History

Unlike some may think, Heirot isn’t actually the name of the world. However, in the beginning there was but one known kingdom, and to its people, it was the world.  Long ago, Heirot was the name of that kingdom. It was a large, vast kingdom, so large that the people of the time believed that it was the world, and there was nothing left to see.  Rumors existed of ‘Outer Lands’ beyond where anyone had traveled, but such tales offered little credibility.

Although not perfect, Heirot was a prosperious, politically stable kingdom. At that time, demons and the many races of sentient creatures that lived in Heirot coexisted in relative peace.  Magic users went to school in the Citadel of Light.  Lords were kind to the peasants that lived on their land. Crime was dealt with justly. The God of Light and the God of Nature were the main deities in Heirot. The kingdom’s monarchs, Queen and King Ighten, ruled the land fairly. They were kind rulers, perhaps even perfect rulers.

Today, some would say this Heirot of old was the perfect place to live. If only the prosperity, the peace, and the nation’s existence itself, had not hung on a thin string of spider’s silk.

A woman called Sinistra Arken looked upon the peace with aggravated hatred. She had come from the Outer Lands - lands that few in Heirot believed to exist at all. They were a desolate place of deserts and volcanic eruptions. Hardly anyone lived there, and those who did lived as nomads and fought amongst each other to survive. The harsh, bitter environment tended to raise harsh, bitter people, but Sinistra’s corruption was remarkable even for her background.  In her thirst for strength and power among the people of the Outer Lands, she turned to Verin, the God of Darkness, for support.  As she grew older, she came to resent all other power, particularly the established peace of Heirot that her own youth had lacked.

The kingdom of Heirot had never known the God of Darkness, nor felt the force of a ruler from the Outer Lands.  Verin and Sinistra made preparations to change that forever. Sinistra was a gifted sorceress, and after forging an identity for herself in Heirot, she went to the Citadel of Light for arcane training. However, in private, the God of Darkness himself taught her the ways of Night Magic, or Dark Magic. He favored her, partly for their shared political interests and partly because her intoxicating beauty intrigued him. Since he favored her, he offered her what no worshipper could refuse: The power to overthrow a kingdom.

“Seek the demons out, the demons of old will remember me. Seek the Ishtassy out, the Ishtassy of old will remember me. Seek the Black Wizards, the Black Wizards of old will remember me. They all will join you. To you I send my demons, and with them will ride the God of Death. You will be victorious,” Verin told her during one of their meetings.

She did as her Lord and Master requested. Sinistra sought out and rallied the demons, the Ishtassy, and the Black Wizards, and in turn Verin sent his minions. When they began their conquest, their forces rode with the God of Death himself.  They started in the Ra’esh Desert, at the very edge of Heirot’s known world. At every village it conquered, the army was joined by the few that did not die or run. Soon the dark army was large, and since peace had lasted in the land of Heirot for so long, King Ighten’s small army was nothing compared to that black siege that was heading towards it. The king told his wife to take their newborn child and run to the farthest end of their land. To take what remained of their people, and hide. He told her that he would stay with the White Wizards and fight the army of darkness.

She did as he asked, and when the King knew that his wife and child were safe across the land and in a place of goodness, he and the Wizards of Light used the greatest extent of their power to move the earth beneath their feet. With magic beyond anything anyone had ever summoned, ground rose behind them, and black, craggy mountains that seemed to touch the clouds created a vast wall to protect the people of Heirot on the other side.

The King and his army fought the dark league for a week, but in the end all were slaughtered.

Before proceeding with the newfound task of forging passage through the impassible peaks Heirot’s king had summoned, Sinistra called for a celebration. Verin himself attended it. That night, he took Sinistra as one of his many brides. She became with-child. It would be a girl.

Sinistra knew that she would have plenty of time to take over the other land. And that since she had destroyed their army… there was nothing left for them to fight with. Once they crossed the mountain barrier, it would all be too easy.  She had all the time in the world with her God as her husband.  So she proceeded to build up her conquered kingdom, which she chose to call ‘Arken’.

Back in what remained of Heirot, Queen Ighten realized that her husband was not coming back. As sole ruler she knew that they would have to prepare for Sinistra’s next attack. They used the Northern town of Lowight as the new capital, slowly rebuilding their nation from there.

Queen Ighten was a woman who had been bred for royalty. She did not know how to get her hands dirty. Nonetheless, she herself walked and lived among the peasants, lifting stone after stone to build a wall around the city and raising the confidence and morale of her people. She also helped build the Palace, half of which still stands today.

Months passed and Sinestra bore a daughter. Birthing the daughter of a God was too great a task for a mortal woman’s body. She did not live but a minute after seeing her child. Now that Arken had no queen, it would be even longer until a move could be made on Heirot, which had been renamed Ighten after the mighty king who gave his life for his people.

Since a good number of Ighten’s soldiers had been killed in the war, Queen Ighten reformed the laws and created a division in the army for women, previously banned from military service, to fight. It was called the Queen’s Maidens. Originally, it was open to any woman old enough to fight. But thanks to the war, there were plenty of orphan girls and there had to be a place for them, so the orphans were sheltered in the castle and trained to fight from a very early age, becoming what amounted to the Queen’s highly loyal personal guard.

Ighten slowly began to flourish again. Men and women willingly put in the hard work needed to rebuild their nation’s strength. Eventually, it was just as prosperous as it had been before. Years passed, and tension between Ighten and Arken slowly grew on either side of the Border.  Sinistra and Queen Ighten’s time passed, and their children came to power in their place.  To each queen’s line was born a female heir.  To Arken, Synestria succeeded her mother's throne, while in Ighten, the young Ellore came to power.

Synestria had her parents killed as soon as she was old enough to inherit the throne and rule effectively. From that moment she began to make good on her mother’s unfinished plans to wage war against and finally finish off Ighten.  Any time away from her political manipulations was spent exploiting her powerful sexuality.  She became known as the Whore Queen, since she had many, many relationships with random men of her choosing.

However, Synestra wanted a child, the promise of an heir to ensure her power before she proceeded to destroy Ighten. With this goal came a dark scheme involving the young queen of Ighten, Ellore. 

Ellore had lovingly married a powerful sorcerer, Richard Imrador. With him she had borne a daughter, Esther, although the girl showed little promise as a future ruler.  One night, Synestra came to Richard disguised in the form of his wife, seduced him and became with-child. When Richard caught on to what she had done, she killed him.

Pregnant with her enemy’s child, Synestra started her attack against Ighten. Ellore was eager to meet her in battle and avenge the death of her husband as well as the decades of suffering her people had endured. That was the first Queen War, which would end in a stalemate when Ellore and Synestra fought each other directly in a fearsome exchange of magic that left Ellore permanently weakened and Synestra dying of an untreatable degenerating curse.

As Ellore weakened, the doctors looked her over and realized she was pregnant. Ellore bore a daughter, Sinead, and used what energy she had to raise her young child in the ways of light.  Synestra bore her own daughter, Shea, and died after giving birth.

Queen Ellore’s first daughter Esther was mentally incapable of ruling Ighten, and the sorcerers in the Dark Citadel knew that with Ellore’s health failing, young Sinead would soon be named Queen of Ighten. However, Ighten now had one more heir, conceived by the same father as Sinead: Princess Shea of Arken.  Synestra’s scheme finally came to fruition as her court had Sinead kidnapped and announced Shea as the only eligible heir to Ighten’s throne.  Ighten had two choices; to recover its princess before Ellore’s imminent death, or submit to Arken’s rule.

After her kidnapping, Sinead spent most of her childhood in the Dark Citadel, past Mount May’em and off the coast of the Ongorethian Sea. Shea also spent her childhood in the Citadel.  It was ordained that when they were at equal strength, Shea and Sinead would duel to see which child of the black arts would act as Queen of the soon-to-be united territory. However, on the day of the duel, four of Ighten’s men broke into the Citadel and stole Sinead back. It had taken them many years, but they had finally found their princess.

Recovered to her true people, Sinead had to undergo intense remolding. She had been taught the ways of dark magic, instead of the ways of light… However, this gave her an advantage that her mother had not had.  She knew her enemy, all too well. 

Meanwhile, Since Shea had no living parents, Verin publicly proclaimed himself her father.  This gave Shea a step up politically in Arken; no one would defy the daughter of a God.  In the end, the two princess’s shared lineage did not result in a unification of the territories by either side.  Shea rose to power in Arken, and Sinead to power in Ighten.

Many years later, Shea and Sinead finally got their duel in the Second Queen War; a massive world war fueled by the personal enmity between the two queens.  The war taxed the people and resources of both lands terribly, and ended in a bitter stalemate.  It also left Shea wounded with a Dark Magic curse that would leave her unable to go out into sunlight ever again. To adapt her world to her new needs, Shea placed a curse on the land of Arken so that the sun would only shine onto her land when she slept.

Today, relative peace has returned to a slowly recovering Ighten, and the dark land of Arken remains as corrupted as ever. Still, the balance of this world hangs precariously, as it did in the beginning… on a thread of spider silk.