Casual Heroing

At some point, you start wondering what’s a legend and what’s true about the Vanedenis. They sound like they are the greatest madmen of all time. I mean, even Stan warned me to stay as far as possible from them. He said they were dangerous and unhinged people. But after today’s chat with Lord Juler, I’m not sure about that.

Honestly, the Vanedenis sound like [Heroes] to me. They sound like everything a person wants to be, everything we should be. And that sounds too good. I mean, when you listen to the stories Lord Juler tells really closely, you start getting a very particular image. They are not just [Heroic]; they are ready to do anything. And no one insults a Vanedeni unless they are ready to start a war. Or, to be more precise, insulted. Now, they are confined to their continent, Kome, a natural wonder with cliffs miles above the sea level. If you want to reach it, you either climb or have the famous flying vessels that Lord Juler was telling me about ferry you up there. Most teleports fail on Kome because there’s much more Mana than is usual. Apparently, it’s the wealthiest continent in this world.

And the Vanedenis used to own it.

Again, past tense.

Now, they are headed toward extinction. When Valarith killed Mauser, they lost all hopes of winning. I mean, all reasonable hopes. And they are unreasonable people. But, if Lord Juler is right, it takes nothing more than one good [Hero] among the Vanedenis to start it back up again. But the Ahali, some weird race of huge monkey-rabbits, have been really smart in the past couple of centuries. They don’t engage the Vanedenis anymore. They try to avoid conflict at all costs. They just starve them. And they ignore them too. They are taking away their importance and their history, and they have already taken away their capital city in the most famous night assault in known history. Some countries mark that day as a national holiday – that’s how much people hate the Vanedenis.

But the more I hear about them, the more it seems they are just holding everyone to a standard that’s too high. And when you are confronted by such high standards, you feel inadequate. It’s like when someone in your friend group is too successful. You naturally start hating them, don’t you? Even just a little bit. Especially if you think you’ll never be able to reach those heights or, even worse, if you are too lazy to try.

And everyone, therefore, hates the Vanedenis.

They hate the idea, the sheer thought that these people could be so great.

They also lost a large number of soldiers and artifacts when the Ahali attacked on the one day when it might have worked.But they could still have won if they had followed Mauser, the crazy necromancer. Mauser had started killing his own people and using dark rituals to empower the living and the undead, bonding them into overpowered monstrosities – eugenics at its finest. But the heart of some Vanedenis was still in the right place when that happened. And Princess Valarith created a resistance. A huge civil war broke out right when the Vanedenis were on the verge of conquering the continent. Most history books don’t even mention it, but the Ahali had simply retreated for years. They waited at the fringes of Kome, hidden away until the Vanedenis ended the fratricide. They stomped the bloodied grass of those rich pastures and went on to finish the job.

Or so they tried.

The Ahali, even after years of civil war, could barely push the Vanedenis back. It took them centuries of favorable conditions and reinforcements from every nation in the world to drive them to the brink of extinction. And even then, they are still careful not to push too much, not to put the Vanedenis with their backs to the wall one last time. Why? Because they believe that their blood could awaken. Also, they believed that some [Hero] of old could emerge and lead a slaughter of insane proportions. Instead, they just let them rot without a real conflict, almost exiled. They still fight the battles, but the Ahali send high-level individuals to take care of the settlements that turn too rebellious. Very few great nobles remain on the Vanedeni side. And fewer still keep waging war.

Lucinda told me that there’s currently a certain Lady Goldith Rodinia that still fights tooth and nail and that the Ahali are increasingly afraid of her. She still has Relics of old, and she’s the most promising warrior of her generation. She has killed [Dragonslayers], the most fearful Ahali warriors. Yeah, I know—weird stuff. But apparently, there’s a lot of bad blood between Ahali and Dragons. They say that if the Vanedenis weren’t still a threat, the Ahali would storm the lands of Dragons to take them down once and for all.

But even though they are becoming a faded legend, I saw, before coming to the Nine Towers Academy, what that one Vanedeni girl could do – I can only imagine what an entire population of fearless warriors could be like. And they say that only the most cowardly of them leave the rocky shores of Kome.

But now, after finding out more about them, it’s clear that one more attempt at Heroing is certainly worth it. This academy fiasco will be a reminder of why trusting people is not great – but also that I had a good time with those people. I’m not willing to become thoroughly disillusioned just because of one bad outcome.

There’s more to do out there. And even though Lady Luck will chase me on the way, what’s life without a woman to flirt with, huh? How can you have fun without a bit of spice? And would you renounce the chance to look for fading legends? I mean, on the one hand, they shouldn’t even exist, and maybe Lord Juler and Valarith are just posers—who knows? But if they are not, where does that leave us?