Endon! Homeland of the best and bravest, gentle mother of heroes and healers! Words cannot begin to describe your beauty or your gentleness - though I will, of course, attempt that lofty goal in later pages.

Before I begin to tell you, reader, of all of the wonders natural and physical of the Kingdom of Endon, perhaps it is best if I expound on the cultural histories of these lands: Endon has been inhabited by one race or another for many thousands of years, and often the unwary traveller will find himself wordless when confronted with some of the strange customs and practices of this place.

I will, however, deliver a warning to you, reader: these few accounts that I will render to you are some of the whole, not the sum of the whole. If I speak of the runemasters of the giantkin, or the feypeoples, or the bloodmages of the Ssthessic Vrasa, know then that these are only small parts of a far greater history.

I will do what I can to detail these wondrous curiosities, but keep your eyes open, reader. There are new discoveries around every corner in Endon.
So: let me write of the giants, of their runes. Let me write of the feywilds and the dissolution of magic. Let me write of the history of the living peoples of Endon, and the legacy they leave behind.

And let you, reader, keep your mind open.

-- Sir Francis de Marr, Knight

This page is an overview of the history of the Valley of Endon and the Kingdom of Endon which took its name. For more detail on any topic, follow the links to individual pages on the right.

Table of Contents

The Embrace of the Giants

Few alive today can tell of how the world came into being. The goliaths believe that the world is but a small part of a much larger creation, brought into being by the slumbering night. The yuan-ti will speak of the fire in the heart of the stars. Closer to, human scholars believe that the world was created by a massive conflagration of untamed magicks. But whatever the cause, the result is the same: a world teeming with various races, each with their own histories, their own lineages, and their own answers to the world’s great questions.

Endon’s history began in time long before memory. It was unarguably the territory of the Elder Giants – the titanic, landstriding colossi from the dim past. Their like has gone from the world, but there have been claims from wild-eye travellers about their graves: skulls larger than villages, their vacant eyes staring into the star-filled skies forever. The Elder Giants lived here for countless millennia, but despite their size, left few relics of their time. No evidence has been found of any structures, or monuments, though the claim has been made that the mythical Himminin of goliath lore was built to their specifications.

Eventually, the Elder Giants relinquished their claims on the mortal lands to their children, the giants. Our contact with this reclusive people is little – most believe them to be savages, and there are certainly accounts that will give the scholar reason to believe this. But there are accounts aplenty that could make the same claim of us, and in Endon there is more evidence than anywhere of the complexities of their societies, the ambition of their edificing, and the deep emotion of their culture.

In the time before the humans, yuan-ti, or other humanoid races arrived in Endon, the giants and the goliaths built their cities: Agduvar, Agdu-Ise, Agdu-Stein, to name a few. These citadels, perched on the mountaintops too high and secluded for any human explorer to reach, can still be glimpsed on clear days. Walls higher than hills, towers the envy of modern architects; the giants’ cities are some of the last remaining artifacts of the giants’ dominion over the land.

The Goliath Dominion

By the eve of their time in the lands beneath the mountains, they had passed their kingship to their lesser counsins, the goliaths. The goliaths, even to this day, are hardy, strong, and long-lived. Though much smaller in stature than true giants, they are nonetheless some of the greatest of the humanoid races, their strength and durability the envy of many.

The goliaths formalised their Dominion when they began to come in contact with other races: in that time, the first dwarven cities were delved beneath the Iron Mountains – oldest of these was Heimflad. They opened trade with them, and with the occasional elven and human transport that came over the mountain passes from the east. This was, in the measure of years in Endon, roughly 2200BE.

However, as trade opened, the Dominion became more vulnerable to outside influences. Whereas for millennia the lands had been protected from the prying eyes of outsiders by the high mountains, now the ways were open for invaders. And invade they did, several hundred years later.

The goliath histories tell of the War of the Stone Tree, around 1520BE: the yuan-ti armies moved over the mountain passes to the east and around the Flintcliffs to the north, and overwhelmed the goliaths. They had no fortifications, no large cities in the fertile valleys, and so the victory of the yuan-ti was swift, driving the goliath survivors back into the mountains.

Accounts from the temples and ruins left after the fall of their empire tell modern scholars that the yuan-ti armies had been launched from across the Long Strait to the east. The Dragonreach Deserts were a barren and desolate place, and the serpentine traders who had gone and returned from the Goliath Dominion told tales of a land capable of sustaining their people.

The yuan-ti moved to fortify themselves as quickly as possible, fearing reprisals from the displaced goliaths, and from their trading partners. But no retaliation was forthcoming: the dwarves, safe in their mountainous delves, did not involve themselves in the affairs of their neighbours, and the goliaths themselves saw their defeat, in hindsight, as an unavoidable tragedy. They instead established themselves more fiercely in the mountains and hills of Endon, and saw to it that the yuan-ti knew that they were not safe once they left their borders.

The Ssthessic Vrasa

History, from this point, becomes more easily read. To the giants and the goliaths, time is a flowing, immutable whole, and the count of years is incidental in the measurement of history. From the establishment of the Yuan-Ti Empire – or the Ssthessic-Vrasa – onwards, historians are more certain.

The Empire was concerned, first and foremost, with establishing a safe and economically-secure society for their people. The scarcity they had endured in the centuries before their invasion of Endon had cemented a desire for long-term prosperity, and so they focussed on the building of infrastructure, farmlands, and marketplaces. To this day, the highways used throughout the kingdom are built on the yuan-ti foundations.

In 1,007BE, the yuan-ti built their citadel: Tol Mannic. As the Empire had secured itself, and its people forgot the hardships of their ancestors, their attention wandered from the economic priorities of the early days. Instead, they built academies, amphitheatres, and established a kind of early democracy, in which a group of elected representatives for each territory brought issues to the Imperial Family.

However, as is the case with most empires, the later days of that ruling body saw a great many issues. Compromises forged over centuries sowed the seeds of discord between their subjects, and the growing population, now unwilling to toil in the fields, began to grow a caste of slaves and serfs. Most of these slaves, captured in raids from other lands, were human, and their numbers grew. They had few rights, fewer privileges, and as their numbers grew for a population of yuan-ti that grew fatter, lazier, and more and more overnumbered, the policies passed by the Imperial Family to curtail them became harsh.

The Slaves' Revolt and the Sunderking

In 32BE, in the slave camps to the northwest of what is now Shallowport, a group of human slaves forged what was to become the Slaves’ Revolt. They overpowered their yuan-ti guards, took weapons and armour, and moved to take Shallowport – then the Imperial city of Darkness-in-Water. By the time that the guard in Tol Mannic had gotten word, the Revolt was underway, and the yuan-ti were fighting a losing battle.

Slaves throughout the empire took up weapons, poisoned supplies, and overtook cities from within. Despite desperate and cruel measures by the yuan-ti to stop them, the slave warriors in the empire outnumbered their own, and the war began truly.

It raged for decades as the slaves pushed the yuan-ti back, led by a slave from the Shallowport pits, known as the Sunderking. He claimed the allegiance of the other slaves, forged himself an army, and began to expand his new kingdom, which he named Endon. His hatred for the yuan-ti and his brilliance as a field commander led to a bloody victory, and the Sunderking continued. He drove the yuan-ti out of their cities, toppled the tower at Tol Mannic, threw down the palaces throughout the empire, and put every yuan-ti he found to the sword.

By the time the campaign ended, at the foundation of the Kingdom of Endon, the Sunderking had exterminated the yuan-ti in their entirety.

Then a young man, the Sunderking led the Kingdom of Endon in building on the ruins of the empire that they had overthrown. Slavery was abolished, lands were carved out for feudal lords, and the Sunderking busied himself with tidying up the pieces of the empire. But few of the old slaves were willing to live under the rule of their new ‘king’, and almost immediately new kingdoms popped up. The elven slaves conglomerated in their city in the forests to the west, Alaron, the dwarven slaves returned to the delvings to the south, and the other humans made kingdoms in Talbot, Riverbend, and Klad, to challenge the Kingdom of Endon and its king in Shallowport.

Years turned to decades as the Sunderking warred against new neighbours, attempting to establish another empire in the image of the Ssthessic Vrasa, with human soldiers instead of yuan-ti. Accounts from the time say that he became so obsessed with seeing his vision come true that he made a pact with some dark power to become immortal. Perhaps for that reason, his vision was achieved in 102AS: a new empire, with the Sunderking at its head.

He had founded a new city to be the capital, Endon, and it was there that he was finally killed in 183AS – an assassin broke into the palace and killed him, coordinated with an overthrow of his guards and seconds. The deposers, afraid of his power and uncertain of whether he was truly dead, moved his remains to the far edge of the Kingdom, to a tomb now known as Sunderking's Barrow.

The Kingdom of Endon

Over the next several centuries, the Sunderking’s successors continued in the attempt to forge a single, united kingdom. With the Sunderking’s death, the kingdom shattered into smaller pieces once more, but eventually the Treaty Pacifica was signed by representatives from Talbot, Endon, and Shallowport in 490AS, and the fledgling kingdom constructed the border outpost at Endon's Pass in 711AS – it is at this point, scholars agree, that Endon, as we recognise it now, began.

Now, Endon is ruled by the royal family, who can trace their lineage back to the Sunderking himself. Their seat is the Hall of the King, in the capital, Endon, and the land itself is ruled by the ruling class: earls, dukes, barons, and lords. In more recent years, other political powers have risen to influence the politics of the region more openly – particularly the merchants’ guild and the guild of magicians.