Creation of the Black Blade

The Black Blade's creation tied very much into the history of the Redgrove family. Once one of the seventeen princes of the nation of Wirinan and the Wyrlin people. In particular, the prince Rychter, a man of great passions and emotion; his compassion, grief, love, and hatred were boundless and quick to change. This along with a compulsive ambition and a need to see his family name not forgotten to time formed a dangerous and reactive concoction.   Of the Wirinan noble families, the Redgroves were among the weakest. Rychter being the sole survivor of a fire that killed the rest of his family and destroyed their villa. Fate seemed to command that the Redgroves were to die, Rychter rose his fist to the gods and denied to them. He would gather up the men of the surrounding villages and his vassals and then marched upon the next weakest noble. History would never forget the name Redgrove if he had a say. He wanted a kingdom to match his pride.   While much of the kingdom of Wirinan was undesirable, the young prince was shortsighted and marched the sixteen others. They say that many were lost in the fighting, he would find in time that while his people were spurred to action by his ambition, it alone can not rule a nation. Starvation ruled and lawlessness spread like fire. All the while the war to unite the land was growing ever more bogged down and seemed doomed to fail soon enough.   Then came a warrior who wield a blade in an eastern fashion. He is unlike any man of history so important, as of his motives we know nothing. He seems to have been without them. A man with no ambition. While he came to the prince's side, we can not say why, and historians for millennia have searched, perhaps he saw the prince a destined for great things or perhaps the met and became like brothers. Whatever the truth the man who wields the blade in an eastern fashion was said to be wise beyond all his years and it is said he wielded his blade in such a way that it is unknown if he controlled the blade or it controlled him. It was his wisdom that tempered the blade of the young prince's ambition.   The warrior is different from many men who are remembered throughout history. Many achieve power through ambition. This warrior though had no ambition to speak of, no motives for himself. He simply was a man of mercy, who helped those he came across. He wandered into the world for reasons no man could speak and would join the Wirinan king for no reason that he ever spoke, providing the young king his knowledge and wisdom when the boy merely had a land to his name. As to why one can only guess, some say the warrior of the east saw greatness in the prince-king, others say they meet by accident and became like brothers in a night.   Along with the eastern warrior's wisdom, the short-sighted king was steadied and began to make use of the land to the best that it could provide. They began to unite all of Wirinan, crushing the prince-kings and bring the people of the land together. He cut apart his enemies and destroyed the bandits that tried to harm his lands. They brought in practices helped change an almost inhospitable land into one where life was sustainable and even flourished over time. It is said on the completion of the compliance of his lands Rychter uttered the words " Tha ula nar'arkyr." In proper tongue this would mean, we are reborn.   Rychter turned his eyes to the cardinal directions and began to spread his people out to claim other lands in order to secure power and resources.   It was at the height of Rychter's power that the warrior left. His distaste left unspoken.   Rychter was alone, how had his friend and partner. His will was iron, his right to rule was absolute. The prince king could not suffer the indignity nor would he. In time the king would find his old friend. The warrior did not flee to another land only to an old keep once forgotten, for he knew that he could not run forever and too many would fall to the ambitious king's wrath.   Rychter saw that his friend had been accompanied by some of Rychter own men with him, they who had begun to fear their lord. While some of his personal retinues stood guard, the iron king had grown powerful and could not stand the might of there former master At the top of the tower the man from the east waited for his king to meet him.   There had been a time when the question the king might have asked was why. Why had his truest friend left him but he had been king for a long time and his arrogance had grown so when the two men met again they both only nodded in one last sign of respect to another. They then rushed each other, their ties were forgotten.   They had come far together ever since the days when the prince-king was just a small Lord on a small throne, all alone. The man from the east had helped Rychter become the man he was today and both paid dearly for it. Once the man of the east would have avoided every blow but now it was the king fought as furious as his teacher, but the teacher was still stronger.   At the end, when the young king lay upon the ground. The warrior apologised and took his own life. The man of the east took his own life with honor instead of letting a man he loved to spill his blood because he could not have that torment placed upon his friend and he could not bring himself to kill his friend.   They say though that this day did not end with that. There was one event that would seal that day in the mind of Rychter forever. On that day as the king stumbled into the next room, searching for aid to his wounds, there before him stood a relic of his own past. The throne of the prince when he was merely a humble boy with wild ambitions. The warrior of the east had kept the tiny throne of the king's humble origins. a keepsake from the time the warrio had travelled to the prince's land offering his servitude and friendship to the man who would become the King of Wirinan.   The king would take his friends armor, blade, body, and his old throne for himself. The blade become his new guide as well as the weight of guilt upon his shoulder. Many would recall that the first of the king found great temperance and wisdom when the blade was by him. The blade eased the black flame of ambition. Whether this was from his guilt or the blades natural arua it is unknown. It is said the rune blade took in the soul of its old master and gained his temperance in all manners.   At the end of the king's days, he took his life with the blade. In much the way of his old master. It is said that his final words were a prayer or perhaps begging, that his legacy becomes a warning to all the world, the price of ambition without temperance. He plunged the blade into his stomach, the blade took his soul to be with his old friend and stripped him of his ambitions.   In the blood of the king it was soaked, upon his ambition it now fed. Ambition hungers and thus it hungered now such as king once had. The blade would take the soul of whoever it killed and scarred the souls of those that is so much as scratched. It was living now and all it had was want.   While the next king was not as his fallen father. The blade fed on his will and fueled his ambition. Those in its presences wrote that they would be filled with feeling that were not their own or that belonged only to their darkest ambitions. The blade corrupted all the king's sons but the youngest, a child with no ambitions, before it was removed from their presences. The lich lords of Wirinan had to protect the last royal child of their kingdom. The servants who delivered the blade from their lands were never found alive, one missing with the rest dead. It would bring great strife from centuries then on   They say as era came to the end if found its way back to the royal family. The lich lords gathered and set about to bury the blade. For while with its its power could they do so much, no warrior of such humble intentions and motives could be found to wield the blade The power seemed to corrupt and scar the soul of all who dared tried to wield it, so only the undead were permitted to hold it for only they were without will.   The lich lords assured it would stay buried, their final gift to the world was to bury the great mistake of their era. Binding the magic that sealed it with their own arcania and their deaths. To this day, the shadow of the Nar'arkyr empire has never been found.

The Black Blade was a real weapon and it was wielded by the Wyrlin prince Rychter Redgrove for a portion of his life, notably the later more peaceful years. Wether there is truth to the story of its orginal owner and the question of which eastern nation might have created it is still very much a debated question. It would appear spraddicly throught the history of the empire afterwards.