The Saga of the Silver Blade is the most pivotal chapter ever learned by or shared with this author about the even greater history known as the Tale of Twilight & Shadow. The Saga amounts to a detailed prose narrative written from the compilation of the countless collections, chronicles, legends, accounts, and tellings describing the culmination of events begun by the Epic Sundering of Eternity. Sometimes, the primary sources are simply reproduced faithfully rather than rendered into narrative which might understate the words of an original author.

In the context of the larger telling, the Saga of the Silver Blade is but a single moment on an infinite line. Calling the Saga a “moment” is relative to the entire collection which reaches from before a conceptual understanding of time to conclude sometime after the passing of any meaningful interpretation of time. All but a very small number of readers will interpret the Saga of the Silver Blade as much more than a “moment.” It spans one hundred and fifty to three hundred years, depending on when one defines the original catalyst of the Saga. There are two related events, separated by one hundred and fifty-three years, which together define the origin of the Saga of the Silver Blade.

The entire story of existence begins and ends with the Tale of Twilight & Shadow. Like every journey we undertake, the conclusion remains unsettled until the end. The Tale began with the Epic Sundering of Eternity, just one of many long and hidden stories telling the Tale of Twilight & Shadow. That epic is set in a time and place inconceivable to anything or anyone capable of truly contemplating the finality of death. Unlike the earlier part of the Tale of Twilight & Shadow, the Saga of the Silver Blade is confined to a much smaller space and time, with relatable places and characters—some of whom a reader might know personally.

The first of the twin origins of the Saga is the Fall of Ciermanuinn in 928 AV, which occurred during the rare celestial alignment known as the Gaze of the Watcher. This potent alignment takes place at the Middark, the precise midpoint of a nine-year Arc, when the shadow of Aithyris falls upon the Great Violet Storm that coalesces on Selyne's surface. On such a night, the ambient Light of Selyne is disrupted and can fail altogether—a fatal vulnerability for a city whose defenses relied upon it.

The Nottsver, a particularly violent and zealous sect of the Stornir often called "Night Swords," invaded Ciermanuinn on such a fateful night. They could not have known the defenses of Ciermanuinn relied on the Violet Light of Selyne–or understood the significance of a strike during Middark. Never before had Ciermanuinn been penetrated. Among those with the luxury to put their survival in the hands of others, debate raged over how it happened, whether it was an amazing coincidence, or just a carefully timed incursion.

The loss of Ciermanuinn and its Alabaster Gate marked the moment officially revealing the legendary Silver Blade, or an equally impressive surrogate. A mythical weapon to the Stornir, they believed the sword was actually a shard of ice from before the birth of the world—or emergence of light. The Nottsver relentlessly hunted for any sign of the weapon, especially wherever they found signs of the Elowyn people, or the alfir, as the Stornir call them. According to their lore, the alfir stole the Silver Blade and hid it deep in the forests of one of the Eleysian Islands. Whoever claimed the blade could summon the great black serpent Storn the Devourer, triggering the return to the pleasing original state of darkness and ice. The Nottsver who surged across the Vales of Ciermanuinn on that Middark believed they saw the Silver Blade that night, that its wielder drove away an incarnation of Storn. And then disappeared.

A slow decline in Nottsver fervor over the next century and numerous additional sightings of their legendary shard throughout the islands fueled more speculation about the Silver Blade’s true home. The Nottsver raids ended, even if those of the Stornir as a whole never relented. Alfirhavn, the very island named for its known persistent shandaryn occupation, became suspect in their minds as the real site where the weapon rested.

The second event which could be considered as an origin of the Saga of the Silver Blade has some similarities with the Fall of Ciermanuinn. It began with the return of the Nottsver suddenly and en masse to the Eleysian Islands in 1066 AV, undermining and ultimately shattering the fragile alliance building amongst the islands and surrounding powers. They struck at the Elowyn community at the Lockstone. The survivors fled without any knowledge of the Nottsver objective for the site beyond brutally searching for something, physically and bodily, among the Elowyn and their ancient home in the shadow of the huge Lockstone monolith.

The peak of the second event occurred in 1081 AV. An orphaned refugee known as Krysaalis a’Ciermanuinn who escaped the fallen community when still just a child discovered she needed to go home. Simultaneously, the Nottsver believed they had finally found their legendary shard and prepared for the surgical extraction of the Silver Blade from the hands of its Elowyn bearer. The Fall of Ciermanuinn and return of the Vale’s orphaned daughter Krysaalis cannot be separated, nor the importance of Krysaalis connecting them. It is with her the Saga of the Silver Blade begins.

The Saga traces the actions of many important people and families, sometimes through several generations. Although the entire telling extends beyond the bounds of this work, this first volume intends to capture the moment the legend of the Silver Blade stepped into the light for all to see. The Legend of the Silver Blade, as this volume is called, is meant to provide an entirely self-contained account of the final movement of the Silver Blade from a myth of a people on the fringe of civilization to a tangibly visible artifact of unknown origin.

Compilation of the following narrative includes the amalgamation of oral and written accounts, a small bit of speculation and commentary, and some creative license to add flavor to what might otherwise just be a dense stew of flavorless facts. No account of any conversation or action with corroborating evidence was changed or embellished. Where creative license occurred, an understanding of the historical person’s nature and all known peripheral influences informed the writing to attempt recreation of the most likely scenario possible, even though some of the details might be factually inaccurate. Corrections occurred where and when noticed, but in a work of this magnitude, it is impossible to confidently believe that all potential errors in consistency are now gone.

Now, let us open the titular chronicle from the Saga of the Silver Blade.

Chronicler of the Silver Blade
Castle Silverblade, Avryn
5th Circle of Arc 134, 1207 as reckoned by the Arcs of Vespria