Leoviedo

"They would tell us to bow, to forget, to live small lives in the shadow of their crowns. But we are not small. We are a people who rise together, who make the light by our own hands, and I tell you now: the dawn is not theirs to command!"

Across Ravreka, children are brought up with fairytales. From the cradles of hamlets, to the bosoms of noble ladies and their nurses, all races tell tall tales of their ancestors and mythical heroes. One such child was of the D’Bernardi dynasty, whose rule was marked by chivalry and good. Enye grew as the youngest daughter to a throne - with plenty of siblings which would be in line before her, thus she's never paid much attention to politics, nor courtly intrigues, too much of her mind of swashbuckling adventure. She neglected her tutors, her studies in favor of learning to ride, to hunt, to shoot, to wield a blade. Because she had six siblings before her, four sisters and two elder brothers, she was allowed her indulgences.

Then came a day where the kingdom was overthrown, her entire family slaughtered by their own vassals who had taken to turning their cloaks in favour of the cult of the Warning Star.

This event cast the idyllic kingdom into civil war, with the loyalists of the crown pushed into one defiant castle at the western reaches of their borders. It is their brave sacrifice that had allowed Enye to venture deeper into the frontier to learn of knighthood, connect with strange allies and finally return with a triumphant and vengeful host. Her success was in large part due to an infatuated Forest Spirit - a favoured prince of theirs known as Oleander - who had fallen head over heels for none other than the princess herself. It was an arduous journey, their relationship, at times a harder one than the warpath Enye was forced to take up at such a young and sudden time. It took guile, empathy and a lot of time, but the Spirit was eventually taught something he hadn’t known for all the millenia he had been working at an alliance with mankind; love instead of feral predation.

Knights were cast from their horses, cultists thrown into the fires of their own design and heroes fell at Leoviedo’s gates.

At last, the princess who had finally obtained a true understanding of knighthood stood in her family’s throne room. She held a choice, weighed it in her heart, for to wed the Spirit would leave her entirely tied within their eternal schemes and risk Oleander’s trickery. In his stead there were lines of allies she had taken under the wing of Leoviedo, whose heroics matched those of the tales of old and whose character was tested in their loyal service.

She took the risk, to safeguard the vulnerable kingdom’s border in exchange for her own life’s ambition and happiness - placing herself into the hands of a being tied to some alien law beyond anyone’s comprehension.

With the Old King - weaver of Kingslaw - in attendance, a pact was struck, one that inadvertently spared countless Ascorni lives. Enye, now queen, made sure to present her terms with Oleander at her side. She stood unflinching before that eldritch monarch and demanded that - in exchange for a realm where Spirits and mortals might stand as one - human, dwarf, pelagekin, and wyrmskinned alike be allowed to endure. That the King’s advancing woods cease their march to devour the towns of men. And that her heirs be granted the right to be raised in compassion, bound to both worlds and estranged from neither.

Leoviedo now stands as an exemption from the norm of monarchies of the world as a whole. It joins ancient magic with common life, extinct avians dot its treetop skies and Spirit walks hand in hand with the common man. The people are provided for by the woods that live and breathe interwoven with their tall castles - whose white spires sparkle in swarms of fireflies. Its borders, including the autonomous duchy of Sloboda, are patrolled by veterans of the civil war. Young knights in shining armour and billowing capes, who cleanse the darkness and rule with benevolence.

And yet, to the powers of Licca and Smyklion, it is a thorn thrust into their eye. A kingdom who keeps up trade routes but refuses corruption, a crown that cannot be bought and lands that will never be sold. Both eye up her fairylike lands, each seeking to undermine the other by proxy and more than eager to leave the righteous nation in ash to do so.