The Chronicles of Caylen-Tor

by Byron A. Roberts

  Some historians have conjectured that Caylen’s handfasting to Astrid Grimmsdottir was merely a union of convenience to strengthen relations between the Wolf Clan and the Tribe of the Long Spears, but it is clear that the king harboured a deep respect and affection for his wife, particularly during the years following the dissolution of the tribal alliance when he would charge the shieldmaiden with the task of governing Ulfheim while he embarked upon his piratical sea voyages. Also, extant clan records confirm that it was Caylen’s firstborn son with Astrid who alone received the tribal honorific “Ar-Tor” (Son of the King), a title he would bear proudly for the entirety of his life. (The exploits of Caylen-Tor’s children following the Ar-Tor’s wedding to the Kymrii princess Gwynna Fairhair are recounted in a subsequent volume of the Chronicles of the Antediluvian Wars, as are the circumstances of Caylen’s mysterious disappearance during one of his many voyages as master of his renowned dragon-ship the White Wolf.)

  As for the tribal army of Caylen-Tor which so memorably prevailed against the legions of Mytos K’unn, scholars from the Collegium of War are now convinced that the preparations undertaken by the Wolf-King’s forces before the Battle of Blackhelm Vale were extensive and thorough, suggesting an impressive level of strategic acumen. Clearly, the Imperial army was utterly unable to maximize the effectiveness of its numerically superior force during the final clash, and was ultimately forced to engage Caylen-Tor’s army almost wholly on the clansmen’s terms.

  The fact that Zyrashana proclaimed her relatively limited dominion as “The First Great Empire of Mytos K’unn” can arguably be viewed as an exercise in self-aggrandizement rather than an attempt to apply any manner of accurate political epithet. The comparatively few territories conquered during her brief reign were not governed by any effective Imperial mandate, and the states of Numadai, Panashaia and Bazalanin continually seethed with unrest and rebellion. Additionally, the unruly Eastern Satrapies staged a partially successful revolt while the bulk of Zyrashana’s forces were deployed against the King of Delania’s army, leaving the imperial garrisons with insufficient manpower to quell the insurrection. Following the occupation of the Delanian capital, the legions of the Witch-Queen immediately assailed the borders of Zulantia and Turanan, sacking frontier villages and overrunning a series of scantly defended military outposts. It is likely that the Imperial army did not at that juncture possess adequate might to stage a full-scale invasion of those kingdoms, and the raids were evidently solely focused on capturing conscripts and seizing plunder to fund the continuing campaign. Zyrashana’s single-minded desire to press westward and seize control of the primary trade routes to the coast was an overly ambitious gambit at best, and any hope she may have harboured of maintaining both her eastern possessions and capturing the western fiefdoms was perhaps an unrealistic one.

  The precise circumstances surrounding Zyrashana’s initial plot to dethrone Mytos K’unn’s rightful ruler King Ahaziah have been recounted in a previous volume of the Chronicles of the Antediluvian Wars, but the true aspirations of the Witch-Queen and her long-term goals remain a matter for debate. Did she truly desire to create a lasting empire, or was her swift and merciless campaign merely a bid to seize as much glory as possible before the inevitable collapse of her fragile dominion? It is widely believed by docents and historians that the Empress Zyrashana’s own inexorable journey to dethronement began the moment her army crossed the border into the sovereign lands of Delania, for although she won a resounding victory against King Gustanhav’s host, the action placed her army on a direct path into the tribal territories of Caylen-Tor, where she would ultimately face her cataclysmic defeat. At any rate, the rapid fall of the Delanian capital has proved to be a subject of great debate amongst many of the Collegium of War’s veteran generals and military scholars.

  Traveling without the burden of ballistae and siege engines, the imperial expeditionary army was much more suited to pitched battle than it was to the art of siege-craft. Scaling ladders and makeshift battering rams had been the Empire’s primary tools against the walled city, and casualties claimed by the defenders’ torrents of flaming quicklime and saltpetre were far fewer than had been anticipated. The fact that the Delanian army had been thoroughly bested and its king slain doubtless had a deleterious effect on the morale of the city’s defenders, and the surprisingly swift capitulation of the Delanian forces attests to this.

  Prior to the Imperial invasion of the Delanian Commonwealth, it is known that Gustanhav’s realm had been teetering on the brink of civil war for several months, as the Parliamentary Council deliberated upon a petition to transfer executive power from the Royal House to an elected senate. The Delanian royalists deemed the petition a treasonous mandate, condemning it as a plot concocted by heretics who denied the royal family’s divine right of succession. The fact that King Gustanhav personally rode to meet the Imperial legions can in hindsight be regarded as a gesture intended to win support within the Council rather than as a well-reasoned and strategically sound choice of tactics. At any rate, the Imperial occupation of the Delanian First City has since become legendary for the sheer scale of its brutality. Imperial losses against the Delanian host were relatively minimal, but historians have noted that leaving an administrative garrison within the walls of the Delanian capital had significantly depleted the ranks of the Expeditionary Army by the time the legions arrived at Blackhelm Vale. Constantly bolstering the Imperial forces with conscripted troops from the dominions in the east assured that Zyrashana’s forces withstood a strategically acceptable level of attrition, but the decision to march west into the tribal lands before such reinforcements had been deployed has subsequently been noted by military inquisitors as a dire tactical misjudgement.

  Reliable information as to the true nature of Talus Ebonfyre’s relationship with Queen Zyrashana is scarce at best. Similarly, research has not yet yielded any firm evidence concerning the diabolism and necromantic rituals in which the pair were alleged to indulge. The progeny of the Witch-Queen were reputedly a fey and sullen brood, her three daughters already well versed in the arcane arts imparted to them by their mother, and her son by all accounts a cruel and cold-eyed child despite having seen scarcely ten winters by the time of the clash at Blackhelm Vale. The sires of Zyrashana’s witch-daughters were believed to have been three nefarious thaumaturgists, but the identity of the sole boy’s father was not such common knowledge. There were those who whispered that the child was the son of Zyrashana’s fallen champion and paramour Talus Ebonfyre, although no one but the Witch-Queen could attest to the truth of the matter. What is known is that Ebonfyre was one of only a handful of survivors of the Darkening of Kor-Avul-Thaa, although what effect such a harrowing experience may have had upon his mind can be nothing more than a matter of conjecture at best.

  Part VII: The Great Wars of the Koord Imperium

  The ascendance of the Imperium has been exhaustively debated by military scholars for many decades. Originally an alliance of minor principalities tenuously united under the rule of an ineffective central administration, the true genesis of the imperial mandate can be traced to a succession of invasions of the union’s southernmost frontiers by the war-bands of the barbaric tribal Sand Nomads. Demanding to be safeguarded against such attacks, the ministers of the principalities voted for the implementation of a temporary act of government bestowing immediate executive power upon the Military Council until such time as the threat of invasion subsided. The Military Council itself was headed by the ambitious and cunning General Kanaan Khan who easily repulsed the forces of the Sand Nomads and then promptly proceeded to implement a well-orchestrated coup during which his fanatically loyal army seized control of the Citadel of the Central Congress. The administrative independence of the disenchanted suzerainties was swiftly abolished and General Khan formally announced the birth of the Imperium, declaring himself Emperor and threatening any uncooperative territories with swift and pitiless military reprisal.

  The Imperium grew stea
dily over the subsequent decades, annexing many neighbouring realms and assimilating numerous rival states. A senatorial body existed to assist the Military Council in matters of civil government, but in reality the senators were easily bribed and browbeaten into compliance by the overbearing agents of the military machine. Traditionally, all rulers of the Imperium were selected by the Military Council from the highest echelons of the army based on martial acumen and not birthright or lineage. This tradition of warrior-emperors was an effective method of maintaining the military as the executive core of the governmental entity, eschewing the ineffectuality of civilian chancellors or the tenuous claims of succession of any potential royal families.

  Historically, it was during the period of the Imperium’s initial territorial expansion that the enmity with the Vyrgothian kingdoms began. Minor border disputes swiftly escalated into a series of large-scale conflicts which subsequently became known as the Great Wars. The wars raged sporadically for decades, until the shrewd and ruthless Emperor Koord ascended the throne of the Imperium and vowed to abandon any tenets of diplomacy and destroy the Vyrgothians once and for all. Koord was a dour and pitilessly practical man who detested debauchery, intemperance and appeasement in all forms. He viewed the senatorial circle of the Imperium as a den of corruption populated by sybarites and degenerates, and secretly planned to abolish the senate once the war against Vyrgothia was won. The Emperor duly appointed the renowned warlord Baalthus Vane to lead the resurgent Imperial war machine and it was under his exemplary leadership that the Imperium’s forces, spearheaded by the fearsome Legion of the Ebon Tiger, won their most memorable victories, including the Rout of the Southern Host, the Battle of Turonium, the Pacification of the Vraii, and the Capitulation of the Horde. Year by year, the beleaguered Great Houses of Vyrgothia, ruled by the elected Over-King, were hammered by a series of military defeats which included the Breach of the Wall of Lithios and the fall of the ancient Vyrgothian fortresses Gul-Nomedes, Gul-Azlaan and Gul-Tryarch. Ultimately, the infamous Rout of the Fields of Kai-Vorg placed the Imperial forces within striking distance of the Vyrgothian Alliance’s mightiest and most renowned bastion, the legendary Gul-Kothoth. The Siege of Gul-Kothoth and the Vyrgothian Over-King’s discovery and subsequent manipulation of the ancient arcane artefact known as the Obsidian Crown (one of three sorcerous weapons which along with the Shadow Sword and the Black Sceptre comprised the fabled Trinity of Might) is recounted in a subsequent volume of the Chronicles of the Antediluvian Wars.

  (For an account of the closing stages of the Battle of the Plains of Kai-Vorg, read the short story “Chronicles of the Obsidian Crown” published in the fantasy anthology Barbarian Crowns. And for the first two instalments of the cataclysmic Siege of Gul-Kothoth, refer to the lyrics to the Bal-Sagoth songs “And Lo, When the Imperium Marches Against Gul-Kothoth, Then Dark Sorceries Shall Enshroud the Citadel of the Obsidian Crown” and “The Obsidian Crown Unbound”.)

  THE ARCANA ANTEDILUVIA (OCCULT TREATISES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD)

  Part XVII: Serpent Lore and the Sorcery of the Ophidian

  Hegemony

  Occult scholars from the Esoteric Academy of New Atlantis are well versed in the history and arcane lore of the ancient Serpent Kings. After centuries of study, the Quorum of Hierophants discovered much concerning the terrible wars waged by the Ophidian Hegemony against the human progenitor race known as the First Ones. The hoary snake men battled their steadfast foes over many hundreds of years, laying siege to the mighty Antarctic Megalopolis on several occasions. Warlike and proud, the Serpent race had vowed to drive the First Ones from the face of the cratered globe, but ecological upheaval and severe climactic shifts continually hampered their efforts to annihilate their ancestral enemy. Utilizing the power of the star-born Viridian Stones, the fearsome anthropomorphic saurians built a series of huge cyclopean shrines to celebrate their supremacy and safeguard their eldritch artefacts and occult lore. When the First Cataclysm befell the primeval world, the Serpent Kings retreated to their mountainous caverns and lava-wreathed fortresses to await the time of their re-emergence. At length, the proliferation of mankind upon the Earth coincided with the inexorable decline of the serpent folk, and they grudgingly fortified themselves within their secret sanctums, still harbouring their undying enmity for the descendants of their hated nemeses and the newly emerging tribes of Man. As for the First Ones, many withdrew to the fathomless splendour of the cities of the Abyssal Plain, while others embarked upon the colonization of the vast subterranean expanses of the Interior World, there to be sustained by their mighty and inexhaustible Vril Suns. And so, the ascendancy of Man continued.

  Many of the myths and legends of the early human civilizations reflected the tribal memories of the elder serpent race, incorporating them as primary facets in their scriptures and teachings. The sacred texts of many antediluvian peoples acknowledged the peerless power of the serpents, while numerous hominid cultures over the aeons have worshipped the mysterious snake-men as gods. It is believed by the inner circle of the Esoteric Academy that sages and magi have over the centuries received knowledge of the early epochs and the Ancient Sea-Wars of Panthalassa through clandestine contact with the Emissaries of the First Ones. Furthermore, the Quorum of Hierophants is now convinced that the battle prowess of the Serpent Kings was matched only by their sorcerous potency. Masters of the arcane arts, the lords of the Ophidian Hegemony commanded magicks undreamed of by the majority of human wizards. Studying the fearsome secrets of Serpent Sorcery was a perilous and terrifying undertaking for a human mage, and only the most ambitious and gifted practitioners of sigaldry could hope to successfully harness the dread energies of the sinister venom magicks. The witch Zyrashana reportedly dabbled in such ophidian diabolism, but archival sources indicate that her grandmother, Queen Tanit Vyperia, attained a level of proficiency in that dark art unmatched by any sorceress before or since.

  (Read more of the nefarious exploits of Queen Vyperia and her plot to ensnare the Elizabethan privateer Captain Caleb Blackthorne in the stories “Into the Dawn of Storms”, “A Voyage on Benighted Seas” and “The Scion at the Gate of Eternity”, published in the “Swords of Steel” paperback trilogy from DMR Books.)

  Part XVIII: The Forbidden Chronicles of the Z’xulth

  The vile genesis of the Z’xulth is shrouded in unfathomable mystery, unknown to even the elder races of the cosmos. All that can be safely ascertained is that the Z’xulth were amongst the first sentient creatures to exist in the universe, roaming the trackless void when the galaxies were naught but errant clouds of sidereal dust. Sustained by a sinistrous and terrifying quasi-sentient energy source, the Z’xulth’s infernal dominion grew as they pitilessly presided over their sovereign chaosphere. Ineffably supreme, the darkling lords duly decreed that they should rule the entirety of the empyrean and force all life to submit to their malefic will. At some point in distant galactic prehistory, a coalition of the universe’s other elder races engaged the Z’xulth in a tremendous war which shattered the stars and left the face of the cosmos grievously scarred. The Z’xulth were ultimately driven back, their dominion inexorably whittled away, until they were forced into a dark limbo which resided in between dimensions, a blighted place which came to be known as the Black Galaxy. For millennia the Z’xulth festered and plotted within the Black Galaxy, exerting insidious control over other beings in an eternal attempt to liberate themselves from the infernal void.

  Since time immemorial, there have been those who have revered, worshipped and deified They-Who-Lurk-And-Breed-In-Limbo, hailing them as gods and ever striving to restore their dark masters to their rightful thrones. Clandestine cults such as The Brotherhood of Dark Elucidation ceaselessly toil to extract forbidden knowledge and glean enlightenment from the black mana of the elder fiends, delving deeply into legendary grimoires of infernal spells and malefic rites in attempts to open portals to the dreaded Black Galaxy. Shunned and nefarious texts such as the Tome of Shadows, the Scrolls of the Third Circl
e, the Chthonic Chronicles, the Lexicon of Antediluvian Blasphemies, the Ancient Book of the Six Keys, the Black Bible of Kor-Avul-Thaa, the Diabolist’s Manuscript, the Cursed Codex of the Unliving Cultists and the Thirteen Cryptical Prophecies of Mu are inscribed with a plethora of sinister rituals and invocations to summon and commune with the ageless devils, although the dread toll exacted by such foul endeavours is invariably ruinous.

  Know also that descended from the avatars of the Z’xulth are such terrifying creatures as The Dwellers In Eternal Shadow; tireless agents of evil who ceaselessly devote themselves to the restoration of their sinister progenitors. In addition, many pitiless malefactors have no qualms about tapping into the darksome power of the arch-fiends to further their own sinister agendas; perhaps the most well-known and dangerous being such perfidious revenants as Lord Angsaar the Dark Liege of Chaos, the ancient vampyric demi-god Amaalphagus, the demon-warrior Maalech Xul and the terrifying hybrid fiend Zurra, within whose ersatz veins runs the genetically manipulated black blood of a Z’xulth Deathbringer. Such prime examples of pangalactic villainy aside, be assured that those who adulate the Z’xulth shall ceaselessly plot to ensure their aberrant masters regain their ancient dominion, grimly confident in the vile belief that at some point in the far future, their ultimate liberation shall finally come to pass, and the ravening lords of Chaos shall once more rule the galaxy.