Regnen Star System

Regnen Star System

Major Holdings – General Information

History

The Chronicle of Regnen

By Bertwin Gisking Bearspear

Regnen, stone-heart of the Drala Cluster, has ever been a prize and a curse. Her fields are rich, her holdsteads well-watered, and above her world glimmers the Starhold of Peven, built by the Feyans themselves, a bastion with a world-shield, proud and defiant, meant to guard the lifeblood of the Dralan trade routes. Yet no shield, however bright, has ever spared Regnen from the greed of kings, nor the hungers of wolves that circle endlessly in the void.

I have walked her streets more times than I will admit, and I have seen her banners change hands, from Galan to Feyan, from Stoneborn to Wyvernborn, and from one set of Furse marauders to another. She has been crown and battlefield both, and her tale is long enough to weary the hand that writes it. Still, let me set it down, for Beorn the Stalwart has asked it of me, and I will not see Regnen forgotten.

Humfrey’s Feast. It began, as so many things do, in blood and treachery. In the year 27,113 AA, Humfrey the Lightning King, who had clawed Tonetic from the Feyan-Galans, sought to end the war with Guinevere Gollach Druidborn, the so-called Supreme Lord. He sent her an offer of peace, gilded with honeyed words, and bade her and her nobles come to a feast upon Tonetic.

I was not there, though I later spoke with a guard who was, but the tale has been told so often that one can almost hear the clash of goblets and the murmur of drunken boasts. At the height of the feast, when the hall was thick with the smell of roasted meat and spilled wine, Humfrey gave the signal. He cried, “Get your knives!” and in an instant the Glessum Furse drew the hidden quantum blades from beneath their benches. What followed was slaughter. Feyan-Galan lords, nobles of old blood, cut down where they sat, their faces still flushed with drink. Betrayal met with betrayal.

Guinevere herself was spared, though not out of mercy. Humfrey took her hostage, and she ransomed herself with whole star systems from Catuvella and Gaint. Lohna, Atrebas, Haesta, Regnen and many more. Thus, Regnen was stripped from her by one night’s folly and handed to the Glessum Furse.

Yet the Lightning King was not the last to seize Regnen. In 27,152 AA came Ella Umbra Stoneborn, who would become known as Ella the Overlord. Ah, Ella, I saw her once, and though the centuries have blurred many faces in my memory, hers remains carved in stone. She was broad of shoulder, iron-eyed, and carried herself with a confidence that dared the stars themselves to gainsay her.

She came into the Drucos Nebula with three children at her side, Wigburg the Bold, Alfgyth, Halbert, and 158 star-fleets. Among them sailed three great starships of the line, the most advanced of their age. Her banners were dark blue, grey and crimson, and when they entered the Regnen system, folk knew another storm had come. By 27,154 AA she was crowned King upon Regnen itself, and the lords acclaimed her as the first High King of Drala.

It was not an empty title. In 27,170 she fought the Feyan-Galans in the great Battle of Regnen, and though her foes were many, she broke them. Two years later, in 27,182, the Starhold of Peven itself was besieged, its shield blazing like a second sun in the night as Glessum Furse and local Dralan Galan fleets hammered at it. The fortress endured, but Regnen had become the very anvil upon which Drala was being forged.

Regnen’s throne was ever precarious. By 27,414 AA the kingdom was at war with Gewiss, and battles raged at Guith and elsewhere. The Stoneborn line held, but only barely. Kings rose and fell in quick succession, some slain, others converted to new allegiances.

In 27,520 AA a king of Regnen fell in battle, and Hacca the Converted rose in his place. Hacca bent knee to Baldwin the Bold of Angul, and by 27,522 he had not only sworn fealty but accepted the white-winged Faith of the Feyans. Baldwin himself stood as Sacred Guardian at his baptism, or so it is said. I cannot vouch for the truth, though I do recall a drunken Angul knight once boasting that his lord had “dipped a king like a common babe.”

Hacca granted vast holdsteads to the Faith, and in 27,562 Pontiff Leofgyth the Bold of Stormborn kin raised the Great Temple of the Harvest Blade to Zagagel upon Regnen. I knew Leofgyth well enough, a woman of fire, sharp of tongue and sharper of wit. She once told me that kings were no different from stone. “You shape them with the hammer you hold, Bertwin, and if they crack, you find another.” And so she did. Through her, Regnen became a beacon of the Faith, even as her kings were tossed about like driftwood on a storm tide.

Regnen did not long remain free. Uhtred the Great of Angul, a man whose ambition outpaced even his wisdom, spread his banners across Drala, and Regnen was bound beneath him. Stoneborn princes were set as under-kings, their thrones reduced to little more than gilded stools. At one point Regnen had so many “kings” that the folk mocked them, saying a man could not walk its halls without tripping over a crown.

Uhtred ruled with iron, yet Regnen endured him as it endured all others. Still, the centuries of Angul domination left scars.

By 27,852 AA Regnen fell beneath Gewiss, its kingdom reduced to a vassal crown. Astrid the Wide Ruler tightened the noose, and her daughter Hildred the Noble Wyvern completed the work in 30,050 AA. Hubbard the Last of Regnen was stripped of his kingship and left a mere system-lord, his once-proud banners folded away like burial shrouds.

Yet in those years Regnen was not forgotten. Osgar the Great of Gewiss made her the jewel of his realm, granting her mints, hoards, and greatholds. He gave seven mighty holdings to his bastard Leobert of Regnen, who became one of the most powerful lords in Drala. I served in Osgar’s court, and I can tell you that Leobert had the arrogance of a king in all but name. He knew his power, and he wielded it like a blade. His offspring went on to become known as the Wyvernshields, but they are proud of their descend from Osgar.

The Skane came in 30,184 AA, with fleets beyond counting, thirteen thousand, if the records are to be believed, though I suspect the number was swollen by fear. They struck Haesta and Maldune, and from their bases they poured into Regnen. Osgar, though, was ready. He had spent years fortifying his realm, though his lords had cursed him for the cost. “Too heavy a burden,” they had said. Yet when the Skane tide broke against Regnen’s defenses, those same lords sang his praises.

I was there in those days, at his court, and I saw the way he steeled himself against despair. His Dralan Star Guards fought with a fury that has seldom been matched. Skane fleets burned by the score, their longships tumbling broken across the void. Osgar hanged the crews of those who surrendered, and though some called it cruelty, others said it was the only language the reavers understood.

After Osgar’s death in 30,198 AA, Regnen again became the stage for kingship. Osmund the Glorious was crowned there, and the scribes composed their acrostic poem in his honor, a work of more flattery than truth, though it has endured. Yet glory never lasted long in Regnen.

In 30,388 AA Harwyn Forkbeard of Skold came with nine thousand star-fleets, Edith Raventail and Lathgertha beside him, and sacked the system once more. Eight years later he returned, with Oathborn, Runeborn, and Bogborn at his side. I was not there to see it, but I have walked the burned ruins they left behind. Even the world-shield of Peven could not guard all the holdsteads, and the smoke of those raids lingered for years.

So it has ever been with Regnen. From the first betrayal of Guinevere to the betrayal of Humfrey’s feast, to Ella’s iron crown, to Hacca’s baptism, to Osgar’s stand against the Skane, the star system has been a prize sought by every hand, and a wound opened again and again. Kings rise, kings fall, but Regnen remains, scarred, stubborn, enduring.

I have called her the stone-heart of Drala, and I stand by the name. Strike her as you will, she will crack, but never break. And perhaps that is her lesson to us all, that kingdoms are fleeting, but the stones beneath them endure, carrying the memory of every banner that once cast its shadow across them.