The known history of the city-state begins with Oerson and his great march into Akados. In the time of his grandchildren, the co-regents Oesson and Oeric, Hyperborea rose up in rebellion against its former masters in Boros. The matter was decided in the great battle of Hummaemidon, when the Hyperborean polemarch Asenna defeated the combined legions of the Borean polemarchos Crassin and Odontius. Polemarch Asenna was slain in the battle, but the grateful co-regents did not fail to recognize his generals, the strategoi, who persevered to see the battle through to victory. One such general was Strategos Oleus Castorhage. For his efforts, he was granted the right to establish and rule the island province of Insula Lymossus, in the newly established Hyperborean Empire. As the harmost (military governor) of the province, Oleus established his “Citadel Castorhage” on the great granite tor overlooking the meandering Great Lyme River.
The Castorhagi family ruled as faithful stewards of the Hyberborean imperators for more than 1,700 years, as they built a successful colony and burgeoning city upon the banks of the estuary. Everything changed, though, when a mysterious visitor called upon Harmost Demos Castorhage. Barely 21 years of age at the time, the harmost greeted the mysterious stranger, who was swathed entirely in robes of brownish-yellow, with a featureless mask over his face. The stranger spoke with words of courtesy, and knew some of the family passwords from older days, so Demos heard him out…cautiously. Demos was repulsed by the stranger’s smell, a combination of rot and strange spices, but the things he whispered caught the young harmost’s attention and held him transfixed. For most of the night, the visitor whispered too quietly for the guards to hear, but with Demos leaning eagerly forward to catch every word. When finally the whispers ceased, Demos Castorhage leaned back as if in a daze. He ordered fine quarters to be prepared for his guest, and announced that he must ponder what he had heard.
The stranger called himself the Eburnean Oracle, and remained at Citadel Castorhage. Each evening he would consult the harmost into the small hours of the morning, whispering ever for Demos’s ears alone. The mysterious oracle never left his rooms except to speak with the governor, was never seen to eat, and was never observed without his full robes and mask. Finally, after six years of the ceaseless whispers, something changed. The barracks of the Lymossus Legion caught fire in the middle of the night. The wooden barracks built against the stone wall of the citadel burned well, and the fire did not spread beyond its confines. As the
Hyperborean legionnaires attempted to escape, they found the barracks doors barred from the outside, and the Castorhagi somatophylakes waiting outside all of the windows with their sharpened xiphos, ready to kill any who emerged. A few of the soldiers managed to fight their way free of the initial flames, only to die upon the blades of the Castorhagi bodyguards.
By morning the entire barracks had burned to the ground, with more than 800 Hyperborean soldiers inside. As the city of Colonia Lymossus looked on in mute shock, the harmost emerged from the citadel accompanied by the Eburnean Oracle. He publicly declared the independence of Insula Lymossus, and himself as King Demos Castorhage I. He then appointed the oracle as his Chief Advisor — and with this, the reign of the City-State of Castorhage had begun.
Hard Alliances
Though Castorhage had its first king (and shortly thereafter its own calendar) based on the crowning of Demos I, its troubles were only beginning. Demos had thought the Hyperborean empire would be too distracted to worry about a single island province, but he hadn’t reckoned on the public reaction to the burning of the legionnaires. Castorhage immediately sent envoys and offers of terms and payment in an attempt to make peace with the eastern empire, but to no avail. Skirmishes escalated on land and sea between the Castorhagi and the Hyperboreans, and within a decade Castorhage found itself engaged in the Eleventy Years war with Curgantium, the Imperial capitol.
War with Hyperborea proved brutal. Though the Hyperborean Imperator had his hands full dealing with Heldring raiders in the south, and humanoid raiders in the north, he still mustered the forces to engage
Lymossus in a long-drawn-out military conflict. Within 20 years, Demos was dead — slain in battle — and 7 years later his oldest son Belos I had fallen as well. Demos’s second son, Belgos, took the throne as Belos II and continued to prosecute the war. Alhough a direct invasion of Insula Lymossus was problematic for the Hyperboreans, Castorhage nonetheless suffered brutally, and won very few of the battles that occurred. It became a war of attrition that Castorhage had no hope of winning. Over the span of the war, the city-state went through nine royal successions.
By the time King Parvalis fell in 121, the end of the city-state seemed near.
With Parvalis’s son only an infant, and no strong heir ready for the throne other than an unpopular and aged uncle, discontent among the people of Castorhage finally came to a boil. The heads of the Four Great Families of Castorhage — the Borxia, Tredici, Nightshade, and Castorhage — met secretly in the tunnels of the Underneath. At this meeting, the four house patriarchs established the “Illuminati,” and called upon the arch devil Caasimolar to intercede on their behalf with the imperator of Hyperborea.
The former President of Hell proceeded to broker an agreement, whereby hostilities ceased, the city-state retained its independence, and a treaty was signed. However, the deal stipulated that the crown of the city-state would pass from the decimated Castorhage family to the Agrige Borxia. In no position to protest, the Castorhagi assented to the agreement, and the beginning of the Borxia royal dynasty began.
The Borxia kings did bring some measure of prosperity back to the city after the peace, and a great measure of prosperity back to their house. But not all were content with a Borxia king. The house of Castorhage began to grow strong again, and the grandson of Parvalis gathered together allies and the other malcontents. Times grew hard for the folk of Castorhage under the years of Borxia excess.
The Borxia reigned for 161 more years, including the rule of King Fidelius the Foul, known today as the Reign of Misery due to his brutal, oppressive, tyranny and the toll it took upon the city. But even that did not tip the scales away from the Borxia. When the Reign of Misery ended with Fidelius’s death in 198, his gluttonous and wastrel son Porfask the Large began his own 16-year reign.
Such was the Large’s largesse that the race known as the swyne began to appear in the city from parts unknown, and upon King Large’s death, these hedonistic folk began to worship the former king as a god — worship that within a century began to produce true clerics. It is commonly agreed that King Large did not ascend to godhood, but who (or what) is granting spellcasting abilities to the faithful remains a great mystery.
The first year of King Large’s reign saw the outbreak of the First Great Fire that killed hundreds and rendered thousands homeless, and the reign of his grandson saw the first outbreak of the plague known as The Death, which claimed sixty percent of the populace. After the plague burned itself out, the survivors turned to the extermination of the rats that were deemed to have been plague carriers — and which had multiplied rapidly, due to the great many plague corpses left throughout the city. This extermination became known as the “Pyre of Rats,” for the hundreds of thousands of rats and rat corpses burned in great bonfires. The rats, mysteriously and utterly unpredictably, fought back. In the dead of the night, hundreds of citizens found themselves beset by rat swarms that devoured them in their beds. Many view this event (known as the Biting Feast) to be the first manifestation of the Rat Queen within the city. Finally, due to ruinous taxation during the reign of King Crowan, the long-simmering discontent in the city reached a boil, and revolt followed.
Anarchists seized Crowan and “shortened his hair by a head” upon the headman’s block, earning him the nickname “Short-locks” in the history books from then on. The Anarchists then stormed the Capitol in force. Here, they seized the Eburnean Oracle, who was hiding within the King’s chambers, apparently having served as advisor to the monarchs of Castorhage for 297 straight years. The mob took the protesting creature, still swathed and masked, out to the Traders Gate Square, where they burned the seemingly immortal creature alive. They wrapped the charred remains in weighted chains and threw it into the river, rejoicing to be done with the foul influence of the individual whom popular opinion blamed for most of the terrible decisions of rule made over the last three centuries.
The Second Castorhage Dynasty
With the death of King Crowan, the city found itself without a Borxia monarch for the first time in 222 years, but their freedom was to be short lived. The Castorhage patriarch, Rissel, was a powerful devil-binder and used his considerable magical abilities — and astute use of political favour — to claim the throne and bring the rule of Castorhage back to the family of that name. The Second Castorhage Dynasty continued uninterrupted for the next 1,500 years with the exception of a trio of short interludes when non-Castorhagi queens ruled. King Rissel was known as the Binder for his magic, but in most minds for his successful binding of House Castorhage to the throne, apparently permanently.
It took some time for the city-state to recover from the centuries of Borxia rule, but changes in trade laws brought in more traders from afar, generating greater tax revenue than in past times, and this period also saw the establishment of the first formal clubs and guilds as a way to both promote and regulate trade among the growing middle class. However, something even more significant entered the city at this time as well. The city’s first guild, the Guild of Harlots, was established under the leadership of an outspoken and influential woman, her name unknown, and who disappeared from sight thereafter.
The first hiccup in the new dynasty of the Castorhagi occurred almost 150 years later. King Prywid, called “the Cursed” (for a variety of reasons) made the beautiful young Coal Borxia his third queen. She soon became pregnant and bore him a son, and people thought that perhaps the string of Prywid’s bad luck had ended. When he suddenly died two years later, they quickly decided differently. Queen Coal wasted no time in taking the reins of power over the citystate and beginning what became known as the Years of Terror. Though it had likely existed for some time within the city, it was during the Years of Terror that the Great Coven truly rose to prominence within the city.
It was from this time that the saying, “Every thirteenth woman in the city is a witch,” came from as the coven took on many important and even official roles within the city. The Church of Mother Grace was suppressed, and the High Bishop of the Church, Jord of Croix, was burned at the stake on the steps of the Great Cathedral for refusing to renounce his faith before a tribune of witches. Legends say that the flames of his pyre burned all day and all night with him standing peacefully within them until the final hour, when he finally crumbled to ash in an instant. Though Jord died that day, word of the manner of his death did not, and the Church of Mother Grace underwent something of a resurgence even as it went underground during the reign of Coal. And when the Years of Terror ended 40 years later, with Queen Coal Borxia burning on those same cathedral steps, the office of the Holy Father of Castorhage was ordained in the name of Jord. Only seven years later, Jord was beatified by the Church and named as the patron saint of the city.
The grandson of Coal and Prywid, King Artelo I, assumed the throne, and the crown rested once again upon a Castorhage brow. During his reign, Artelo resolved to reverse the fortunes of the city-state by making it the hub of a vast trade empire. To this end, he commissioned the construction of the Great Docks to accommodate the largest trade ships of the world. He also greatly expanded the trade fleet of the city-state, sending its ships abroad for trade and exploration. Two years later, the Castorhagi ship, the Brave made landfall on the western coast of Libynos, and four years after that Castorhage established its first trading colony on Tandril Island across the Crescent Sea.
Artelo’s daughter Malice succeeded him and continued his overseas policies, with the additional strategy of using the city’s criminals as slave labour. She established the Forest Coast penal colonies, and was the first Akadian monarch to establish peaceful contact with the wild elves of the Green Realm. Unfortunately, this peace was not to last. Her own great grandson, Lertis Tevoy, seeking to follow in his ancestors’ footsteps, decreed that a road should be built through the Green Realm to pierce its inner secrets. He then set about protecting the road with forts along its length, and had the audacity to be surprised when the wild elves interpreted his actions as an invasion. What followed then was a ruinous 24-year war of attrition fought against the elves of the Green Realm.
The elves’ numbers were never truly known, and almost every battle was fought on their terms in their terrain. Not a single significant engagement was won by the Castorhagi, and every foot of ground gained was done so at the expense of gallons of Castorhagi blood.
When finally even King Lertis had to admit that the Great Road was a failure, he was forced to mortgage the Crown Jewels to pay off some of the resulting debts. More than 76,000 Castorhagi had been slain and more than 3 million gold sovereigns spent in the futile war. The Crown Jewels would not sit long in a bank vault in Curgantium, however. Lertis Tevoy’s half-brother, Terrance Aquiri, made arrangements with a Leng slaver, who purchased the King of Castorhage for sufficient funds to re-acquire the Crown Jewels from Hyperborea and settle the huge debts accrued by the now-missing king. Terrance Aquiri was as surprised as anyone when his plan worked without any problems. The aristocracy, exhausted by Lertis Tevoy’s excesses, unanimously heralded Terrance Aquiri as the new king rather than a traitor. Terrance gained nickname “Acquire,” for his methods in obtaining both the Crown Jewels and the Crown.
King Acquire
King Acquire’s initial reign was largely peaceful and prosperous. During this time, the Castorhagi exploratory ship Brave stumbled upon a never-before-charted island in the Crescent Sea that had apparently risen from the deeps. An ancient, intact palace upon it — believed to date from Phoromyceaen times — made it an extremely attractive find, and Acquire claimed it for the Royal Family, naming it “Royal Island.” He moved his wife and two daughters to the refurbished palaces in this serene, idyllic setting, far from the cutthroat politics of the Capitol. When his much-loved Queen Selene became pregnant again, he resolved that the island should become the permanent Royal Quarters during times of peace. She delivered for him triplet sons, and the people of Casterhage declared it a new golden age for the city.
As the boys grew into adolescence, they proved to be handsome, intelligent, talented, and possessed of a sweet disposition allowing them to cooperate and work with one another without rancour or jealousy. The people, who received regular updates on the Royal Family by official dispatch from the queen, began to call the boys the Crown’s Hope, and saw them as guarantors of the city’s burgeoning prosperity for decades to come. However, when the princes reached the age of 16 and were to be presented formally at the Capitol, tragedy struck. Before their ship could set sail to join King Acquire in the city, the beautiful Royal Island sank as suddenly as it had risen. Everyone upon the island was lost: the entire royal household, the queen, the two princesses, and the three princes. The city entered a state of shock, and Acquire was devastated. He could no longer govern, and took to wearing ashes and sackcloth for his self-perceived infractions against the gods. He ultimately abdicated his throne to his cousin Aldwerd, and took up a lonely vigil at sea, waiting for the island to rise again. When it eventually did, 18 years later, Acquire settled upon it, renaming it Bitter Island. The palace still remained, but of course all of his family and retainers were long gone. He took up a hermetic existence upon the island, and King Aldwerd would send the Royal Ship Rosestone to check on his cousin, bringing him supplies and what creature comforts it could. When the ship returned in 686, the island was gone, once more sunk beneath the waves, taking what was believed to be the last of the surviving royal family with it.
There was one member of the family that had escaped the island, though. Unbeknownst to all, one of the many folk of Castorhage who had become enraptured by the Royal Family was none other than the vampire lord Beltane. When the Rosestone made its initial voyage to pick up the Royal Family, it did so with the captain and crew firmly dominated by the god-like vampire. Beltane visited Queen Selene in the night, twice, while the family made its preparations for departure, each time leaving her one step closer to immortal undeath. On the third night, Beltane stepped upon the ship’s deck to see the island suddenly sinking beneath the waves. He dove in and swam to the Queen’s chamber where he found her upon the verge of drowning — and bestowed upon her his final life-draining kiss.
He then buried her deep in the sea mud to await the next night. When she arose as a vampire at the next nightfall, she found that Beltane had fashioned a coffin from her furnishings in the palace. Then, traveling by night and burying themselves in the coffin by day, they made their way back to Castorhage, where Beltane introduced to the Fetch his first and greatest Bride, Selene.
The city long mourned the loss of its beloved King Acquire, but his cousin Aldwerd I proved a capable king, as did his son and his grandson. This proved to be of great importance, for in 751 the poles of the world shifted, the Goitre formed in the western ocean, and the continent of Boros froze over. This sudden event brought great climactic change, including a major cold surge from over the Haunted Steppe and the Crescent Sea. A realm like Reme could weather the sudden shift because of its great territorial resources; the Grand Duke could relocate his people to warmer or more fertile areas as needed. But for a small, overpopulated island like Lymossus, there was no such solution. The Fimbulwinter came to Castorhage when Aldwerd I’s great-granddaughter Queen Gwenth was only 29 years old.
The unrelenting winter storms closed the harbour much of the time, and made life on the island virtually impossible. Help and supplies were not forthcoming from the main continent because of the great fires ravaging the hinterland. The imperial capital at Curgantium was destroyed, and the Hyperborean Empire was on its knees. The Fetch hunted in the twilit days of the city with impunity, daring any to confront them — and Beltane revealed himself to the city for the first time, along with his heart breaking bride Selene, the city’s once-beloved queen. But through it all, the young
Queen Gwenth marshalled her resources, organised her labour, prioritised the city’s needs, and empowered ministers and common folk alike to help find solutions. When the Fimbulwinter finally passed, 15 years later, and brought a much needed summer back to Lymossus, Queen Gwenth found herself ruler of a city that had not only survived, but had found its spirit through the adversity. When trade relations were established with distant Xi’en shortly thereafter, true prosperity began to burgeon in the citystate.
When she died at the age of 57, Queen Gwenth became the only monarch of Castorhage to be given the sobriquet “The Great.”
Unfortunately, her son, King Artelo IV, unexpectedly died only a few months later, leaving the city in political upheaval. During the “Troubled Years,” civil strife wracked the city while a suitable heir was sought. Finally, a nephew from the line of Lertis Tevoy was found and crowned King Corvus Taim. None of his children survived into adulthood, so after his death the crown passed to an uncle and a cousin before finally finding stability in the person of the twin regents Alar and Elspeth. Brother and sister, neither wished to rule over the other; they chose instead to cooperate and share rule in the tradition that the sons of Queen Selene had intended.
When Alar died young, Elspeth ruled as sole Queen until her own death at the age of 80, passing the throne to her own son.
Change of Regimes
After the relocation of Hyperborea to Libynos and its eventual fall, Castorhage found itself largely cut off from continental trade. Attempts to reach mutually beneficial agreements with Reme were proving problematic, as each side wrangled for greater control of the Crescent Sea; most of Castorhage’s focus turned towards its far-flung trade interests in Xi’en and Libynos. The city of Trinidar became a major colonial holding for Castorhage. Over time, however, the rise of Foere altered matters. Suddenly there was a powerful, centralised force of governance on Akados — and where the Hyperborean imperators had become corrupt and distracted, the new Foerdewaith Overking was proving to be dynamic and decisive.
Seeing the difficulty of his position, King Prudus I sent envoys to Foere with oaths of allegiance and orders to negotiate favourable terms with the new Overking, Macobert. The Overking accepted the homage from Castorhage, and granted the city-state a protectorate status rather than that of a vassal state. Foerdewaith inspectors-general were sent back with the envoys to assess the tax burden of the city. Though Prudus’s decision was pragmatic and wise, not everyone perceived it so. There was much grumbling in the streets over the matter of bowing to a foreign power, but the next morning when all three inspectors-general and King Prudus himself were found in their respective beds consumed alive by rats, the city held its collective breath. King Cantor II sent a polite letter of condolence over the unfortunate, yet totally accidental, demise of the inspectors-general — and reminded them that Castorhage’s own king had perished in identical fashion. He chose not to reiterate any oaths Prudus I may have made, and Foere decided it prudent not to send any more inspectors-general. Few, if any, taxes ever made their way to the new capital of Courghais, and for its part the Foerdewaith Crown tried its hardest to simply ignore the city-state of Castorhage.
Reclamation
During the reign of Prudus II, the Overking of Foere called for a Great Crusade to free the Libynosi holy city of Tircople from the clutches of invading heathens. The King lent his sword and his knights to the cause, and was well rewarded for his efforts. Castorhage was given rights to colonise the eastern coast of Libynos, and the city-state wasted no time in doing so. Soon colonies began to spring up along the coast, and Castorhage took its first real steps as a maritime empire.
The new largesse flowed into Castorhagi coffers, but it was not to last for long. With much of Foere’s military strength still engaged in Libynos, a powerful vampire lord calling himself the Singed Man took the opportunity to overrun and conquer the Duchy of Kear in western Foere. The loss was particularly troubling to Casterohage as their own King Prudus II was traveling through Kear at the time. He and his entourage were captured by the soldiers of the Singed Man, and King Prudus II died as his prisoner. Prudus’s widow, Queen Constance, assumed rule over the city and began the long process of trying to convince Foere to expel the Singed Man before he became a true threat. The matter became complicated, however, when a Foerdewaith army led by the Duke of the Rampart was soundly defeated, and the duke captured and turned into a vampire in the Singed Man’s service. All told, it would be 155 years before the Singed Man was finally overthrown.
In the meantime, the activities of the Singed Man emboldened the vampires of Castorhage, and they began operating boldly throughout the city, using the deaths from the first outbreak of the Shabbisian Plague to cover their activities. When Bishop Anthony Mackus discovered that the Fetch had infiltrated the Church of Mother Grace all the way to the Holy Father, he instituted the Great Reclamation, purging the church of vampires and abolishing the office of Father of Castorhage. Mackus became known as the Great Cleric of Castorhage and was given the mandate to “guide the city from darkness.” He quickly implemented a crusade against the Fetch in the city, and soon undead ichor ran in the streets alongside the living blood shed by the Fetch.
While the distant crusade raged, great changes took hold. The Singed Man was finally laid low by the Foerdewaith paladin Sir Varral the Blessed, and his nightmare kingdom in the Duchy of Kear was dissolved. Foere was quick to move in to reclaim its lost realm, but not before Castorhage annexed the port of Tarry as “rightful recompense for the sacrifice of their own king to the cause.” Foere, already beleaguered from its long years of fighting Kear, and perhaps respecting the city-state for its own ongoing crusade against the undead, chose to not challenge this annexation. Tarry became an official mainland port for Castorhage, followed not long after by the secondary port of Kalares Croft.
Even on a social and infrastructural front the city-state advanced mightily. Crown Justice Moravan, well remembering the plague of his youth, ruled against the Crown’s interests in the ground-breaking case Symmons, et. al. v. Tettle Escratory, which resulted in the breaking up of the horrifically corrupt (and extensively Fetch-infiltrated) guild of the Sewagers and Ironmongers. Castorhage also saw the establishment of an Office of Sanitation to oversee disposal of the city-state’s waste in a manner that posed as little health risk to the populace as could be achieved. Hundreds of defunct and dangerous sewer channels were sealed, preventing many avenues formerly used by the Fetch; the Bilges were used as a replacement to move the city’s wastes to the dismal Brine Heath for disposal. King Leris Pallor was personally against the ruling by the Crown Justice (due the immense cost to the Royal Coffers). The Great Cleric, however, supported the ruling — moreover, the Crown Justice was beloved by the people, and King Leris publicly (albeit reluctantly) supported the ruling.
By the beginning of the 15th century, Great Cleric Anthony Mackus had disappeared — undoubtedly at the hands any one of an endless list of enemies he had made in his quest to bring the city to piety. Without him, the crusade against the Fetch ground to a screeching halt. The office of Holy Father was reinstituted by the Church, and the next Father of Castorhage, Umbertine VI (the Conciliator), did much to smooth over grievances and bring a modicum of peace back to the streets of the city. Legends say that the now-sainted Umbertine VI even sat down at a negotiating table with Beltane, the God-Emperor of the Fetch himself, in order to broker a lasting peace. Whatever the truth of this story, under the stewardship of the Conciliator the rampant bloodshed came to a halt within the city-state, and peace was re-established. When the beloved Crown Justice Moravan died only two years later, the Holy Father presided over his funeral — held on the Great Docks so there would be sufficient room for the immense crowds and an entire flotilla of boats to allow additional spectators. The closing words of the Holy Father’s eulogy proved unintentionally prophetic when he uttered, “We will never again upon the Crown Bench see gentle soul and iron will like that of the blessed John Quintilius Moravan.” Since that time, the corruption and depravity of the Crown Justices has been absolute.
The Time of Empire
Despite the peace ushered in by Saint Umbertine VI, all was not well in the city-state. The number of so-called “gods” of Castorhage — largely quashed during the time of Anthony Mackus as he made his stated goal to destroy Beltane — began to grow again. The first report of the Leper King began to appear, along with the Aspect of the Green Man, and the Great Coven claimed that the Devil once again walked the night. The reasons are still much debated, but most scholars of the city-state believe that the mysterious other-realm known as Between was stirring and drawing closer to the mundane world than it ever had before. The height of this increase in godly beings came when the Harvester of Cribs famously made off with the triplets of goodwife Grace Hamminy. It is said that was when fear entered the city and never after loosed its grip. Less than a decade later, in the 41st year of his fruitful reign, King Leris Pallor mysteriously fell from a high balcony of the Capitol. Murder was strongly suspected, but even magical investigation could get no clear answer, so the matter was closed by order of his newly crowned son Worrn I (originally pronounced WOR-in, though later accepted as simply WORN in the centuries to follow).
Early in Worrn’s reign, the fleets of Foerdewaith gathered in Reme for a Third Great Crusade against the Huun in Tircople. Worrn I, wishing to honour the example of his five-times great grandmother Queen Constance, declined to support the crusade — thereby re-planting the seeds of animosity with the grand duchy of Foere. When the next year the entire crusader fleet was lost at sea in a terrible storm, King Worrn’s less-than-sympathetic condolences of “having warned against this foolish adventure” fanned the flames of animosity to a blaze, one that has tainted relations between the two nations ever since.
King Worrn died of a fever at the age of 43, and disloyal advisors then sought to slay his son Tyrus in order to shift the Crown to a different Great House of the city-state. Some claim that the Borxia were behind the plot, others claim the Tredici, and still others point to the Perfida acting at the behest of certain Foerdewaith interests. None of the theories has ever been proven. Prince Tyrus, surviving the treacherous attempt, was forced to take ship in the night, and flee the city. In the voyage to escape his assassins, Prince Tyrus ran across Bitter Island, once again returned from its long rest in the deeps of the Crescent Sea. Fearing being overtaken by the assassins’ ships, and hoping to find a defensible place within the miraculously-preserved Phoromyceaen palace, Tyrus and his small band of companions fled inside. Within, he found not just a place to hide but a means to win back his throne. In the hermit’s cell where King Acquire had lived out his final days, Tyrus found a shining, silver-bladed sword — King Acquire’s own legendary blade Vangard. With this sword of great magical power, Tyrus and his companions turned on the assassins and brutally slew them in ambush. Then taking the attackers’ own ship, Tyrus returned to the city. When the traitorous advisors spotted the sails, they assumed it to be their own assassins returning successfully from their hunt, and made no preparations for defence. Tyrus and his companions attacked the palace, surprising the advisors and slaying all but a few to be kept for questioning. The lesser co-conspirators and supporters were sentenced to exile on Bitter Island, where they were chained to the pillars of the palace and guarded by briny jailers. Tyrus was soon crowned Worrn II, and when Bitter Island once again sank eight years later, the briny guards returned to report that all prisoners had still been alive and chained when the palace slipped beneath the waters.
The reign of Worrn II became known for expansion of its colonial
holdings and diplomatic coups, as the rival Foerdewaith struggled with their own Wars of Succession. King Worrn II sent forth the refitted ship Brave and other vessels far and wide, establishing colonies on the Bream Isles and opening trade with the isolated Gtsang Prefecture. Moreover, King Worrn II’s court was one of the first to formally recognize the newly independent kingdoms of the Vast and North Heath, sending ambassadors to their courts. It is thought that Worrn II’s wisdom might even have soothed the damaged relationship with the Grand Duchy of Reme, but his death one year before that nation’s own independence from Foere meant that his young and inexperienced grandson Luceus was on the throne when the grand duchy rose in rebellion. The Foerdewaith Court, still smarting over the ongoing struggle with the Vast and North Heath states, put intense diplomatic pressure on Castorhage not to recognize Reme’s sovereignty. Stumbling through the political threats with the grace of a blind owlbear, Luceus managed to offend both nations, and soon found himself in the short-but-decisive Short War with Reme. In seven short months, Reme soundly defeated Castorhage’s navy and forever forestalled Castorhage’s future chances to regain control of its former possessions, Tandril Island and the Forest Coast. In the next year, the Free States declared their independence in the Forest Coast, and the Grand Duchy of Reme gleefully became the first to recognize this new state. Worrn’s own death by burning, at the time of the Sixth Great Fire of Town Bridge, was seen as something of a relief, and his own estranged son Musilleus was hastily put upon the throne. Strangely, Worrn was nowhere near the fire itself at the time, an interesting mystery left to be conveniently forgotten. The unfortunate Musilleus was immediately pressured into a marriage with an eligible lady of the city-state, and soon had his own son, Quintus.
Quintus inherited none of his father’s and grandfather’s weak chins, watery eyes, or vague dispositions — quite the opposite, in fact. Quintus was likened to his noble ancestors Prudus II and Worrn II, showing their sharp minds and steely resolves, earning him the nickname of “the Cognate.” It was during Quintus’s tenure upon the throne of Castorhage that the Great Bream shipyards were established and the Elitan-i-Pan Confederation of the Shattered Folk was discovered, opening yet more trade routes for the city. It was also during his reign that the fleets of Castorhage first ran afoul of the monstrous aquatic masters of the Nether Sea, beginning more than two centuries of warfare with the sea-throng of the Sinking Place. When King Quintus Cognate died childless at the age of only 44, his death opened the way to the throne for a cadet branch of the Royal Family.
Quintus’s first cousin Rolith Artyle was next in line, and would have been the favourite for succession — but he had been inconveniently killed by his own uncle in 1548, after using an obscure and rarely referenced rule of the dice game Royal Families. Musgrove the Cold-Hearted, the very same uncle, reluctantly assumed the throne. Musgrove did not rule for long: his research into the properties of alchymic undeath — some say based upon research previously pursued by Quintus Cognate — led to his accidental self-poisoning and death after only eight years of power. It became a Castorhagi legend that his funeral was the only time the sealer of the Royal Crypt smiled while performing his duties. His son Musgrove II succeeded the father and immediately set about undoing many of the draconian measures that Musgrove I had put into place.
Musgrove II’s reign was doomed to be short as well, however, for his father’s research had borne deadly fruit. Musgrove I emerged from his tomb as a lich-like monstrosity after resting for only four years, slew his own son — whom he named as the Usurper — and resumed his reign. Now, he styled himself as Musgrove the “Dead-Hearted,” rather than his former “Cold-Hearted.” A pall seemed to hang over the city during the terrifying — and potentially endless — reign of the undead Musgrove, but the stability it caused over a 54-year reign had benefits as well.
During the second reign of Musgrove I, the money-banks of Castorhage began the novel practice of issuing paper tender, which soon caught on for transactions of greater value. The city began trade and colonisation in Far Jaati. The Empire of Castorhage reached its greatest expansion, and was rapidly becoming a true naval power. Even the 17 unsuccessful assassination attempts against the undead ruler only served to bolster the power and reputation of the city, now referred to as “the Blight” as often as it was called Castorhage.
When King Musgrove attempted to gain even greater power through a transition to demi-lichdom, his plans went greatly awry. The previously un-killable king was reduced to a fine ash that the Father of Castorhage, the leader of the Great Coven, and a Bride of Beltane worked to collect completely, bless thoroughly, then scatter across hundreds of square miles of the Fetid Sea. Castorhage was through with Musgrove the Dead- Hearted. The undead king’s own great-grandson assumed the throne, to much acclaim by all.
The reign of Musgrove’s great-great-grandson, Warden II, saw the addition of trade to the Razor Sea and peaceful contact with the mysterious grey elves (or Sarefein), though no major colonial acquisitions were added at that time. However, during the time of Warden II’s own son, Worrn III, perhaps the greatest discovery in Castorhage history took place when the unassuming accountant Hetherington Quarrus Mabe first made contact with the place known as the Between. The discovery of Between radically altered the direction of the city’s leadership (though in many ways on a covert level), charting its course, even into the present day, toward a wealth of new resources, colonisation opportunities, open warfare, and unspeakable dangers beyond the borders of reality.
A Shadowy Present
Since the discovery and continuing exploitation of Between, many of
the city’s ambitions have been turned in that direction, but not all. Other breakthroughs warrant mention. In the last century, the arts/sciences of golem-stitching and planar pact-making have been virtually perfected. Extra-planar thralls inundate the city, and the creation of ever moreingenious fleshgines has culminated in the creation of the Crooked Promethean. At long last, too, the city-state has discovered new heights in the art of naval warfare, after suffering a series of humiliating defeats to the fleets of Oceanus. In the early 18th century, Castorhage unveiled its innovative new Dreadnought class of warships: ironclad side-wheelers, steam-driven by boilers containing enslaved elemental spirits. Ever since the city manufactured a small fleet of these magically-powered war machines, the Royal Navy has been virtually unstoppable. With the rumoured addition of new fire-weapons yet to be revealed in the waters around Akados, to the mind of Castorhage’s military commanders there is nothing their empire cannot achieve. Whether true or simply hubris, this idea is perhaps best represented in two events of recent years: a single-ship blockade of the Alcaldrich Empire’s port of Caduvar, and the reportedly successful entry into the unnavigable Tempest Meridian by the dreadnought Extirpation.
What this means for the city-state and the rest of the world, remains cloaked in shadows and speculation, but great change is a certainty.
