Excellent, Bob! I should really write a few brief entries myself....
In the meantime though:
In the meantime though:
So I've got a definite order now, barring changes to Rivanna's traits that might see her chapters changed or exised. Volanna is chapter 2, Rivanna chapter 3, Svartalfar Palace chapter 4, Stonewarden (yes, Stonewarden) Chapter 5, Illusionist Chapter 6, somethingsomething Leaves Chapter 7 (the only one I've yet to write) and Nyxkin Chapter 8. Always assuming any of it actually fits. In any case:
Ljosalfar Palace Wrote:Chapter 1: Sarcodes Cycle
How many years had passed in exile since the first battle was lost, in a winter never broken by the spring? Arendel Phaedra shivered, alone on her balcony. Even after all the years of civil war, a part of her heart still refused to believe that Faeryl - Faeryl Viconia, the Winter Queen, protector of their people through the harshest seasons of each year, and long her beloved sister in all but blood and name - had turned against her people so completely. Arendel still tried to convince herself at times that there had been something she had missed, some chance to make things right, before the deadly persecution sanctioned by the Winter Court had led at last to the eruption of civil war. Perhaps if she had trusted Faeryl just a little bit more, and echoed her call for the new traditions of her Winter Court, their people might have followed their mutual lead; peace might have held, and unnumbered lives might have been saved. Yet how could she have willingly abandoned the ancient traditions to which she and all her people had devoted themselves for centuries? Even in retrospect, how could she wish to have more deeply trusted a Winter Queen whose new rites were symbols of intrigue and deception, and who in the end had sanctioned night raids on the homes of Ljosalfar innocent of any crime but their old and steady faith?
Slowly, she shook her head, huddling her shoulders against the cold, staring out across the frozen plains. She drew a deep breath, blinking latent tears from her eyes before they could fall, and exhaled, gathering herself, standing tall. Hating the choice she had to make, wishing the past could change, did nothing to absolve her of her responsibility. Ill-equipped though she still felt to lead her people through the winter after centuries as their Summer Queen, Arendel Phaedra knew her duty, and steeled herself to it silently: In part - in very small part - her task was to make the best choice she could, that would lead to least disaster for her people. Yet she knew the larger part of her duty as well: To stand behind the choice she made, and then to accept and take the blame when it went ill and brought pain and misery and too great a measure even of death upon everthing she cared for and everyone she knew. Too well she knew, in the unceasing winter that seemed only to grow more bitter with each passing month and year, that no choice she made - nor any made by any of her people - could go otherwise anymore. Her choice was between catastrophes, and even so was no choice at all: She already knew very well what she had to do.
She looked sadly over her palace - the palace raised too close to Faeryl's own, the better to sustain their civil war - her eyes lingering, yearningly, on the swaying trees of the great atrium, beneath the Summer Dome. The glass helped keep the winter snows at bay, but she well knew how the cold seeped in through the ground; the beautiful life and green, growing, health of that little grove, like the whispering breeze that swayed its branches, drew constantly on the palace's gentle magics - and on hers. The trees would live, perhaps even thrive, so long as the spells held out, but she knew no enchantment alone could sustain her people forever against the winter's growing cold - and they were quickly approaching a time when such magic as they had must be turned to meet more urgent needs than even all the hope and cheer she could bring her people through her beloved palace grove.
She descended from her balcony, down the winding tower stairs, toward the base of the grove itself, where the heads of the great families awaited her decision - a decision, as she finally acknowledged to herself, wholly driven by necessity. The civil war should have ended after the loss of that first battle, when the Winter Court, apparently far better prepared for rebellion than the sudden, outraged rebels themselves, had nearly captured or slain the entire Summer Court. It was only with the assistance of many local civillians, her own brother's noble self-sacrifice, and the timely arrival of support from outside the city that she or any of her Court's leadership had managed to escape. Had she bowed to reality then, and led the many supporters she found beyond the city walls as far as possible from Faeryl's center of power, there might have been hope yet for the people of both courts and all those who stood with each.
Instead, they had warred, her people insisting to themselves that they fought for what was right because it sounded so much better than killing - and dying - for revenge. Arendel's palace, raised without the aid or consent of the Winter Queen, near enough to the Winter Court to continue the deadly strife, was nevertheless too far away: Far enough to prevent the forces of the Winter Court from overrunning it before its defenses were ready, but therefore and by the same token too far away for any hope of victory. Marching painful miles through the hostile and frigid wilderness, her forces dared not rest without triple guards, nor separate to hunt, lest they be ambushed by the highly-mobile forces of their nominal enemy ... and all the while, along the way, they increasingly had to do battle their true enemies as well: All the manifestations of the deadly cold, together with foul and icy creatures seemingly born of the winter itself, from monstrous beasts to the malicious little frostlings - like pale blue goblins with bones of ice and horns like icicles protruding from their heads - that loved to strike during blizards from the midst of the swirling snows.
A journey through the winter wastes was difficult enough, but a journey directly toward the heart of the enemy's power, with the magic of Faeryl Viconia and her Court Illusionists to counter any spells Arendel and her Court Mages might work on her soldiers' behalf, was suicide. More than one rebel army, depleted and demoralized by the journey even when the Nyxkin - elven riders of the Winter Court on snow leopard steeds - hadn't decimated them already, had arrived at the walls of the Winter Court only to be stopped cold, forced to fall back, and then torn to shreds at last by a deadly counterattack. The best Arendel could say in defense of their war effort was that the Winter Court's forces, when they dared to come so far, were turned away with equal ease at the gates of the Summer Court.
The war was worse than a failure: It had ravaged the whole of the elven people - the Ljosalfar of Arendel's ancient traditions and the lately-self-styled Svartalfar of the Winter Court - at a time when each would be in dire need of all their strength, and perhaps of the other's strength as well. Surrender of any kind was no longer an option; Faeryl and her court would see to it that anyone who did would either die or come to wish they had ere long. With the choice of doing nothing identical to continuing the war with fewer and shorter sorties as the winter closed in all around and Svartalfar huntresses and Nyxkin who seemed to somehow thrive in winter tried to cut them off from everything outside their defensive walls, there was only one real possibility: To flee.
She came before the gathered assembly, and stood at the feet of her Summer Throne in all its green-sheltered grandeur, formed by spell-assisted nature from the bole of a still-living tree ... and she told the gathered heads of the great Ljosalfar Houses her decree. There still were places in the world where a few elves survived who were loyal to their Summer Queen. If she led her people in search of a new home in one of these small and sometimes-secret settlements, her magic and the spells of her Court Mages could help to sustain them all without danger of intervention from the Winter Queen or her Court - if only because they all would be so far away. They would have the choice of turning aside from danger whenever it manifested itself, instead of needing constantly to march toward a single, heavily-defended goal. It would soon even be safe to rest with normal watches and to live - so far as possible - off the land, if only they could leave Faeryl and her court far enough behind. Even the huntresses and Nyxkin could only safely travel so far afield if they intended to ever return to their Queen and Court. Soon enough, the two Courts would be so far apart that no invading army from either side could hope even to reach the other's gates across the deadly winter snows.
A few loud voices persisted on other sides of the debate, and for a while they were answered, but the decision had been placed in Arendel's hands already, and her answer had been proclaimed. Her people, she knew, were beginning to make preparations, and there was nothing left to do but to lead them and to aid them - and she prayed, without knowing who could possibly hear her prayers, for the welfare of her people in the terrible migration that lay ahead, through snows far deeper than they had been when she first fled the Winter Court, and that would only be growing deeper as time passed.
That night, with preparations already underway, alone out on her balcony once more, she looked toward the horizon and the city that lay beyond, and her heart offered another wistful, silent prayer - for no matter what crimes the Winter Court had committed, no matter though Faeryl Viconia, whom she had loved almost as a sister, might be as treacherous as the most vengeful of her advisors could believe, still she knew in her heart that there were innocent elves among those Faeryl had named the Svartalfar, and they too were her people, or had been in the summer months of bygone years. Thanks to the long labors of the Winter Court in times of bitter cold, they perhaps were better prepared than her own rebel people could be, but even so, she was acutely aware of their suffering, for in the end they were as vulnerable to the unceasing snows and frosts and deadly winterborn beasts as she.