A Brief History of Eion
(and the March Kingdoms)

For almost a thousand years, history is written only in the ancient kingdoms of Xand, the southern continent and seat of civilization. The northern continent, Eion, is little considered, its inhabitants — the Conoric, Sivonnic, and Iellic tribes, among others — merely shadowy barbarian figures. The mysterious northern Qar, whose civilization actually predates even the kingdoms of Xand, are more shadowy still.

For that millennium, mighty Xis and the other kingdoms of the southern continent are satisfied to dominate the southern tip of Eion, to trade up and down the eastern and western coasts with the pale-skinned barbarians of the north, but otherwise to leave most of the trackless — and to most Xandians, uninteresting — continent unexplored and unconsidered. Nevertheless, Eion is rich in minerals and plants, and trade remains constant and profitable. In the last two centuries before the establishment of the first Trigon — the Eionic Year One — the southern continent's trading settlements on Eion grow into cities, and some of the cities expand into nations. Hierosol in particular grows from a small port city into a major seapower, trading up and down the coast of Eion and gradually supplanting the parent cultures of the southern continent as the northern continent's source of authority and power — and gold. Hierosoline armies move into the interior of the continent to protect trade and defend Hierosoline settlements from what they consider the less-civilized peoples, and gradually extend Hierosol's culture to most of Eion.

Hierosol is a pantheistic republic (the hereditary kings, whose Hierosolic title is vasilleos, are overthrown before the beginning of the Trigon) which is ruled by a council known as the Twelve Families, although in truth there are already far more than a dozen leading houses well before the Trigon is established. But Hierosol is also a city of many gods and many priesthoods, and squabbling between the adherents of the various temples leads to a coalition between the priests of three of the most powerful deities — Perin the lord of the sky, Erivor of the waters, and Kernios, master of the black earth. This coalition, known as the Trigon, quickly assumes a position of power over all the other temples and their priests. One of the three gods' high priests is elected as its leader and spokesman, and this figure, called the Trigonarch, rules as the supreme religious power in Hierosol, but in practice he can do nothing without agreement from at least one of the other two, and can be stripped of his power by his two fellows. Thus, manipulation and craft are built into the Trigon from the very beginning.

Hierosol's rise continues, and it becomes not just the dominant power in Eion, but as the kingdoms of Xand decline into decadence, of all the known world. Hierosol's supremacy lasts for almost six hundred years, then the empire collapses at last of its own weight, although for several hundred years afterward the Hierosoline remnants are given a respectful attention that they no longer deserve.

The younger kingdoms of Eion's heartland rise from Hierosol's imperial ashes, with Syan outstripping the others in the early nine hundreds, their ascendancy made manifest when King Nikolos moves the Trigon out of Hierosol by force and installs it in Syan itself, where it still remains. Syan becomes the seat of fashion and learning for all Eion for two hundred years.

Since a time before history — even the histories of the south which date back two millennia or more — the humans of Eion have shared their lands with the Qar, who are known variously as the Twilight People, the Quiet People, or even "the fairy folk." Although there is a huge Qar settlement (a place called Qul-na-Qar by its inhabitants) in the far north of Eion, there are Qar everywhere on the continent, although mostly in rural, untraveled areas. As humans have spread across Eion, the Qar have largely retreated to the hills and mountains and deep forests, and in places even live quite peacefully (if unobtrusively) in close proximity to humans, who regard them as magical spirits, and often leave them offerings. But in some places, especially where the human population has expanded quickly, there is conflict, and there have even been mortal struggles between Qar and humans from time to time. For most of the first millennium after the Trigon, the peace between the two peoples is largely due to separation, and also to the simple fact that most humans fear the mysterious Qar.

As the year 1000 approaches, a terrible plague appears in the southern seaports of Eion and begins to spread inland. The sweeping mortality known simply as the Great Death kills in days, and few who are exposed to it survive. Farmers desert their fields. Parents desert their children. Healers will not attend the dying, and even the priests of Kernios will not help perform ceremonies for the dead. Villages empty. Despite quarantines of entire towns, by the end of the first year nearly a quarter of the people in the south of Eion have succumbed, and when the plague returns with the warm weather in spring and the death toll mounts higher still, many people believe the end of the world has come. Terror leads to a search for causes, and although the Trigon and its priests declare that the plague is punishment for the irreligiousness of mankind, the terrified population seizes on more visible targets. Foreigners and especially southerners are at first blamed for poisoning the wells, but soon an even more obvious culprit is suggested — the Qar. In many places they are already considered to be evil spirits, and none of them have been seen to die of the Great Death themselves, so the idea that the plague is caused by the malice of the Twilight People is unsurprising.

The fairy folk are slaughtered wherever they are found, and since many of their settlements are already remote from human habitation, the Qar often have no warning or even inkling that the attacks are coming. Whole tribes are captured and slaughtered. Frightened humans set woods and even cultivated fields on fire, destroying their own animals and crops as well as the Qar. The hysterical rage spreads across Eion, spearheaded by troops of fanatics called "Purifiers" who have dedicated their lives to eradicating the Qar, and who rob, torture, and kill any human they deem to be unduly sympathetic to the fairy folk. Human villages already devastated by the Great Death are burned to the ground by Purifiers as a lesson to any who might resist their holy mission.

The remaining Qar flee north, until, reinforced by some of their own kind from Qul-na-Qar, they turn and make a stand at a settlement of theirs called Coldgray Moor not far from the present-day Southmarch. ("Coldgray", although an accurate description for the site of the battle, is a human misunderstanding of the Qar name Qul Girah, roughly "place of growing".) The battle is terrible — the human survivors are plagued with nightmares for the rest of their lives — but the Qar are defeated in large part due to the last-minute arrival of an army led by Anglin of Connord (an island nation off the coast) and the Twilight People are driven out of the areas of human habitation entirely and back into the thickly-forested lands of the north.

Like thousands of other less famous mortals, Karal, the king of Syan, is killed in the battle at Coldgray Moor, but his son, who will reign as Lander III (known as "Lander the Good" and "Lander Elfbane") grants the March Country to Anglin and his descendants to be their fief, so that they can be the wardens of humanity's borders against the Qar.

Almost a hundred years pass. The empire of Syan is beginning to come apart, although Syan itself is still strong. In the wake of the plague and the collapse of order, troops of mercenary soldiers known as the Gray Companies have become a permanent part of the landscape. They sell themselves to various despots to fight their neighbors, or choose an easier enemy, kidnapping nobles for ransom and robbing and murdering the peasantry.

Anglin's descendants have divided the March Country up into four March Kingdoms — Northmarch, Southmarch, Eastmarch and Westmarch. In the year 1103 an army of the Qar sweeps down out of the north without warning. The March King's descendants fight bitterly, but they are pushed out of their lands and fall back to their kingdom's southernmost borders. Only the support of the small nations along the border (known as "the Nine") allows them to hold off the Qar while waiting for help from the great kingdoms of the south — help which is slow in coming. In the midst of this terrible struggle, a sense of true northern solidarity (and a certain distrust of the southern kingdoms) is created for the first time.

Only a fierce winter allows the humans to hold the Qar in place in the March Country. In the spring, armies arrive at last from Syan and Jellon and the city-states of Krace. The battle against the Qar rages off and on across the north for two years. The land is devastated, and will not fully recover for a generation or more, and in following years the human plague of the Gray Companies will arrive in the wake of the war to spread their own brand of chaos.

When the humans at last defeat the invading Qar and try to pursue them back into their own lands to eliminate the threat once and for all, the retreating fairy folk create a mysterious barrier that, although it does not keep humans out, confuses and bewitches all who pass it. After several companies of armed men disappear, with only a few maddened survivors returning, the humans give up and declare the thing they name the Shadowline to be the new border.

Southmarch Castle is reconsecrated — the Qar had used it as their fortress during the war — but the Shadowline cuts across the March Kingdom, and all of Northmarch and much of Eastmarch and Westmarch are now vanished behind it. But although they have lost their northern fiefs and castles, Anglin's line survives in his great-grandnephew, Kellick Eddon, whose bravery against the Qar is already legendary. When the Nine Nations band together and give their loyalty to the new king at Southmarch (in part for protection from the rapacious Gray Companies), the March Kingdom once more becomes the largest and strongest power in the north of Eion.

The Present

It is now 1316 years since the first Trigon, three centuries after Coldgray Moor, two centuries since the loss of the north marches and the establishment of the Shadowline. That boundary has remained constant, and effectively marks the outer edge of the known world — even ships seldom return from journeys in far-northern waters.

Syan has almost entirely lost its hold over its former empire, and is now merely the strongest of several large kingdoms in the heartland of Eion. The power of the Autarch, the god-king of Xis on the southern continent, is growing: for the first time in almost a thousand years, Xand is exerting power on the northern continent. Many of the countries along the southernmost coast of Eion pay the Autarch tribute, or are ruled by his puppets.

The House of Eddon still rules in Southmarch, and Southmarch is the only power in the north — Brenland and Settland are small, rustic, inward-looking nations — but the March King's descendants have begun to wonder how far the Autarch's arm may reach into Eion.

Two centuries after the Qar's last appearance from behind the Shadowline, Anglin's folk have almost forgotten that danger can come from the north as well as the south.