We All Were Victims: Times of Turmoil:

The Complete History of the Fall of Caelin (by an honest-to-goodness Etrurian)

Foreword

I do not presume to be an expert in this field. As a humble Etrurian of comfortable means and charged with governing the House Caerlon for the entirety of my life—or until I may retire it to my still thirteen summers' old heir –I myself have not been able to so much as glance upon the harvest-gold fields of what used to be called Caelin. (I agonize that I have not ventured out of the borders of Etruria itself either, Goddess bless it). My interest in the history of Caelin starts with the history of my mother, Lady Priscilla. As a young woman, she found her long-lost brother in the ranks of Caelin's army. In fact, as it turns out, he later fell in love with Lady Lyndis, Caelin's heir apparent. That my mother once dabbled with this lady, a woman with over seventy-four attempts to her life, intrigued me. Before long, however, I grew weary of how little my mother was able to tell me of her.

I did not dare ask my uncle about this. He was always a sour kind of person, and I only dare write that right now because he's dead. I pray my own mother doesn't roll over in her grave at my disrespect. I only speak the truth.

But I digress. In my quest to uncover the most complete elements of the intriguing goings-on of Caelin, I had formally invited anyone with knowledge of these events to my home for a good, long chat by the fire. I started with connections of my mother, connections who had also dabbled with Lady Lyndis. They recollected a rich, sentimental, and not entirely believable tale, one that included dragons. (As far as I'm concerned, those have been extinct for a thousand years and should never be brought up again. Ever.) They also painted the Lady Lyndis in the most glorious light, an idol of perfection, a headstrong beauty with a strong sense of justice and a pure and innocent heart. The most fascinating part of these entreaties is that I collected the same story from seven different people during seven different meetings occurring over a span over thirteen years, including Lady Louise of our own House Reglay, the Lycian monk Lucius, a Sacaen wanderer named Guy, my good friend Merlinus the merchant, a fine young heart-throb bard called Nils, an Ilian pegasus knight Farina, and my mother, of course. Nonetheless, as exciting as the tale was, I quickly became bored with the pinnacle characters. People are not so good, and story-mongers like myself do not like characters that are so good.

And so, soon after I married my most beautiful wife Eliza, I left my thirst for the history of Caelin and Lady Lyndis in some cranny in the back of my head. Then one spring morning came a man jaded and bitter with the world, cursing fate, luck, the gods, the Goddess, mankind and everything else in existence. I don't remember what he was wearing that day, but he was a very practical sort of man, a fellow who rarely spoke an unnecessary word. But he came upon my manse and announced to my guards that he had a tale for me, and he may well have been the only one alive to tell it.

I was not at all hesitant in granting him an audience, for I had just finished the year's tax reports and sent them off to the king, and greatly needed some entertainment, the kind of entertainment my wonderful Eliza's chatter could not provide. A good man-to-man, heart-to-heart chat was what I needed, and my wife was not a man. (And that is a good thing, but I digress again.)

And so it was this man and I found ourselves seated across from each other at our informal dining room, for I did not wish for us to be barred by formality and directly told him so. He nodded solemnly, and I could tell from the look on his face that his tale would be a painful one to share. After the expected introductions, he began with the very words I've made the title of this tome: "We all were victims." And with that, he proceeded in telling a tale that wove itself over lunch and coffee, settled through an afternoon shower, and outlived the day and most of the night before it could expire to the moaning pre-dawn winds. I was so moved that I asked him how I could show him my thanks beyond a good bed, breakfast, coffee—maybe even a few more nights of rest in the manse?

His reply was a stern one, and it rang in his voice as if this was now the question of the fulfillment of his life. Here is his charge, word for word:

"Let the world know."

I then understood his purpose for approaching me. I, being outside of Caelin, and outside of Lycia, could with unbiased eye recount the tumultuous happenings of the fall of Caelin. At that time, I only felt it right to follow his command to the dot, to the cross of the T, and only later realized the enormous complications I would encounter. Before I could finish penning this history, I met again with five of the seven connections from my mother, started (timid) correspondence with the lords of Ostia and Pherae, had my three children (Peter, Valentine and Andrew), discovered shocking secrets about my own heritage, nearly went insane when Eliza disappeared (she got lost in Etruria-Ilia mountain borders, but she's safe and sound in Ilia now), and wore out my eyes reading multitudes of Caelinic histories, accounts, and letters of old times that good old Merlinus was able to gather for me during his travels. Beyond that, I have aged across my middle ages, grown from naïve young man to a steadily plodding father, stopped growing hair out the top of my head, and have recently started to worry about the condition of my teeth. And the inevitable meeting with my dead, sour uncle.

But that is for me alone to face later on. As for my final thoughts regarding this, I can only pray those who find this tome will take from it as much as I have, if not more. It is a mistake to ignore history, for that is precisely the reason it reoccurs. That is precisely the reason the existence of humanity is "a mere cycle of birth, struggle, death and rebirth." And though the struggle for Caelin is lost forevermore, I will be so vain as to demand this be a chapter remembered in the whole of Lycia's glorious rise since the victory over Bern eighteen years ago.

And with that, I present the almost forgotten history of Caelin.

Most sincerely,

Johnnathan Caerlon