1
The Story of the Knights, Part 1: The Last Fortress
Part I: The Last Bastion
Half a millenia ago...
in the land of Cordierin, a dimension long since lost to time, a man known today only as the Griever lost his only child, named Twilight, in a petty war between his nation, Harkos, and a rival tribe, Kryniar. The Kryniar had invaded the lands of Harkos in an attempt to gain small parcels of land debated over between the Kryniar chief and the King of Harkos. The Griever did not understand the war - he could not understand why such a meaningless section of land was so important - but rather than debate the matter in Harkos' hall of debate, where it most certainly would have been snuffed, he simply decided to secede from the realm of Harkos and begin his own nation, called then by the name of Syderis.
In the Griever's time, Kryniar and Harkos made up the only two roughly coherent states on Cordierin - all the others were simply backwater republics or feudal kingdoms that rose and fell quickly. Of course, Harkos could not stand for the secession of any of their territory in the middle of a land war, so the corrupt Taiga Guard made the decision to pacify Syderis - by force. Three members of the Guard were sent to kill the Griever and his wife as well as burn his small hut to the ground. However, they could not have expected that the Griever had burned his own house away and fled. Convinced of their success, they returned to the royal castle.
Meanwhile, the Griever's idea of peace was beginning to gain traction among the lower classes of Harkosian society, whereas previously it had been thought of as despicable. Seeing this, the Griever began to recruit for his new nation. In less than a year's time after he had burned his house, the young nation of Syderis returned to the flat lands where his hut had been and established camp, now a few hundred strong (by comparison Harkos had 38,000 at the time). The Taiga Guard had previously been unaware of Syderis' forging, but now that it had returned to the heartland of Harkos, it dispatched its entire force to Syderis' lands.
This was a fatal mistake for the Guard. As it began its war against Syderis, the Guard Captain realised two things: one, that he had left no forces on the front with Kryniar, thus allowing its meager armies to attack and invade Harkos; two, some of his soldiers were beginning to convert to the Syderisian side as well. The Captain ordered his forces back to the front with Kryniar, but it was too late, and the frontier had capitulated. In addition, nearly the entire number of the Guard had switched sides, leaving him with only three soldiers of his original 500. Harkos' fate had been settled, and as the king abdicated, the Griever took his place in the castle, claiming all of Harkos' territory for himself.
Kryniar was having none of it. It saw Syderis as the replacement of the fallen Harkos, and thus ordered its army against the new state. However, the new King easily saw to the defeat of the tribe, and Syderis and Krynair were unified. His role having been completed, the King found a successor and retired in peace, dying at the age of 103.
With peace and prosperity replacing the constant state of war Syderis had been in since its origin, the nation flourished in a Renaissance. Magical science in particular began a full-scale revival of pre-war times. Chief among the new discoveries were a way to cross the paths of dimensions, or "warrens" to some. The wizards of Syderis were unprepared, however, for what would follow.
Fifty years after the Griever's death, the wizards (or "magical scientists") opened their first portal, to a land they had thought to be splendorous. However, they were gravely mistaken. The portal led to That Which Comes After, the same Warren which (as chronologued in the Summer Queen's History of Caer Sidi) brought Syvisa to ruin. Syderis was lucky enough to have been much more prepared, and so the war that followed was notably prolongued due to their preparation. The war lasted nearly twenty years, and was a stalemate for the first nineteen - until the royal castle was breached, and all but one of the nobles were slain, along with nearly all the inhabitants. The endless void began its final sweep towards the Mount of the Golden Steed, where the last bastion of resilience against what comes after remained.
The single surviving noble was named Hrimnar, a native of the same mountains as that of the Golden Steed. He managed to flee to the bastion in the mountains, but witnessed as the vast armies of that which comes after swept through the fertile plains of Syderis. Facing near defeat, he gathered the few people alive in the bastion and began the Rite of the Crimson Spear. This Rite was one known since ancient times. In exchange for the life of the individual who initiated and completed it, it would summon a portal to a prosperous land. However, as Hrimnar was finishing the Rite, he was cut down by a spy from the midst of his closest allies. The Rite was not completed - but it yielded a different fruit: access to the Sentinel's Abode. Hrimnar's life was lost forever, but the remaining Syderisians launched through the portal to the Abode, into a dimension where no mortal had gone before.
