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Fort Vehl: History and Rumors: Difference between revisions
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The date of [[Fort Vehl]]'s founding is lost to time, but as with many places in the world, the location always seemed to be used for something. Submerged remains of huge dock pylons litter the bay's bottom, scattered like sticks in the hand of an overactive child by the strong undertow. From a study done by [[Layonara]] Surveyors, Inc. in 1437, at least five different types of wood are represented and the decay and location of the pylons indicates a spread of around six hundred years. Occasionally even older items are unearthed from the silt of the bay by a particularly violent storm. | |||
What records exist of Fort Vehl are contained in twenty-one thick volumes secured in the temple to [[Rofirein]], next to the temple's own four hundred years of recorded history. The eclectic collection includes [[wills]], deeds, several volumes of legal decisions from a fastidious judge two centuries dead, a sea captain's journal, news sheets and flyers going back several centuries. Also included are a sheaf of letters from a town gossip circa 1070 that laid waste to every reputation of the day with such erudite bloodthirstiness that even today they remain a thing of legend and have been reprinted twice ("Letters from Home, or Gossip in the Age of Law", 1344, publisher unknown, and "Peony Lamplighter; A Tongue Mightier Than a Sword", 1408, Brelin House Publications). One interesting bit of history revealed by this massive collection of miscellaneous parchment is that Fort Vehl was, for at least two centuries, an oasis of lawfulness in a sea of self-serving desperation thanks to one place: the [[dragon]]-carved Temple of Rofirein. | What records exist of Fort Vehl are contained in twenty-one thick volumes secured in the temple to [[Rofirein]], next to the temple's own four hundred years of recorded history. The eclectic collection includes [[wills]], deeds, several volumes of legal decisions from a fastidious judge two centuries dead, a sea captain's journal, news sheets and flyers going back several centuries. Also included are a sheaf of letters from a town gossip circa 1070 that laid waste to every reputation of the day with such erudite bloodthirstiness that even today they remain a thing of legend and have been reprinted twice ("Letters from Home, or Gossip in the Age of Law", 1344, publisher unknown, and "Peony Lamplighter; A Tongue Mightier Than a Sword", 1408, Brelin House Publications). One interesting bit of history revealed by this massive collection of miscellaneous parchment is that Fort Vehl was, for at least two centuries, an oasis of lawfulness in a sea of self-serving desperation thanks to one place: the [[dragon]]-carved Temple of Rofirein. | ||
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The decline of the rule of Rofirein law in Fort Vehl has a definite beginning; a spring day in 1266, when the halfing Dorchester Goldwicket employed a number of graduates of the [[Mistone]] Academy of Innovation to blow off the face of a hillside in search of a fabled gold/silver/gem/platinum mine (depending on who was telling the story). Aided by a passel of gnomish and dwarven engineers, Goldwicket had bought the land with the intent of mining. As the Rofireinte temple was in one of its periodic actions against a group of unusually organized [[rogues]], they took his money and gave him the deed. What Goldwicket found was not gold -- but it might as well have been. For when the face of the hill crumbled under the spectacularly controlled [[Al'Noth]] blasts, there sat an elaborately carved archway, untouched by the pyrotechnic violence still echoing across the town. The stout [[halfling]] was the first to walk through the pried-open doors, and in an account recorded by the town crier, found | The decline of the rule of Rofirein law in Fort Vehl has a definite beginning; a spring day in 1266, when the halfing Dorchester Goldwicket employed a number of graduates of the [[Mistone]] Academy of Innovation to blow off the face of a hillside in search of a fabled gold/silver/gem/platinum mine (depending on who was telling the story). Aided by a passel of gnomish and dwarven engineers, Goldwicket had bought the land with the intent of mining. As the Rofireinte temple was in one of its periodic actions against a group of unusually organized [[rogues]], they took his money and gave him the deed. What Goldwicket found was not gold -- but it might as well have been. For when the face of the hill crumbled under the spectacularly controlled [[Al'Noth]] blasts, there sat an elaborately carved archway, untouched by the pyrotechnic violence still echoing across the town. The stout [[halfling]] was the first to walk through the pried-open doors, and in an account recorded by the town crier, found | ||
<blockquote | <blockquote>...a huge room, with a shrine to an unknown deity on each wall and a [[cold]] floor of marble tiles, the center of which is laid as the likeness of a cross in alternating grey and white slabs and a marking of great arcane power glowing red in the exact center of said cross. | ||
</blockquote> | </blockquote> | ||
The reason for the room was discovered that very day, when an angry and very drunk townsman with a home near the now much shorter hill attacked Goldwicket on that tile floor. The halfling was fatally stabbed, only to find that he was able to stand and walk away! Moreover, as he rested behind a shrine to staunch his still leaking wound, he found himself healed in full. Several days of testing confirmed it -- the room was spelled to allow combatants to fight without [[death]]. How such a place came to be, that had the power to [[heal]] people just before the moment of death, is unknown -- there is no other place in Layonara like it to this day. Goldwicket saw the possibilities and immediately set about cleaning and decorating the room, adding a hostess, seats, and a keg station, and began to schedule fights. After a few months he was a very rich halfling, and in the one and only free election ever conducted in Fort Vehl, ran for and won the title of Mayor away from the Rofireinites. | The reason for the room was discovered that very day, when an angry and very drunk townsman with a home near the now much shorter hill attacked Goldwicket on that tile floor. The halfling was fatally stabbed, only to find that he was able to stand and walk away! Moreover, as he rested behind a shrine to staunch his still leaking wound, he found himself healed in full. Several days of testing confirmed it -- the room was spelled to allow combatants to fight without [[death]]. How such a place came to be, that had the power to [[heal]] people just before the moment of death, is unknown -- there is no other place in Layonara like it to this day. Goldwicket saw the possibilities and immediately set about cleaning and decorating the room, adding a hostess, seats, and a keg station, and began to schedule fights. After a few months he was a very rich halfling, and in the one and only free election ever conducted in Fort Vehl, ran for and won the title of Mayor away from the Rofireinites. | ||