…Travails of my youth did not give me peace and even before I was cast upon the Great Ocean by the vagaries of fate my curiosity sampled the morsels of knowledge brought to these shores by pale faced merchants of the Highborn Empire. Through them across an unimaginable gulf of time came to me a story from the birthing days of the Golden Age. Before Sunna, before the kings and queens of the Napaat valley, before even the Elves reached the serenity of the White Isles, there were five great Elven Princes, the mightiest and noblest of their kind beyond the boughs.
It is said Dorac was so taken by their virtue that he could not bear the thought that these exemplary Elves might perish in defence of their budding nations. So he forged for them helms, shields, scale and plate like the world had never seen before. Each piece was a tapestry of engravings that proclaimed the majesty of the Elves to all who dared cast eyes upon them, lighter than the plumage of a Giant Eagle, yet of such craftsmanship it put the finest Dwarven artifice of the age to shame.
When the Princes again took to the field of battle to face the barbaric hordes they shone as bright as the giant brazier overlooking Aldan. Personifications of Elven noble heritage and the right to rule the world they blinded their savage foes with august brilliance of their donned gifts. Many were felled by their keen blades, for who would dare strike such regal splendour?
Nothing is eternal save maybe death, and in strange aeons even death may die. So too came the hour of doom for these exalted ones. From the east it came in a shape of a man, a warrior, a warlord, a conqueror. Jewels of a dozen sundered kingdoms glistened upon his troubled brow and the skulls of their kings adorned his standard. Pride goes before the fall, or so the saying goes, and the Elven Princes went to war. One by one they faced the raven-haired murderer, and one by one they were broken beneath his iron boot, their divine gifts shattered and blemished.
For their failure and shame the names of the Princes were erased from memory while that of the bronze skinned butcher still haunts the dreams of the wise. A phantom of destruction who may yet one day return to finish the Elves for good.
An age later in a time of great calamity when brother fought brother and daughter slew mother the first Prince of Ryma beseeched Dorac to reforge his gifts into a single suit, so that he may defend his people from the madness that had engulfed them. Though bravely he fought eventually pride got better of him on the blood-soaked fields of Erle and the gift of the gods passed into the hands of Queen. To this day her annual champion is granted the honour to don a special suit of armour that many claim is the one and the same as the Dorac’s panoply of “Forgotten Kings”…
Extract from Tales of the Fey, Tome II, Between the Waves - an account by Thomas the Bard
