It is impossible to tell the history of Estrelin without speaking of its twin, the Kingdom of Reyalen. Even before the formal creation of each kingdom, the two regions were closely linked together due to the symbiotic relationships that arose early on after the fall of the Enterin Empire. In the present times, there is a royal union with the head of the Atrilark dynasty present on both thrones of Estrelin and Reyalen. Before this union, the two kingdoms were common friends that often traded with one another and joined forces to defend against various invasions that would have easily overwhelmed them individually. But there is a much deeper story to the first country I designed for this world, prophets who heard the whispers of primordial gods, wizards who invented magic that could bend the world, and several lines of kings that sought to forge an everlasting kingdom in the shadows of those who failed before them.
The historical region of Estrelin is located in the southwestern corner of Enterin. It is a heavily forested region and was exposed to numerous kinds of magic thanks to its geography. The overall look of the land is heavily inspired off of the landscapes in Southeast Michigan where the horizon is always covered by the tree line. Hills are scattered across the land as well which make navigation off the main roads somewhat difficult for outsiders. As you move eastward towards the river and Reyalen, you would find that the land becomes more and more scarred with the destruction of the Stellar Intervention. Large craters are scattered across the land where meteors impacted the planet and large ravines cut through the land, evidence of battles beyond human comprehension. Finally, there is a single mountain in the north eastern corner of the country, though it is one of the smallest mountains on the continent. It sits in line with the mountain that Fort Karis is built upon which can then be traced to be a part of the massive Barrier Mountain range.
In ancient times, the region of Estrelin was populated by several coastal settlements, along with a few that sat along the Verna River. They avoided the inland areas because of the massive forests and the magical creatures that lingered in them. At the time it was a strong natural defense against invasion, but the Enterin empire was able to traverse them thanks to their innate sorcery. After a short war, the Estrelin region was subjugated and used to research magic. The Empire dispatched several colonists from the north which would mingle and eventually merge with the original inhabitants, thus the Estrelin culture was synthesized. As the influence of the Enterin power began to fade due to internal politics, the Estrelin people began to dissent around 50 years before the Intervention. This dissent began when the inhabitants of Estrelin ventured into the surviving magical woods and learned the truth of the nature of magic.
All magic flows from the Source. A world that exists in parallel to reality where power and energy allow for anything to manifest before you. While physical bodies can never reach it, a soul can make its way through the veil and visit it for a time. When the first scholars entered Estrelin’s forests, legends say that they laid down and slept for three days in order to detach their souls from their bodies, their dreams were filled with visions of an old and ruined land where old gods fought amongst each other over the question of mortality. Upon their return to Waking World, these scholars found that they had brought more than just visions with them. When you visit the Source, your soul is saturated in that primordial magic that lingers there, it sticks to you and when you awaken, you find that you can now channel magic as if you were born a sorcerer.
The scholars took their newfound powers and studied them in secret. Slowly they discovered that there are many different streams of magic that flow across the world like invisible rivers. In fact, the largest of such streams, originated from the mountains and flowed in parallel with the Verna river. It was discovered by the scholars of Estrelin once they awoke from their three day hibernation. Utilizing the old powers of the Source, the scholars learned how to extract magic from these streams or the ambient magic that surrounds us, and then channel it into various spells. Like the sorcerers of Enterin, these spells were mostly elemental at first. Creating and fueling fires, spraying frost or toxic gas, and at its most extremes, harnessing the power of storms and tides to devastating potency.
But the one great limiting factor to the scholars was the volume of magic available to them. They were unable to harness too much power or else their bodies would be overwhelmed by the energy built up inside of them, for that reason they needed a conduit to focus magic through. It was theorized that magic could be channeled through items that were drenched in magic, just as their souls were capable of twisting magic once they were exposed to the Source. Efforts began to trace the flow of magic to the point where it crossed from the Source into the Waking World. They were only met with disappointment when they discovered that the beginning of the magical stream parallel to the Verna river was much higher than the mountains, as if magic flowed from the stars to the mountains and then into the river. The scholars returned home disappointed, as the Empire began to collapse, they feared that a bloody massacre would be committed when Enterin deployed their sorcerers to suppress the revolts.
But then the Intervention began and Vester’s second moon was deorbited by unknown means and collided with the opposite side of Vester that Enterin is set upon. As it did so, various debris either fell from the sky or was suspended in the great ring that now hangs above Vester. While the world breathed a sigh of relief after barely avoiding a mass extinction event, the scholars of Estrelin wasted no time in collecting the scattered fragments of the moon that fell to Vester. If magic came from the stars, then surely stones bathed in their light could make the perfect conduit. In the centuries following the fall of the Enterin empire, the first astronomers rose to power with three goals in mind.
To protect the sacred forests that are gateways to the Source to ensure all citizens access to magic. To defend the people from tyrants such as those of the old Empire by utilizing their sacred magic. And to unite the people of these forests under a single country that guaranteed their rights and privileges.
From these three principles, two of the seven successor kingdoms emerged. The first was Atrilla with its capital in the city of Estrelin which the region would owe its namesake to in the present. Atrilla was a monarchy that emphasized careful study and conservation of the woods in order to create an impenetrable defense if the north attempted another invasion. Their plans were inspired by the Corial valley, a large stretch of land between present day Greyden and Estrelin that is covered in forests with wildlife that is actively hostile towards human life. These forests are so dense and the animals that live there are so attuned to magic, that very few people have ever managed to live there.
The Atrillans covered their northern border in new forests and attempted to populate these woods in obstacles that would make Atrilla an unappealing target. The eventual result of this was a form of stewardship over the land that was unfamiliar to most other Enterin based cultures. A careful interplay between what the Atrillans took and what they conserved was maintained with a web of trade routes between their more friendly neighbors to the east and the south.
Speaking of the south, the nation of Vernlin formed around the southern point of the Verna River. While the north was concerned with any potential invasion, the south was in a much more secure location allowing for the further development of magic. Their capital was named Soul Haven and was the site of many religious revelations. Several of the Celestial myths originated in Vernlin during this time, often acting more as a syncretic version of several other myths across Enterin that drifted down the Verna river or towards the west through the trade relations established by Atrilla.
Their efforts culminated in the formation of the Astronomer’s Guild and the establishment of the sixteen High Priests, two institutions that quickly spread across multiple nations dedicated to the technological and spiritual advancement of magic. Each of the High Priests were dedicated to the different gods along the Celestial Cycle. The Cycle was derived from the ring of constellations surrounding the north star, the moon, the great ring, the boundless ocean, and the vagrant stars (which would later be discovered to be their own planets.) These objects would be gathered together into the pantheon of the Meta and the Eterna and influenced massive parts of Estrelin’s culture from the calendar to the focus of magic’s progress.
(Sidenote: These myths are the other stories I’m writing for this blog right now, or have finished if you’re reading this in the future. I like to imagine that these are one adaptation of the myths and that there are several other variations out there that range from slight changes to complete contradictions to what is “canon.”)
The Guild was the evolution of the original scholars, who continued to develop magic and spread it to the general populace. The greatest discovery of the time was that the remnants of the second moon could be used to not just channel large volumes of magic, but to store magic for later use. Meteors were tracked down across the country before they were mined and smoothed into components for more complex rituals. Which meant even greater discoveries were made which meant large spells and so on…
As Atrilla and Vernlin grew closer to one another, their nobility began to slowly integrate into one another. Eventually, in the year 778, the two countries were united into the singular Kingdom of Estrelin under the rule of the Atris dynasty. Her coronation was at the southernmost point of Estrelin on a cliff overlooking the sea. There a large plaque was planted onto a stone pillar to commemorate the occasion. This is the Queen’s Rock and is a symbol to all mariners that they have passed into Estrelin’s waters, while affirming that the authority of Estrelin is affirmed by the Celestial pantheon which is clearly visible from this elevated peak. The translation of the writing states:
By the grace of Nemra and the Celestials above, here on the 15th day of the month of Atark, 778 years after the time of Intervention, Queen Vera Atris was crowned monarch and protector of the Kingdom of Estrelin. All that is before this monument is the domain of her and her descendants now and forever.
The country kept the old political divisions of the two former kingdoms and used them as the basis for the feudal structure that Queen Atris sought to expand. The Kingdom is divided into three major duchies along with thirteen other positions of varying power that all swear vassalage to the monarch in the city of Estrelin-Propper. Two of these duchies are named Atrilla and Vernlin and are centered around the areas where the two successor kingdoms’ cultural legacy was most prevalent. The third duchy was established during Atris’s time in order to counterbalance the power of the other two, the duchy of Starcrest lies along the Verna river, where its capital of the same name represents the largest river crossing available. This led to a decentralization of power within Estrelin which became a necessity as orders from the capital could not quickly reach the frontier of the Kingdom due to the old forests they had sworn to protect.
The Atris dynasty would rule for about two and a half centuries, which was a time of relative peace within the Kingdom even if the lands in the north experienced a period of instability. But their reign of peace would be torn down with the rise of revolutionary new ideas in neighboring lands.
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