Entry 7

Half a century ago, there lived a man named Reevan. He built his life beneath the vast craggy slopes of the Kradellan Mountains, carrying nothing more than a pick, an axe, and the perseverance to transform that little mountain valley into a place called home. The fleeting few who knew this story well enough to tell it always conveniently forgot the part where he had nowhere else to go; the man had been exiled from his city of birth, pushed to civilization's edge for some crime which has long since been forgotten. 

Yet Reevan's solitude was soon interrupted by fate in the form of a wagon train, intent on establishing a mining colony within the valley. Land rights for the entire mountain range belonged to Bovica, but their previous lack of interest in the area had allowed this exile free reign - so long as he refrained from attracting unwanted attention to himself. The prospective miners immediately began work setting up camp and scouring the range for viable tunnel spots, much to Reevan's disappointment. Seeing no way to force them out or persuade these people to leave, he instead decided to let them do as they wished.

Months passed, and before long the man who previously thrived on a lack of human interaction had grown used to the mining colony's presence. His own knowledge of the valley had proven invaluable in finding a suitable location for their settlement to coalesce, and by year's end he was an accepted part of the community. Time marched on, he fell in love with a woman of the colony, they had a child, and this is around the time when the story became tedious and boring to listen to. It's tedious and boring for me to explain, as well. But everything began to get much more interesting around five years after the initial caravan entered this secluded part of the Kyrlund.

The economy of Bovica had been declining.  For twenty years, in fact. Maintaining borders with the surrounding countries required an inordinate amount of supplies, practically starving the rest of Bovica while the army and Church lived lavishly. Rumors surrounding the extreme resource costs spread amongst city-goers and particularly nosey villagers, with each one more outlandish than the last. Some claimed the cause to be a rise in bandit raids on Bovican trade routes; others suggested the northern nation of Triton may have been preparing for another war, to retake what they lost when Bovica became independent. Most of it was simply gossip, containing barely a fraction of the truth.

It would only take seventy more years for those rumors to become fact.

The mining colony within that little mountain valley, named Sarvas through a community-wide vote, had done its best to produce the necessary resources to keep receiving payment from Bovica; but every month, the amount of required stone and metal ore had been gradually increasing until the minimum desired quantity was beyond what their mines had the capability to produce. In response to this, the government sent a large group of soldiers to the valley, as well as to many other mining towns along the range, and ordered them to establish a garrison there. The troops would monitor the mines and rule through martial law, brutally punishing anyone who didn't meet their rules and regulations. As you can probably guess, this shift marked the beginning of the end for Sarvas.

Whippings became common, women were passed around from soldier to soldier, and the residents could do absolutely nothing about it, else they risked poverty at the loss of Bovica's coin. Reevan, fearing for the upbringing of his at-the-time three year old daughter, managed to sneak both her and her mother out of the valley. He never saw them again. Less than a month later, a massive revolt broke out; at least eighty townsfolk died in an attempt to push the soldiers into a retreat, while another seventy disappeared into the mining tunnels. At first, the Bovicans tried to hunt the escapees down, but to no avail. The tunnels were simply too vast to explore all of them without getting lost or trapped. So instead, the garrison collapsed the beams holding up the main mine entrance, and then proceeded to do the same for every tunnel exit in the valley. The bodies of those who fought back were burned beyond recognition, preventing any later accounts from forming any semblance of a death registry. Reevan was never seen after that night, making his fate unknown.

Following that, the Bovicans had no reason to stay. Without people to run the mine, there was no way to continue operation, leading to the entire garrison packing up their supplies and returning whence they came. This story was circulated throughout the Kyrlund by way of wandering traders and caravans stumbling upon the abandoned village in the valley, but the tale of Reevan in particular was not. You might be wondering how I know of him at all. It's rather simple, really.

His daughter was taken a little ways southwest of that valley by her mother, and grew up in a small, unremarkable farming village. She had no surname, as did neither of her parents, but upon bearing her first and only child she wished for a change. And a change it would be.

Her name was Madi. And I am her son.