Introduction

The Omega Tower stands beyond the height of its years. Its greatest days have passed, yet at its heart there remains a deep and abiding power, one whose reach still carries across the continent of Danukoria. Those who dwell within what remains of its once ample halls, men, women, and Yiwaereen alike, are marked by it. Some would say shaped. Others would say bound.

As with the coals of a great bonfire long after the flames have died, the Tower endures with a heat that cannot be denied, and it leaves its mark where and when it wills.

Come. Sit for a moment, and hear a tale. I could begin elsewhere, as some do, but stories of this kind are best begun where something still stands to remember them.

The Tower does, and so we begin there.

It rises on the old border of Wharcer and Yadrios, at the southern edge of the Zyvurge Mountains. It now shelters the remnants of what was once the mighty Jophaidian Guard, and it is the last standing of a chain of twenty four tower keeps that once watched the frontier.

Yet the true shock of that age was never the towers themselves, but the choice that made them necessary.

After generations of grinding war, of marches without victory and battles without end, the rulers of Wharcer and Yadrios abandoned the hope of conquest. In place of endless bloodshed, they bound themselves by treaty. Peace did not come gently, but for the first time, it could be imagined.

In the years surrounding the treaty, as both realms bled themselves thin, the rulers of Wharcer and Yadrios ceased to meet as sworn enemies. They accepted a hard truth: no border endures without constant watch, and neither principality could provide it alone.

From this necessity arose an independent force charged with holding the treaty fast. Its creation was remarkable, but those chosen to serve within it were more remarkable still. Drawn from the fiercest war heroes and the most seasoned commanders of both realms, these guards swore allegiance not to crown or land, but to the border itself, and to the limits that governed it.

In time, the Guard determined that permanent towers were required if this fragile and often bloody peace were to hold. Stone was set where patrols had once passed, and watch was given walls, height, and endurance.

From these towers, the border was no longer merely enforced, but remembered.

As trade passed back and forth across the border, the keeps in many places became centers of learning and exchange. The leaders of the Guard came to understand that if their purpose was truly to protect the border and the people who now lived along it, steel alone would not suffice.

They drew upon the finest minds among tradesmen, artisans, scholars, and, not without grave hesitation, representatives of the Yiwaer Council. During the Annual Meeting of the Border Guard in Jophaid, this expanded charge was formally recognized.

It was there that the name Jophaidian Guard was adopted, and the course of its future set. Knowledge and skill, they declared, were as vital to peace as sword and shield.

In the generations that followed, the Jophaidian Guard succeeded almost too well. Pressure from the Aparctian Tribes bore down upon both Wharcer and Yadrios, and a much remarked romance took root between the young Prince of Yadrios, acknowledged heir to the Yadrian crown, and his future wife, the adopted daughter of the Regent of Wharcer.

Together, the two realms set aside what few grievances remained and met the ever hopeful Aparctian Tribesmen as one. After long generations beneath the watchful towers of the Guard, the two realms became one themselves, just as their future rulers were joined by marriage.

The new nation took its name from the majestic mountains that had once divided them.

Thus, Zyvurge was born.

Like most births, it came with struggle and pain. The wars against the Aparctian Tribesmen never truly ended, but their weight was turned outward. With the signing of the marriage instrument, the border between Wharcer and Yadrios ceased to exist as law, even as its habits and wounds lingered for years thereafter.

Centuries have passed since those days. The Aparctian War endures as a chain of battles without final end, and the Border Towers have fallen.

All but one.

This tower was the last of the twenty four to be built, and among the best kept. It stands just beyond Jophaid, once a small village and now a center of trade and scholarship. The Guard complex there has definitely known better days.

Several outbuildings have been reduced to bare walls encircling grass grown practice fields, and some say the Tower moans in its sleep, as though it were struggling for breath.

The remnants of the Jophaidian Guard still live here, in the place where their statutes and precepts were first set to word. They remain an elite military force and a house of higher learning. Many among the royal houses still keep private guards and secretaries trained within these walls.

And so the Tower stands.

It has endured grinding war and hard won peace, union and forgetting. It remembers what others no longer do, and it is from that remembering that this tale is told.