Introduction

I started working on Candle’Bre in mid 2002, and since that time, I’ve had a lot of folks ask me what Candle’Bre is…what it means.

I suppose the answer to that question depends on who you ask, but for me, the world is so vast and so full of possibility that I’ve come to view it as a lifelong passion, and not simply a project with a set endpoint.

It’s the place where all my hopes and dreams live and have life breathed into them, but it’s also the place where all my demons come out to play. A place of endless tooth-and-claw struggle, and a place of triumph.

For me, in all the days that have come and gone since that day in ‘02 when I decided I’d take it upon myself to create a whole world from scratch and enlisted the aid of a group of volunteers who were just crazy enough to believe, like me, that we could, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Candle’Bre has given me the full spectrum of experiences from outright despair to unbridled joy, and everything in between, and honestly, in looking back over that time, I would not trade one second of it, because out of those struggles, and in the midst of those hard won accomplishments, some remarkable and lifelong friendships have been formed.

In that respect, we have all truly become citizens of Candle’Bre, and my hope is that, with the release of the books, we’ll see a steady stream of immigrants to this new land. That you are here reading these words is at least some indication that it’s working. Won’t you stay a while and join us?

Origins of the Basin

The land of Candle’Bre is more ancient than its own features, older than its own mountains. It has been morphed and changed, shifted under the weight of centuries and in the fury of a single moment. On this land, its history forgotten in endless cycles of life and death, the people exist and build over the unrecognizable ashes of the past. To the people, this is all that matters: the now, what exists. The people who claim this land for their own, however, merely scratch the surface of the great wonders and horrors of history.

Once, there was an Empire, so great that it was The Empire, the Realm of Man, the seat of all civilization. It may have been the source of man, the great tree from which mankind was scattered like leaves after its loss, or it may have been just one of a procession of empires back to the dawn of time. But it was an empire, and it was the last empire.

So little is known about The Empire that it is not even considered fit for discussion in history books; what small part was carried off in the minds of the first refugees was garbled in their death or consumed in the raging flames of Langborne a hundred years later. History more than two hundred years ago is only myth.

What is known is that the Empire was huge, home to millions, and it was ruled in whole by the great figure of the Emperor ruling from the peerless city of Ravanna, fortress and shrine to humanity. His legions ruled all of mankind, his power was undisputed, and his magnificence was unquestioned.

This is entirely all that is known about The Empire before the Nilroggi.

The Nilroggi were not known to The Empire. All the enemies of The Empire had been vanquished or lay distantly across the seas of the world. No man alive will claim to know why or how they came, they simply did. Where The Empire knew only victory, they brought defeat; where the legions had never lost a man they were slaughtered wholesale. The Nilroggi were a hideous, terrifying enemy, creatures that never rested from the task of destruction. They bore down on The Empire like a furious, unwavering tide that stained the land incarnadine and blew cities aside like sandcastles.

The war started slowly, in the east of The Empire, and refugees poured from ravaged provinces. The Nilroggi neither captured nor spared; entire lands were depopulated. The survivors who had escaped moved in long processions westward, not stopping at the mighty fastness of Kehesh and moving though Ravanna itself without halting. They had no faith for the legions of The Emperor or the walls he had built. They had seen the enemy that could not be stopped, and they did not end their flight for promises of safety from the lips of the Emperor’s men. They marched westward and did not turn back. They fled, and in the end, only they lived.

The Emperor’s legions fought battle after battle against the Nilroggi, but the Nilroggi outnumbered them and fought fanatically to the last creature with no fear of death and no apparent need for rest. Kehesh, the great fortress that lay only two days west of Ravanna, fell to the Nilroggi in a battle that signaled the end of The Empire. The legions were crushed, and the capitol was in utter chaos. Every night, the citizens could look from the walls of Ravanna and see Kehesh in the distance, now a great Nilroggi warren surrounded by the glow of burning villages. The symbol of their invincibility had become the ghastly reminder of their failure.

Ravanna fell not long afterwards, in a terrible massacre that finally threw The Empire into ruins. With the seat of government destroyed, all contact between the various lands of The Empire was lost. Of the refugees who had fled west, only a few small bands remained. One of these bands, led by the priest Arliss Castillar, traveled to a sparsely populated land in the far western reaches of The Empire, a land which was known as Harrad. It is known now as Candle’Bre.