Anthros’s Endless Tome
The Bastions of Solara, A Fifty-Year View
976–1026
Penned by Anthros, Wanderer of Eryndor, Keeper of Histories
The Aasimar of The Bastions of Solara present themselves as guardians of peace, arbiters of justice, and celestial stewards of civilization. They are not wholly dishonest in this. Their roads are secure, their courts orderly, their soldiers disciplined, and their passes vital to the movement of trade between eastern and western Eryndor. Many lives have been preserved by their intervention. Many fortunes have been made beneath their protection.
Yet as with all nations that speak often of righteousness, it is wise to watch where the coin goes, who receives mercy, and who is judged most swiftly. Over the last fifty years, the Bastions have grown richer, more influential, and more feared. They have also grown less innocent.
972–974: The Ashen Purge Raids
In the early 970s, Solaran commanders authorized a series of punitive strikes against tiefling villages scattered at the foot of the volcano of Ash-Korrath. Some of the villages served as supply points, shrines, and warning settlements tied to the greater refuge above. Yet truth of association does not cleanse cruelty of method. Solaran proclamations framed the raids as righteous necessity. In practice they were terror warfare.
Granaries were burned before winter stores could be moved. Wells were fouled or collapsed. Shrines were desecrated not for tactical value but for spectacle. Families fled into ash fields carrying what they could lift. Captives were taken in the name of interrogation and redemption. The campaign won no lasting ground, but it demonstrated that the Bastions could descend in holy wrath when it suited them.
It also nearly widened into a larger conflict. To reach Ash-Korrath in force, Solaran armies would have required mustering and movement through lands tied to the Thalenmark Empire. The Empire objected sharply to foreign armies marching trade roads under banners of divine emergency. Solara protested the insult, then accepted the refusal when profit and practicality prevailed. Thus the angels learned that even righteous armies sometimes require permission.
976–999: Guardians of the Pass
During the closing years of the continental wars, the Bastions of Solara became indispensable. Their mountain passes connected east and west. Their fortresses guarded the only reliable overland route broad enough for armies, caravans, and diplomatic movement alike.
This gave Solara unusual leverage. They could tax merchants, delay envoys, inspect military cargo, and offer safe passage to those who behaved properly. Many rulers called this stewardship. Many merchants used harsher terms.
At home, the Triumvirate of Radiance expanded administrative offices, customs houses, military stations, and sacred courts. Service to the state was praised as holy duty. Public ceremony increased. So too did fees. No nation becomes gatekeeper without first learning to charge admission.
983: The Trial of Golden Judge Malcerion
The most famous corruption scandal in recent Solaran memory erupted in 983, when High Judge Malcerion — widely admired for eloquence and public piety — was accused of accepting gifts in exchange for favorable rulings. The charges included altered inheritance judgments, suppressed debt claims, and one especially memorable case in which a merchant’s innocence appeared to correlate precisely with the weight of silver delivered beforehand.
Crowds filled the plazas of Auris Prime. Choirs sang of justice. Witnesses wept on schedule. Malcerion was stripped of title, publicly condemned, and vanished into a monastery whose doors do not open outward.
Yet in the quieter years that followed, a legal doctrine emerged stating that certain sacred offices could only be examined by internal review under approved authority. In simpler terms: common corruption would be punished publicly, elevated corruption privately.
1000: The Final Peace
By the year 1000, Eryndor had grown weary of war. Roads were broken, treasuries thinned, trade uncertain, and graveyards crowded. Though many conflicts had cooled, the continuing hostility between the Drakmir Dominion and the Sylvandar Republic threatened to reignite the wider continent.
The Bastions did not force peace alone. They first used influence, diplomacy, pressure, and promises to align the weight of Thalenmark Empire, Kastalshire, Halls of Kar Dromm, and Lexovar behind settlement. When merchants, kings, engineers, bankers, and dwarven ledgers all begin preferring peace, even proud nations must listen.
The treaty ended the war between Dominion and Republic and formally closed the greater age of conflict. Thereafter the Bastions assumed a broader role as treaty enforcers and guarantors across Eryndor.
1001–1006: The Pilgrim Years
In the years after the treaty, thousands journeyed to the Bastions seeking blessing, judgment, healing, absolution, or merely the prestige of saying they had stood beneath radiant towers and heard choirs in person. Temples overflowed. Inns multiplied. Markets boomed. Relic sellers prospered beyond theological reason. Bottled holy water was discovered to have an astonishing range of local sources.
The state benefited enormously. Donations increased. Tariffs rose politely. Public image flourished. Even cynics admitted that Solara looked magnificent when funded properly.
1007: The Glass Cleansing
Prosperity often carries vice in its baggage. During the first decade of peace, the narcotic known as Glass spread through labor districts, caravan yards, barracks, and poorer quarters of several Solaran cities. The response was immediate and theatrical.
Warehouses were raided. Dealers were chained in public squares. Great pyres consumed confiscated Glass while priests preached purity. The campaign was declared a success. It also conveniently justified sweeping new inspections of all caravans and cargo entering Solaran lands. Search powers expanded dramatically. Delays became common. Tariffs also rose across numerous categories of goods. Glass remained plentiful where doors were gilded, but customs revenue never looked healthier.
1010–1012: The Eastern Marches Expedition
The rise of Grisha the Ironhowl in the Redmarch Coalition alarmed many in Solara. Believing a swift punitive campaign would shatter this new order, Solara launched an expedition eastward under banners of justice and border security. They expected scattered warbands.
They found prepared defenses, coordinated ambushes, false retreats, disciplined cavalry strikes, and supply lines attacked with unnerving precision. Solaran columns advanced, stalled, bled, and withdrew in increasingly righteous formations.
Captured banners were paraded in Redmarch songs for years afterward. Official Solaran declarations described the campaign as a successful demonstration of strength with objectives concluded. No second demonstration followed.
1018: The Great Rail Consecration
When the great rail lines of Lexovar finally linked eastern and western Eryndor through Solaran territory, the Bastions turned infrastructure into liturgy. Stations were blessed. Engines were anointed. Choirs sang above polished platforms. Trade volume surged almost immediately.
Yet some wiser officials noticed a subtler truth. Caravans once dependent on mountain escorts could now move faster, cheaper, and with fewer ceremonial delays. The Bastions had gained revenue while surrendering part of their old monopoly.
1020–1026: The Veil of Privilege
In recent years, murmurs have grown more common among merchants, veterans, and poorer quarters of the Bastions. They note that common theft is punished swiftly, while noble fraud receives review.
A new concern occupies official sermons: the rise of airships and expanded sky-trade. Solaran authorities condemn reckless aerial commerce as dangerous, unstable, under-regulated, and threatening to the peace of all nations. They call for stricter oversight, licensing, inspections, approved flight corridors, and celestial standards of safety.
It should also be noted that goods crossing the sky do not pass through Solaran gates.
Thus the Bastions remain wealthy, fortified, disciplined, and admired abroad by those who have not lived there long. But reverence has grown thinner than before.