"...Skana burned – burned so fiercely that olden tales speak of how the neither moon, nor sun appeared about their respective horizons for many a day’s. Refused to lay eyes upon the bloodshed awaiting their steadfast gazes. Hardly anyone could blame the all-encompassing deities, representative of all that is good and natural, of peace and serenity – All that was of light and darkness. The skies remained a sickly black and the clouds a dirtied brown. All that came to bid them greetings was the rainfall of ash sweeping over the folk and the seared vestiges of those they once called family and friends, and the dwellings they once called home.

Skana herself was weeping beside her folk. She could hardly avert her gaze from the butchery which transpired, for she had seen all as she has always seen all. She was witness to man’s greatest moments as she was to their pitfalls, both their capacity for sacrifice and the folly in their character. She had seen many a war, many an empire fall at the hand of another poised to take its place, but this – this was a devastation not yet achieved to such catastrophic proportions. Skana was in such dismay as she felt the pain and despair of a folk that had yet to fully know the true meaning of the word, as she too felt every bit of aversion and anger consuming the Valeriaans, the sentiments and passions that drove them to enact such a sin without hesitation, nor remorse. It was in those coming days she too finally wept – tears which extinguished the remaining flames cast about the land looking for more to feed upon in such barrenness. It was her tears which brought an end to it all at last. And though the land burned no more, what her tears could not heal was the unseen toll done to her folk and the repercussions it would have upon an already uncertain future. There was no remedy, even in all her great might, that could ever heal such a wound.

The folk called the tragedy “Mordúnn” – the Black Dawn – to memorialize the sorrow of Skana. To remember the time they wept in solidarity with one another. It was the end of a world they once knew, and the beginning of one that forever reminded them of the victors’ capacity for ire.

That was over two hundred years ago, and the Valeriaans were as much in power then as they are now. Their despotic reign is the bane of all prosperity and contentment of the commonfolk, who live in fear of an empire all too quick to punish and all too obliged to be unforgiving. They are a folk who live in a world with a past torn away from them and a future long faded from sight. A world in which the fundamentals of edification and proficiencies are forbidden to them, the promise of prosperity left to those who lay claim to the spoils of war. But that does not stop them from longing. It is all they have left. While the many could only hope there would come an end to the Valeriaans, others took to their courage and raised a blade in a stoic defiance.

It was on the day proceeding the fall of Heímdäll, as they gazed upon the ruins they once called home with both heaviness in their hearts and a indignation thought only to possess the Valeriaans, that there came a glimmer. Not one to set flames once more to the already burning Skana. But that of a call, a beckoning to action – to take up arms ever so defiantly in the wake of the newly formed empire. They called themselves the Oathbound, for did they make an oath to resist the Valeriaan reign as they did in olden times. As they always would in all the future held.

But oaths were a disregarded concept left to the ages when men gave their lives to the most sacred of promises, to uphold the word they so valiantly gave. The Valeriaans in turn sneered at this conception. At a notion they confidently deemed archaic and foolish.

What was used as an expression to deride the folk of a region thought to be of a more uncivilized and barbaric means, now was proclaimed loudly upon the tongues who adopted what would be a title. A legacy. For Heímdäll. For the folk who were denigrated because of their circumstances upon birth. For the folk who took up arms against the Valeriaans in olden times. For the homeland which birthed the heart of defiance. A rebellion was formed of unforeseen heroes, the bravest of hearts among the commonfolk.

The two adversaries have stood at odds with one another for over a hundred years, for the Oathbound are the last hope the commonfolk of Skana have left. Though they may not boast an outward display of support due in part of the grave consequences, it has not stopped them from furtively yearning from the shadows, from behind closed doors, in the intimacy of trusted parties, the victory that had been lost to them those two hundred years ago.

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