Lost High Houses

From WikiBorn

Playability

The 3 missing houses, Onyx, Pale, and Void (taglines unknown), current information states, will not joinable at release.

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History

Transcribed from The Official Trailer

Five Hundred years after the Destruction of Empire of the Eight Demons, the Eight High Houses awoke in the realm of Quarterstone; released by the ice that claimed the Ancestor World the very moment the Altar of the Undying was destroyed.

It was not a world they knew: the city of Quarterstone no longer covered by a sky with three suns, but a vaulted rock carapace. A piece of the Altar of the Undying lay in the middle of the thawing battlefield, near the corpse of Satanamura. The piece seemed to be at the heart of the thawing and was claimed by the champions of the High Houses to see whether it would further melt the Undying Ice that covered everything they saw. The Barbarian Seal, (as it would be called) did that indeed; thawing the sorcerous ice and releasing many hundreds of the Awakened.

However, not all of the Awakened stood together.

While Maul, Silver, Torque, Shroud, and Rune worked together, Pale, Onyx and Void opposed them.

Many battles were fought for Quarterstone during that time, the Barbarian Seal conquered and in turn lost by each party, until most of Quarterstone was freed of the Undying Ice. Using the sorcery of the Eight Demons, the three opposing High Houses departed through the Deadspell Storm and left in search of other realms. Their flight marked the founding of a new Quarterstone and during the following years, the shard realm expanded; the city largely restored.

The first realm discovered was Mount-of-Heroes, where it turned out the Princess of Skulls had forged a kingdom of rot. Though she had not entered the realm itself, she had built a massive floating fortress just outside the entrance: The Scoured Citadel. The initial engagement by the armies of the High Houses was devastating: the Princess of Skulls used ancient sorcery of the Mumia to destroy thousands of valiant warriors, raising them as undead and turning them against thier former brethren. In pursuit of the High Houses retreating to Quarterstone, the Skull Princess sent out an army of undead Vailyrian steeds and riders against the young realm. The High Houses were almost completely wiped out as she sent wave after wave of airborne denizens.

It was a desperate time for the Five High Houses as they frantically tried to fight off the Skull Hordes. Hope for salvation was a luxury no one could afford, yet it was during that period that a boy who born who would save them. his name was Graidlon Marrow and he was a Daevi bestowed with incredible powers.

At the age of twenty-three, he found a hidden cavern in Quarterstone where a strange sancutary was located. Walking into the edifice, he made contact with a greater spirit, calling itself "the Oracle". It told him that it could save Quarterstone and its people, if Graidlon would allow it to teach him about the nature of the Mumia's magic. Graidlon was the first to recieve an Ancestral Dream and learned of the way to defeat the Princess of Skulls: he needed to go to her and become her consort, dying as she pushed a jewel from her crown into his forehead. This would make him impervious to her sorcery and empower him to force her to leave the High Houses alone.

The young champion took up arms for Torque and gathered around him four other heroes of the High Houses: Kaelmiannon (Maul), Mhuiritsa (Silver), Sidor Vhey (Shroud), and Kunxon Lenga (Rune).

He departed with the four other champions and traveled to the vicinity of Mount-of-Heroes, where they fought their way through the Skull Hordes and crossed the threshold into the Scoured Citadel. When he entered her presence, he was alone, the last of his champions having died on the steps before her bowery. He pledged himself to her, dedicated the blood he spilt as a token of his love, she accepted Graidlon and - as the Oracle foretold - sired him by pushing a jewel of her crown into his forehead.

There are no tales of what happened next, except that the sacrifice made by the heroes of the Five Houses resulted in the Princess of Skulls fleeing in the Scoured Citadel from Mount-of-Heroes, taking her new undead Consort and her armies with her into the Deadspell Storm. Mount-of-Heroes was settled much, much later, and the people of the Enclave would come face-to-face with the monstrosities inhabiting that realm; the Howlers.

Graidlon's selfless act (and that of his four friends) made it possible for the survivors of the cataclysm that destroyed the Ancestor World to begin anew, forging a bond between the High Houses that would never shatter again.

The Enclave of the Five Sacrifices was born.

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