Vecna and the Cult of Ashardalon:
The following lore has been gleaned from a number of sources, including reliable reports concerning inscriptions and wall paintings found within ancient burial sites in the southern Lorridges, as well as oral histories. Due to the rarity of such sources, the secrecy with which they have been guarded, and the generally vague nature of the clues left behind, it is difficult to prove with absolute certainty the accuracy of the following historical reconstruction, and even more difficult to determine the specific dates when the events in question allegedly occurred. Where no sources were available to shed light on historical developments, a healthy dose of logical inference and scholarly license filled in the cracks. How much is myth, how much truth? You, judicious reader, must decide… but remember that many lives have been lost gathering, transcribing, and diffusing this lore over the ages, as certain parties would prefer to see all references to the personages found in this work utterly eradicated from the memories of both the living and the dead. Others would simply horde it for their own, inscrutable ends. I know not how much longer I shall enjoy life on this Oerth, but I pray that you, brave reader, shall pledge yourself to putting the forbidden knowledge now in your hands to wise and good use.
In your trust,
--Gilidarius the sage, 10 Fireseek, CY 581
During the early days of the Whispered One’s reign, a confederacy of Flan tribes known as the Mara ruled the small “kingdom” of Burgred (later corrupted to Burgess by Suloise and Oeridian scholars). Even before the Whispered One transcended the limits of mortality and massed an army that would establish his dominion in the Sheldomar Valley and beyond, the Mara (who in some songs and poems are held to have occupied lands near the frontier presently demarcating the territories of the Gran March and Bissel) had witnessed a gradual increase in martial activity near the great wetlands to the south. Companies of savage warriors from far and away, and even some of the more peaceful and long time allies of the Mara answered the summons of the powerful, but secretive, sorcerer that had united the oft mist-shrouded territories adjacent to the great wetlands.
It is said that the Mara king Welnarek IV (who in some accounts is called, somewhat confusingly, King Burgred or King of Burgess) firmly yet politely declined repeated invitations from the Secret Lord’s envoys to attend His court in the Spidered Pavilion. Instead, he began to negotiate an alliance with his peoples’ traditional enemies in the highlands (in what today is the southern Lorridges), a barbarous, dragon-worshipping folk. The Ddraigasa (“People of the Dragon”), as the hill folk were called, had also declined the Secret Lord’s overtures. Yet increasingly alarming rumours from the south continued to travel north to the Mara and Ddraigasa, some going so far as to assert that the Secret Lord had recently conquered even death itself…
King Welnarek IV, last king of Burgred, made a pact with the leader of his peoples’ traditional enemies, the powerful wizard-king Gulthias. The wizard-king, who effectively had fulfilled the role of priest among his people for many decades, ensured that the hill folk continued to revere the great wyrm Ashardalon as their ancestors had—a rare glimpse of the magnificent and terrifying dragon had a greater impact on the Ddraigasa than did the subtle responses of unseen gods. Ashardalon was revered as a tribal protector, and also out of fear—the last thing the tribesmen wanted was to call the wrath of the great wyrm upon themselves through negligence. As a condition of the pact with Gulthias and the hill folk, the Mara King and his people were required to renounce their ties to the Old Faith and to convert to the worship of Ashardalon. In exchange, the Mara could build strongholds along the western and southern edges of the Ddraigasa’s highland territory, and obtained a pledge of mutual defence from their former foes. King Welnarek would have the authority to command Ddraigasa forces on the battlefield, while Gulthias held ultimate authority over his peoples and would summon the wyrm to their aid. Thus, the first and only “significant” anti-Vecnate resistance movement was born. While the majority of the Mara willingly submitted to this pact, a small number of Mara tribes led by one, Saithnar, rejected it and sought refuge in the Dim Forest, where they hoped to avoid the conflict altogether by obtaining the protection of the druidess Dydd the Wise. To her credit, the druidess supposedly had protested the endorsement of the Whispered One by Old Faith leaders. As it would turn out, Saithnar acquired the epithet of “Warlord” for waging his own bloody but short-lived campaign against the Vecnate forces that invaded the woods.
As the Whispered One’s influence spread throughout the Sheldomar, so did the strength of the Cult of Ashardalon. Many Flan tribesmen (Mara and non-Mara) who had not yet been enslaved by the Lich Lord’s forces preferred to take their chances by siding with a dangerous yet magnificent dragon and his cult rather than with a tyrannical, undead sorcerer king (or the morally bankrupt Old Faith). It was a choice between the presumed lesser of two great evils. The noniz and dwur of the region, however, wisely chose to retreat into their strongholds due to the lack of trust they felt towards the various human factions. Such is the human perspective, anyway, which allegedly has been contested by the bearded folk. Unbeknownst to King Welnarek and other well intentioned Mara rebels, Gulthias also had aspirations of conquest and domination over the Sheldomar.
Ashardalon’s cult had erected great fortifications and centres of worship in the Lorridges that pre-dated the Whispered One’s reign: the greatest among them were the hidden tower called Draco Spire and Citadel Ddraig (“Dragon,” now known as the Sunless Citadel) in the foothills to the southwest. The worksmanship of the structures suggested that external influences, probably draconic, were involved in their design, because their scale and level of sophistication were unusual given the presumed technological level of most Sheldomar-area Flan tribes during the pre-Migrations era. Some theorize that Ashardalon himself provided Gulthias and his ancestors with the knowledge required to build the fortifications. Sages also have linked burial mounds and the remains of ritual circles found within a 30 mile radius of Citadel Ddraig to the dragon worshippers and their allies. King Welnarek IV and his people barely had the time to build Castle Overlook and a few watchtowers before the Vecnate forces conquered their homeland and invaded the high country, only three years after the Whispered One proclaimed himself Emperor of the Flanaess and marched his armies north… and the same year that the King of the Mara refused the Lich Lord his bloody tribute.
Historians claim the Lich Lord traveled only in the company of a then young but particularly dedicated officer named Kas to Castle Overlook, and proceeded to single-handedly destroy the small fort with his powerful magics; he reportedly had done the same to the traditional lands of the Mara. Ashardalon then took to the field and fought the Arch-Lich, setting the entire plateau ablaze with his fiery breath. Yet despite the dragon’s might, the Lich Lord stood victorious. Ashardalon fled the battlefield and abandoned his worshippers, judging that the lives of a few devout followers were not worth saving at the risk of losing his own quasi-immortality.
Shortly after Castle Overlook’s defeat, the Whispered One’s forces conquered Citadel Ddraig and put its occupants to the sword. Thinking that Citadel Ddraig was the headquarters for the resistance, the Lich Lord himself sunk the stronghold into the earth in order to demonstrate His symbolic triumph over the dragon, and to ensure that the structure could never again fall into enemy hands and be used against His troops.
Having escaped Castle Overlook shortly before it fell to the enemy, King Welnarek IV rallied a small band of followers to make a last stand alongside Gulthias’s Ddraigasa on the grounds below Citadel Ddraig. King Welnarek IV, who had thus far resisted repeated magical assaults by the Whispered One thanks to the legendary powers of his crown, perished under Kas’s blade while the Lich Lord laid the citadel low. Gulthias himself seems to have been absent during this final battle. While a handful of loyal soldiers who survived the conflict managed to retrieve King Welnarek’s remains, concealing them in a remote location in the hills while awaiting a safer time to conduct a proper interment, the Lich Lord walked away with the Mara King’s still-crowned head.
Their strongholds captured or destroyed, their leaders slain or vanished, Vecnate forces teeming the hills, the last of the dragon-worshipping Ddraigasa and of King Welnarek’s retinue scattered throughout the Lorridges and Lortmils, seeking shelter in whatever nooks and crannies they could find. A brave few conducted occasional guerrilla raids against the Vecnate forces, causing as much harm as a lone fly around a horse’s tail. They consequently were ignored by the victors. The Vecnate troops had little interest in pursuing the scattered rebel bands, due to their insignificance to the empire’s safety and expansion. The southern Lorridges were considered conquered and secure territory, and the Mara and their kingdom—like so many other Flan kingdoms of the epoch—never recovered.
The Whispered One left a large garrison at Castle Overlook, due to its strategic location overlooking both the Lorridges as far as the foot of the Lortmils, and the northern plains of present day Gran March. Having defeated the greatest threat that would ever challenge His new reign, the Lich Lord retreated to the confines of His Rotted Tower in the Rushmoors, trusting His lieutenants to expand His realm and to rule in His name while He pursued His arcane studies. Over the course of subsequent centuries, the Lich Lord’s Empire spread north and east, extending (nominally, at least) from the southernmost reaches of the Sheldomar Valley to the shores of the Nyr Dyv. The victorious army of the Whispered One remodelled Castle Overlook to better suit their strategic needs, and the remains of Citadel Ddraig fell into forgotten ruin, swallowed by the Oerth.
The death of Ashardalon
Gulthias and some of his highest ranking acolytes, however, were back in the hidden stronghold of DracoSpire when the battle for Citadel Ddraig took place. As the dragon fled the battlefield, he commanded Gulthias to make ready for his eventual return. Gulthias’s devotion to Ashardalon turned into complete obsession.
One day, years later (as told in the Saithasnal), Ashardalon perished from a wound he sustained while battling the druidess Dydd in the Dim Forest. Fandorth the Elder has surmised that Ashardalon sought the druidess out because he blamed her for “causing a schism” among his new Mara followers, which contributed to their defeat at the hands of the Vecnate forces. She therefore was a prime scapegoat and target for the vengeance he so craved following the virtual annihilation of both the Ddraigasa and the Mara. In his great arrogance, the wyrm underestimated the power of the druidess, thinking her and her acolytes far weaker a target than the Lich Lord. His arrogance proved to be his undoing. Upon securing proof of the dragon's demise after years of absence, Gulthias and his cultists eventually followed their draconic master into oblivion, ritualistically converting DracoSpire into a mass tomb prior to committing mass suicide
The location of DracoSpire is as of yet, unknown, but, speculation places it hidden deep within the Lortmil Mountains, hidden by powerful magic.
History may well have forgotten the story of Ashardalon and his followers completely, save for rumors that Gulthias has returned in the form of a vampire. . .
In your trust,
--Gilidarius the sage, 10 Fireseek, CY 581
During the early days of the Whispered One’s reign, a confederacy of Flan tribes known as the Mara ruled the small “kingdom” of Burgred (later corrupted to Burgess by Suloise and Oeridian scholars). Even before the Whispered One transcended the limits of mortality and massed an army that would establish his dominion in the Sheldomar Valley and beyond, the Mara (who in some songs and poems are held to have occupied lands near the frontier presently demarcating the territories of the Gran March and Bissel) had witnessed a gradual increase in martial activity near the great wetlands to the south. Companies of savage warriors from far and away, and even some of the more peaceful and long time allies of the Mara answered the summons of the powerful, but secretive, sorcerer that had united the oft mist-shrouded territories adjacent to the great wetlands.
It is said that the Mara king Welnarek IV (who in some accounts is called, somewhat confusingly, King Burgred or King of Burgess) firmly yet politely declined repeated invitations from the Secret Lord’s envoys to attend His court in the Spidered Pavilion. Instead, he began to negotiate an alliance with his peoples’ traditional enemies in the highlands (in what today is the southern Lorridges), a barbarous, dragon-worshipping folk. The Ddraigasa (“People of the Dragon”), as the hill folk were called, had also declined the Secret Lord’s overtures. Yet increasingly alarming rumours from the south continued to travel north to the Mara and Ddraigasa, some going so far as to assert that the Secret Lord had recently conquered even death itself…
King Welnarek IV, last king of Burgred, made a pact with the leader of his peoples’ traditional enemies, the powerful wizard-king Gulthias. The wizard-king, who effectively had fulfilled the role of priest among his people for many decades, ensured that the hill folk continued to revere the great wyrm Ashardalon as their ancestors had—a rare glimpse of the magnificent and terrifying dragon had a greater impact on the Ddraigasa than did the subtle responses of unseen gods. Ashardalon was revered as a tribal protector, and also out of fear—the last thing the tribesmen wanted was to call the wrath of the great wyrm upon themselves through negligence. As a condition of the pact with Gulthias and the hill folk, the Mara King and his people were required to renounce their ties to the Old Faith and to convert to the worship of Ashardalon. In exchange, the Mara could build strongholds along the western and southern edges of the Ddraigasa’s highland territory, and obtained a pledge of mutual defence from their former foes. King Welnarek would have the authority to command Ddraigasa forces on the battlefield, while Gulthias held ultimate authority over his peoples and would summon the wyrm to their aid. Thus, the first and only “significant” anti-Vecnate resistance movement was born. While the majority of the Mara willingly submitted to this pact, a small number of Mara tribes led by one, Saithnar, rejected it and sought refuge in the Dim Forest, where they hoped to avoid the conflict altogether by obtaining the protection of the druidess Dydd the Wise. To her credit, the druidess supposedly had protested the endorsement of the Whispered One by Old Faith leaders. As it would turn out, Saithnar acquired the epithet of “Warlord” for waging his own bloody but short-lived campaign against the Vecnate forces that invaded the woods.
As the Whispered One’s influence spread throughout the Sheldomar, so did the strength of the Cult of Ashardalon. Many Flan tribesmen (Mara and non-Mara) who had not yet been enslaved by the Lich Lord’s forces preferred to take their chances by siding with a dangerous yet magnificent dragon and his cult rather than with a tyrannical, undead sorcerer king (or the morally bankrupt Old Faith). It was a choice between the presumed lesser of two great evils. The noniz and dwur of the region, however, wisely chose to retreat into their strongholds due to the lack of trust they felt towards the various human factions. Such is the human perspective, anyway, which allegedly has been contested by the bearded folk. Unbeknownst to King Welnarek and other well intentioned Mara rebels, Gulthias also had aspirations of conquest and domination over the Sheldomar.
Ashardalon’s cult had erected great fortifications and centres of worship in the Lorridges that pre-dated the Whispered One’s reign: the greatest among them were the hidden tower called Draco Spire and Citadel Ddraig (“Dragon,” now known as the Sunless Citadel) in the foothills to the southwest. The worksmanship of the structures suggested that external influences, probably draconic, were involved in their design, because their scale and level of sophistication were unusual given the presumed technological level of most Sheldomar-area Flan tribes during the pre-Migrations era. Some theorize that Ashardalon himself provided Gulthias and his ancestors with the knowledge required to build the fortifications. Sages also have linked burial mounds and the remains of ritual circles found within a 30 mile radius of Citadel Ddraig to the dragon worshippers and their allies. King Welnarek IV and his people barely had the time to build Castle Overlook and a few watchtowers before the Vecnate forces conquered their homeland and invaded the high country, only three years after the Whispered One proclaimed himself Emperor of the Flanaess and marched his armies north… and the same year that the King of the Mara refused the Lich Lord his bloody tribute.
Historians claim the Lich Lord traveled only in the company of a then young but particularly dedicated officer named Kas to Castle Overlook, and proceeded to single-handedly destroy the small fort with his powerful magics; he reportedly had done the same to the traditional lands of the Mara. Ashardalon then took to the field and fought the Arch-Lich, setting the entire plateau ablaze with his fiery breath. Yet despite the dragon’s might, the Lich Lord stood victorious. Ashardalon fled the battlefield and abandoned his worshippers, judging that the lives of a few devout followers were not worth saving at the risk of losing his own quasi-immortality.
Shortly after Castle Overlook’s defeat, the Whispered One’s forces conquered Citadel Ddraig and put its occupants to the sword. Thinking that Citadel Ddraig was the headquarters for the resistance, the Lich Lord himself sunk the stronghold into the earth in order to demonstrate His symbolic triumph over the dragon, and to ensure that the structure could never again fall into enemy hands and be used against His troops.
Having escaped Castle Overlook shortly before it fell to the enemy, King Welnarek IV rallied a small band of followers to make a last stand alongside Gulthias’s Ddraigasa on the grounds below Citadel Ddraig. King Welnarek IV, who had thus far resisted repeated magical assaults by the Whispered One thanks to the legendary powers of his crown, perished under Kas’s blade while the Lich Lord laid the citadel low. Gulthias himself seems to have been absent during this final battle. While a handful of loyal soldiers who survived the conflict managed to retrieve King Welnarek’s remains, concealing them in a remote location in the hills while awaiting a safer time to conduct a proper interment, the Lich Lord walked away with the Mara King’s still-crowned head.
Their strongholds captured or destroyed, their leaders slain or vanished, Vecnate forces teeming the hills, the last of the dragon-worshipping Ddraigasa and of King Welnarek’s retinue scattered throughout the Lorridges and Lortmils, seeking shelter in whatever nooks and crannies they could find. A brave few conducted occasional guerrilla raids against the Vecnate forces, causing as much harm as a lone fly around a horse’s tail. They consequently were ignored by the victors. The Vecnate troops had little interest in pursuing the scattered rebel bands, due to their insignificance to the empire’s safety and expansion. The southern Lorridges were considered conquered and secure territory, and the Mara and their kingdom—like so many other Flan kingdoms of the epoch—never recovered.
The Whispered One left a large garrison at Castle Overlook, due to its strategic location overlooking both the Lorridges as far as the foot of the Lortmils, and the northern plains of present day Gran March. Having defeated the greatest threat that would ever challenge His new reign, the Lich Lord retreated to the confines of His Rotted Tower in the Rushmoors, trusting His lieutenants to expand His realm and to rule in His name while He pursued His arcane studies. Over the course of subsequent centuries, the Lich Lord’s Empire spread north and east, extending (nominally, at least) from the southernmost reaches of the Sheldomar Valley to the shores of the Nyr Dyv. The victorious army of the Whispered One remodelled Castle Overlook to better suit their strategic needs, and the remains of Citadel Ddraig fell into forgotten ruin, swallowed by the Oerth.
The death of Ashardalon
Gulthias and some of his highest ranking acolytes, however, were back in the hidden stronghold of DracoSpire when the battle for Citadel Ddraig took place. As the dragon fled the battlefield, he commanded Gulthias to make ready for his eventual return. Gulthias’s devotion to Ashardalon turned into complete obsession.
One day, years later (as told in the Saithasnal), Ashardalon perished from a wound he sustained while battling the druidess Dydd in the Dim Forest. Fandorth the Elder has surmised that Ashardalon sought the druidess out because he blamed her for “causing a schism” among his new Mara followers, which contributed to their defeat at the hands of the Vecnate forces. She therefore was a prime scapegoat and target for the vengeance he so craved following the virtual annihilation of both the Ddraigasa and the Mara. In his great arrogance, the wyrm underestimated the power of the druidess, thinking her and her acolytes far weaker a target than the Lich Lord. His arrogance proved to be his undoing. Upon securing proof of the dragon's demise after years of absence, Gulthias and his cultists eventually followed their draconic master into oblivion, ritualistically converting DracoSpire into a mass tomb prior to committing mass suicide
The location of DracoSpire is as of yet, unknown, but, speculation places it hidden deep within the Lortmil Mountains, hidden by powerful magic.
History may well have forgotten the story of Ashardalon and his followers completely, save for rumors that Gulthias has returned in the form of a vampire. . .
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