THE COMPENDIUM

Events

14 entries

The Ash Famine

A years-long crop failure across the vale that broke House Vandahl's surplus and drove the first Asheni encroachments onto the silver road.

The Barrow Schism

The tribal split that produced Dreva Velthys's exile — a dispute over whether the barrow prophecy permits the named one to be an outlander.

The Coming Unmaking

The named dread at the end of the Long Descent: the last of the old empire's power finally used up, the Vale's oldest endings finally closed, the dead lying down for good — followed, some insist, not by peace but by the unraveling of everything large enough to hold a name. The Old Reckonings' cycle, if it is more than a dead college's guess, come around again.

The Drawing-Down

The true, hidden cause of the Sundering: not a broken working but a theft. The elder Vyr of Aelvyrenn, with Athra's art, built a great engine to draw on the god Vallen's own strength and lift their cities into the sky. The draw went too deep. It cracked him, and the Vale has been failing by inches ever since.

The First Sealing

The Sealed Choir's founding act — the first great Unclosed thing bound 'under stone and name' — proving their closing craft and setting them forever against the Listeners who would wield what the Choir would bury.

The Old Work Wars

Not one war but a pattern: every generation since the Sundering, some power has tried to monopolize the Old Work trade, and been broken for it. Each attempt shorter, each winner weaker, each war smaller and uglier than the last. The current scramble is the latest iteration — and the good bronze is running out.

The Rampart Wars

The Vallen Imperium's long eastern consolidation — a generation of military roads, pushed borders, and broken holds that brought the Vale's peoples under bronze law. The last civilizational war. Called 'the eastern consolidation' in imperial records; called 'the Rampart Wars' by everyone who lost.

The Shore Arrival

During the Sundering, something emerged from the sea onto the Emberwaste's Lava Shore and did not return — burn-marks on the basalt that have not faded in centuries mark where it came ashore.

The Silver Collapse

The flooding and abandonment of House Vandahl's primary silver mine, which halved the house's income and began its public decline.

The Spur Sealing

The day sixty years ago when Lord Vandahl's grandfather ordered the lower halls of the Sered Catacombs shut and the Lower Wardens sworn to silence — the official story is structural collapse; the actual story is that the heir in the deepest niche stood up.

The Stilling of the First Working

The first proof that Old Work could be opened instead of just feared: a Listener held her hands and her breath still long enough to read a sealed bronze working without waking whatever curse or Unclosed thing was left guarding it, and lived — founding the discipline of reading Old Work safely.

The Sundering

The day the god Vallen broke at his own seat, Caer Vallen, and the Vale has been fraying ever since. His weapon broke with him; the largest shard — the Wright's Shard — came to rest east in Vallen's Barrow, where it sleeps still.

The Unclosing of the Deep Listeners

The cautionary tragedy: the first Listeners to work the deep galleries under Caer Vallen for too long, too far past the last safe seal, never properly finished the dig — and slowly became the Unclosed themselves. The College's standing warning and the Choir's favourite proof.

The Waking of the Seat

A Wrights' Heirs expedition pushed into Caer Vallen to dig into its deepest workings — and woke the Vallen Sentinel and set the whole broken seat stirring, lighting the fuse the College and the Choir now both reach for.