Newsletter #9

TCoS Dev Chat 4

We’re going to bring you a Dev Chat every two weeks until release. The fourth session of the series is scheduled for Sunday the 11th of June at 21:00 CEST. Each chat will be held in Q&A format with our QAbot open to receive questions starting 18:00 CEST and during the chat. To participate or read along, you simply have to join #spellborn-qa on our IRC server: irc://irc.tcos.com. More details about the network and services are available on our website. A log from each Dev Chat will be made available on TCoS.com after each session.

The upcoming chat will focus on the three rogue classes in The Chronicles of Spellborn. Our Game Designer Coen “Co-N” Neessen will once again be available to supply answers to your most burning questions.

Lore - The War of Shadow’s Hammer(Period: 632-654)

The following story is a continuation of the Enclave's history from the point of the lore published at the end of Teaser movie 2. The Enclave of the Five Sacrifices had just been founded.

In the years following the war against the Princess of Skulls and the founding of the Enclave, the shard Parliament was discovered and claimed for the Five High Houses who each established a stronghold there. It quickly became the center of all House politics and the administrative hub of the Enclave.

The hollows of Quarterstone were excavated further and the Temple of the Oracle relocated to the center of the city. Great tunneling projects were initiated that allowed Vailyrian steeds access to the city through docking corridors, and when the Oracle ordered the High Houses to create a shaft through the vaulted roof of Quarterstone, so that it could project its awareness into the DeadSpell Storm, the Five High Houses obeyed and undertook an excavation project that lasted for generations.

After many years, the expansion of the Enclave took flight as Ringfell was discovered. The Enclave experienced a time of peace and prosperity, which lasted for nearly a century before disaster swept through the Enclave once more.

Though it seemed that the Enclave’s peaceful age would last for ever, it was not meant to be. In time, the horrors of the war against the Princess of Skulls would be forgotten, but the search for new shard realms continued and exploration of the DeadSpell Storm moved ahead without pause. There, in those dreadful veils of enraged mana, did explorers find a new realm, almost a century after the initial discovery of Mount-of-Heroes. Called Carnyx, it remained silently embraced by the Undying Ice, untouched since the destruction of the Ancestor World.

The Enclave would bring the Barbarian Seal to this new realm and claim it as their own – and in doing so – release the Vhuul, a race of servitor creatures created by the Vailyrians, from their prison. They would forfeit the Barbarian Seal and a great war would be waged, claiming the lives of many.

Before those dreadful days however, the Enclave of the Five Sacrifices had nothing to fear. New generations of heroes and champions were born, forgotten lore and science rediscovered, and more effective construction applied to the Enclave’s realms. The High Houses had grown powerful and confident and in no other was this more evident than in Aryones Ithkari, champion of the High House of Scales; Torque. Where Graidlon Marrow had been a brooding youth, traumatized by the horrific circumstances of his existence and forced to surrender himself to a dreadful fate, Aryones was his polar opposite. He was light-hearted, joyfully blessed with a striking physique and a formidable array of talents and skills.

He was know as “Aryones the Golden” or “The First Light of Heaven”, and he would bring a great doom to the Enclave, almost destroying what Graidlon Marrow had tried to preserve.

Initially, upon discovering Carnyx, the Enclave’s explorers thought it unlikely that one of the three Lost High Houses had made its home there. The realm was completely covered by the Undying Ice and had not been disturbed by outsiders. This lead to a decision from Parliament to bring the Barbarian Seal to Carnyx, freeing it from the ice and start settlement immediately. Logurhadin the Woestriker, Champion of the High House of Ropes; Maul, had been selected to bring the Barbarian Seal to Carnyx, together with Lady Cormuthesta of the High House of Shrines; Rune. The procession, accompanied by hundreds of soldiers and workers, set out for Carnyx after a festive celebration in Quarterstone.

They did not return.

Several weeks later, the first Vhuul attacks against the Enclave began. Strange flying craft, forged from rock, bore vulture like creatures to the realms of the High Houses. The attempted invasion of Quarterstone was defeated with ease, as were those of Parliament, Mount-of-Heroes and Ringfell. But the creatures kept coming, increasing in number as time passed by, and growing more powerful by the year.

It was then that Aryones Ithkari decided to take the other High House champions with him to destroy the Vhuul and claim Carnyx, much like Graidlon Marrow had done a century before in Mount-of-Heroes (but Aryones was intent on coming back). So they took their Vailyrian steeds with them and their armies, readying themselves with powerful artifacts, weapons and spells, and descended upon Carnyx like an ancestral host of divine spirits.

But what no one could have know was that among the Vhuul there was a priesthood using ancient magic the Enclave had never encountered before. Among these vulture priests there was one who was an elder: a creature knowledgeable of the magic of the Mumia, like the Princess of Skulls had been. It was the leader of all the Vhuul and their priest caste, and was known as the “Archfell”. As Aryones fought the Vhuul swarms and ships, the Archfell stole his soul, possessed his mind, and turned the “First Light of Heaven” against the other champions, slaying the entire retinue Ithkari had brought with him.

The High Houses waited in vain for Aryones to return with news of victory, but were instead treated to an even bigger horror. Ithkari, now a puppet of the Vhuul, attacked the Enclave as the general of their Swarm. After several battles against his former brethren, slaying the finest warriors the Enclave possessed, Aryones Ithkari became known as 'Shadow's Hammer', a tragic parody of what he once was. The doom that befell the peoples of the Enclave during his war against its shard realms made him much feared and hated.

A delegation of Torque warriors, sent by the Enclave to reason with Aryones, was completely corrupted and swayed to his side. He convinced them that he had been wronged by the Enclave and sent them back to wreak as much havoc as they could before they were found out. The slaughter perpetrated by the “Arionites” as they murdered nobles and commoners alike in Parliament and Quarterstone was something the Enclave had never experienced before. The shock was paralyzing.

Maul and Shroud came together and decided to act on their own volition - Torque had failed them and their trust in warrior-gods and paramount heroes had been violated. A staunch opponent of the patriarchical system of military rule, Muragh Kaizin of Maul gathered about herself the best assassins she could find, and aided by whatever secrets Shroud had manage to unearth from floating ruin in the Deadspell Storm, set out to find the Archfell and slay it.

So it came to pass that not a Torque champion, but Maulite and Shroud assassins were to deliver the Enclave from evil, infiltrating the Vhuul hive to its heart and slaying the vulture priest-king. None of them returned, overcome by the mindless Vhuul swarm bereft of its messiah, but the power of the vultures had been broken nonetheless. The attacks against the Enclave ceased.

Though Shadow’s Hammer was ultimately captured and executed, his followers remained hidden throughout the Enclave. Carnyx remained under control of the Vhuul swarm and both the vultures and the Arionites would haunt the Enclave for centuries to come.