Rilan The Conquerator

150 years of conquest had made Rilan think he'd truly seen the full extent of opposition any fragment of the continent could throw at him. He'd made the first incline in the unnaturally lumpy kingdom of Hilly, had cut the first crystals that made the lenses that blew the Freespeaker's Freezepeak Keep apart and shut them up for once. He'd burnt the Brown Marsh black and erected the Dark Step to mark his being the sole army that stood against the swamp's improbable dangers and horrendous plant life. But sitting upon a sledge throne dragged by a hundred slaves through the muck of the north he'd been given pause by the towering machines of the invading Fire men.

Though it was never his intention to do so, Rilan's conquest brought a shaky peace upon the continent of Toronna. No single force had been able to fend him back and so he'd steamrolled across every petty fiefdom and quaking mage stronghold until he reached the very tip of the sandy icebergs of the north. There he established the Hightower Basin, a pet project he'd quietly drawn up while crushing all resistance. It had the simple elegance of a humungous muscular titan who called himself 'The Conquerator' but nonetheless expanded into a complicated and difficult to govern territory unto itself. Simply put, nobody was sure where Hightower ended and the basin began, but Rilan ruled as effectively as he could, chopping bits off of people depending on their crime, with the occasional murderers head being personally lopped off to show the good people their ruler was still alive and ruthless.

So infamous was Rilan's capability for barbarism and mercilessness that slowly but surely the other former kingdoms came grovelling back begging for a piece of his conquered pie to keep their people from starving. Rilan's chief wife had advised him to demonstrate restraint to these pitiful welps, so he killed the messengers sent, stuffed their bodies with all the gold and jewels possible and had them delivered, bloating and wealthy, back to the various crumbling kingdoms of the south. They did not bother him again.

As time went on, the apologetic attitude of the peoples of Toronna eventually won his heart over and Rilan decided to dispatch half of his army to bring law and order to the south. Slowly the army dwindled, some killed in the defense of the crumbling boreal cities, others deciding to stay in select territories and establish a ruling class. When the final force arrived at the southernmost tip of the grasslands, immediately preceding the winter wastes of the Freespeaker's peninsula of ice they concluded that the return trip was not worth it, built the tower of Roam in a day and started calling themselves the adjudicators, police of the continent.

Satisfied he could leave the kingdom in capable, or at least calm hands, Rilan journeyed past the mountains that protected his people and sought out a quiet sanctuary to live with a reasonable horde of vassals and barbarians and hopefully die killing an enormous Sun Beast. Instead, the aging conquerator came across a desolate pre-conquered wasteland occupied by a group of fire touting freaks and their hellish machines. A pitched battle ensued, Rilan dispatching a single messenger to explain the invasion to his subjugate nations and personally devouring 50 infantrymen. He described the taste of war-crazed fire islander as 'Spice-alicious'.

Although Rilan's army was able to cripple the enemy onslaught, the conquerator himself was supposedly killed by a toppling war machine he'd been personally sieging. The beaten down, unoccupied cities of Toronna belived themselves free of a tyrannical empire and marched North only to fail due to their own botchery in considering the ruler they'd so reviled. They were stopped by a safegaurd of baseborn vassals dedicated to their barbarian king. The Adjudicators too sought to take control of the basin and met the safeguard head on, 100 elderly knights bulling through a stalwart collection of pitchforking, teary eyed kinglovers. Just as it seemed the Adjudicators would take control of the island for good, a message came from Rilan's Navy. Bitter that Rilan hadn't left Hightower for him, the Royal Barbarian Navy's Royal Barbarian Commander had sought to conquer the people that cut down his king himself and launched an assault on the Fire Islands to the east. Repelled and with half his fleet burnt at sea, he sought the help of every faction on Toronna individually, implying the wealth of Rilan had been left to him and would be given to any force that joined him.

Armies assembled along the coast and the Barbaric Sea commander slowly gathered together a naval fortress known as the Bastion at Arms. An interwoven seaborne city met the retaliating Fire Islander's head-on and in a great show of forced cooperation blew the Flamin' Navy asunder. In a final stroke of bitter apocalyptic revenge, the High Priest of the Islands released the subterrenean behemoth Bastinado and retreated East, salting the line of island behind them to prevent any foe from assaulting them again.

Uninvolved in the war until this point, the Freespeakers left their mountain, having long deliberated what the giant hole that had been blown in their fortress could mean to them they concluded to develop something similar to see if they could fire it from inland and make the damage look symmetrical. Armed with advanced experimental siege engines the Freespeakers went from one city to another looking for a vantage point to launch their weapon. The beast Bastinado decimated the Northern territories and burrowed towards the Black Marsh until, due to a margin of error involving forgetting which way to point their weapon, the Freespeakers fired directly at the burrowing monstrosity and saved the island. Lauded as heroes and geniuses (and never denying it) the freespeakers established a simple rule for the various Kingdoms of Toronna. Although there would always be war in the marches and borderlands of their land, no Toronnan could ever ignore the call to arms to defend the nation from foreign invaders lest they test the wrath of the Freespeakers unspeakable (and deliberate) weapon.

Centuries passed. The western peoples of Phan crossed the ocean and made peace with Toronna after an invasion attempt by the Fire Islanders on themselves. The methods of operating their war weapon were forgotten and the tools used to work it spread across the land as novelty trinkets. An uneasy, but constant peace descended and neighbor grew less fearful of neighbor. The barbarians were rounded up and recruited as Adjudicators, never letting any one army dwarf the independent police force. The Bastion at Arms crumbled and was divided among coastal cities as so much dock and frigate fodder. A sense of normalcy infected the people of a previously mysterious and tumultuous nation and the quarreling Fire Islanders Invasion was eventually forgotten, as were the Eastern Islands themselves.



Rilan awoke in what could only be the Dark Step, his monument inscribed with a dogma of marauding and controlling the land. Confused, he simply stated "This is my effin' temple!" and kept his eyes closed in the damp darkness. A slithering voice crept into his ear.
"Yess. You are at here which is the place YOU created!" the voice rattled off the walls at odd angles, like the words themselves didn;t hold together right. Rilan shook his arms and realized he was shackled to the sacrificial slab he'd married and eaten his first wife upon.
He grunted and tried to headbutt the source of the voice, but found his neck bound as well.
"Nooo, you'll be here awhiiile. You need an edge-ooh-cay-sshun." The voice continued. "It hass been a long time since you were in this land, Conquerator, and you have many ssonss of ssonss of ssonss still living in fear of your return."
"Damn right!" Rilan yelled, and found the darkness lifted from his eyelids as the source of the voice pulled a mask away from his face. He still couldn't move, and it hurt to form words.
"But your nation, the one you stupidly created..." The voice became aggressive, lurking somewhere outside of Rilan's vision. "The nation of marchess that never belonged here, it needss help from itss grandfather."
Rilan found he could move his head a bit and turned to spit at the source of the sybillant voice, but it crept out of his field of vision. Thin grey hairs crawled over his eyes and a second deeper voice began questioning him.
"Would you sacrifice the learned men you taught a lesson, the people you turned to worhipers and forgot about, or the traitors who sought to usurp your rule the moment they knew they could best you?"
Rilan thought a moment and then thrashed around wildly in his chains looking for an escape. He caught sight of his body and froze. What was once seven feet of purest pillaging form Barbaria could muster, Rilan saw the thin varicose form of a corpse connected to his neck.
The second voice began speaking again, a him filling in the air before every word.
"Let me explain to you why those are your options." Rilan listened, and when the creature speaking behind him finally finished, he immediately said "The Freespeakers." and had a half second to wait for a response before a roar filled the dank chamber and he felt the shackles pulling away from him.
"Well, that'll be all Rilan." The first voice hissed. "Be sseeing you."
A dagger came down and swept across the Conquerator's eyes, coming just short. Unflinching, Rilan felt his mind ooze back towards unconsciousness.