Once there was a family kind, strong, bright, and good. They had lost their home for disobeying their lord in order to bravely protect others in a time where death spread it’s ugly face across the world. It must have seemed at the time that this would be the end of the family. This loss, though, was but the start of their tale.
Their journey started in a time of great suffering when the plague of burning fever and peeling skin swept the lands. The lord of their home beneath the mountains shut out the world that needed the help this family could offer. His cowardice feared not for his people but his position of power and the wealth of his home. In madness he sought to use the plague to weaken his neighbors for conquest while preserving his own might. My family knew of ways to combat the plague and he ordered us shut silent in the dark. This did not sit right with the family to hide away with their books and forges while the rest of the world fell to the Burning Death. In a battle for the gates they left their home with all that they could carry away in wagons of clever design. They were never welcome to return and ventured out to help the greater world.
With time and much suffering this family helped many towns and weakened the effects of the plague until it passed in town after town and village after village. As they traveled along they collected others who had lost their homes in the chaos of the world. Taking them in and building new wagons for them welcoming these lost people as family. They wandered the world seeking a new home.
This family carried with them all of the tomes of their ancient library in a wagon train of a length so long you couldn’t see the end from the beginning, as it would fade into the distance. Each book was wrapped in waxed cloth and stored with others of a similar subject in a barrel. They made many things more mobile and brought them with them as they traveled. When they encounter a problem they would open the barrels related to the subject and see what wisdom they could use from the books.
Eventually this family came to a land of vast openness and light upon grassy knolls and low hills. This kingdom was imperiled by desperate people from the farthest reaches of the south. A lack of rain unknown to the people of this land had struck in the south and food was short not long before the longest night was due to arrive. These people sought what they needed by force slaughtering the peaceful people around them consuming them and all the food they had piled away for the longest night.
Answering this tragedy my family once more rendered aid with both machines of war, and healer’s hands to the kingdom in peril and helped to turn the tide. They were given in thanks land that was emptied by the raiders who mercifully did not leave the people to starve after taking everything from them. This land was given in a pact on a hill overlooking a lake during the first shining of the sun following the longest night. The moment of this gift was marked with the breaking of bread and the passing of a Circlet woven of metal vines and roses, the bread to my family and the Rose Crown to the King.
With the families blood mixed with the people who came to join them and their old ways and tribe where forgotten by all. Except for their love of lore and kindness of heart, these they passed on eventually growing into a large university with a strange, out of place library built into the ground. In a style very different from the locals filled with texts collected from many a distant location and from the books carried with them.
This family was the Sulvrosa Family and with time and careful planning and gifts given after aiding others their land and titles grew. The lands my family have claimed eventually became known as the land of the shining rose, Istorfinna as the name has warped to with time, it’s meaning all but forgotten except maybe in the olden tomes left by ancestors long forgotten or in the memories of those who cling to the lost ancient languages buried deep beneath the Academy of Roswynd.
