Acelin the Stalwart

The name Acelin first appears in recorded history during the Age of Treachery, in the Land of Rebirth, where penitents can earn full forgiveness for their sins in exchange for ten years of humble toil. There is no record of what sin drove the man to this place. When his decade was up, Acelin, though he wanted to, could not simply stay. He had to test his redemption to know if it was real. As it happened, his ultimate trial came for him immediately. As he was making warm goodbyes, a breathless messenger arrived. War had come to Kaerok, and the Sacred Order was mustering to aid their brethren in faith and staunch allies. Northern heretics of Frostheim had violently broken with the Order’s orthodoxy. Alongside Orc mercenaries and warbands of malcontent Skinwalkers led by the Orc warlord Saftor the Farsighted, the northerners were besieging, one after another, what were at that time merely the Free Cities of Kaerok — proud and strong, but divided against themselves. If Frostheim had chosen to settle their differences with the Order in blood, Acelin vowed to repay them in kind and traveled to the nearest muster-grounds. When he was evaluated, he proved naturally competent with shield and pick-hammer. When the marshals of the Order questioned if had a fighting background, Acelin’s eyes darkened and he did not explain his skills. The Sacred Order could scarce afford to reject any able—bodied recruit, less a trained warrior, especially one who had earned the erasure of his past, and so he was passed. Acelin was no ordinary soldier. He was a born leader and a beast of war. He quickly rose through the ranks and proved a tactician without peer, and a skilled negotiator to boot. In his first battle, he not only struck down a dozen foes and saved the lives of several comrades with the timely intervention of his shield, but arbitrated between two feuding commanders and helped them synthesize a plan that ultimately won the field. He continued to produce victories and used his growing fame to advocate fiercely for trust and coordination between the Cities. It was during this time he became known as the Stalwart. The humility and righteousness hard-won by Acelin in the Land of Rebirth was key to his charisma and success. He fought for every soldier’s life as if they were his kin, always meticulously choosing his engagements to avoid unnecessary casualties. This compassion won him the trust of the lords and garnered support for his calls to elect a singular warlord, a Knight of Knights, to oversee the war and, perhaps, the future of Kaerok as its sole monarch. One Lady Sethallia, who had long denounced the selfishness and disunity she saw among the lords, was his first avid supporter, and soon others followed. Without a Knight of Knights, Kaerok could never have repelled Frostheim as it did. And had any but Acelin the Stalwart, the twice-destined, been elected to be that Knight of Knights, they may well have failed to live up to the enormous challenge. Acelin’s magnanimity, sincerity, and guile saw Kaerok, the Order, and Aravian expeditionaries conduct a counter-invasion. The war had left a power vacuum and absence of leadership that Acelin exploited just as the Frostheim coalition had sought to do with the disunity of the Free Cities. The last general standing to oppose him was Tellana lronwill. She had consolidated what was left of the Frostheim political structure under her leadership, and was the only power-holder who could feasibly accept the terms of a surrender and legitimize the deal in the eyes of her people. Frostheim and Kaerok both were remade by the treaty of peace: no longer confederations of city-states or of petty kings, but two strong kingdoms. Tellana became the first Queen of a united Frostheim, and immediately proposed a marriage alliance to Acelin. The warrior-queen and the Knight of Knights were wed, and yet again Acelin was able to bring unity where strife had once prevailed. He was the first king of Kaerok, and under him the heads of the noble families became known as the Banner Lords. The impact of his rule went much further than this – Acelin and Tellana laid the blame for the war squarely at the feet of Saftor the Farsighted, and in so doing laid the ground for the bloody Red Crusade. Centuries of strife followed, in which the Gaellen Pact was formed. The origins of the Gaellen War itself, bloodier than the Crusade, can be traced back to the decisions of Acelin.