Lore/Story The Fiosians Want Their Castle Back: A New Sellan History of Gavel

Ne Fios il an ti Éllan d'Aensaure Sento:
N'ITAESSÉLL IXRE LUDIEHI

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It has been a hot minute since I gave my last update, a minute so hot that few likely remember my name, face, or what I was even working on.

Hi! I'm hmtn. I make conlangs, and quite a few of them have been fanwork for this server. I've previously made a version of Ancient Wynnic and Orcish, both of which are linked in my description. Several years ago, at this point, I decided to sit down and take a crack at High Gavellian.

Now, this was High Gavellian. I wanted it to be good. I had a couple of projects under my belt, but I really wanted it to be my magnum opus. So I went and tinkered at it, more and more and more, and I got caught in a death-loop of ever-increasing skill and standards.

I finally finished High Gavellian.... sometime last year, I'd say? Except not quite. The project has grown like a weed, and it turns out that "High Gavellian" is more of a guideline than the name of a specific language. I've got a High Gavellian, and it is indeed my magnum opus, but I've also got quite a bit of other work I'd love to share!

I also have a concerning amount of private worldbuilding going on. I've fallen for the Tolkien trap. Turns out that, if you want to make a language (family), you've gotta have a timeline. You've gotta know who all your speaker populations are, where they are, where they're going, and why they're going there if you want to know what words they're telling one another.

And so my Gavellian timeline has become a monster. I tried to keep it canon-compliant, but at this point the label "canon-compliant" has so many asterisks attached to it that it's completely meaningless.

This is a fan-timeline, not of an objective Gavellian history, but instead of the history of Gavel as seen through its dominant culture - the Sellans.

One might recognize this alternate name for the Villagers from the wonderful work of @Trashiejunkyard whence I borrowed it. But beyond that our two worldbuilding projects aren't connected to one another or anything. I just thought that the name was nice. You might see other nods to Wartorn in this timeline, on occasion, but again they're just nods.

This timeline is a compilation of several different texts written by Corkian scholars, for typically human audiences. Most of the source materials were originally written in Modern Standard Sellan (Si'é Sélliesen), a common lingua-franca in Human-Sellan relations, but whenever possible I instead used Corkish Fruman editions, as they often contained more explanations for various bits of jargon.

Also, this whole project started because of my conlanging, so I'll occasionally interrupt the timeline to talk about the languages. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ What can I say, I've got an interest.

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Table of Contents​

5: Age of the League
These are only predictions. The list below is subject to change as new chapters are posted.

1. The Gylian Anarchy (Below)
2. The One Where The Fiosians Lose Their Castle
3. Fire and Stone
4. The League of Lords
5. The First Breath of Gavel
6. Jēsen and its Dialects
7. Warring States Period
8. Seven Princes to Midnight
9. War of the Two Gylias
10. And Then There Were Three
11. The Gathering of the Sellans

6-1: Dynasty of the Mace and Crown
[TBA]

6-2: Seven Principalities Period
[TBA]

6-3: Dynasty of the Eastern Wind
[TBA]

6-4: Blueflower Period
[TBA]

6-5: Dynasty of the Great Forge
[TBA]

6-6: Dynasty of the Endless Lake
[TBA]

7: The Gavellian Revolution
[TBA]

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A Gal Liassin Siosfios
THE GYLIAN ANARCHY​

I. In Medias Res (In the Middle of Things)
And the Elders were cast down, and so it was that, in their dying wrath, the splendors of the 4th Age would follow them. The Heart of the World would be forever lost, hidden and broken, remembered only in the hearts of Sellans and in scant drops of holy blood.

Regardless of the historicity of Sellan myth, it is undeniable that a great disaster befell the land, and that it was put to waste. In the heart of the Séll, what is now the lake-lands of Gylia (though it is said that the lakes had not been there before), the former slaves of the Elves descended into madness and barbarism. They were the best of Gavel.

The 5th Age would struggle to be born through centuries of such blood and strife. The exact length of this dark age is unknown, for all manner of writing and knowledge would disappear during the Gylian Anarchy. Traditionally, Sellan historians claim that all bonds of friend and family were shattered in an epoch of suffering.

However, it's important to remember that much of the historical record of the 5th Age was written and maintained by Comécivaen. The throne and its servants had great incentive to embellish the horrors of the time before imperial rule. "The empire may be harsh, and sometimes cruel," one could imagine a cleric saying, "but it is better than the alternative."

Yet even in the modern historical understanding, the devastation of the Gylian Anarchy is a matter of degree, not presence. For one, the concrete historical record of the Sellans only begins in its tail end. For another, these earliest written records from the Séll unanimously bear the perspectives of a people who have known suffering and strife for generations, a people who had known that the world before them was a greater place, a place that they would never see, a place that they pined for nonetheless.

II. Du Sipéte Obíause (The Long Quiet)
The chaos of the transition would leave an unknown span of years between the Twilight of the Elves and a formal declaration of the 5th Age. Traditionally, Sellan historians label this intermezzo as part of the latter, numbering them as negative years of the 5th.

By this count, the oldest verifiable pieces of written Sellan records began to appear in the final century before 5A 1. The ornate alphabetic hand in which they were written was rarely named, but is called "High Elvish" when it was. However, the language that this script was used to write was not the High Elvish claimed by the south. The language, too, was unnamed, with Sellans referring to it at most as Inne Jēsen, "Our Speech."

Its speakers regarded it as a broken, bastardized dialect of the High Elvish spoken by their former masters, a tongue also called Liesyu. Use of "proper" Elvish tongue - though not its writing - seemed considered beyond the pale by this time's residents of Gylia. Its speakers, and these earliest Sellan scribes, used their tongue to record what they regarded as a broken, bastardized imitation of governance in a world without Elvish rule.

III. On the Sogosellans
There was a notable exception to this trend, however. The mountains of Southern Gylia, long a stronghold of the Elders, remained home to a number of Sellans loyal to the Elves, no matter that the Elves had since been scoured from the world.

They maintained High Elvish, apart from their vernacular, and maintained the Elvish faith, which had been scorned by the other Sellans. They did not maintain an exceptional amount of lost knowledge, however, and their earliest records post-date those of their northern and eastern kin. These southern Elf-Friends called themselves the Anis, "Light-Fearers," while the rest would call them Sógosellan, "Mountain Civilized Folk," or Sogósellan, "Southern Civilized Folk," after the land in which they lived, which would be called Sogoséll during the 5th Age.

IV. Nac Neúre Du Póssa (The Mortality of Mortality)
Regardless of tongue, the first records of Gylia, and Sogoséll, and other lands where Sellans dwelt, would reveal lands of petty chiefdoms and clans. The Sellan world, in the tail end of the Gylian Cataclysm, would be dominated by fortified villages and strongholds, where dwelt a Lord and their clan, who commanded warriors and collected tax from the great mass of farmers in their dominion.

It was a quintessentially feudal system, albeit one not yet dominated by any great princes or kings. Instead, these petty fiefs engaged in constant low-level warfare with one another, and there was little difference between a petty lord and a bandit. Even the greatest landlords of this era could, it seemed, not guarantee defence against depredation, and great hosts tied to nothing would periodically ravage the Séll. Any great trade, or collection of wealth and knowledge, was nearly impossible.

For generations, this had been the world. It is no wonder that the Sellans of this time and the times that would follow would consider it a dark age.

But a dark age cannot last forever. These earliest records of the Séll describe conquest and consolidation. Petty chiefs became great chiefs, and then great lords, and then "princely" lords, called Óháriex, or "Prince."

V. On the Oldest Kanderites
During this time, Sellan culture would also spread north and west out of Gylia, into the Lands of the Stone-Folk, the modern regions of Kander and the Gel riverbasin. The land had yet to decay at this time, though it had also yet to see the full splendor of the Younger Elves. The Stone-Folk had not been nearly so ruined by the Twilight of the Elves as the Sellans had been, and it is said that they preferred to live simply, and in peace.

But then came the Sellans. By the end of the 5th Age, the Stone-Folk would be extinct as a culture, though much of their way, habits, and blood would survive in the north, among the Sellans of Kander. There was no single disaster that triggered their decline, and indeed the Kanderites (it is here noted that Kander was a late 5th age term for "stone") regard this substrate as their truest ancestors. They were Sellanized, yes, but they remained, and it would be foolish to say that they would not have their due by the end of the 5th Age.

With the alien faith of the Sogosellans in the south, and the distance of the new Kanderites in the north, the previously compact Séll of Gylia would become more stretched and distant than it had already been.

VI. Nildáxassin (On the Spirits and their Shamans)
The final critical piece of the Sellan world in the wake of the Gylian Anarchy would be its shamans, who at this time called themselves the Nildáxassin Order, though they were certainly not so organized. In later times, the Sellan priesthood would come to be called n'Auré. Though such a title is anachronistic for such an ancient time, it will be used for the remainder of this text for the sake of consistency.

The movement that would become n'Auré arose, it would seem, as a backlash to the Elvish faith that the lords of the 4th Age had imposed upon the Sellans. It held to many of the same precepts, but seemed to take great glee in tearing down the beloved icons of the fallen slave-masters.

ON, Lord of Light, the Great Influence, and Master of the Solar Vanguard, was cast from His lofty position atop the world. He was reduced to a hound, a beast, a servant of the Sellan powers, and would begin his thousand-year-march towards irrelevance in the mythology of the Séll.

Countless of those Sellan powers would rise to the fore of sacrifice and ritual. Llo Taexaetau, Égion-Ctein, Beloved Úx, the Thunder-Dragon Urssúr, and Drinoqu, and countless more. Many would rise and fall over the centuries, but as ON waned, a god here called Tfaiyl Guardian, or simply Tfaiyl, would gradually establish itself as peak of the Sellan pantheon.

Tfaiyl, who would eventually be declared a sole universal power, would dominate the monotheistic period of the late Imperial n'Auré, but by this early point had yet to even acquire the position of first-among-equals.

In truth, however, the spirits and gods worshiped by early 5th age Sellan shamans were not the main focus and impact of Sellan religion at this time.

Shamans were the closest thing to a universally-recognized and respected institution of the Séll during the Gylian Anarchy. Even in the south, where the Elvish faith lingered, these early priests were understood to command great and terrible power, and to have a destiny not beholden to the material world.

The shaman class of the early 5th Age, like n'Auré in the 6th, would go to great effort to keep all magical knowledge and ability constrained. For good reason, as well - was is not abuse of magic that held the Sellan people in bondage? Was it not the terrible magic of the corrupted Heart that drove the Elves to decay and ruin? Were there not countless tales, in ages even closer to the Dawn, of reckless sorcery bringing great disaster?

For reasons both religious and very practical, Sellans held and would continue to hold a very dim view of magic, the broad populace thinking it good riddance that it was held under strict lock-and-key by the shamans of the Séll. This would eventually come to pierce n'Auré like a the horn of a Toruto, but not for some time.

No, in this time, the shamans were a neutral, powerful, independent, and highly mobile social class of the Séll. It's unclear when merchant caravans first drew close to them for safety, but it's clear that, by the end of the Gylian Anarchy, the lines between cleric, messenger, and merchant had become so thin as to be effectively erased.

VII. A Tiure Aneche (On The Coming Days)
The temporal lords and princes were not idle while n'Auré waxed in strength. They continued to feud, and war, conquer one another, and build the earliest states of recorded Sellan history. The Gylian Anarchy came to an end not with a bang, but with a gradual consolidation of the first two Great Estates of the Séll.

The nobility and clergy would be the only two of the Great Estates to form during the 5th age. Their increasing size, power, and cohesion would eventually begin to raise a thought, here and there: Was one of them to unify the Séll? Which?

 

Woah this is awesome! Do you have a description/write up on the language or it’s grammar?

btw if you weren’t aware, there happens to be a relatively active conlanging community in the wynncraft discord (in large part because of the translation work towards Tahkashtel).

 

Thank you! I'll certainly be going into bits of how the languages function here and there, but they're not intended to be the main attraction. I'll leave the detailed writeups for a separate time/document.

For now, I'll note that, while we're in the 5th age, the language used for titles and such (like the ones in the first chapter) will be in Jēsen, which will gradually become the main prestige tongue of the era. We'll see the exact circumstances of that in the next few chapters. If you know of an Ancient vs. High Gavellian distinction, then Jēsen is on the Ancient side of that, though it's nowhere near the oldest strain of Gavellian. Think of it as a transitional stage, simultaneously an Ancient and High Gavellian.

As we enter the 6th age, we'll be transitioning to d'Inlya. It's a related language, and the dialect of High Gavellian preferred by the Sellan monarchy. The title at the very top of this thread is in d'Inlya; it's the "main" HG of the timeline. Any time I refer to "High Gavellian" without qualification in this thread, I'm probably referring to d'Inlya. Jēsen is solid, but d'Inlya is one of the most detailed languages I've ever made, as well as my favourite, so maybe we'll see more details then.

Oh, I'm aware :-) I've always been kind of tangential to that community (I've been gone too long), but CT's work and the community's effort to translate it is inspiring, and part of what kept me so invested in this project for all this time. We've made it! I'm so very happy.

 

hmtn! i havent even read it yet but im so excited

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I love the interpretation that Qira named the Vanguard specifically to piss off religious folks

LANGUAGES? no wonder this has been in the works for so long, you made a full fledged continent with hundreds of years of history and all that entails
I'm very excited for what's to come, and this section was great.

 

I. Thou Thsoliäch (The Place of the Departure)
The northernmost fief of the Elf-Friends was called Fios, named so after the castle and family at its heart. Fios's holdings sat on the middle stretches of what is now called the River Suvaoch, though it was called Aldóron until the early 6th age.

As the name implies, the Aldóron flowed north from the old stronghold of the Elves, both Elder and Younger, spilling out into Gylia and ultimately emptying into the region's namesake lake. Castle Fios was built at the very northern end of Sogosell, in a place where the region's defining mountains were few, and only a handful of leagues south of where the river became wide and meandering as it entered the Gylia plains proper.

Naturally, their fief made for a popular river-crossing, especially once they built a bridge to ford the Aldóron. This brought the House of Fios much wealth and power, power that they would use to lay their enemies low and exert influence over their neighbours.

It would be vital that they did so. As mentioned earlier, Fios was the northernmost fief controlled by a house of Elf-Friends, thanks to their connection to Sogosell proper upriver. The immediate neighbors of Fios were loyal children of the Séll, one and all, and looked upon the Lords of the River-Toll with barely-disguised contempt. It was, in fairness, a rather steep toll, but perhaps the records indicating as much were biased.

Even the clergy were forced to pay the toll, for they were not the clergy of Fios, and much of the fief's peasantry were Elf-Friends of the north who had fled to this last lonely castle. Thus was built the town of Fiosqa on the western side of the bridge, and thus it was that it would develop a reputation for apostasy, and unfriendliness to n'Auré.

The feeling was mutual. Though the House of Fios was forced to tolerate their presence, as well as of their ilk upon their fief, they would not forget that these were the people who had laid ON low, and who had slaughtered the Elves, they who had defeated the Nightbringer and justly ruled for a thousand years or more¹.

In the entire known history of the Séll, no house would spawn more myths and legends than Fios, nor more notorious figures². But the Lords of the Toll were not so great a house yet, nor would they be, not for quite some time. That in mind, here is the first great tale in the Matter of the West—

The Loss of Castle Fios
NE DU THIOS ÉLLAN A SIÚRE ÁEGILA
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One day, one of the first days of the Séll, in the time of blood-before-the-blood, the House of Fios came to be ruled by the Lord Orísefútísre. He was known to be a weak and capricious fool, squandering the efforts of his ancestors. He spent their gathered coin like water. He wasted the lives of his servants and slaves, and the grain of his peasants on excessive feasting. With no thought, he would give his emerald and time to matters beneath a Lord.

He raised the tolls upon his bridge in compensation, but all this did was run dry his mine. When faced with a treasure from the west, a great medallion of fire, he threw it to his concubine, in full view of the gift-giver. When faced with a treasure from the east, a lyre of the Vindals, and a woman who could play it, he treated her as a minstrel, and forced her to play the songs of her people only as mockery and humiliation.

The House of Fios was not well-loved, in this time, for they had instead given their love to the dead and accursed. This debauchery and mockery of navoyl was to be their price, but it would be no punishment without a judge.

His reckoning came the day that he personally insulted a sage of the faith, forcing him to bow and scrape before a temporal lord for passage. News of this humiliation soon passed to the nearby vassals of Fios, humbled children of the Séll, who decided that they could no longer abide this madness and barbarism.

Rallied by Lord Kaencollva Xintiūch, among the strongest of the Fiosian banners, marched to their stronghold to do away with the Elf-Friends. The son of Lord Orísefútísre, also called Orísefútísre, and sometimes Stargazer, plead with the banners from the ramparts of Castle Fios. He nearly lost his life in the process.

Though Orísefútísre the Younger had assumed it would come to siege, his Lord father instead wished to destroy his much greater enemies in the field. And it was then that Orísefútísre the Younger realized that Fios was lost. The castle, the fief, the last senses of his father.

As he secreted away in the night, the last of the Fios-in-Fios gazed back upon the castle, and saw that his father had opened the gates, and saw the fire, and heard the screaming of Sellans. He laid a curse, then, upon the entire line of Kaencollva, such that they would forevermore know misfortune, struggle, and exile, as they had brought onto him with this treachery.

For a moment, Orísefútísre, no longer the Younger, for he knew his father was to be dead by morning, was faced with a choice. Should he go south? No, not if he wished for Fios to survive. To the masses of Elf-Friends in Sogosell, Fios was little better than their apostate banners.

East, then? Orísefútísre had heard tell, from many, that the eastern mountains were home to a witch of great power, who could grant almost any wish, if at a ruinous price. Orísefútísre did not know what, exactly, the witch could take from him.

III. Ac Óch Atiotiér (The First Exile)
Orísefútísre, and the few Sellans he could trust, traveled north along the eastern banks of the river, making towards the river-marches of the Greatest Lake. They passed through the lands of strange peoples, with strange dress, customs, and manners of speech. They did not pass in peace, not quite, but it was not a time of great strife. Twenty Sellans were enough to appear a danger to bandits and a curiosity to lords.

For weeks, they rounded the lake, eventually passing into the Lands of the Vára. There, the curiosity of the south (for the Lords of Iron had never before seen Sogosellans) entertained the court for several weeks, and Orísefútísre began to understand the lady of the Lyre who had played in his father's court.

They passed further to the east, beyond the bounds of the Séll, through the gates of Thianus and into the lands of the Dwarves. They saw few, on their journey, for the Dwarves were ever reclusive and mistrustful, and their party made merry with a band of Hobgoblins, with whom they defeated a dread Goliath, and who bestowed upon Orísefútísre an enchanted dagger.

Finally, they came to the north-east, home of the Witch. It was a dark place, a cave in a canyon, and Orísefútísre dismounted his horse, and told his Sellans to wait outside. He had been made to know that he must enter alone.

A great spider laid in wait, guardian of the cave, and if not for his dagger Orísefútísre would not have passed its trial. He descended into its heart, where he found a still pool and a woman, once again strumming the lyre that she had played in his father's court.

"Rin Pondaur," said Orísefútísre, and the Witch agreed, for she had seen his heart, and the heart of his family, and was in the mood to strike him down, then and there. Instead, she asked what the price would be, for strength and treasure to restore his House.

"I know not the limits of your power, but I offer everything," said Orísefútísre. "Everything I have left, which is not much, but I will even offer my life, should it return Fios to glory."

The Witch smiled. It was not a kind smile.

IV. Arégíndenna Siosáries (To Curse A Fool)
"I am She Who Is The Road³, and the affairs of your house are not beyond my power, as very little is. I remember you, Stargazer, and your kindness, and do not blame you for the foolishness of your father, but I do blame your house.

"I shall not destroy you today, Stargazer, for you are yet to make good on your name, nor shall I destroy your house, which is forfeit to me, and yet to fulfill my purpose.

And she said that "I shall curse you, and your line."

"So long as you wish Fios to see the morrow, you and your line are exiled from Levtus. Only one shall ever again carry your house onto the throne your father lost. They shall, die, on that day, upon that seat, and so shall end the line of Fios."

And she gave to Stargazer three small stones, hewn from the First Dragon, and she said that they were the sealed keys of her curse. So long as House Fios held at least one, her power would linger upon the Séll.

"Should you wish to lay down my curse, and return to the fickle whims of fate, cast them aside, into flame, sky, and lake. It was their birth, and it is there that they wish to return. They will leave you, if you do not guard them, and guard them jealously."

And Orísefútísre looked at the three gems, dark and red and clotted, each the size of his thumb-nail, and understood the nature of the curse. He would never again see his home. His bed, the people of Fiosqa, the hills and walls on which he played, the river bank where he sat and smoked. He would never again lay eyes on the grave of his mother, nor the mockery given to his father.

The tolls that had made his House rich were forever closed to him, and to all of his line, and he would never live to see the traitor House Kaencollva brought to heel. But in exchange, if he but kept three stones, his line would become immortal. He shed three tears, each of blood, which landed on the stones.

"Good boy," said the Witch. "But that was my price for Fios, not Stargazer. My price for you shall be so: Your line shall also be mine."

And so the two were wed, and so House Fios returned to the west in blood and witch-flame, and the daughter of Orísefútísre and the Witch would become the Lord of the South, first of the Princes of Sogosell.

V. On the Historicity of this Tale
Though held up as sacrosanct in Lleva, and so unfortunately in Wynn as well, the Matter of the West is well understood by normal people to be primarily mythological.

We live in an age of reason, and science. All principles of chronomancy and temporal magic involve real presence in real or potential timelines, and the various runic matrices and power sources required to fuel them are incredibly steep. Nobody in the early 5th age could command such power and knowledge, regardless of the Fiosian delusion that they had such a mighty figure in their bloodline. Did they not already have enough of those?

It is the opinion of most of Gylia, as well as this author, that while House Fios was betrayed by their bannermen, and forced out from their original fief (principle of embarrassment), they managed to escape with much of their wealth and resources. Perhaps after an extended campaign, they would eventually regroup in a southern holding, where they would continue their waxing and consolidation. The historical records of any of the regions that Orísefútísre Stargazer passed through never mention such a distinctive party of Sogosellans, and no records in South Gylia describe a dramatic, sudden reappearance of House Fios, simply a gradual swelling of power in their southern holdings.

The House Fios experiencing a loss of their northern, river-tolling fief and re-consolidating in the south is a much simpler story than that of a strange woman, simultaneously living in a cave and Castle Fios, distributing prophetic bloodstones. That is no basis for any serious historical analysis.

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Author's Notes

1. The timeline is rather hazy in the wake what Mage Island is nowadays telling us was a freak meteor bombardment. Don't take this at face value, they change their leading theory every six months.
2. Save perhaps Dulia.
3. "Qira," in d'Inlya, though note that this is ahistorical, as d'Inlya doesn't exist yet. Due in part to this tale, and tales like it, "Qira" is a stock character in Sellan culture, a witch of unknown name and terrible power. The name has been applied to multiple historically-attested individuals fitting the archetype, including several specifically resident in the western Canyon.

Translator's Notes
I lied! The title for Part I is in High Elvish (Liesyu), the version of High Gavellian preferred by the Elf-Friends of the 5th age. I figured it was fitting. Liesyu is related to Jēsen, but not actually very closely! It's the final fruit of a whole mess of 4th age Elvish dialects that stopped being relevant when the Aldór got collectively murked as a civilization. The Sellans... will not be apologizing for that. Actually, it didn't even happen. It's myth. But if it wasn't, then they deserved it.

I've mentioned this on and off in other places, but please don't take anything that the Sellans say about themselves or anyone else at face value. Despite living on a continent with (neo)-Elves, they're the true centre of Gavellian arrogance and disdain. Seriously, it's like a compulsion for them.