The Conflagration
My father's selfish madness cost my mother her life and took from this world its greatest store of collected knowledge and history.
Many, many events led up to The Division between East and West, but it was the fire that consumed The Queen's Royal Library and left Library Palace a gutted, near-ruined stone shell that marked the end of the United Era.
Summary
For more than 25 years, King Darian had been sliding into madness, convinced that he'd become privvy to a mystical prophecy that foretold that the birth of twins would divide the nation. Slowly poisoned by paranoia over the idea of siblings warring against each other for control of the nation, when Queen Ellia became pregnant and two new heartbeats were heard within her womb, Darian sought the advice of his Council of Regents.
In their wisdom, the council decided to develop a plan to peacefully divide the island of Capitalla. This, they reasoned, would preserve the best interests of the people in the case that there should ever be such a great indecision between two elegible monarchs. After all, it was a scenerio for which they did not have a plan and one that could, at least in theory, come to pass.
Darian mistook what was meant as a hypothetical exercise as iron-clad confirmation of his fears that the impending twins would end up warring over everything that the descendents of Tige and Talla had worked and sacrificed to build. In no short time, he became fully consumed by his delusions.
At first, he simply ignored those who strove to remind the king of his duties. Eventually, punishments were handed out. He would not hear any advice that his attempt to divide the land would breach the promise made by Tige and Talla to the dragons. Doing so would therefore invite the wrath of the dragons who, in those days, were still falsely revered as gods.
The king's madness did not afford him the clarity to worry about such things. After all, did not the prophecy itself come from the dragon gods? And so it was that as the queen labored with the birth of her ninth and tenth children, the king put his blood signet to the official decree of the Division, and sealed the fate of himself, his wife, and the collected history and knowledge of a full age.
Historical Basis
It wasn't until generations after Darian's death that doctors would come to understand the lifelong after effects of the parasitic brain infection Darian had suffered as a child, and several generations beyond that before a vaccine would be developed and deployed to eradicate the disease across the continent.
Because eye witnesses still survive to tell the facts according to memory, the burning of Library Palace by a great dragon is not in question or dispute. All of the questions arise from differing, surviving historical accounts of the events, choices, and reactions that preceeded the division of the once-united nation.
In Art
As is the case with most dramatic points in history, the Conflagration is a popular subject -- or at least background -- of many bards and artists, but is especially popular amongst fiber artists. From visual tapestries, to weaving, knitting, crochet, and tatting patterns depecting different representations of flames and dragon scales, conflagration-inspired textiles began appearing almost before the ashes were cool.
Because of this strange allure of fire motifs in all sorts of fabric production, over the generations "official" conflagration patterns emerged among every type and style of textile. Conflagration hound's tooth, conflagration tartan, conflagration brocade, conflagration knitted lace and tatted lace and crochet lace. And that's not even counting the beautiful and devistating woven tapestries.
Another overrepresented medium for illustrating the conflagration is mosaic art. Composed in all materials from tile to glass to wood to gems to metals to pieced fabric panels, the subject seems to be treated with a reverence and care that invites only the masterful in their craft to attempt it. Because of this mythic status among the mosaic artists of Argentii, each depiction is an absolute masterpiece of style, technique, and aesthetic beauty.
Date of First Recording
Within hours of the actual happening.
Date of Setting
This event reset the numbering of years across Argentii.
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What a well written, tragic story. I liked the extra section about how the conflagration spawned an art style, a nice way to showcase how a historical event affect a culture down the line. ... And nooooo! All those books! :'(
So Argentii is a vehicle for telling ghost stories. Because write what you know. And I needed a surefire way of subverting all of the ghost story expectations. So it seems that WorldEmber is being used to explore exactly how the Library Inn collects and catalogs the memories of the dead. Tragically, you have to have at least a tiny sliver of bone in order to do it, so people lost to things like dragonfire, theeksfur mishaps, and shipwreck are often left to wander without their story being recorded.
Haly, the Moonlight Bard