Beware dear reader that this humble tome is mostly concerned with the Caleds. What are Caleds, you may ask? Well they are the inhabitants of the kingdom of Caledonia, set upon the isle of Bretwealda. A name that has imperial connotations and that the inhabitants modestly call the ‘Lairdly-Isle’ in response to the men of ériu dubbing their own island the ‘Emerald-Isle’. The Caleds are a northerly folk, who live between the lands just south of the Firth of the Thern in the south, and north of the Dusgaidh Highlands or Dusgaidh Mountains as they also call them. These mountains have for the past several decades formed almost as much the boundary line as any other between the Kingdom of the Caleds, and the earldom of Norlion. The people of Norlion are themselves a mixed group of Brittians (those southron folk of the kingdom of Brittia) and Caleds. But back to the Caleds, their realm extends to the Wend-River and the neighbouring Cruach-Mountains chains in the west. The isles in the west are hotly contested not only between the kingdom of Norwend and Caledonia, but by the islanders. As for the Caleds they speak a lilting tongue rather more akin to what we might term Scottish-Gaelic.
*****
As to the histories, they are a long winding affair. The trouble is that the history of the world could fill up many tomes, with those lands of North and South-Agenors, each able to do so. The history of Gallia and her predecessor states, alone have occupied the pens of many a scholars (most far more eminent than myself!) and has such a history that it would be an insult to attempt to encompass it in but a few pages. This is especially the case when it is not the centre of this tale, and is to be mentioned only by virtue of its peculiar bond with Caledonia. First to be discussed will be the conflicts that came to be known as the ‘War of the Early-Days’.
At that time Cyclops had populated a large portion of the continents and their neighbouring islands. They were cruel and without much goodness, being demonic creatures that worshiped dark-gods and demons who encouraged their worst vices. The first true challenge to their power came when the oceans drank the gleaming cities of Narratsii or Narratsya as some call it, and the people of those distant lands sailed eastwards. From out of the west, came the Elves and though they were a shadow of their former glory they made war with many of the Cyclops.
Most preferred to carry on across the waves, to Agenor, purging those lands along the way in many cases of the Cyclops, in order to liberate the slaves of those people. But a number preferred to stay in Bretwealda. The Cyclops’ were not without defences, and were to push back those Elves who now called themselves the Skógr?lf ‘Tree-folks’ and the fey-folk Fairies they had allied with. Some of these Elves took to the Mountains where they were to adopt different practices and the name ‘Sagndar’ to differentiate themselves from their ‘wretched’ forest-cousins. But the reality was that Skógr?lf and Sagndar alike had been banished from the south, and all but abandoned by those Elves who had continued eastwards towards the distant lands known only as the ‘Golden Gardens’.
For eons it seemed, the Elves held the line with the assistance of the odd Golem, and in time Dwarves. Arriving from the east, initially to form a large continents spanning Empire, the Dwarves had lost their empire and were fleeing the chaos and came to the island to seek refuge, wherefore the Cyclops had sought to enslave and devour them. Fleeing north themselves now, they made for the deep recesses below the mountains. Finer smiths than the Elves, who could not abide iron of any sort, the Dwarves nonetheless set to work forging fine weapons, which they shared with men and Wolframs (who also came from across the waves).
Thus armed, they threw themselves against the Cyclops’ in countless wars. In time this became ill-advised and after more land was lost, the Elves rounded upon the Dwarves and warred with them, blaming them for the losses. The Dwarves pulled farther into their mountains, with the fathers of men angry at the loss of iron weapons and blaming the Elves for this. Only the Wolframs’ held fast against the monstrous lairds in the south.
*****
Into this age hither came Fionnlagh a chieftain of a small tribe, by the name of the Fionnii. The father of many sons, many of whom proved far braver or more foolish than he ever was, with the best example of this being the youngest of his sons. This impulsive youth was keen to save the people in the south, from the Cyclops’ chieftain Ygorln who captured and slew the lad with Fionnlagh and his remaining sons going to the Elves for aid. This they would not do, for they had grown comfortable with their current lot in life. Complacent, the Elves turned him away advising him to give up on his son.
This Fionnlagh the Great-Father would not do, and by this time in his seventieth year he plunged south with his sons giving chase, to try to dissuade him or to support him. Ygorin slaughtered them to a man with ease. Outraged by this, his last remaining son Uthard the Sword, armed with one of the few remaining Dwarfsteel blades still to be found in the north marched south now. Left behind, to act as chieftain of the tribes in the north, he rallied a great number of them to his banner, wherefore he advanced south.
Meeting with the Elf-chiefs he delivered a great speech, shaming them for their abandonment of his father. It was while he was there; he invited the Wolfram chiefs to form with the Wilder Elves the ‘Pact of Fionnlagh’. What followed was the last of the Wars of the Early Ages; it ended in Uthard and his forces pushing the Cyclops’ south of the Wulf and Neirin Rivers. Peace followed, with Uthard perishing to illness in his sixty-third year. After him, his sworn-brother the Wolfram chieftain Malo Grey-Mantle, assumed the kingship. He ruled for but six years, ere he passed on also except when he passed away, his son was named as his heir.
From there the Wolframs or ‘Wolf-folks’ as others called them, assumed the kingship of the people whom Uthard had led south in the wars against the Cyclops. As the centuries passed, they ceased to comport themselves as wolves might but rather as jackals. They took advantage of those other than themselves, taxed them more than their own tribesmen and even began to imitate the Cyclops’ slavery-practices and even at times traded with them.
This ceased when the last of the kings took the crown, he was Griogair the Fair-Minded. A just monarch, he freed many of the slaves, ceased trade with the Cyclops’ and once more sought the counsel of the Elves. But they turned away from him.
His efforts were undermined by his Queen, who desired neither peace nor reconciliation with men, so that she often behind his back ordered harsher measures against them. The result was a civil war that rocked the kingdom, and saw Griogair’s sons slain in a series of battles by the rebel-chieftain Roparzh. A direct descendant of Uthard, one whom Griogair could not bring himself to harm until his kingdom lay in ruins, and the two met in the field. The duel that ensued between them saw Roparzh hew down the Wolf-King.
Roparzh-King as he was later known was not a bad ruler or an unfeeling man. Rather, he was one in the mould of Griogair himself and preferred to spare the remaining Wolframs. He also broke the Dwarfsteel blade of Uthard used to slay Griogair. After this, he turned his men south and led them against the last of the Cyclops, at last laying them low and pushing their demonic sort from the islands forever.
*****
The line of kings descended from Roparzh were not a united kingdom, but rather a federation of small tribal kingdoms some focused around small wooden forts others not. It happened that while the Pact of Fionnlagh fell apart, and Roparzh’s line established a series of kingdoms events were also ongoing on the Continent. The Elvish kingdoms there, established by cousins of Brigantius the Elf-chieftain of the Wilder-Elves or Skógr?lf, had been broken. Rocked by civil-strife and continuous internal feuding, those in the lands near the isles, who had been likewise abandoned by the Elves that went east, became increasingly tribal. They also became divided betwixt the Skógr?lf and the Sagndar. They and the tribes of men in the lands east of their once-kingdom were to be assailed now by a new threat.
By this time thousands of years separated the exodus of the Elves, and the return of a corrupted branch of those people, twisted by malice as much as by dark gods and demons.
The second of the great conflicts are those that became known as the ‘First Wars of Darkness’. They involved the Dark Elves or Svartálfar as they call themselves hereon referred to as Dark Elves. All-conquering, as they worshipped the evil Dark Queen of Nifleheimr, and her father the wicked trickster Loki.
These people laid low the Continental lands, but that will be discussed in a moment. First the invasion of the shores of Bretwealda will have to be discussed.
They first came to the shores in the south where they subdued many of Roparzh-King’s descendants and peoples. For decades the war raged. It is said that in their anguish the people of the west turned to the gods, who took pity upon them. They could not directly interfere, but one of the strange tri-unicorns (in the east they were known as ‘Kirins’) agreed to die (there are tales that three others also did, but those are tales for another time). His spirit was reborn into a man, a woodsman’s son. This lad was named Cormac, and he it was who rallied the Caleds to the rescue of the southron folk, and who fought to save the Elves who were the Dark Elves’ true objective. He it was also who rallied many of the Wolframs. During this war, he fought desperately alongside a rising southern king by the name of Roparzh (an heir of the line of Uthard). This Roparzh, known as the ‘Reclaimer’ for it was he who fought to reclaim the lost lands of his forbears, who was truly in command.
Jealous, after the last of the Dark Elves had been laid low, and darkness was chased from the shores of Bretwealda, he would chase Cormac shortly thereafter. This was the first of the ruptures betwixt the north and south. What was more was that when Cormac left to go across the Glacial Sea to the far north, he brought with him a vast number of Elves. Most of them preferred to depart with him on this dangerous voyage, leaving but a small number of their kin behind on the Lairdly-Island.
Cormac did not simply leave for greener pastures, as it was said that he left to continue the war in the north where the Arns millennia later came from.
Roparzh meanwhile, established himself as ruler of lands that approximate those of Hwicce, Gewisse and the western lands of Estria. It was on the shores as far south from the Caled lands as possible, and upon the hill where Fionnlagh had perished centuries before that he established a city. This city was later to be conquered by Roma, who renamed it Colonia Luciania, and was later renamed once more by the locals Auldchester. In honour of how it was the oldest of Bretwealda’s great cities (after Sgain). It was thereupon the shores or in his wooden-fort that Roparzh the Reclaimer, often looked out across the Channel to Gallia. And it was there that he likely dreamt of what might well have been, and what he wished to be...
*****
Simply put, the first state in what has become Gallia is that of Zulvrain, spawned in the terrible and bloody conflicts with the all-conquering Dark Elves. Founded by an impulsive dark-sorcerer named Aganippe who poured much of his hatred for them, and ambition into the gemstone, he used it to trap the dragon Zomok within it. The gem would decades later come to claim the spirits of his children, his wife and even himself, before his nephew sought to be rid of it. After this the Zulvrain had a slow yet steady decline, until the Romalians came across the Diaíresian Sea that divided North and South-Agenors from one another. Roma was an imperialist power that had united all peoples and conquered all that she had come across hitherto her entry into the lands of North-Agenor (with a few possible exceptions). They soon destroyed the Zulvrain kingdoms, annexed most of the region ere they returned hither to their own lands to engage in an extended civil-war.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
The conflict ended with the establishment of the Principate, in place of the ‘Res-Publica’ (Public-Thing or Common-Weal of Roma). The Principate returned, re-conquered these lands and assimilated them. In time, in the reign of the Princeps Lucian, they were to extend their empire as far west as the island of Bretwealda.
*****
The island of Bretwealda was for the first time since the Dark Elves, included in Continental affairs to a greater extent than mere petty raids and trade, by the Legions of Roma. The south was soon divided between those willing to recognise Roma’s authority and those not.
Many were they who hearkened back to the age of Roparzh the Reclaimer, falling back to songs of that great age of heroes. Unfortunately, the few who sought to emulate Roparzh were few and far in between, and generally not very successful at rallying their fellow tribesmen. Eight centuries of constant tribal warfare and internecine conflict had weakened the little unity on the isle.
Roma’s legions led by the Princeps Lucian, who was an old hand at war and conquered all the way up to the Lion-River, thereby the river he turned back. Quite why is still a mystery. Likely it had to do with his concerns regarding the supply-train. The south was to be consolidated in the next hundred years or so, with the increasingly Romalian south was to be subject to countless raids from Cymru and Caledonia neither of whom had surrendered.
But it was about this time that a branch of the Caleds, the Pechii or the ‘Pechs’ began to become the prevalent tribe. It was they who had gone on to assimilate neighbouring tribes and to push ever more southwards. They neither recognised the values of the ancient Pact of Fionnlagh, nor cared for the Wolframs. Pushed south, many of the Caled tribes were however pushed north by the Romalians, wherefore they turned westwards or in other cases joined with the Pechs. The Pechs and Roma entered into a raid-war one where the borders were poorly defined.
This lasted until the Romalians pushed as far north as the Highlands. It was there that the Pech Talorcan, rallied his people and countless others, and sought to wage a war which involved hit and run. This sort of violence had its way and saw a fair amount of results until the Princeps, the Ogre Kadrianus.
He had inherited his position after Lucian’s dynasty had died out, and had been adopted into the next dynasty after proving himself one of the finest generals alive. Cunning and strong as no man could be, he saw the needlessness of this war and preferred to give ground. Pulling back south of the Lam-River, he had a large wall built one that bore his name. It was to be manned by the legions present in Brittia, those that remained there until the collapse of Roma.
*****
When collapse came, it was harder for those of North-Agenor. The collapse came after nigh on a hundred and thirty years of continuous civil-war. It was not long, before successive empires in South-Agenor arose to lay claim to the legacy of Roma. None ever fully did. As to the north, it was left to find its own way as tribal barbarians flooded the frontiers, to establish large kingdoms.
On the Lairdly-Isle some of the legions notably the VII ‘Luciania’ legion sought to dig its heels in. They were however pushed from the centre of Brittia by one warlord after another. The legion and its men’s kin established themselves in the Saesonian peninsula. It was there that they mixed with the tribesmen, to form a unique blend of semi-Cymran tribal kingship with some Romalian form of civility. The great Brickanian Wall named after the last general Brickanius, was their last truly monumental feat on their own. Seventy years after the construction of this wall (begun twenty-three years after Roma left the isle), a man of Caled extraction by the name of Artuir, it was he who established a kingdom in the north of Brittia. There he forged a ‘cross-wall’ realm (one that stretched from one side to the other of Kadrianus’s Wall), one which combined Romalian laws and justice with Brittian values. To the south pushing up against the formerly controlled legion territory were tribes from the Continent. Arriving from abroad, these men known as ?lle and Vengrist were fierce warriors and established large kingdoms. These kingdoms took up the names of Gewisse and Hwicce, and that exerted a great deal of influence over the island. These colonising tribes also begat other nations throughout the land, of Brittia: Those of Argoed, Rheged, Sudlam and Estria all kingdoms that warred endlessly for the next centuries with one another, as they forgot much of their history and ancient heritage.
Artuir died as all mortal men do, and his son Lachlan succeeded to the throne, he was to be slain by an alliance between the chieftain of the Wilder-Elves, Vulkuinas and M?rwine II of Estwulf. The two desired the wealth of Artuir’s kingdom. Only one of them got it, as M?rwine had no intention of sharing with his stupid ally, whom he immediately betrayed to the Elf’s disgust.
Some of Artuir’s followers withdrew to the almost spherical shaped peninsula of Valumtia. There they built for themselves a kingdom, and reorganised under the rule of one of Artuir’s rivals, King Theoric.
*****
In the north, the Pechs established a great kingdom, one that spanned from the Thern-River to the lands of Norwend in the north. The centre of this great capital was the region now known as Sgain, or Fortriu. Sgain was the name given to the city that had once been the site of the home of Sgair the Golem, ere he was destroyed by the Romalians.
The Pech Kingdom stretched to the western isles also, but that region was in time conquered by some of ériu’s tribesmen.
Over the centuries this chaotic multiple kingdom period, which involved countless wars, hardly changed at all. It came about that almost half-a-millennia after the fall of Roma, the Dark Elves returned with reinforcements from the east, as a large army of the ‘living-dead’ or Unliving as many called them. This was what threatened the kingdom of Neustria with the Dark Elves and a small contingent of Unliving arrived upon the Lairdly-Isle.
The war that followed was violent, and considerably shorter than the previous one. Most of the kingdoms struggled especially after the King of Gewisse Ealdhelm with four of his sons fell in the battle of the Reudhfields. Invaded from the north and east, by the kingdoms of Hwicce, Bernicia (a new dynasty had re-established the kingdom) and Morwyn, Estria came near to being destroyed. It was for Wigheard Ealdhelm’s son to flee to his mother’s people in Cymru, there he found safety until he came of age and return to reclaim his homeland. During this time, his neighbours were cast into disarray themselves, by the Dark Elves.
From the north swept down the Caleds and Pechs, went south after they had repelled the Unliving who had threatened their own homelands. The kingdom of the isles established by the ériu had absorbed a great deal of the Caleds, forming a kingdom by the name of Ríocht-Riada. Led by the great King Achaius I, the mightiest of the kings of Ríocht-Riada who went on to claim the Pechish throne as he had a claim via one of his grandmothers. When he did claim the throne the lands north of the Wend broke away, forming the kingdom of Norwend.
Advised to head north to reclaim this kingdom, Achaius preferred to head south to rescue the south, forming as he went the League of the Nine Kingdoms. It comprised of Ríocht-Riada, Pechavia, Norlion, Rheged, Bernicia, Gewisse, Ergyng and Saesonia. At first Gewisse preferred to remain outside of it, but was soon to benefit from it as did Hwicce and Argoed.
It was Achaius who rescued the lands of the Lairdly-Isle, and he who strove the most mightily against the Dark Elves and repelling them at last from the shores of the island. This he did with his Dragonsteel sword, leader of all the armies of Bretwealda he broke the Dark Elves and Unliving at the battle of Auldchester. After this, he led a portion of the armies of Bretwealda east into Neustria, to assist Aemiliemagne in fighting the Dark Elves and their vast hordes there.
*****
The wars that followed took up fifteen years of Achaius’s life, and by the end of it he returned to his homeland, with one of Aemiliemagne’s daughters for a bride, a great deal of gold and still more wars to fight. For Norlion and Norwend had taken to raiding and attempting to steal land from him. The rest of his reign was spent repelling them now, and fighting off usurpers.
That is until he lay ill in a monastery of the god Fufluns (the god of agriculture and farming), near the Thern-River. It was there that he was slain, by one of his rivals who usurped the throne and sought to slay his sons and claim his widow for himself.
She fled to Ríocht-Riada, where she found refuge with Achaius’s cousin Tavish the Ship-Builder. By this time, it must be understood that the Pechs had appreciated Achaius’s strength and vigour, but not his passion for his faith. A religion they had not all converted to; that of Quirinas. The Quirinian faith with its doctrine of twelve-gods and many Paragons had upset them. This along with their innate hostility towards the people of Ríocht-Riada had meant that they welcomed his usurpers with open arms.
What followed was a diminishment of Pechavia, along with the other Bretwealda kingdoms. While these kingdoms fought the Dark Elves both in the south and on the Continent, raiders had come from the north, from across the Glacial-Sea. These pirates were Arnish Viking-raiders, men who followed war-gods and who desired gold and silver and land. At first they raided temples in small numbers, and coastal areas then they began to come hither in ever increasing numbers. They had already over-taken a large number of the establishments on the Misty-Island to the north. They now overtook and destabilized almost every kingdom on Bretwealda.
*****
Under Helgi the Terrible, a gargantuan heathen army invaded, conquered the whole of the east of Bretwealda, then a great deal of the west. Until only a fragment of Ríocht-Riada and Gewisse, along with Norwend remained to resist the evil Arnish conqueror, who went on to conquer ériu. There he built a majestic castle, thanks to his Ogre slave, a Master-Builder of some renown. In the south the weak line of Cedric, under its final king the son of Wigheard III, Cedric II was at last usurped and replaced. This new line was to father far stronger, greater kings who built high keeps and in time undertook the repulsion of the Arnish warlords. Once they had confined them to the ‘Arnlaw’ and thus to the status of vassals, they attempted to lay claim to the other northern lands.
As to Pechavia, it staggered on, until Ríocht-Riada’s final king Cináed MacAchaius, who avenged his father, took up the throne of Pechavia after he slaughtered her nobles and the last of his rivals. Crowned High-King, he was to set about fighting to safeguard his newly founded kingdom.
*****
It would not be until his grandson’s time Causantín II the Wise that the two kingdoms fully formed into Brittia in the south and Caledonia in the north. The Caleds, érians and Pechs all united, they formed new alliances and fought in a series of battles against Brittia to keep the south from annexing them. The most noteworthy was Dún Brunde in the year 611 which saw thousands dead. After this war, Causantín withdrew to the north, where he retired in time and his successor sought to continue his work, to heal the land and kingdom. The trouble was that while Causantín had been crowned king by the second Cormac, a hero who had discovered the Stone of Sgair, the heart of the Golem and crowned Causantín upon it. His successor was the son of Causantín’s cousin, a madman adopted by the old King. The people had not forgotten this, and neither had some of Causantín’s greedy sons. Thus, civil war for the next almost a century resulted in Caledonia.
In the south, the kingdom of Brittia was in hardly any greater condition as it began to crumble under despotic and highly idiotic kings. That is until R?dwald the Usurper took the throne, and reunited the kingdom. His own reign was a rocky one, yet it lasted for twenty-five years and saw the first period of peace in Brittia’s history. This was considered a golden age for the people, though the nobles despised it. R?dwald was a strong monarch, and this they could not tolerate. After him, his line was overthrown and replaced with the previous one.
They then went on to be usurped this time by a Norse-King, who established his own line on the throne, only for his heirs to prove as wanton and foolish as the heirs of the line of ?thelwulf.
*****
What of the Misty-Island of Antilia, you may ask? Little is known. Centaurs lived there for a time, this much was known. When the Dwarves travelled to Bretwealda it was said that the northern-island had been newly raised from the sea for them and the Centaurs who wished to find peace there, away from the Continent’s wars.
Men went there also and established gleaming cities, ones that grew in majesty and beauty, as they were left isolated from the outside world. Elves also came in time, and were to form some semblance of peace with Men and Dwarves. Untouched by the Dark Elves, they in place of them had Amazons to fear. Namavo is a series of islands far to the south to the west of South-Agenor, specifically of the lands of the Ogres known as Korax. Conquered and in disarray by the Viking-raiders of the north, many Namavians had however picked up the drakkars and sought to cruelly raid both Agenors. They had gone north with most easily fought off by the people of Bretwealda and ériu (the latter was struggling with the evil Warlock-King of Amadan, whom most Amazons preferred not to menace). Thus defeated, they had established colonies in the lands of the Twelve Kingdoms (the twelve successor states of Neustria) and Antilia.
When the time came, Northmen ere their conquests in Bretwealda took each of the cities from the unprepared men of the Misty-Island, building up their own kingdoms to replace them. It happened that the Amazons and Centaurs, formerly marked enemies joined together to seek to defy the Norse. They failed, and were reduced to their western-holdings with the Amazons only newly arrived upon Antilia themselves.
It was almost a century and a half when the Norléanians arrived upon the Misty-Isle. Former Arns who had colonized the west-lands of Neustria known as Ouestria, these knights had sailed in search of fresh lands to conquer. Keen to find new lands due to the overpopulation in the lands they had dubbed Norléans, these knights carved out their own lands from their Nordic cousins.
*****
But into this contest for power and age of conflict came the Dark Laird. Little is known of this figure, only that he had ancient roots, some said these tied him back to the Dark Elves others Roma. Not that it truly matters, as this shadowy figure, who had connections to both Dark Elves who had been ruled by their own distant Dark Laird and Roma, wielded powers and arts unseen for many centuries. Overtaking many of the holdings of the Jarls of the Arnish lands of Antilia, and some of the keeps and lands in Gallia the kingdom that had reunited much of Neustria, all feared it for all know that war is inevitable.
