Сеталия

Before the Kingdom of Kaerok there were the Free Cities, fiercely independent and proud. Sethallia, ruler of the Free City of Landsrell, was more farsighted than most. She had served as an envoy to the Elven nation of Aravia and seen what their tightly unified kingdom had accomplished. She had read the histories of the ancient Dragonkin Empire and learned of the centuries of peace and plenty that had come from their centralized rule. While the tyranny of the Dragon Emperors repelled her, she concluded that they became tyrants due to preventable factors. Her interpretations were colored by her sharp distaste, expressed only privately, for the other Free Cities and their lords, who cared more about personal status and grudges than the common good. She believed a lord’s notion of commonweal must extend not only to their subjects, but to their rivals’ subjects, for the people of Kaerok shared so many cultural and spiritual bonds. The freedom of the Free Cities she saw as foolish, for the price of their freedom was division and thus weakness.

A series of catastrophic events proved some of the merits of her views. A Free City was nearly destroyed by rampaging Skinwalkers. Later, disaster unfolded at the Council of Narbuk, a conclave intended to ease tensions and mend rifts between branches of the Church of Lumaya. Sethallia, always a believer in unity, listened eagerly for news from the Council, expecting a new age of peace and tolerance to emerge. Instead, a chaotic schism unfolded when certain delegates were allegedly assassinated during a recess after one heated exchange. Hardliners from the Sacred Order and the Free Cities took control of the Council and declared, among other strict and inflammatory decrees, that Skinwalkers were to be universally abhorred and destroyed as servants of Darkness. In the wake of this, savage purges occurred all over Kaerok. Sethallia had always sympathized with Skinwalkers, viewing them as victims of a curse and not monsters, and was disgusted by the Council’s verdict. But her voice of calm and reason was not enough to control the rising tide of hatred. While blood flowed in the streets and the lords plotted how best to exploit the chaos for their own gain, Sethallia saw even greater troubles brewing and prepared Landsrell for long years of hardship, stockpiling grain and recruiting troops. Others called her paranoid.

Sethallia was right again. The repercussions of the debacle at the Council took time to propagate, but like an avalanche triggered by a distant quake, backlash was inevitable. The Council’s verdict had been an affront to the Church in Frostheim, which had long ago integrated Skinwalkers into their canon, deeming them part of Lumaya’s divine plan regardless of the origins of their curse. The Free Cities found themselves under lightning attack from the north as Frostheim warriors and their Orc auxiliaries poured across their borders. The lords of Kaerok’s Free Cities were largely unconcerned with culture and politics outside their realm, and so failed to realize exactly how high the tension on their border had been ratcheted. They paid dearly for this.

As the northernmost cities fell, many lords saw the chaos as a gainful opportunity. Many paid off the invaders, creating a bidding war whose loser was overwhelmed and sacked without assistance from the others, enriching and empowering the Frostheim coalition in the process. The Free Cities were defeated in detail, and Sethallia’s warnings finally gained credibility. The lords styled themselves knights, but they had no leader to rally them all together and direct their strength toward the true threats that surrounded them. Long and grinding years of war and raiding passed while the Free Cities slowly coordinated a coherent defense. Landsrell, fortified and prepared, withstood wave after wave of attacks, proving to be a keystone in the defense of the realm overall. If Sethallia’s realm had fallen, the unity of the others would likely have disintegrated and Kaerok as a polity would have ended then and there. Instead, she endured, rallying support from the flagging lords, until the man emerged who godfathered the Kingdom of Kaerok as a new political entity: Acelin the Stalwart.

If Acelin, first King of Kaerok and Knight of Knights, was the godfather, Sethallia must be accounted the godmother. Due to the evolving contours of the war she could not coordinate extensively with Acelin, and met him only once, at his coronation. But she was one of his first and greatest advocates. Respected for her foresight, she helped justify Acelin’s growing consolidation of power. Acelin went on to unite the Free Cities and drive the Frostheimers back, establishing borders of Kaerok that have persisted more or less unchanged through the present. He later entered into a political marriage as part of the process of rebuilding Frostheim and Kaerok’s relationship – a fact that was said to have left Sethallia quietly heartbroken.