Anbennar is a mod for Europa Universalis 4, which takes the original game's mechanics and uses them to make a fantastic world. In the sense of being high fantasy as well as general awesomeness.
It's an excellent mod, and I will attempt to portray one of the more interesting (to me) pieces of lore here.
Note: while not explicitly shown in this fic, one of the characters, Lothane, is the result of rape. It will be discussed a little. Just FYI.
Their work was nowhere near done, even if the orcish hordes had their leadership decapitated. Bands of them still roved the countryside and would make nuisances of themselves until stopped.
There was much work to do- lifetimes worth of it, possibly- before this land was even a shadow of its former glory… but men would once again rule in Castanor, the orcish Greentide finally stalled in that great basin.
It was a shame that the woman who did so much to stop it didn't live to see it. Her name was Corin, and she led a group of adventurers, brave and true…
And she lay in repose in the city where she had fought her last battle, where she had killed orcish cohesion alongside their leader, the Dookanson.
Even with a war still left to fight, adventurers came from across the whole width of the Castanorian Basin to pay their respects- and to lay plans for the reconquest.
Rogier stood before the body. Her hair, still vibrant red, lay in waves around her, contrasted against the pallor of death. Someone had been tasteful enough to cover up her mortal wounds in death, so she almost looked to be asleep, sword and shield lying at her side.
He felt his throat clench when he realized how young she was. Four and twenty, scarcely. His sister, Eilís, had been… what, a decade younger when he saw her last? More? His fists clenched as he tried to remember.
She had been sent here, to Castanor. Before the Greentide, when they thought she'd be safe in those proud, chivalric kingdoms….
If he was not wearing gauntlets, his nails would have been digging into his skin. He'd find her. He'd find her. He had to find her.
Rogier realized he wasn't the only one lingering. Across from him, on the other side of the ramshackle bier, was a giant of a man. Actually, man was not the correct term. The bulk, the ears, the tusks- one wrapped in blue ribbon- told of orc heritage.
If memory served… that was Lothane. A companion of Corin- the same hero whose body lay in repose before them- who overcame his nature and fought against the orcish hordes.
(Rapespawn, some small part of Rogier's brain thought. Almost certainly rapespawn.)
Circling around, Rogier stood next to him. For him, Corin would have been one of the key figures in his life, ripped away far too soon. Rogier knew grief. He knew it in father murdered and sister missing, in country lost and birthright stolen.
What words could soothe that ache? He could not think of anything his men could have said to him to cheer him during his darkest hour.
"She saved me." Rogier was surprised to hear him talk but was glad for it.
"From what?" Rogier prompted, voice gentle.
"I would have been executed, if not for her."
"By orcs?"
"Yes. My brothers in arms were slain, everything I had worked for gone… and then her." And then her indeed. Rogier could not imagine a single life in this basin not impacted by Corin.
"And for what offense were you so prosecuted?"
"For dreaming of peace. Is that so strange a thing?"
To orcs, perhaps it was. But calling his forebears a collection of savages did not seem the right move at the moment.
Lothane bent his head before the bier and began to hum. The song was rough, the voice anything but motherly, but Rogier recognized it. The same tune his mother had sung to him and his sister, so many moons ago…
With more intensity than probably appropriate, Rogier turned toward the half-orc. "Where did you learn that song?"
"From my mother."
Rogier stepped towards him, heart pounding. "Who? Tell me of her! Does she live still?"
Lothane's brow furrowed, but he schooled his temper so his voice came out curt "She died when I was little more than a babe, Silmuna."
Rogier slumped, like a puppet whose strings were cut, the pieces coming together despite his horror at the picture they formed.
Blue. Blue. It wasn't a ribbon adorning Lothane's tusks, it was a worn, tattered scrap of a scarf. He knew the rich blue it would have been, years ago. It was the color of the banners Rogier had spent decades fighting under, the color his sister delighted in wearing.
Rogier felt his jaw grow slack and felt hot tears at the corners of his eyes. Words clumped up in his throat, incapable of climbing any further.
He paid his last respects to Corin and then fled from the room. Lothane shook his head but quickly forgot the stranger. There was far too much to be done.
His followers were shaken, Rogier knew. A good leader needed to be courageous, needed to lead from the front. He needed to be present, not staring away with glassy eyes.
His sister was gone.
His entire quest was folly. She had probably been cast aside without the dignity of a proper burial nearly two decades ago.
Here Rogier was, chasing smoke and ether, as a Wexonard pretender sat his throne. Not counting his traitorous cousins, who scarcely deserved to be called humans, much less Silmunas, he was the last of his family.
A legacy stretching back for hundreds of years… rent asunder by the cruel workings of chance.
Well, he supposed he was not the last. Lothane may have been a bastard in the strict, legal sense of the word, but compared to the backstabbing bastards back home…
Lothane was, in theory, not so bad, although prolonged contemplation of the events that led to his birth sent Rogier to the training yards at a fiendish pace.
Caught up in battling orc and goblin remnants, Rogier neglected to contact his potential nephew for months, which stretched into years.
Eventually, though, their various campaigns brought them close enough for a meeting.
Lothane had risen far above his birth. Of unknown sire and mother who perished, there was every reason for him to fade into obscurity- fade, fade, just as his half-orc fellows had- but he did not.
Lothane Bluetusk had fought alongside the woman who had become a goddess. He had been closer to her, before her divinity, than anyone else.
His fealty to Corin was strong still, made manifest in the foundations of the pious band he now led. Or perhaps state was a better word. They had grown strong.
Castanor was a land of adventurer lords now, and today he was to meet with one of them. A Rogier, of the Sons of Dameria. (A band of radical revanchists, or so his advisors said.)
The face, grizzled and poorly shaven though it was, evoked some sense of deja vu in his mind.
For a few moments, Rogier stared at him, uncomfortably intense, before letting out a sigh. "Lothane…"
That was the face of someone who brought a lot of emotional baggage, and Lothane was beginning to feel a little unnerved.
Fortunately, they were capable of discussing business first- exchanging strategies and news about the status of the world. The Sons worked in the west, Lothane's Corintar in the east. They could learn from each other.
Still, Rogier was not subtle about his staring. If he took that much offense at a half-orc, he could take his Damerian flag and shove it up his-
"That scarf… you got it from your mother, yes?"
"Yes." Lothane grumbled. How did he…? Oh. Many men had spoken to him after Corin's death, and one of them… one of them had been Rogier. He had stormed from the room, nearly crying, after a lot of prying into Lothane's personal life.
Rogier sighed. "My sister would have been here before the Greentide, you know. A handmaid to a princess of Castellyr."
Castellyr? Lothane recognized the name vaguely, one of the great knightly kingdoms which flourished in Castanor before the Greentide. In fact, it wasn't too far from where Lothane's old war band had lingered…
"And why tell me this?" Lothane asked.
"Because- because my sister always wore blue." What sort of non-sequitur was that?
He had gotten so used to the scrap of fabric tied around his tusk that it was possible to almost forget it was there, but it suddenly seemed obvious.
"Nonsense," Lothane grumbled. "You'd claim kinship with me because of… what, a scrap of cloth? Your sister would not have been the only person in the world to wear blue."
"You're my nephew. I'm certain of it." For what it was worth, he truly seemed to believe it.
"Cease this foolishness at once."
"Please." Rogier seemed to crumple under his refusal. "A man alone in the world, sans family, is a terrible thing."
"I will never be a fitting replacement for your sister, Silmuna. Now, please. Leave me be."
Lothane would not say that dismissing Rogier hurt. It did not. The man was desperate for a past that would never be again, just like the other Sons of Dameria.
Yet Rogier had planted seeds in Lothane's mind. The facts seemed to check out. Research- why had he even bothered to research this?- seemed to prove that yes, Eilís the Blue had been in Castellyr before the Greentide. And yes, as her name implied, she wore blue.
That was not evidence enough by itself, of course. However, from what little Lothane remembered of Corin's wake, one of the things that provoked Rogier was the lullaby.
Finding a Damerian among his men was not the easiest- unsurprisingly, most had thrown in their lot with their exiled prince, Rogier- but those he managed to find did agree: that lullaby was Damerian, through and through.
He could not truly bring himself to be overexcited about bloodlines, for all those lords and princes of the west seemed to care. So what if he was the descendant of some Emperor? What mattered was the here and now, the concrete results of his labor here in Castanor.
Still, his mind would wander back to Rogier more than he'd like to admit. Lothane had known no father and had scarce few years with his mother. Family… family was an odd concept. An uncle just appearing from the ether shook him, even if he was closer to any of his brothers in arms than this stranger who apparently shared his blood.
So he eventually decided to write a letter.
Rogier had settled. Well, in a very literal sense, the great band of adventurers he led had settled in Castanor, hoping to one day build up the strength to retake the homeland. In another sense, he contented himself with that. He wouldn't find his sister here- but he'd find a home for his people.
Life in Castanor was rough, a far cry from the court of his youth. Even though they were 'settling' Castanor, his capital had the feeling of a military camp more than a city. There was still a risk of being waylaid by orcs or monsters on the roads- one of Rogier's projects was creating safe roads and trails, the veins of his new state, carrying information and goods in equal measure.
The news from Castanor was fair enough. The orcs were being beaten back and mankind was regaining its rightful place as ruler of the basin. (Well, barring the halflings.) Somehow, though, the rider that made him the most excited was the one that came from Corintar. From his nephew.
For some reason, the simple, clumsily sealed letter (a sword and shield pressed into the wax) struck fear into his heart more than news of an impending orcish warband.
(Orcs were something that he could slay, something concrete he could strike down.)
Rogier,
After much contemplation, I am no longer so doubtful regarding your claims.
I cannot promise you, though. We will never truly know who my mother was. As much as you may wish it, I may not be your blood.
That… was a definite possibility, Rogier would admit. A possibility he had swiftly swept aside in desperation, but certainly possible.
But Rogier had a feeling something greater was at play here. Destiny, perhaps, divine providence, the same fate that had delivered his forebears centuries ago…
The gods, in their mercy, had not taken everything from him. That was his fervent hope.
He continued to read:
I can promise you nothing, not even that we are actually relations. However, in times such as these… I cannot bring myself to reject a hand opened in brotherhood.
Or perhaps brotherhood is the wrong word. Uncle-hood does not have the same smoothness to it, though.
I do not think I will ever be the Silmuna you wish me to be. But your nephew? I could attempt that.
