Dîmeril and the Copper Crests
Dîmeril Laeghartha was an adventurer and ranger long before she became a cavalry commander. Years spent travelling through wilderness, exploring forgotten places and fighting alongside small bands of companions had already made her an experienced scout and warrior by the time she became involved in the great campaign to liberate the Korvaj Peninsula. The campaign was led by Gimdaruth, an accomplished half-Elven ranger who had gathered an army to break the power of the Orcish strongholds dominating much of the peninsula's interior. Gimdaruth was charismatic, experienced and apparently everything the younger Dîmeril admired in a ranger. She developed a rather immature infatuation with him, something she believed she concealed considerably better than she actually did. Unfortunately for Dîmeril, her youthful affections had settled upon a man who could never reciprocate them.
Gimdaruth's long-standing companion and discreet lover was Therion Valcrest, a handsome and socially polished High Elf who had been appointed commander of the newly raised Copper Crests. Their relationship was something of an open secret amongst the army's senior officers. Few particularly cared that the two men were lovers; what became considerably more controversial was Gimdaruth's willingness to give Therion commands for which friendship and affection had prepared him rather better than military experience. Dîmeril joined the Copper Crests as a junior officer. The new regiment was intended to serve as light cavalry, providing scouting, screening, reconnaissance and pursuit for Gimdaruth's army. Although Dîmeril was already an experienced adventurer and exceptional horsewoman, she had never commanded soldiers on any great scale.
That changed at the Battle of Low Harbour. Therion Valcrest proved disastrously unequal to his first major engagement. Faced with the confusion and violence of battle, he lost control of his inexperienced riders. Contradictory orders were issued, squadrons became separated and the regiment began to fragment. What should have been a valuable mobile reserve threatened to become a rout. Dîmeril took command. There was no formal transfer of authority and no calculated attempt to usurp Therion. The situation had simply reached the point where somebody needed to take control before men began dying unnecessarily. Dîmeril rallied those riders she could reach, sent messengers after the scattered squadrons and restored enough order to get the regiment moving again. More importantly, she stopped trying to use the Copper Crests as something they were not. Rather than attempting to hold the inexperienced regiment together as a conventional battle line, Dîmeril exploited its mobility. The Crests harried the Orcish flanks, screened friendly formations, carried messages between separated commands and struck at vulnerable enemies before withdrawing whenever the Orcs attempted to pin them down.
By the end of the battle, a regiment that had come close to disintegrating wolud become, by the end of the campaign, one of the most effective formations in Gimdaruth's army. Therion himself never seriously disputed what had happened. Humiliated though he was, he understood that Dîmeril had probably saved both his regiment and his life. Gimdaruth's reaction was more complicated. There was simply no credible way to leave Therion in command after Low Harbour. Too many officers and soldiers had witnessed both his failure and Dîmeril's success. Dîmeril was therefore confirmed as Captain of the Copper Crests.
Under Dîmeril's command, the inexperienced regiment matured into one of the army's finest companies. She emphasised speed, reconnaissance, discipline and individual initiative. Her riders learned to operate in dispersed squadrons, screen an advancing army, locate enemy movements, pursue broken formations and raid vulnerable positions without becoming trapped in prolonged fights against heavier troops. Dîmeril also expected her junior officers to think for themselves. A squadron commander separated from the regiment was expected to understand what she was trying to accomplish and act accordingly rather than wait helplessly for new orders. The Copper Crests consequently became unusually flexible and increasingly difficult for their opponents to predict. Their reputation grew with every campaign. So did their loyalty to Dîmeril. She rode with them, shared their dangers and rarely asked a rider to take a risk she would not accept herself. To the Copper Crests she ceased to be merely the officer who happened to command them. She was their Captain.
Among her officers was Sabine Thornmere, a capable half-Elven ranger who became one of Dîmeril's closest friends during the Korvaj campaign. There was an irony here that Dîmeril entirely failed to appreciate. While Dîmeril was nursing her hopeless attraction to Gimdaruth, Sabine was developing equally hopeless feelings for Dîmeril. Sabine understood fairly quickly that Gimdaruth had eyes only for Therion. Dîmeril took rather longer. Neither woman spoke openly about her feelings. Dîmeril's youthful infatuation gradually faded as she came to know Gimdaruth better, while Sabine's affection for Dîmeril did precisely the opposite.
The success of the Copper Crests brought Dîmeril considerable personal renown. Initially this reflected well upon Gimdaruth. He had recruited Dîmeril and the Copper Crests remained part of his army. As the campaign continued, however, stories of the regiment and its charismatic half-Elven captain began to spread beyond the army itself. Gimdaruth became increasingly jealous. Dîmeril's replacement of Therion had already wounded his pride, even though military necessity had left him little alternative. Now the officer who had supplanted his lover was becoming one of the best-known commanders in his army. It was not simply Dîmeril's reputation that troubled him. It was the obvious personal loyalty she inspired amongst the Copper Crests. Their allegiance remained formally to the army, but there was little doubt whom many of them regarded as their commander. Dîmeril appears to have had little interest in competing with Gimdaruth. Whatever youthful attraction she had once felt for him had largely disappeared. She wanted to command her regiment and finish the campaign. Unfortunately, Gimdaruth increasingly saw a rival where Dîmeril saw none. His resentment became unmistakable when the conquered territories were eventually divided.
With the Korvaj campaign won, estates, titles and positions in the newly conquered lands were distributed amongst those who had distinguished themselves. Successful captains became landholders. Officers received commands and honours. Therion Valcrest, despite his disastrous performance at Low Harbour and subsequent removal from command of the Copper Crests, was granted extensive lands in the conquered territories and raised to the dignity of Graf of Valdorn. Therion himself appears to have been somewhat embarrassed by the generosity of his reward. He had never disputed that Dîmeril had saved the Copper Crests at Low Harbour and knew perfectly well whose service had contributed more to the eventual victory. Nevertheless, the grant was Gimdaruth's to make, and Therion accepted it. Other officers whose contributions had been considerably less significant than Dîmeril's were likewise rewarded with estates, commands and honours. Dîmeril received nothing. The omission was deliberate.
Dîmeril neither protested nor petitioned Gimdaruth for the reward she had plainly earned. The insult was obvious, but it carried a more personal sting than she cared to admit. There had been a time when Dîmeril had admired Gimdaruth enormously. As a younger ranger she had looked up to him as an accomplished soldier and commander, and that admiration had briefly become a rather foolish infatuation. The crush had long since faded as she came to know the man behind the reputation, but some residue of respect had remained. That disappeared with the division of the spoils.
Dîmeril now understood that Gimdaruth's resentment mattered more to him than fairly rewarding months of loyal service. That Therion Valcrest received a Grafdom while she received nothing made the point particularly difficult to misunderstand. She bore Therion no ill will, he had treated her honourably after Low Harbour and had never denied that she had saved the Copper Crests, but she knew perfectly well why Gimdaruth had favoured him. Dîmeril had no intention of begging a man she had once admired for recognition he should have freely given. She resigned her commission.
For the Copper Crests, the decision came as a shock. Some of her officers urged her to reconsider, and there were riders who would gladly have abandoned the army and followed her. Dîmeril would not permit it. Whatever she now thought of Gimdaruth, the Copper Crests were not hers to steal away out of wounded pride. They had been raised to fight the Korvaj campaign and had served with honour. She would not end that service by encouraging mutiny simply because their commander had treated her badly. She surrendered the command she had won at Low Harbour, said farewell to her riders and walked away from Gimdaruth for the last time. The regiment had been raised to fight the Korvaj campaign, not to become her private following. She surrendered her command and made it clear that the Copper Crests would remain where they belonged. Among those she left behind was Sabine Thornmere. For Dîmeril, it was a painful farewell to a close friend with whom she had fought and lived for years. For Sabine, it was considerably more. Dîmeril rode away without fully understanding how much her departure had cost her friend. Sabine remained with the Copper Crests for a time, but without Dîmeril the regiment was no longer quite the same. Eventually she too resigned her commission. By then Dîmeril had returned to the Veyrwood and disappeared into its depths. Sabine went looking for her.
Aelheryn and the Perpetuity of Ilyr Vael
After leaving the Copper Crests and departing the Korvaj Peninsula, Dîmeril returned at last to her childhood home in the ancient Veyrwood. She had been away for years and returned a very different woman from the young ranger who had first set out in emulation of her father. What Dîmeril did not realise was that her departure had affected others as well. Sabine Thornmere, her friend and fellow officer in the Copper Crests, had watched her leave with considerably more regret than Dîmeril understood. Sabine's affection for her had long since grown beyond simple friendship, though she had never quite found the courage, or perhaps the right moment, to say so. By the time Sabine finally resigned her own commission and went after her, Dîmeril was already gone.
Home had changed as well. Her mother had remarried, taking a wood-Elven husband, and had begun another family. There was no great quarrel between them and Dîmeril bore her mother no lasting resentment, but her return proved uncomfortable for everyone concerned. The household had grown around her absence, acquiring its own relationships and rhythms in which Dîmeril no longer quite knew her place. She had returned expecting to find home and instead discovered that home had continued perfectly well without her. Her visit was brief.
Dîmeril took once more to the Veyrwood, travelling increasingly deep into its ancient interior. It was there, during this unhappy and solitary period of her life, that she encountered the unicorn Aelheryn. Why Aelheryn chose Dîmeril was never entirely clear. Perhaps the unicorn sensed the unhappiness beneath the young half-Elf's hardening exterior; perhaps she recognised the essential goodness of her character; or perhaps her reasons belonged entirely to Aelheryn and were never Dîmeril's to understand. Whatever the cause, the two bonded, beginning one of the most important relationships of Dîmeril's life. Together they travelled farther into the Veyrwood than Dîmeril had ever ventured before, eventually finding one of the strange paths that passed between worlds. Whether by accident or design, Dîmeril and Aelheryn followed that hidden way beyond Goerath, passing through the Golden Woods and eventually emerging into a world entirely unknown to Dîmeril. It was Erdian, the world that the people of Warlderia would much later know simply as the Other Place.
Erdian was very different from the world Dîmeril had left behind. Humans lived there in considerable numbers, but across many of its lands they occupied a distinctly subordinate position beneath peoples who collectively regarded themselves as the Higher Races. Dîmeril's half-Elven ancestry therefore placed her in an unusual position. She was not human, yet neither was she readily accepted amongst the ancient Elven societies she encountered. More importantly, she was a foreigner in the most literal sense: she came not merely from another kingdom or distant continent, but from another world. Her achievements on Goerath meant nothing here. Nobody in Erdian had heard of the Korvaj Peninsula, the Battle of Low Harbour or the Copper Crests. Dîmeril might claim to have commanded cavalry in a distant war, but there was nobody who could readily confirm her account.
What she could demonstrate, however, was considerably more persuasive. Dîmeril was an accomplished ranger and exceptional horsewoman who possessed an experienced soldier's understanding of scouting, reconnaissance and cavalry warfare. Moreover, she travelled in the company of Aelheryn. Whatever doubts might surround the foreign half-Elf's stories, the fact that a unicorn had chosen her as its rider was rather harder to dismiss. In time, her abilities attracted attention.
The Perpetuity of Ilyr Vael
Dîmeril eventually found herself amongst the lands of the Perpetuity of Ilyr Vael, an ancient High Elven state which considered itself not so much a kingdom as an uninterrupted historical condition. Individual rulers mattered comparatively little. Offices, institutions, bloodlines and policies were expected to endure for millennia, their temporary occupants merely custodians of something vastly older than themselves. At the time, the Perpetuity was engaged in what it regarded as a relatively minor border dispute with the human Picayune States. The conflict had become unexpectedly troublesome. Ilyr Vael had deployed the celebrated Argent Lances of Vael, an ancient regiment of High Elven heavy cavalry commanded by Lord-Captain Caelir Vaeltharan, Hereditary Lance-Lord of the Seventh Radiance (pictured). The Argent Lances were magnificent. Drawn largely from the lesser nobility of the Perpetuity, they were superbly mounted, beautifully equipped and drilled to extraordinary standards. They were also performing badly. Their principal opponents, the Picayune irregular horse, repeatedly refused to give them the conventional cavalry battle they desired. Instead, the human riders employed ambushes, feigned retreats, broken terrain and constant harassment. When the Argent Lances concentrated, the Picayunes dispersed. When the Elves pursued, the humans drew them into difficult country before turning upon isolated detachments.
The proud Vaelian regiment found itself repeatedly frustrated and occasionally humiliated by opponents it had initially regarded with contempt. Somewhere within the Vaelian command, someone had the good sense to notice that the foreign half-Elf travelling with a unicorn appeared to understand precisely what was going wrong. Dîmeril was eventually retained as a mercenary officer and military adviser to Lord-Captain Vaeltharan. Only then did her old experience with the Copper Crests truly become relevant. The Vaelians neither knew nor cared about the reputation of a cavalry regiment from another world. What mattered were the lessons Dîmeril had learned while commanding it. Dîmeril quickly concluded that the Argent Lances were not poor soldiers. Their problem was that they were attempting to fight the war for which their traditions had prepared them rather than the war actually taking place around them. She encouraged smaller and more independent detachments, greater reliance upon scouts, better use of blocking forces and lighter weapons where circumstances demanded them. Above all, she persuaded the Vaelians to stop blindly pursuing an enemy whose apparent flight was frequently nothing more than another weapon. Dîmeril did not attempt to turn the Argent Lances into Picayune irregulars. Their discipline, horsemanship, equipment and formidable charge remained genuine advantages. Her task was instead to create circumstances in which those advantages could actually be brought to bear. Caelir Vaeltharan proved sufficiently intelligent to recognise the value of her experience. Despite resistance from some of his more traditional officers, he supported her reforms and gradually learned to adapt his own command to the realities of the campaign.
Unfortunately, his growing professional admiration for Dîmeril eventually became something more personal. Caelir became enamoured of his half-Elven adviser and eventually proposed that she become his paramour. Dîmeril emphatically refused. When Caelir initially persisted with gifts and further attentions, Dîmeril made it unmistakably clear that her refusal was final. She had no desire to become his lover and still less desire to participate in whatever elaborate aristocratic courtship he imagined he had begun. To his credit, Caelir eventually understood his mistake. He apologised, ceased his pursuit and thereafter maintained a professional relationship with her. There was a certain irony in all this of which Dîmeril remained completely unaware. While a High Elven lord in another world attempted rather grandly to win her affection, Sabine Thornmere was back on Goerath quietly trying to find her.
By the closing stages of the conflict, the Argent Lances were a very different regiment from the splendid but inexperienced force that had first ridden against the Picayunes. They had not abandoned their traditions, nor had Dîmeril transformed them into light cavalry. Instead, hard experience had finally been added to their ancient discipline. The Picayune riders discovered that familiar tricks were increasingly anticipated, false retreats were no longer automatically pursued and Vaelian squadrons had developed an unpleasant habit of appearing where previously they never would have been. Eventually the Picayune States were brought to terms, and the border war came to an end. Dîmeril's employment ended with considerably less ceremony. The Perpetuity of Ilyr Vael calculated what remained of her contract, added the appropriate campaign gratuity, formally thanked her for her services and considered its obligations discharged. Dîmeril was entirely content with the arrangement. She collected her money, packed her belongings and departed Ilyr Vael without ceremony, accompanied by Aelheryn. There was, however, one resident of Ilyr Vael who found the strange foreign half-Elf rather too interesting simply to allow her to disappear.
Solara Elenhi was a High Elven wizard of considerable talent, comfortably established within the ancient society of the Perpetuity and increasingly bored by it. Dîmeril fascinated her. Part of that fascination was undoubtedly Dîmeril's claim to come from another world. Part was Aelheryn. Part was simply that Dîmeril seemed to accumulate adventures, dangers and unlikely situations with a frequency Solara found enormously entertaining. Where most Vaelians regarded the foreign half-Elf as an interesting temporary visitor, Solara wondered where she was going next? Eventually curiosity won. Solara followed her. There was no great declaration of loyalty. Solara was not swearing herself to Dîmeril's service and certainly did not regard herself as anybody's retainer. She simply decided that accompanying Dîmeril and Aelheryn for a while promised to be considerably more interesting than remaining in Ilyr Vael. Dîmeril assumed the High Elf would eventually tire of rough roads, uncomfortable camps and dangerous company and return home. Solara rather assumed the same. Neither proved correct.
What began as curiosity became companionship, and companionship eventually became habit. Solara would remain one of Dîmeril's closest friends long after the brief border war that had first brought them together had faded into memory. So Dîmeril left Erdian much as she had arrived: following one of the strange paths that wound through the Golden Woods between worlds. Only now there were three travellers upon the path. Dîmeril, Aelheryn and Solara. And somewhere on Goerath, entirely unknown to Dîmeril, Sabine was still looking for her.
The Border Lord of Ardenfell
Once again Dîmeril, Aelheryn and Solara travelled through the Golden Woods of the Fey Realm. Solara was fascinated by the place; Dîmeril, who understood its dangers rather better, was considerably more wary. In those days the woods were home to all manner of Fey, including predatory redcaps, joystealers and splinterwaifs, and travellers who strayed from the hidden paths could easily disappear. They spent one night sheltering in a ruined manor, its crumbling halls speaking of some forgotten age of splendour, before finding another crossing and passing through the veil once more. This time they returned to Goerath, emerging in the Caledor Woods, a temperate sylvan forest inhabited by good folk and particularly noted for its large half-Elven population.
Their reunion was an emotional one. Dîmeril had believed Sabine lost to her old life, while Sabine had increasingly begun to accept that she might never see Dîmeril again. The two were finally reunited a year and one world later. For Sabine, there was rather more to the reunion than friendship. Her affection for Dîmeril had long since deepened into something she rarely spoke about and knew was unlikely ever to be returned in the same fashion. Dîmeril understood more of this than Sabine perhaps realised. She could not give her friend what she wanted, but she loved Sabine deeply in her own way, and finding her again after everything that had happened in Erdian meant more to her than she readily admitted. Sabine, for her part, asked remarkably few questions about where Dîmeril had been. She was simply very glad to have found her again.
Soon afterwards they befriended Luin, a wood elf who would become Dîmeril's long-standing retainer and one of her closest friends. Together they spent a happy winter in the Caledor Woods.
Then another offer of employment reached Dîmeril.
To the north west of Caledor lay the Duchy of Averneth, whose newly crowned ruler, Duke Eruyk, possessed a precarious grip upon his inheritance. The Duke was easily distracted from the affairs of state, but his formidable Lord Chancellor, Varenthos Krail, was anything but. Averneth's southern frontier was deteriorating. Settlements had been burned or abandoned, roads had become dangerous and monsters and raiders descending from the Ardran Hills were steadily pushing civilisation northwards. The Ardrans were a rugged expanse of broken ridges, rocky valleys and steep escarpments. Their caves and isolated valleys sheltered bandits, humanoid raiders, ogres and other dangerous creatures, while ancient ruins and abandoned mines drew a continual procession of prospectors and adventurers. The region's mineral wealth had given rise to an old saying: “There is gold in the Ardrans. That's why there are bones in the Ardrans.”
Krail persuaded the Duke to establish a series of Border Lordships along the Southern Marches, granting capable individuals land and considerable authority on condition that they restore order. Dîmeril was the first appointed. She rallied a number of volunteers from Caledor to her banner and rode north to take possession of the battered frontier lordship of Ardenfell.
The first year was desperately hard. Dîmeril and her companions fought bandits, humanoid raiders, ogres and trolls and even brought down a hill giant. Old ruins had to be cleared, roads reopened and isolated settlements persuaded that this latest attempt to restore the frontier would last longer than those before it. The victories came at a terrible personal cost. While Dîmeril and her companions were exploring a dungeon infested by restless undead, Aelheryn remained outside. During their absence the red dragon Pyraxxion descended upon her. Dîmeril returned to find Aelheryn dead. The loss devastated her. Only the support of her companions kept Dîmeril from abandoning everything she had begun at Ardenfell. She buried Aelheryn and kept her horn, not as treasure but as the last physical remembrance of her oldest companion.
More deaths followed. The brave Elven rogue Caelith Silverbough was killed by a giant spider. Torren Oakhand, the famous werebear of the hills who had attached himself to Dîmeril's company, died fighting the ancient vampire Othmar Vhal. Two more of Dîmeril's companions eventually left Ardenfell, not through cowardice or quarrel, but because they had simply endured enough. Dîmeril could hardly blame them. She remained, she took vengeance. Dîmeril hunted Pyraxxion, slew the dragon and claimed his hoard. She kept little of it for herself, pouring much of the wealth into Ardenfell's fortifications, settlements and soldiers. Othmar Vhal was likewise hunted down, dragged from his hiding place and finally exposed to the cleansing light of day.
Slowly, painfully, Ardenfell became secure. Within two years Dîmeril had transformed the lordship. She raised three companies of hobilars, lightly equipped mounted troops ideally suited to patrolling the rough frontier. New watch posts were established, abandoned settlements reoccupied and roads made safe enough for merchants to travel again. Other Border Lords followed Dîmeril into the Southern Marches, often possessing considerably greater wealth and resources than she had enjoyed. Together they began to stabilise Averneth's southern frontier. For perhaps the first time in her life, Dîmeril ceased to think of herself primarily as an adventurer or mercenary. Ardenfell had become home. That was when matters began to change.
Lord Chancellor Krail granted lucrative mercantile licences in Ardenfell to guilds and trading companies associated with his political allies. Initially Dîmeril welcomed them. Investment brought employment, supplies, improved roads and additional revenues with which she could maintain her hobilars. The abuses emerged gradually. Krail's favoured companies received extensive rights to timber, mining, quarrying and trade. Independent miners were pressured into surrendering claims, small merchants found themselves excluded from markets, and families discovered that woodland they had used for generations had been incorporated into commercial concessions negotiated far away. Dîmeril intervened.
She closed a logging operation that ignored its agreed boundaries. Her hobilars returned evicted families to their homes. When mercenary guards employed by a mining concern badly beat local prospectors, Dîmeril arrested both the guards and their overseer. The guilds complained to Krail. The Chancellor, who had once been Dîmeril's greatest supporter at court, finally concluded that the Border Lord he had helped create could not be controlled. A ducal commissioner arrived carrying sealed orders from Duke Eruyk. Dîmeril's appointment was revoked with immediate effect. Ardenfell had been granted at the Duke's pleasure and therefore returned to the ducal estate. Its keep, lands, revenues and associated rights were forfeit to the Crown. So too were Dîmeril's soldiers.
She had raised the three companies of hobilars, trained them and fought beside them, but they had been created under ducal authority and maintained from Averneth's revenues. Legally, they belonged to the Duke. Dîmeril was ordered to surrender command. She did. Some of her officers were furious. Several offered to resign and follow her; others were prepared to resist the order outright. Dîmeril refused. She would not transform her dismissal into a rebellion that would brand her soldiers traitors and bring war to the very people she had spent years protecting. She assembled the hobilars one final time, thanked them for their service and reminded them that their oaths were to Averneth, not to her. Then Dîmeril surrendered the keys of Ardenfell.
The loss hurt far more than the ending of any mercenary contract. She and her companions had shed blood for this place. Dîmeril had spent Pyraxxion's treasure upon it, rebuilt its defences, raised its soldiers, ridden its roads and buried friends in its soil. She knew its villages and its families. Ardenfell had become hers emotionally, even if it had never truly been hers legally. And now it was gone. For the third time in her life, Dîmeril simply rode away.
She returned south into the Caledor Woods, accompanied by the small group who had remained with her through everything: Solara Elenhi, the eccentric High Elf wizard who had followed her from Erdian; Sabine Thornmere, her old half-Elven comrade from the Copper Crests; Luin, the wood elf warrior who had become her loyal retainer and friend; and Lusara Elmare, the half-Elven priestess of Ehlonna who had become the company's spiritual guide. There, amongst the trees, Dîmeril once again stopped to recover, mourn those she had lost and decide what she was going to do next.