The Hormund man who received the Fragment of Silence built a great empire with his hands. This was not easily achieved, however.

With the disappearance of the white star, warring began. Many succumbed to greed and malice in the name of their families and their blood. They coveted precious treasures and spilled blood for the sake of sparkling trinkets. Their intellect bore naught but steel to rend each other's flesh instead of tending to advancement and building.

Those that had nothing fell or grew weaker, in the end resorting to profane activity for the chance to see the next day. Many evils were wrought, and ultimately, the greatest treachery was born in the hearts of men, Oerggon, Yaowun, and Hormund alike: the plot to steal the Fragment of Silence within a blessed living man.

Legions of men flooded to his doorstep to take what was rightfully his. All the evil of man raged against him, but he was never felled.

‘Three nights were sufficient for the Cradler of the Fragment to silence all who desired the brightest honor afforded to him by the white star. Three nights of flowing blood and rend flesh, I see. The Butchering of The Loud,’ wrote Ement the Elder Scribe.

This one man brought peace and order with the powers of the Fragment, and created a lineage of powerful humans that inherited extraordinary power and ruled alongside him for many years: his eighteen sons and daughters.

They were the lineage of Tiendred, the Unfelled Ones.

They called themselves gods, as each of the Tiendred lived for hundreds of years and was followed by good fortune, wielding immense powers that shook the lands of men.

The only constant that remained was their undying father, he who wielded the Fragment of Silence.

His rule was not perfect, however. His influence was not enough to win over all men in the lands, not even his own children. Some of them left the grace of the Silent One and traversed the world in search of something more.

How could those born from the stars not mirror the desire for glory, to pierce the dark with their own radiance?

Multitudes followed them, swearing fealty as their subjects. A majority of them carried grievances for the cruelty that still plagued them, even under this gracious rule of the chosen Hormund man and limited influence of the Silent Peak which rested in his domain, failing to reach those that still lived with distorted shadows.

Those that would not bend the knee and follow the progeny of the chosen Hormund man, fell in with darker crowds: men and beast from lands outside the grace of the Silent Peak. In time, dark fury loomed over the horizon once again, borne against the Cradler of the Fragment.

‘The evils that the first blessed man failed to quell brought the desperate man to make known to odd forces that there were lands aside from their own. Blessed, Sheltered lands for the taking,’ Rinion the Elder Scribe documents.

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And again, it was war.

Odd creatures with humanoid and unseen forms stormed the lands, wreaking havoc and bloodshed.

They spread evil over the lands, corrupting the waning influence of the Silent Peak over LESTRIA’s crust and bringing plagues to the people.

In these warring times, humans were both blessed and cursed with unnatural powers.

They acquired Sorcery from the energy of the world, and Enlightenment, from the deep understanding of the mysteries of LEASTRIA.

They harnessed LEASTRIA’s force to match the strength of the Fragment they had witnessed in the hands of the Hormund man.

Then yet another power rose from these dark times.

Nay. It was not proper to call it a power as it wrought more evil than good to whoever it latched on to. It came with the invasion of odd creatures from beyond the known lands and seas.

There came the rise of Genuine Curses.

They were rare but not unseen, feared but not mistaken.

The Hormund man with the Fragment of Silence rose up again with his eight loyal spawn and fought against the odd enemies alongside his people.

But nay. They fell short.

Many of these ‘gods’ fell under the hands of Cradlers of the odd stars.

The blessed man with the Fragment of Silence saw the blood of his people staining his fruitful lands and gnashed his teeth. He bore the Fragment of Silence from his flesh and bashed it against the crust of his lands, breaking them away from the ill-formed hands of the evils that had prevailed against him.

And thus the lands of man known as the Sheltered Lands were born, bound by nothing but sea and free from reach; the Vast Sea to the West and the Vaster Sea to the East.

The Lineage of Tiendred as it had been known to glory perished along with the first piece of the Fragment of Silence. Only one bastard child, neither godlike nor blessed, remained from as the Hormund man’s loyal legacy. He went on to rule, preserving the Sheltered Lands.

Alas, he couldn’t keep a hold over the realm as one. His ten half brothers and sisters, long detached from their father, created their own nations in the Sheltered Lands, pushing back against his authority. They established their own lines but never left the name, Unfelled.

Life never remained the same in the Sheltered Lands: cities were built and fell to war; grand treasures were forged by those who were Enlightened and stolen by greedy Kings that did not hearken to the will of the ‘gods’; sorcery grew, abused by foul men with tainted minds after the wars; and Genuine Curses festered, rare as they were.

Yet, none of this eclipsed the lazy evils that reached out to the desperate.

Remnants planted by odd stars to pillage the beauty of the creatures made by the Silent One tempted the frail and those born outside the Sheltered Lands – far from the Silent Peak.

They grasped at these forces with delight.