Igor Drazkharov was not renowned for his etiquette or his courtesies. His was a bleak province inhabited by a hardened folk. Frequent were the summer raids from beyond the northern borders of Holwingen, marauding greenskins and savage barbarians oft descending on the farmsteads in search of plunder, rapine, slaves and worse. Yet the grip of winter was almost as dire, as the biting wind and torrential snow-storms all but buried the countryside for months at a time. The lands were perilous to travel, even for well-supplied caravans and bands of armed local militia. Such hardships turn the kindest souls stern and mistrusting, and Drazkharov’s ruthlessness with foreign invaders became widely known. So it was to the great surprise of the garrison of the Krahefort when a lone traveller, arriving in the gloaming of an autumnal evening, stood before the gates of Drazkharov’s castle seeking the hospitality of the Count of Holwingen.
She had travelled a long, dangerous road yet for all her weariness and dust-stained travel clothes she maintained an undeniably noble bearing. The usually curmudgeonly Count took audience in the gloomy Raven’s Hall, with his barons and knights assembled to hear the curious tale of the lady rider who had found her way to the Krahefort alone, against all the odds.
Hers was a bitter tale. She told the Count of her far-away homeland, ravaged by war. Of how her noble brothers and their kinsman died in the defence of her once proud city. Of her flight into exile, pursued at every turn by those who had laid waste to her country and slain her people. She was the last of her family, without home or refuge or friends. Her shone with diamond tears with the telling of her tragic tale, and the knights and barons and Count and all, each of them hung upon her every word. They were utterly captivated.
She was tall and graceful, with midnight hair and alabaster skin. Her voice was a song of grief and loss that somehow magnified her beauty. Even in the darkness of the Raven's Hall she shimmered with an undeniable aura of majesty. It is said that it was her eyes though, as they glistened their grief in the meagre candlelight, that utterly beguiled the Count. His dour and flinty heart had melted in her gaze. So it was that the exotic stranger, who had risked all in search of safety, found her unlikely sanctuary at the Krahefort and her comfort in the arms of the Count of Holwingen. Within the turn of the year the Count was married, and Igor presented his new wife, the Countess Anastasia, at the Emperor’s annual ball in Grand Palace at Sigmarheim.
Yet the story of Count Igor and his Lady Anastasia would not end in fairytale. Upon their return to their seat in Holwingen it appeared as though Anastasia’s hunters had not surrendered their pursuit. An envoy of the Dragon Lords of Mellvellon, at the head of a mighty army, sought an audience with the Count. The Elf claimed that he was tracking a dangerous foe, one who had for many years eluded the hand of justice. When the envoy named Anastasia as the fugitive and criminal that he sought, she wept with anguish. Confronted with the face of one whose kin had a hand in the downfall of her motherland and the death of her brothers, she begged her husband for vengeance. Enraged by such accusations and inconsolable to see his dear wife moved to such fear, the Count consigned the Elf to the dungeons of the Krahefort, never to be seen again. Igor rallied his barons and knights and in a single day of ferocious battle drove the Elves from the lands of Holwingen.
As the carrion birds of the Krahefort flocked to feast upon the spiked heads of Elven captains that adorned the Count’s battlements, Anastasia plotted with Igor and his barons to fortify the castle and expand the defences of the province. Doubtless more invaders would come now that the Lady’s presence was known.
The shadow of the massacre of the Elves hangs heavily upon the bleak hills of Holwingen, and the smallfolk whisper fearfully of the tortured screams that can be heard across the moors of a still night. Echoing up from the dungeons of the Krahefort, they serve as warning to those who would seek to extinguish the last scion of noble Aquila.
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