The History of Etroa and its Empire
Written by order of Master Arlat Cor, under the auspices of the Guild of Histories, here follows a truthful account of the history of Etroa itself, in brief, according to the oaths of the Guild and those taken by the journeyman whose work this is.
From the earliest days, humans have lived around the great caldera in the center of Etroa. It is a very rich land, with plentiful natural resources and unusually rich soil, along with the geysers and rivers. As all Etroans know, the land slopes down towards the center of the caldera. Rivers run down the slopes towards the mountains and the deserts, rainfall is plentiful in the southern regions. Wildlife was common and widely varied, as might be expected of such a rich territory. Of course, there are serious difficulties in travelling through the mountain passes in the rainy seasons, and it was difficult, at first, for Etroa to reach the seas in the South due to the Mountains, which merge with the rim of the caldera to produce high cliffs or steep hills just inland of the coastal regions, save in a few prized harbors, barely large enough for a small fishing fleet.
A word should be spared for the caldera itself, for its center is quite possibly the most impressive yet dangerous part of all of Etroa. A rise in the ground leads to the lip of a chasm, into which the brave and foolish have sometimes descended. Cracks in the rise sometimes give vent to streams of incandescent rock, molten and hot enough to set fire to anything organic that approaches within a few feet. Behind these cracks, inside the chasm, there is more molten rock, and visible on the ledges and outcrops are ancient treasures, sacrificed by the earliest tribes to their deities. Above these riches, and sometimes near them, can be seen the remains of the thieves, robbers, and valiant knights on quests who wished to recover some of these ancient treasures. The caustic environment is almost perfectly fatal to anyone who even dares to remain near the chasm for an extended period of time. Unfortunately for archaeologists, this also tends to corrode away anything not made of gold or silver that ends up in the chasm, limiting the things that can readily be recovered from the pit.
Etroa itself started with the tribes that called the area home. Many of them formed and the details of their lives are largely unimportant for this brief summary, save for a note on their beliefs. Some of these tribes worshipped the lava flows, and some animalistic belief systems appeared, and many minor deities were prevalent, as one would expect of such tribes. But there was one that would end up subjugating the others, and this tribe, the original Etroans, believed in a god of the forge. It is not known when this belief rose, and evidence suggests the tribe had previously worshipped the caldera, as did many tribes in the area. However, it appears that the rise of this new belief may have coincided with the rise of simple metallurgy, for the first idols of this god are decorated or made of copper and tin. This explanation is widely accepted by modern scholars, since it is unlikely that deity whose principle aspects were craftsmanship and creation would be worshipped for long without such idols.
Regardless of the origin of what would become the most common belief system in the Empire, this tribe's development of metallurgy was a huge advance. Copper tools are not as sharp as stone tools, but they can be sharpened much more easily and aren't destroyed nearly as fast as stone tools, and a wider variety of tools can be made with copper, and with more control over the final shape. This tribe fairly rapidly conquered most of the central regions of Etroa, and as they evolved they turned from conquest and destruction to subjugation. The Etroan tribe became the First Tyranny of Etroa, and its rule was marked by harsh centralization, cruelty, and an incredibly oppressive caste system. This is the first appearance of what we now know as the Guilds, except in this incarnation they were the tiers of a terrible caste system and used to hold down the members of other tribes who did not work metal. Any culture other than the Etroan beliefs and practices were functionally outlawed, though the concept of a law was not as developed as it would become in classical times. The First Tyranny was quite obviously hated by everyone under its rule, and before the memory of independence had faded it was overthrown, leaving behind a pair of public works projects that were never finished and a legacy of hate told through stories to later generations, the source of much of our modern understanding of the time.
The First Tyranny was overthrown by what would become the Tribal Alliance, a more or less equal gathering of all the tribes, save for the Etroan tribe itself, which was expelled from the area. The Tribal Alliance wasn't really a powerful entity of its own, every tribe being far more interested in preserving its autonomy after the First Tyranny. It was more or less a collective statement of opposition to the Etroan tribe, and lasted for a couple hundred years as a very loose statement of sorts. However, this would be broken by the rise of the Etroan Kingdom, as once again the banished Etroan tribe had come up with a new metallic invention, and this time, they were here to stay.
The Etroan tribe had discovered the usefulness of the "Sunseeds", a material not found too close to the caldera but in other parts of Etroa. It reacts with water, violently, to create heat, and is a colorful and amazing gemstone besides. The tribe had begun using these gems in Sunshard Spears and the beautifully deadly Macilmires, and they were used to deadly effect, paired with the use of lightly tin-tainted copper, which we now call bronze, from their new home away from the caldera. Their superior metal and the incredible horror which a blow from a sunseed-tipped weapon would inflict a victim quickly conquered the Tribal Alliance. The new Kingdom did learn more than a few lessons from the First Tyranny, and it lasted for hundreds of years, carrying us firmly into classical times. The new dominion was cultural in nature, for their worship of the god of the forge led the Etroan tribe to believe its craftworks superior to all others, and anything produced by a nonbeliever was useless, unfit for use in the Kingdom. This quickly lead to the adoption of the forge deity and the rest of the Etroan pantheon, and from there the Etroan beliefs slowly but steadily overcame the tribal identities. The Guilds arose in a more modern form, being sort of religious in nature, each dedicated to a different Etroan deity who dealt in a different form of craftsmanship. The Blacksmith's Guild was of course the most powerful, followed by other metalworking guilds such as the handful that became the Jeweler's Guild. The other crafts were close enough to equal, though the equivalent of a Farmer's Guild was not as formal as the other Guilds and held no power. Farming was not held as a worthy craft, and this nearly starved Etroa, several times in fact. Following the rise to power of the Guilds, succession changed, from being an election amongst those descended from the Etroan tribe itself to being an election amongst the leaders of the Guilds. Interestingly, bribery amongst the Guilds did not drive most elections for most of the Kingdom, because of a few memorable instances of the Warmaker's Guild, traditionally not a very wealthy Guild during times of peace for rather obvious reasons, insisting that it be a death penalty offense to attempt to sway the vote via monetary means. With a concerningly pointed list of arguments for why this should be so.
Late in classical times, the small kingdom of Misr was claimed by ingenious engineering tricks following the invention of the Lunguma, after the war with the Ofal and defense of Icona, our first Protectorate. The story of that war is told elsewhere and need not be repeated here. Following the invention of the Lunguma and its use in that war, other uses were thought up. The rapid construction of a dam and fortress on the Misr's main river and water supply quickly convinced them to submit and they were colonized. Their desert lands were not all that productive, but their great knowledge of hydroengineering and architecture informed Etroan practice for generations. Misr was conquered due to the whims of the first of the Mad Kings of Etroa, and it seemed at first that it had been nothing more than a senseless desire, for the desert peoples had nothing but sandstone and just about enough crops to feed themselves. But then an ingenious engineer suggested ways to use the dammed water to expand the desert farmland, and for a time Misr became one of the breadbaskets of Etroa. It was here that the modern Farmer's Guild did arise, and their crops did much to help reduce the issues caused by Etroans regarding farming as labor unfit even for peasants. Despite this belief, slavery never took hold in Etroa, for the rules of the deities held that anyone who practiced a worthy craft could not be enslaved, and so while the occasional Etroan took foreign slaves, all of them quickly learned a simple craft, such as woodworking, and had to be freed.
The Angamolen followed the Lunguma, and following the retaking of the Ofal conquests, Etroa turned its attention to the stubborn holdout tribes in the mountains and hills. These were defeated, and the extent of Etroa was now limited by the Askians to the East, and the Sea to the North and South. Immediately to the west laid Misr, and the barren desert ended Etroan expansion in that direction. Etroan society was now nearly homogeneous and dedicated to craftsmanship and to the forge god and his attendants, who had created the world and at times worked in the forge at the center of the world. Naturally, the center of the world was the great caldera in which lived the Etroans, the very center of which was the fiery chasm so sacred to the early tribes. And so Etroa was destined to be the ruler of the world, for why else would the great Molen Aina, god of the forge, place us around his forge and teach us his secrets? So went the logic of the Kingdom's expansion, until it could expand no further over land.
The Kingdom was from time to time interrupted by the rules of tyrannical lunatics, Kings hated by all and denounced as Tyrants, indeed these periods of rule by Tyrants are considered to be the latter "Tyrannies", interruptions in the lawful rule of righteous Kings. The First Tyranny is different, because it was more rule by a single dominant tribe than by an individual, but it still earns the moniker. The crimes of the Tyrants are listed elsewhere, and we will not repeat them here, for they are best left forgotten. Also during this time are the rules of the famed Mad Kings of Etroa, the tales of whom are variously used for morality or amusement amongst young children.
A period of relative quiet ended the Etroan Kingdom, a few skirmishes with Askia, some discontent in Misr, the rise of a rebellious sect of believers here and there. A small peasant's rebellion near the end is the only thing worth mentioning, where a few farming peasants of lower station than the craftsmen of the cities rose against said craftsmen, and promptly rediscovered the pain of Sunseed weapons. The present King, the last, in fact, of the famed Mad Kings, issued them a punishment, the likes of which none but a madman could conceive of. The farmers couldn't imagine it either, and quieted down after the three-year punishment, where they had to work the ground with nothing but the tools they could make themselves, which naturally included no metal tools. For if you could craft metal, surely you would not waste your life as a farmer? The Kingdom afterwards found itself slowly falling into a state of moderately corrupt sloth, not really doing anything of note...until the invention of the Great Galleon.
Etroa had become a more seafaring nation as increased usage of steam power allowed for the poor natural harbors to be widened over the course of generations of work, and we had contacted the small nation of Eld very early on. Their story is likewise told elsewhere, but in exchange for aid we acquire their strange Skytears, which can alter the density of objects. These lead to the creation of huge ships that were unusually light, nearly unsinkable in most conditions, pride of the Shipwright's Guild. The use of these ships to explore the world lead Etroa to three northern nations of Noblin, Koltcher, and Oliven. During a brutal three-way war, Etroa ended up intervening on the side of Noblin, a trade partner, leading to the reduction of the northern pair of nations to colonies and Noblin becoming a Protectorate. The present King, Ounon, declared himself the first Emperor and decreed that his descendants would rule, founding the historical Etroan Empire. This was, naturally, a deeply unpopular move with the Guilds, but the Emperor had a plan. He, and his successors, spent three generations building loyalty to the Emperor, and the Emperor alone, in the Protectorates and colonies (and adding new ones), and used this loyalty to economically and politically crush the Guilds and their corrupt lackies in the government. This clever move would even reduce the corruption problems, for a time.
The Empire now sourced wool and timber from the three northern nations, food from Misr, and Skytears from Eld, amongst many smaller colonies and Protectorates. Its crafts were world-renowned, particularly in metalworking. Engineering knowledge and Engineering Guild membership would rise, and religion fell behind. Religion, after all, was the evil disease of the neighboring Askians, with whom Etroa never quite managed to stop fighting. The industrial era fast approached, and Etroa was far ahead of many nations in industrializing. The Self-Contained Turbine Apparatus was the first of the incredible leaps to be made, and it powered the Etroan nation through to the modern era. The threat of the Yuzuan upstarts loomed large, and so the great plan was laid: The monstrous task of freezing a village-sized piece of the ocean into a warship and sailing it across the seas to batter our way onto the Yuzuan homeland and claim it for our own. Operation Eclipse forced a peace onto the hated enemy and we claimed many of their territories. Shortly thereafter, the islands of the Darbred chain were also turned into a Protectorate by funding one of their warring tribes with our outdated weaponry, all of which was superior to what was in use on the islands beforehand.
It did not take long, however, for the Empire to come apart at the seams. Modern sentiment was turning towards democracies, and an unexpected problem arose for the nobility, crippled by the work of Ounon and dwindling in numbers. High-quality arms and armor were becoming available to regular Etroans. No more did peasants fear being literally exploded at the hands of a noble's loyal soldiery, since they wore the same bullet-resistant lightened steel armor and carried the same incredibly accurate rifle. The rise of the sixth ruler of the Empire was marked by a disagreement over succession and a series of pretenders coming forwards for the throne, and in the midst of a brutal, but limited, civil war the remains of the nobility tore itself to pieces fighting for the throne, and by the end there was little left. One of the nobility, ruler of the Warmaker's Guild's largest city, eventually claimed the throne with the skills of his Guild, but a peasant revolt swept away the remnants of the Empire. The Guilds took control over the entirety of Etroa, and for a time their money ruled the country. Then the People's Guild appeared and the other Guilds were not sure what they could do to stop the upstart without sparking another revolt, and before long it was too late. The People's Guild had reformed all of Etroa into its modern democratic form.
Finally, we have reached the modern era, and find Etroa as we know it today. A land of factories, and workshops, massive dams, ports carved into mountainsides, entire towns built and rebuilt as necessary, craftsmanship valued more than anything else. Mairan was recently conquered, and its elite CAP units are already the envy of most of our Protectorates despite the many problems Mairan itself has had with rebellious elements. Darbred as well has had some problems with the rise of cults, who claim to follow the traditions of their tribes. In addition, there is unrest amongst the members of some Guilds, particularly the Farmer's Guild, Forester's Guild, and Herding Guild, that their crafts are not paid as well as they should be. Farmers, loggers, herders, and similar producers of essential materials have less power than others in Etroa, since others can charge much more money for their crafts. They believe they should be considered to be members of all crafts, since they allow all others to do their work. Some see merit in this, and some do not, and it has become an increasingly large point of contention.
The great extent of craftsmanship throughout Etroa gives it a shine, one that covers the problems with a sheet of silver, gold, and steel. Those who do not craft, are not valued. Farmers are still only tolerated, despite the best efforts of the enlightened who prefer eating, even with low-quality utensils, to starving next to cabinets full of golden plates. Etroa's resources as well are running out, and tensions with Askia are climbing towards what might be an ugly war. But Etroa will surely make something great out of the situation.
It is, after all, what we are best at.
I am now even more sorry because oh crap, this is even longer now. Hence the spoiler.
Excerpts from "The Annals of the Mad Kings"
The "Mad Kings", or sometimes "Mad Queens", of Etroa are a series of monarchs who ruled at different times across our history. No particular relation is any dynasty is required, because Mad Kings rarely popped up repeatedly. Instead, "Mad King" is an almost honorific title, given to someone so breathtakingly, earth-shatteringly mad that they looped all the way back around to successful, though to accuse them of sanity is generally considered to be a form of insult. For these are no garden-variety insane monarchs or boringly normal raving lunatics, no, these are the truly Mad. The monarchs so loony they accomplished things through a combination of complete unpredictability, accident, by failing their original goals, or the guiding hand of fate dropping onto the cosmic scales so heavily it's amazing they still balance out for us mere mortals. More or less, anyway.
Their stories are legends amongst Etroans, and are commonly used for children's stories teaching morality, or meant to amuse. They're also a favored topic in schools, and writing some history about them is one of the earliest tests a prospective member of the Guild of Histories might take. Counting amongst their ranks such beloved figures as Ractios the Fractured, Autrea the Diplomatic, and Larnen the Untrusting, these wonderful characters are a cornerstone of Etroa. Here follow the accounts of their deeds, from first to last.
Early Etroan kings, and the odd queen, came largely from the Blacksmith's Guild, which in those days was a highly traditional institution with quite a lot of power. The other Guilds typically spent generations building enough standing and backing amongst the people to put one of their own in power, and the Weavers' Guild was poised, seven Kings after the ending of the Tribal Alliance, to put their monarch on the throne of Etroa. Unfortunately for them, their candidate was dismembered in a horrifying steam-powered spinning wheel accident, and as they scrambled to put their campaign back together (their candidate, unfortunately, was well beyond the point of no reassembly) the election happened and they lost their chance. For the next King was the kleptomaniacal Earus of Anosiath, a monarch raised to the throne from the Architects' Guild (a separate institution from the more modern Guild of Architecture, origin of the modern Guild of Structural Engineers, but not the origin of the Guild of Engineers, and entirely unrelated to the Guild of Stonewrights and Architects). The Architects' Guild had also been planning to put someone on the throne, and the sudden collapse of the Weavers' Guild attempt cleared the way for the great success. The Blacksmith's Guild had failed to win back the throne because the previous monarch had been one of theirs, and is rightly remembered only as Dairin the Impressively Inconsequential. How he received this name is not well understood, apparently even at the time it was considered to be truly meaningless. He accomplished absolutely nothing whatsoever and is generally considered to be the most incredibly mediocre monarch in the history of monarchies. Regardless of the exploits, or technically lack thereof, of his predecessors, Earus was poised to catapult the Architects' Guild to fame. And then it turned out that he was something of a possessive sort, and the stress of monarchy turned him into a full-blown must-possess-everything kleptomaniac. Now, usually his demands were easy enough to meet and he DID revolutionize some aspects of Etroan city planning, but then he realized that there were nations outside of Etroa, and things went downhill rapidly. He demanded the small nation of Misr. Now for most people this would be really, amazingly problematic. Declaring war on a desert tribe with large numbers of horsemen and camels and the ability to navigate around the desert is a terrible idea. However, the Misr were a farming people, and spent much of the year on the banks of a large river that came down from the mountainous rim of the Etroan Caldera. One of the King's retainers, a devious-minded architect (we get a lot of them like that in Etroa, actually), came up with a cunning plan. He'd spent some years living amongst the Misr, so aside from being a treasure trove of information he knew how to break them. So the Etroan military built a dam on the river, and when the Misr marched on the dam, they built a pair of fortresses to protect it from attack, and forced the Misr to surrender. However, in his later years Earus became depressingly more sane, or at least better at being satisfied with the things he could steal, and in a show of remorse or possibly an intelligent long con he used the dam and its reservoir to build up an extensive irrigation system, making the Misr rich, sparing many Etroans the inglorious fate of a farmer and also making Misr permanently dependent on Etroa. Misr is now just a region of Etroa, its populace is Etroan in every way, but back then it was often all that kept them in the Kingdom.
The second of the Mad Kings was Ractios, the Fractured. He was one of a slew of monarchs elected from the Architects' Guild after their massive growth in power caused by the absorption of Misr and all its knowledge into the Empire. Known principally for adopted entirely different personalities for any given mood he might be in, Ractios demanded a palace and throne room for every moon and personality. This resulted in an almost fractal-looking spiderweb of palaces and gates and doors and courtyards making up his still-expanding palace, when he was finally brought down by a revolt of the farmers, angry once again at their mistreatment under the more powerful crafting Guilds. Or, rather, nearly brought down. The mob broke down the first set of doors into his palace, only to discover another five equally well protected (and magnificent) archways raised in front of them. And so the mob split up and broke down those doors, to discover that the defenders had retreated into a maze of corridors, unoccupied throne rooms, and courtyards. The mob burned a dozen throne rooms, and finally got bored, and went home. Thus was Ractios, who had retreated into his "absolutely terrified" throne room, the one with the pit trap, spared the wrath of the angry farmers. This also spared many architects and masons from unemployment, since after making the massive throne complex there were no more jobs for the medium-sized army of masons and architects he had raised to do the job. Ractios' story is told in many forms throughout Etroa. Farmers tend to paint him as a villainous figure and a reminder to have patience, others point out the wisdom in waiting out your enemies and misdirecting them. Still others point out the glory of architecture, but we're pretty sure that's limited to the Guild of Stonewrights and Architects, and nobody cares about them.
Some generations after Ractios, Autrea the Diplomatic is recognized as the third Mad Monarch, so named for the number of diplomatic agreements she made in Etroa's favor. She was, in fact, not very diplomatic at all, but rather unendingly precise to a fault. No sane person could stand to debate the finer points of a treaty with her, and thus she managed to get great concessions out of foreign rulers and diplomats who wanted desperately for the minutiae to stop. She is known as Mad, rather than merely a great (though obnoxious) diplomat because her obsession with precision dominated every aspect of her life, and indeed it is said she died after ruling for only eight years, after spending seventy-two hours screaming at servants to set her dining table "properly", an arduous affair involving a primitive sort of ruler and many, many fine adjustments to the silverware. This was not unusual, but it was during a time of unusual activity of the caldera, and the minor tremors, which went on for six weeks afterwards, continually disrupted the silverware. It is unknown of whether she died of dehydration, a stroke or heart attack, or a servant finally having had enough and killing her, but it seems that nobody in the palace, whatever happened, was inclined to investigate her death. Her lesson for children is that if you are more knowledgeable than your opponents, you will win. Her lesson for adults is that when arguing with an intelligent child, you will never win.
Strangely enough, when Autrea was succeeded by a member of the Guild of Histories, an unusual affair in an of itself as that Guild is not very powerful and rarely wins elections, the new monarch also became a Mad King. Larnen the Untrusting, an incredibly paranoid monarch who saw plots everywhere and in everyone, and routinely removed executives from power after they'd been there just long enough to learn the job, since he was afraid of them plotting to overthrow him with their knowledge. In the process, he accidentally managed to eradicate corruption from the governing bureaucracy entirely, since every single powerful family, Guild, or foreign power ran out of corrupt choices for the position long before his reign was up, and by the end he was literally picking random people off the street to serve as bureaucrats. His rampant paranoia crippled the efforts of the rich and powerful to corrupt the government for decades, and despite the fact that he eventually determined that the floors were in on the plots and he needed to fly away out his uppermost tower's window to escape, he is generally regarded as a successful monarch. His story is given usually as an amusing tale, but it is sometimes paired with a lesson about unpredictability or randomness. The Statisticians Guild supposedly venerates him as a living proof that random sampling is a more effective system than nonrandom sampling.
Arana, the Arachnophobe. True enough, Arana was an arachnophobe. However, she was not merely arachnophobic. Similarly to Larnen before her, she was perhaps a mite paranoid. She suspected the arachnids were out to get her, and had death squads sweep the grounds of the palace hourly to kill any arachnids that could be found within it. After many years, she is believed to have suffered some form of head trauma, and became convinced that a rare form of beetle-like insect was in on it as well, since it had eight legs, just like spiders. Therefore, she ordered the entire kingdom to destroy every spider and beetle they could. This worked about as well as you might expect on the spiders, and indeed Arana would die of fright upon realizing her efforts had failed. However, they managed to destroy the beetles, an impressive feat for sure. Etroa harvests nearly doubled the year after the War on the Arachnids, and modern scholars generally believe that the beetles were native to Askia, of a sort that does great harm to many crops that would otherwise thrive in the Etroan climate. Arana accidentally aided the Kingdom, without meaning to do anything other than murder arachnids and things that looked like arachnids. Her lesson tends to be one of finding good in evil acts, such as the attempted removal of an essential component of the ecosystem, though most arachnophobes simply applaud her attempts to destroy spiders, understandably.
Nemnarch the Mad is one of the most famous of Mad Kings. He is not called "the Mad" because he was insane, but rather because he was constantly, unreasonably angry. His incredible temper lead him to rage at anyone and anything that remained within his sight for more than a few seconds. He is not a Tyrant, however, because he did not ever actually seem to do any serious harm to anyone, despite his endless anger. Instead, he is remembered as a Mad King for his contributions to the Etroan vernacular, in the form of various curses, insults, and (mostly derogatory) sayings. In addition, Nemnarch was most certainly a master of anger management, as he carefully stored and grew his anger so that he never lacked any of it to spew forth at everyone around himself. It is said that his masterful raging and cursing won several border skirmishes with Askians, who found themselves unable to meet the mad Mad King's eyes or stay within range of his lethal vocabulary, which is said to have caused bleeding from the head, deafness, and crippling lack of self-esteem at distances of up to fifteen hundred meters. Later attempts to weaponize his curses have proven unfortunately unsuccessful to date.
Last of the Mad Kings was the incredible Sormatin, known variously as "the Betrayer", "the Devious", and "the Twistedly Humorous". His exploits involve many pranks the like of which no sane human being could ever devise, the issuing of bizarre punishments for crimes, and the betrayal of every single political ally he had, one at a time, in the most exquisitely complicated ways, which never seemed to end badly. For him. He managed to betray the legendarily corrupt Guild of Politicians, a group that had recently formed and attempted to dominate Etroan politics. After a mere two decades in existence they were the strongest Guild and poised to elect the next monarch...but then Sormatic, formerly a member, betrayed them and revealed their corrupt dealings in a lengthy speech to the common people. These people formed an angry mob, burned down the Guild of Politician's headquarters and stole their entire treasury. The repugnant Guild dissolved shortly thereafter. After that, he managed to get himself elected King, by aligning himself with every other candidate and betraying them in one after the other. He then set punishments so unbelievable that some of them are still on the books, such as his famous defeat of a farmers' rebellion, in which he forced the rebellious farmers to surrender every tool they had that they had not made themselves, and forbade them from buying new ones until three years had past. Needless to say, this punishment impressed and horrified every single farmer in Etroa, for they had expected mass hangings for treason and had instead seen the most inventive punishment imaginable levelled on their fellow farmers. The punishment for a Farmers' Guild rebellion is, in fact, still in Etroan Law and has remain unchanged since that rebellion. Sormatic would go on to do many other hilarious deeds and, arguably, misdeeds, before betraying everyone in the palace on his deathbed, by informing them all, mere minutes before expiring, that he had paid them with fake coins for three years, and that they were all fired in addition to that. Where the real money went is not known, but it is suggested that the sudden and unexplainable gain in money seen by the Guild of Traitors shortly thereafter may be connected. The fact is, however, that we'll never know, since the Guild of Traitors was a brief-lived and obviously unstable venture that failed shortly thereafter due to infighting.
--- Excerpts from "The Annals of the Mad Kings", covering a few of the notable characters in that list.
(Brief completely out of character author's note: Yes, I know, Madman writing something humorous about "Mad Kings". Trust me, the idea first occurred in the above lore piece, and then I realized that, really, they should get more time in the spotlight, so I added another one, and, well, now look where we are. Anyway, the connection to my name I realized only after I started writing this, but I hope it gives you guys some additional amusement because this is supposed to be amusing.)
Author
Topic: Commander Arms Race: Etroan R&D (Preliminary Turn 5 - Final Phase) (Read 19329 times)