Monument to the Past (Quest of Fire Friday)

ABARROS

The site of a battle in Libertias’ war for sovereignty over the region from Ecthelowall.   Much of the town had been rebuilt in stone quarried in Ecthelowall and ported over as reparation for the costly conflict.

Very little had transpired within the town of note since, and so its greatest point of interest is a statue cast in bronze of the Ecthel Monarch, Kilcameron. The last in a long line, the spindly man wears robes of a philosopher rather than armor for combat. In his hand is a rolled map signifying the territory’s transfer.  Kilcameron stands tall, looking away as he stretches out his arm in offer of the map. There is resignation in his eyes. Whether an accurate portrayal or interpreted long after, in Kilcameron’s sorrowed gaze is the town’s pride for its part in the war ending Ecthelowall’s dominion over in Libertias. Doubling the pride was the fall, soon after, of the Monarch. He was taken prisoner by the nobles of Ecthelowall and executed for treason, thus ending Ecthelowall’s line of Monarchs.

By Anargen’s time (1600 Middle Era) the notion of a Monarch of Ecthelowall seemed impossible. A sinister memory of the past which could only be used in whispered tales around hearths. The statue is mounted on a pedestal bearing an inscription, which Anargen remembered for the look of it, the elegant flow of the artistic scrawl in the bronze was a feat of its own:

“Here on the fields of Abarros, frozen in ice and the stillness of sacrifice made,

We triumphed o’er tyranny and woe.  Freedom here was sown.”

Those whispered tales and the boast inscribed on the statue’s base were woefully unaware. In The Gathering Dark many shadows and terrors regarded as myth prove alive and of undeniable danger.