D'Saferate Family/Corwin/Journal/10
Chapter 10: Sirion
On my travels, I have heard more about one realm than all others. The name of this realm is Sirion. It’s infamy is renowned from Itorunt City in the South to Ashforth in the North, from Fontan in the East to Kalamar in the West, all over the continent, in all the histories, Sirion is a name that is constantly mentioned. It was there that I went next.
I trekked East from Old Rancagua in to these historic lands to find it’s noble welcoming and inviting. I made it to the capital and got to meet the infamous Doc, and old elf known the continent over. He was more than happy to humor my questions and it was enlightening to hear his views. One of he most interesting tidbits I managed to pry from his lips was when I asked him about how often Sirion held tournaments. This question is usually a “puff-piece” I use to try and catch my subject off guard. He mentioned that at one time, Sirion had held numerous successive tournaments until one day, a divine entity contacted him and told him that tournaments weren’t meant to be monopolized by one nation and that any country defying this would end up in the disfavor of the gods. I was skeptical at first about this claim, but after doing a bit of research and asking around, it seems that his story has an air of validity about it. I leave it up to the reader to decide for themselves what to believe.
Also while in the capital, I visited the library. There I poured over ancient tomes and maps documenting this continent’s tumultuous history. I became intrigued by an island to the north named Skezard. Apparently it rose from the sea at the same time that the Obsidian Isles and the western part of Itorunt did. I noticed that Sirion had no claim on this region, even though it lie so close to it’s shores, so I decided to do some investigation. At first I asked around about the island and a few knight joined my cause to visit the island, but many more told us that we risked our lives. The council of Sirion forbade any noble to travel there because of the evil that lurked there. I snuck out of Sirion city and set out north alone.
The journey was long and tiring. If anything can be said about the great forests of Sirion, is that they are a natural maze, waiting to confuse and enemy and make him backtrack over and over. I’ve seen such forests as the Great Perdanese Forest with it’s well-kept roads and the dark twisted forests East of the Inner Sea, but even with that experience it still took me the better part of two days to navigate the ancient woods.
Skezard is a lonely island. The thought raced through my head consistently during my time there. As for people, I mostly saw the walking dead, and the in few actual settlements, the people seemed dead as well. Dense mists covered the isle at most times and people stayed indoors mostly. I spent the better part of two days in an old wooden tower, observing the dead wander around aimlessly.
In a way, my expedition to that dead isle was a sort of a prelude to the remainder of my stay in Sirion. While being incredibly old with a long history, it is also equally dry and lifeless. One could go mad if they spent too much time there.
