Chronicle of House Zartavius

Almost entirely lost to the annals of history, the First walked the earth during an age when the gods walked among men. It is known he survived the siege of Troy through a dark pact struck with one such deity—a bargain that sealed a curse upon his bloodline for all eternity.

His Demise

Unaware of the god's treachery, he met his end at the Battle of Marathon, leading a valiant, charging route against the Persian forces.

His Legacy

His true records have been swallowed by time, leaving him a ghost even to his own descendants.

Unlike his forefather, the Second's deeds are well-recorded. Raised in the opulent nobility of Macedonia, he viewed the ancient tales of gods and curses as mere myth. He surrendered himself to debauchery, dining and laying with whomever he pleased—until he was conscripted into the army of a certain Great Macedonian king.

His Valor

He proved his worth on the campaign through Asia Minor, riding all the way to the edges of India.

His Demise

He fell in battle against a monstrous war elephant, but only after slaughtering half the enemy's flank single-handedly.

His Legacy

Though he sired many heirs, none were deemed worthy to carry his surname. The name Zartavius was buried beneath the dust of history, sleeping until the early medieval era.

A lord marked by boundless potential, the Third was born to hold a weapon, favoring the crushing weight of a warhammer. He was headstrong, noble, and deeply cared for his serfs and lands. Yet, his martial prowess bred a fatal overconfidence.

His Mistake

Ignoring the delicate checks and balances of feudal rule, he provoked a conspiracy among rival nobles. When he uncovered their plot to overthrow him, he defeated their greatest champions in combat—and then foolishly granted them clemency.

His Demise

This mercy proved his undoing. His castle was razed, his house dragged through the mud, and his family slaughtered. He died fiercely protecting his only child, the sole survivor of the massacre.

The Fourth's earliest memories were of summer winds and a warm, loving family. Those memories were forever violently overwritten by the sickly stench of burning corpses and the sound of his father's skull dragging against the gravel behind the horses of traitors. From that day forth, he was consumed by a singular, cold fury.

His Rise

Possessing his father's height, if not his bulk, and armed with his mother's icy temperament, he clawed his house back from the brink, elevating them to the rank of Marquis. He loved his soldiers, mourned their losses with genuine anguish, and always fought where the melee was thickest.

His Vengeance

He descended upon the treacherous nobles who had betrayed his father, razing their keeps and salting their lands just as they had done to his.

His Demise

When kings sought to raze his house once more, seeing men merely as numbers on a ledger, he stood his ground. He held a chokepoint entirely alone for four days and three nights. He died upright in the saddle.

His Legacy

He was given proper rites by his son, buried beneath an ancient oak tree, still clad in his battered armor.

The Fifth buried his father, his mother, and his suitors. Haunted by his father's dying words, the Fifth wholly rejected this fate.

“Don't weep for me child, this is our birthright. A life with the promised end of brutality. Don't weep, for what need for tears when I am doing what I ought to, son... dying. Remember my honor.”

His Path

He lived a dynamic, restless life, fleeing the dual curses of the men before him. As a vagrant knight, he fought rabidly, swinging his blade as if every strike might buy his freedom. He took suicide missions, surviving purely through spite and unmatched endurance.

His Redemption

Everything changed when he was left with the Sixth after her mother died in childbirth. Holding a whelp so defenseless, he finally understood the Fourth's curse. He gave up his hardened shell, raising her with the warmth he had been denied, burning away his own ambition to forge her into a weapon.

His Demise

He lived longer than any other of his line, ultimately falling in battle to save the Sixth one final time. To him, a father needed no other reason to die.

Raised with the battlefield as her mother and the Fifth as her father, the Sixth became an unparalleled genius of warfare. She was kind, possessed an unyielding optimism, and was revered as a living saint by her mercenary band. To reconcile the ghosts of her lineage, she melted the armor of the Fourth and Fifth, forging it into her own plate.

The Mistake

Unable to find peace outside of war, she wandered into the ancient steppes and stumbled into ruins older than human memory. Plunged into a darkness that no torch could pierce, she heard a symphony of screaming voices calling her "failure, successor, traitor, dog, none."

The Eldritch Pact

She was met by a dead god—Entropy personified, a cold, slimy manifestation of order woven with hundreds of thousands of eyes. It offered her an unbeatable war if she would only "open her eye."

Her Demise

The revelation that the gods had not left, but had merely died, shattered her psyche. Cursed with visions of forgotten ages, she found her final freedom by charging alone into an enemy encampment to claim the opposing commander's head.

The Seventh was a boy fiercely devoted to his mother. Though her mind was broken by the eldritch truth, she feigned warmth for his sake, and he chased after her, desperately hoping to save her soul.

His Burden

He was haunted by failure. He failed to protect his mother. He failed to protect his mercenaries. Most of all, he failed to kill—for his heart was entirely too kind for the curse of his bloodline.

His Demise

During a vicious territory war, he was tasked with protecting fleeing civilians. In this, he did not fail. He burned every ounce of his life away, holding the line so that not a single innocent perished. He died face-first in the mud, devoid of any knightly glamour.