Nonetheless, regardless of the present, the tale of Eryndor begins in the light.

A mighty paladin general by the name of Avius led a victorious life of honesty and light for over 40 years. He was a great man and had many victories fighting under King Leechian. Through this time, he acquired a wife, and had two children. He always insisted that they be taught the warrior lifestyle as soon as they could wield a mace. Life was good and hard for the paladin in Belegeria. There was no glory, just the peace of mind that comes with maintaining the ages of serenity that existed in the lands. But even in the unyielding light, shadows can shrink and twist and hide themselves. Unknown to Arvius, the dark crept into the lands of Belegeria like a painless but deadly poison.

The Beginning of the Darkness

The first true signs of change to Belegeria that Avius noticed was through the King. A once peaceful man who ruled through diplomacy and reason, the King suddenly showed signs of greed and a hunger for power. Soon after, a dark cloud encompassed the kingdom, thick and cloudy like swamp gas, bodiless like a glimmering heat wave off cobble roads. Under this day-night, the King ran his armies through defenseless peasant villages outlying Belegeria as to build a wider kingdom line. Inciting treason and conspiracy as his motives for war against the defenseless, the King ordered the burning of every village in his path. The few survivors were maintained as nothing more than slaves to build more castles.

Under this tyranny, the people began a rebellion. A rebellion that Avius was forced to quell. One by one, he shattered the bones of weak peasants with his Hammer of Judgment. For every innocent slain under the holy weapon, Avius became weaker in spirit and body. However, he kept following King Leechian’s orders.

Eryndor is born

Although the peasant rebellion was easy to suppress at first, the rag-tag army soon made a strategic retreat to the Everledden Woods. The king, along with his armies, were not familiar with woodland combat, but repeatedly trekked into the forest to slay the last of the innocent. There, the people lent themselves to forest assassinations of Leechian’s men and officers. The peasants quickly adapted to the woods. They evolved to the Gaia of the forest and began a large, fruitful village deep in Everledden. The village was named Eryndor, as it carried the name of the forest’s greatest tree, the Eryndosis.

As Eryndor first flourished, Paladin Avius secretly felt great relief that the innocent had finally created a safe-haven for themselves. Over time, however, the relief crumbled away to viciousness and a sense of revenge against the people of Eryndor. With the last bits of his former self fighting for control, Avius knew his heart was blackening just as his King’s already had. He sent his family off to join the Everledden wood folk and buried the pieces of his hammer, armor and enchanted jewels across the land.

While Avius wandered further into the dark cloud, he felt the darkness thickening. The darkness almost took a human form inside of his mind and tormented him. He knew this evil would soon consume his righteous and just body. He fought the torturer, but realized all he was doing was fighting himself, fighting his dark side. So as his last action, he plunged himself off a cliff, dashing the remains of his poisoned soul against the rocks below.

When the King received word of the fall of his mighty general, Leechian started burning the forest. He started burning from the closest leaf to his kingdom, and vowed to not stop destroying Everledden Forest until every tree was black or chopped lifeless. As the rebellion’s homeland was becoming smaller, and Leechian’s land was becoming stronger and larger, the hopes for the wood folk’s defensive maneuvers were weakening. The Hero of Everledden, Syris, begged a close village of elves, led by King Riadarin, to join his fight. The elves want nothing to do with the corruption of man, and Riadarin denied the request. Alone, and with a withering forest, Syris decided he had to plan an attack on the fortress in a last resort effort to kill Leechian, praying that after he falls, the rest of the madness will stop.

The Assassination

One night, the wood folk of Eryndor planned an impossible assassination of the tyrant. When they went on their silent siege of the fortress, slitting neck after neck of clumsy guard. Keeping their presence unknown, they crept closer and closer to the generals’ quarters, where the mad Leechian was continually planning new assaults. They only had to get by the royal guard’s quarters, and pray that the demise of Leechian would force the dark clouds back into recession.

They crept across the rooftop of the quarters, and at a simultaneous signal, Everledden axe men broke through the roof. Immediately behind the front line, archer on top of archer poured in through the rooftop. Finally, shield men with huge wooden planks blocked the only entrance and exit for the royal guards. The arrows flew as though guided by goodness and slaughtered the corrupt knights like pigs, leaving the floor one puddle of crimson. The knights who were not hit by the first line of steel crawled their way to the door and attempted to bash past the shield wall. But all they found was a barrage of arrows in their backs.

With the stealth of the operation lost, the elite force made a mad dash for the generals’ quarters. They broke through the sealed door, shield men first. They started sprinting down the turning corridor, led by Syris and the huge wooden plank shields. Various soldiers, responding to the noise, clamored in through secret passages and the side doors, taking out some of the force, but not after they caught an arrow to the heart. More and more soldiers came, and more and more fell under the sprinting band of mobile archers. However, the sheer number of the castle’s guards finally weakened the number of Eryndor warriors to six. Just as they were at the last door, three fully armored royal guards charged at the surviving assassins. The wooden arrows and tiny short swords were no match for the royal guard’s flails, long swords, and thick armor. With the hope of the mission’s success quickly fading just as so much of the goodness in the land had done, the six warriors desperately battled for their lives.

Just as all hope seemed to have left, a quick parry of a royal guard’s sword left Syris facing the final door with no enemies between.

Without a word, Syris ran to the door, and with one swift kick, busted the door at its hinges. Leechian stood waiting with a drawn bow. Syris strafed just in time, and the steel arrow flew past him, connecting with a royal guard in the behind melee. In an instant, Syris jumped onto the long war table and sprinted across at Leechian. In desperation, Leechian drew another arrow, and just as Syris leaped down at him, he let the steel arrow loose. The arrow drove a hole through Syris’s chest, but with his momentum the long sword cleaved down into Leechian’s shoulder all the way to his black heart, where it stuck. Leechian let out a screeching yell, a yell that instantly shattered all the glass in the room.

The Unmasking

Syris and the warriors in the hallway felt like their brains were exploding. All the warriors grabbed their ears, even Syris, ignoring the arrow hole in this chest. At that moment, Syris was positive King Leechian was more than just corrupt. After the screaming blast, Leechian smiled deviously, and Syris released the grip on his ears and drove his dagger into the possessed king’s forehead. At that instant, Leechian’s body exploded with a black tar that instantly ate Syris’s flesh into nothingness and began doing the same to the chamber walls. The black tar then gathered itself as though conscious of its recent freedom from its withered, old, kingly vessel. The darkness shot into the air and burst through the ceiling.

Far from the castle, the on-looking wood folk watched the black tar and clenched their teeth at its horrible sound. Then, in an instant, like a wizard’s fireshot, the tar sprayed miles across the land. Wherever it landed, it spread, and turned the land into a soft, transparent gelatin pit. In what seemed like a second, the pits sank, and out crawled horrible green creatures, naked and teethed, as though they had been waiting under the ground for years and just now awakened. They all let out their own battle cry, and together it could be heard from Everledden forest. These creatures were of course Orcs and goblins, but other vicious and indescribable monsters of ancient times were scattered among the greenskins. The horde gathered back to the castle as though they were commanded by some unseen captain.

“This must be the work of a dark lord,” said the people of Everledden as they bore witness to the ensuing chaos.

Cries were heard across camp. “Battle stations!” “Arm the treeswings!” “Hide the children!”