide any detail. From reading between the lines, it involves a significant force of Axou warriors and magicians escorting necromantia from the Halls of Maykop into the forest itself to a certain location where a powerful Winter ritual is used to make the vallorn quiescent.

In the end, a series of fortifications were built around the boundaries (in Kabanja and Thronaskoni), and garrisoned by troops charged with destroying any spawn that pressed out of the tangled depths. And then the Axou simply ignored it except on those rare occasions where it tried to expand beyond the borders of Visokuma. There are apparently treaties between all the citadels that if the vallorn becomes aggressive, they will temporarily put aside any ongoing disputes until such time as the threat is ended.

Venturing into Visokuma

Entering the Vallorn was no small undertaking. We used our funds carefully but they were barely sufficient to acquire guides, some guards, oxen, and supplies for a month-long trip. In the end Illarch Maxatious offered some assistance, providing a unit of Agema from his own household, and using his influence to secure us good prices for our provisions. I initially was cautious about his aid but he dismissed my concerns – he said to think of it as an investment. If our expedition convinced the Empire to share it's lore of the vallorn with Axos, in the long run it would bring prosperity to the nation – and especially to the Towers of Kantor.

It took us the better part of a fortnight to travel the road that winds through the hills and across the plains of Thronaskoni to the fortification built on the edge of the Visokuma forest – on the boundaries of the Vallorn itself. The road mostly exists for transporting supplies and troops to and from the castle, and to service a handful of farms and villages along the route.

Once we were away from the coast, the weather became increasingly warm and uncomfortable, and it rained much of the time. This was typical of the season, our Agema captain informed us, and another reason that posting to the castle on the edge of Visokuma was considered a poor one.

The castle itself was impressive enough – perhaps the size of the Silent Sentinel in Casinea – a reminder that the Towers of Kantor have easy access to great quantities of white granite. The garrison commander did not seem particularly pleased to see us – I think that had we not been bearing documents under the seal of the Grand Ilarch of Kantor she would have turned us away.

She cautioned us repeatedly not to “stir things up” in Visokuma. The vallorn had been “feisty” of late – for the last month or so in fact – and she was concerned that this presaged another excursion by the abhorrent beasts that dwelt in its heart. Already, she said, there were reports of unfamiliar white flowers growing on the plains to the south and unsubstantiated stories of “odd pods” growing in some of the fields to the north which she seemed to take as a personal affront. In the end though she allowed us to pass through the castle, and travel west into the forest.

It is... even now, actually inside Visokuma – inside the Cavan vallorn – it is hard to put the place into words. It is warm, and it is wet – a little like Therunin in high summer but more so. It rains – a lot. The plants are exotic, unfamiliar, brightly coloured flowers are everywhere but here and there, like a discordant note in a song, something known, familiar, unexpected – a beggarwood tree, perhaps, or a stand of mangrove trees that would not be out of place in the Tarn valley.

There is a lot of water here, but we encountered no rivers – only pools and lakes, and the streams that run between them. There are insects – the forest teems with them – some familiar many much less so. I have seen thumb sized-hornets and vicious wasp-like terrors the size of dogs in the same hour. Shiny black beetles with spiked shells as large around as dinner plates, and swarms of pale white ants as long as my little finger that preyed on them. One of the guides – a woman who had visited the forest on no less than three previous occasions – put her hand down on a wet log to steady herself and was bitten by... something.. the scuttled quickly away. Within ten minutes she was dead, her flesh sloughing from her bones like boiled meat. Within a handful of minutes she began to stir – but we all know what had to be done. Our Axou companions – those familiar with the vallorn at least – took steps. They did so with heavy hearts – those who fall to the vallorn do not return to the citadels, and rest beneath the ground there. They do not become honoured ancestors, they are not awoken to speak with their descendants. I understand a little more of why the Axou fear the vallorn, and ignore it as much as they can.

The insects are not the only threat here. There is a species of pitcher plant here that grows to great size, and possesses a long fibrous tendril with which it scoops birds and large insects out of the air. The long tendril is whip fast, and the end is covered in a sticky, paralysing sap. On the second day out, I strayed too near one. The last thing I remember was a noise like a thunder clap, and then the ground rose to meet me and darkness swallowed me. Had I been alone I doubt I would have been alive today, but luckily my companions were able to drag me to safety. I doubt the thing could have actually pulled me into its sticky pitcher, but the surviving guide spent a night gleefully explaining that the plants repeatedly strike at larger animals – or humans – until they are dead then wait for the flesh to begin to rot before slicing strips of decaying meat off with their tendril and dropping them into their insides. He claimed the things can move, pulling themselves along slowly through the forest, so that one can never be sure quite where they will be encountered. I think he was joking.

The miasma, of course, hangs over everything. It pools in hollows and over the streambeds, visible in the air as a light green fog. I have rarely seen it so thick – perhaps in the heart of Brocéliande when I was a girl. The Axou are aware of green lung – and take precautions against it. They called it Kantor's Jest. Nobody laughs. We had only one encounter with vallornspawn husks; the precautions and additional oil of blackthorn we had brought with us served us in good stead. Our guides said that such encounters were uncommon – and rare along the edges of the forest. Most of the places where the vallornspawn are found are known and avoided, and we were not near one. They did not try to hide their concern.

The Ruins and the Scrying Eye

In the end, we were forced to turn back long before we reached the heart of the forest or the ruins of Cavan. In honesty, it is hardly surprising. Competent as the guides and Agema were, the Axou are no Navarr. There are no steadings here, and no safe places to camp. We quickly decided not to press our luck.

There was a ruin, however, that the guides said was not too far from the edge of the forest. It took us two days to reach it, and it was in all honesty a little disappointing. I would say that it had once been a watchtower – probably intended by the Terunael to keep an eye on the Axou of Thronaskoni. It was undeniably Terunael in origin, overgrown with the green kudzu of the vallorn's embrace. There was also a moss-covered stone with an inscription and the remains of a spiralling design. Time had worm most of it away, but I could make out the odd letter here and there.

It was a mournful place, one that settled into my spirit and filled me with sorrow. A symbol of the tragedy of Terunael. Of all that has been lost, and that we will never recover. We will never know who built this tower, or what the inscription on this stone was, or what became of the final guardians of this place. Did they die fighting to protect their fleeing neighbours from the vallorn, unaware that they were saving them from one dark fate only to condemn them to another at the hands of the Axou? Or did they flee before the green tide, and die on Kantoran spears?

Regardless; the trip was not wasted. While the guides warned we should not linger too long, we broke out our prismatic ink and tempest-jade bowls, and performed a scrying. It seemed as good a place as any. Under the watchful eyes of the Agema, we wove the design for the our magic, and looked out across Visokuma.

It was breathtaking. A great pool of vibrant, deep green, shot through with currents of blood red. There are no trods here. There have never been any trods here. If Brocéliande is a wellspring of the vallorns might, this place is like an inland sea – like one of the bottomless mountain lakes of Hercynia. It is deep beyond measuring. It has never been tamed, and its power has never been diminished. It has been tended – there are marks of this “Invocation of the Throne of Maykop” that Maxatious spoke of – and the presence that underlies the power of the vallorn seems somnolent. Slumbering power, not watchful or bitter like some of the vallorn to the west.

But it is a vallorn. It is a vallorn that has possessed the entire forest of Visokuma for a thousand years, one that has never known the tread of a striding or the watchful eyes of a steading.

There was one other thing that we noticed as we wove our magic – an absence. There is an absence near the heart of the vallorn large enough to register as something of note to our scrying eyes. Given everything Maxatious said, and the recounting of Istacia, I would guess that what we are seeing is the largest weirwood forest I have ever heard of – larger than the Golden Trees of Seren. It is possible that this forest is in some measure responsible for the eerie restfulness of the vallorn of Cavan, but that is entirely speculation on my part – an instinct, based on nothing concrete. Miaren was the first of the vallorn to fall after all, and perhaps there is some resonance in the sap of the weirwood trees that gentles or weakens the vallorn. They are largely untouched by its taint, after all.

Shortly after our ritual was complete, the guides became anxious and insisted we move. There were noises in the woods – something large crashing through the trees. One of the Agema said “it is a bear” but she looked away as she did so, and she was afraid.

Conclusion

I have discovered nothing new about Star, I am afraid. But I have confirmed the existence of the vallorn in Axos, and learned a little of its history. There is more to discover here I think. Istacia says there was a road that connected Cavan to Béantal Dol, and in some way to Therunin. I might be able to find out more if I travel to the north-west, to Kabanja, and visit with the inhabitants of Ipotavo. Such an investigation may also be helpful in working out how we might connect Cavan to the trods and begin to leech the vallorn power from Visokuma.

It is also possible that if we stay in Axos and continue to investigate the impact of Terunael on the Victorious Axis that we may be able to learn more about these descendants of Terunael who lived in the fallen citadel of Soloha.

Alternatively, I can begin the long journey back to the Empire, and a more reasonable climate. I leave the matter in your hands, Advisor.