Recently, our country of Albion has borne witness to a glorious revolution. The second son of our great Hero Queen took the throne from the tyrant Logan, and has since created an Albion that literally was reborn from the ashes of the former. Gone are the sad homeless; gone are the ignorant masses; gone are the sad, wretched droves of child laborers, with their racking coughs and dirty faces. The new Hero King follows in the footsteps of his mother, not only in wisdom, simple goodness, good-humor, and generosity, but in power and greatness as well.
And so I, Samuel, friend of both our late, beautiful Hero Queen and our current, great Hero King, will document not only the rise of the former, but the rise of the latter as well. The book I previously wrote, documenting the political rise of our Hero Queen, was destroyed in the raid on the Brightwall Academy years ago. The time has come to recreate it for our new academs, and for those in the years to come.
All hail the King of Albion!
Chapter One: A Hero Born and a Hero Made
The tale of the Albion's golden era begins over fifty years ago. Then, in the filthy streets of Bowerstone Old Town, her older sister Rose raised the Hero Queen, then called Sparrow, after the unfortunate deaths of her parents.
While the way her parents were killed is not known, a conversation I had later with the Hero Queen may very well shed light on the subject.
"As you, Samuel, may know, after the Three were brought together by Theresa, we were ambushed by Lucien and his Spire guards. While the Three were spirited away to the Spire, Lucien stayed behind, preferring to shoot me himself.
I recall being in an idyllic sort of limbo, one that I think of now as both a dream and a memory. Does that make sense? Even now that farm, with its chickens and beautiful fields, seems less like Heaven and more like something that was long ago. During the time in limbo, Rose mentioned our parents several times, proudly proclaiming that if Thag attacked them, they'd give him a good thrashing.
Were my parents Heroes as well? I know that the Hero gene must have been there, but did it lay dormant, or were they as I am?
I suppose I'll never know. But that dream was more than a dream. That much I'm sure of. It's a possibility, at the very least."
Though the deaths of their parents are sadly not documented, the early lives of Rose and Sparrow were far from pleasant. They were homeless, moving from one run down shack to the next, dreading winter and counting the days until the terrible season gave way to spring. And all the while, they would stare up at the grand castle of Lord Lucien Fairfax, mayor of Bowerstone at the time, and wish to live there, a wish that would be used to manipulate the duo by the enigmatic Seer of the Spire, and, in a cosmic sort of way, lead to the creation of a Hero.
One winter (The Hero Queen estimated it to be when she was nine or so), a trader by the name of Murgo came to Old Town. Not much is known about the man himself, though hindsight (always a glorious thing) shows that he is connected to the reappearance of dozens of ancient artifacts. Whatever its origins, it was there that Sparrow found what would later be one of her most treasured possessions; the music box. Falsely advertised as being able to grant wishes, Rose and Sparrow worked several odd jobs to gain enough money to buy it, after being convinced by a strange, red-cloaked woman with odd eyes.
They managed to gain enough cash to buy it, and while the music box produced music and lights, and even reportedly vanished, it did not appear to grant their wish. That night, however, guards came to the shack to collect the children on behalf of Lord Lucien. Both ladies were ecstatic, despite the sentiments of a dog that would later prove to be Sparrow's greatest friend. The children went with the guards to Lord Lucien. Only to her closest friends did the Hero Queen tell what occurred there; Jasper, Walter Beck, and me.
"When we got to the chamber, Lucien seemed remarkably good-natured. My sister was understandably awkward. I, as I was and would be for years after this, was silent. I rarely spoke. Rose did the talking most of time, though that didn't exactly stop me from making the decisions.
Anyway, the reason we'd been called there, he said, was the music box. Not the music box itself, but rather, the fact that we'd been able to use it. Why that was important, we didn't know. Nor did I, for a very long time.
He told us to stand on a platform. I'd like to say I had a bad feeling about it, and maybe I did, but if I did, I ignored it and got on as willingly as my sister. The platform was engraved with the seal of the Heroes Guild, but then, my sister and I were more interested in the fact that it began to glow.
Almost instantly, Lucien's manner changed. He became frantic, ignoring my sister's questions. And then he pulled out a gun."
At this point, the Hero Queen was understandably overcome. What happened next is not difficult to figure out. Her sister, Rose, was shot in front of her. She too was shot, propelled out of window of the castle's highest tower and falling onto the street below. By all accounts, she should have died then and there. But the bones of Heroes are far stronger than those of mere people, and the Seer of the Spire, who was then simply called Theresa, found her in the snowy street.
The Seer took her to the gypsy camp, which is now unfortunately lost to time. All we have now is access to the ruins, courtesy of the Historical Society and our King, and what little the Hero Queen could remember. The camp was apparently isolated from the rest of the world, save the traders that came to do business with the gypsies. As far as the Hero Queen could recall, few came and none left, save her. She whimsically describes the air as being warm and filled with music, the trees spanning over the camp like a roof over the roofs, and the people being kind, gentle, and free-spirited.
She left the camp when she was nineteen at most, entering the Chamber of Fate, which has now been tragically lost to time. Entering the Chamber of Fate unlocked her Heroic blood, and began her journey to be a Hero.
And of course, after that, well… Who doesn't know her story? There are numerous books and bards that will regale you will the details of her battle with Thag, her journey to the Spring of Light with the Hero of Strength, her glorious defeat of the Crucible, her ten year long imprisonment in the Spire under the reign of Lucien, her escape with the Hero of Will. And who could live without hearing, in one inn or another, how she battled her way through Wraithmarsh, now Mourningwood, and to Bloodstone, to speak with the King of Pirates and Thieves, Reaver. And how, from there, she journeyed to the Shadow Court and gave her youth for a complete stranger? How she, along with the Three, defeated the Shard and all it's minions, and journeyed to Hero Hill with the Seer Theresa?
And what musician, what poet hasn't written a ballad for Sparrow, who died and was reborn in the Spire, who selflessly chose to bring back all those who died in the Spire, rather than her beloved dog and her lost sister?
This book is not written for that period of her life. This book is written for what came afterward.
Chapter Two: The Eight-Hour War
After the fall of Lucien, the people of Albion decided it was time for a change. They realized that Albion would not survive the test of time without becoming a unified country. This was something that had never been done before; the townships and city-states of Albion had always been notoriously independent, and the country hadn't been unified since the days of the Archons. Now, however, there was a descendent of those Archons, and she'd certainly proved herself worthy of the crown.
While her future was decided for her and her fate sealed, Sparrow wandered. She returned to the Temple of Light and gave every bit of her gold to the Temple. As the Temple of Light has long since fallen into disrepair and its monks are long dead, none can attest to what the Hero Queen described. But, according to her, her generosity was repaid in years. The Light undid the damage Sparrow took for the stranger she found lost in the caverns of the Shadow Court, and she was once again youthful and beautiful.
She lived for several months in the abandoned, isolated shack that was once the hideout of Thag, who happened to be her first fallen enemy in a long list of fallen enemies. Then, one day, the royal guard came for her. Needless to say, Sparrow was thoroughly startled, even more so when she walked into Bowerstone to find the masses cheering their new Queen. The fact that no one had consulted her was little short of amazing. However, she accepted the throne with grace, and knelt before a monk of Light as he placed the newly wrought golden crown upon her head.
Barely had the crown settled, however, when the revolt began.
While the Queen had been elected on the throne fair and square, some of the snubbed nobility were less than happy. They'd been hoping to become kings or queens, and when the Hero of Bowerstone, through no choice of her own, ripped that rug out from under them, they were incensed. Please note that most, if not all of the families that revolted were deeply in debt. There were quite a few families, some contributing more than others. The ones that felt the full wrath of the Queen were the families of York, Stonewall, and Beck.
Those three families staged an enormous siege on Fairfax Castle itself, mere hours after the Queen went through her coronation. Reluctant as she was to be queen, Sparrow was outraged that these families would attack her after all she'd done and sacrificed for them. She, along with her loyal guards, attacked the battling armies while the citizens of Bowerstone hid in their homes. The battle, and the war, lasted a total of eight hours. It ended when the Queen herself beheaded Lord Thomas Beck. After that, the armies, mostly consisting of mercenaries, fled.
If the name Beck sounds familiar to you, it should. The treasonous family gave us our greatest war hero. Sir Walter Beck.
Chapter Three: The Becks
The Beck family was not a particularly old family, nor a particularly powerful or affluent one. This was mainly due to their father's gambling addiction and their daughter's continued frequenting of houses of ill repute. Though their mother was considerably less frivolous, she was so cold that even her children brought her little pleasure, and the lands under her rule suffered because of her lack of empathy. In fact, the only real redeeming member of the family was their only son, and heir to what little of the family fortune that was left. Walter Beck.
Walter Beck family life was, by and large, loveless. At the end of Thomas' life, Walter had embodied all that Thomas hated; responsibility, order, and discipline. This combined with the fact that Walter's birth meant less time and money to spend on vices made Thomas absolutely loathe his son, and he made no pretenses about it.
Their mother, Alexandra, was never a particularly cozy person. Raised in an environment where "hostile" was, quite frankly, an understatement, she regarded her children, even when they were babies, as distasteful creatures. Her son was no exception. In fact, she may well have hated him the most. While his father saw the boy's very existence as a hindrance to his lifestyle, and later saw his seriousness as an annoyance, his mother saw the boy's wit, gregariousness, and sense of fun as a precursor to his father's debauched lifestyle. As a consequence, she not only loathed him for simply being himself, but also forced him through a torturous regimen that deprived him of much of his childhood.
He and his sister, Renee, never saw eye to eye, being opposites in nearly every respect. She was a few years younger than him, exceedingly beautiful, and self-taught in ways to put it to her advantage. At any given time, she'd have at least three men wrapped around her little finger. Whether or not they knew about each other was inconsequential to her. Her father loved her dearly, oddly enough, and they often went gambling together. This caused even more discontent between the siblings, as Renee never hesitated to remind Walter that their parents loved her more. While Walter tended to take this with a certain amount of good-humor, his family life caused no little amount of resentment in later years.
"Looking back now, I can't begin to imagine why I didn't join the military earlier," he wrote to a friend after the Eight Hour War. "When my father died, I couldn't even muster up a façade of mourning. And, frankly, I didn't think people expected me to try."
Walter Beck joined the military at the age of seventeen, the earliest legal age. He became a guard for Bower Lake. The day he turned his back on his parent's house, a place he never called 'home', was the last day he saw his parents alive.
After the Eight Hour War, Walter was brought to the castle, not quite as a guest, but not as a prisoner either. As he went through Bowerstone Market, he passed the beheaded body of his father on its post in front of the clock tower, next to his co-conspirators. "There lies a man of little wit and less judgment," he is reported to have said sardonically.
He was brought before the Queen, again not quite a guest and not quite a prisoner. No one knew what to make of the young man. Reports from his superiors were glowing, but he was also the son of a traitor. Many nobles called for his death, if only for symbolism. Lady Beck was already in line for her execution, but no one really knew what to do with the siblings. What the Queen decided for Walter would undoubtedly decide the course to take with Renee.
The Queen didn't ask much, and she was characteristically blunt. Politics was never her strong point, and in cases such as this, it was made even more apparent. While this would usually put a witness or suspect off-balance, this was because they were inclined to be subtle when the Queen was not. Walter was just as blunt and straightforward as the Queen, and even in the trial, they both spoke candidly to each other. This was, perhaps, the beginning of their famous (and perhaps, notorious) friendship.