The Age of Regulus and Raxos

Augusta grew up around a river ford overlooked by a group of low hills that were interspersed with marshland. Originally a collection of herding villages connected to the City of Ilea, the area became a hub for the dispossessed: brigands, runaway slaves, exiles, and vagabonds, the poor and the powerless, huddled in small huts with mud walls and thatched roofs. Those who came here learned to thrive by trapping, hunting, raising cattle, and establishing a trading post for the hill tribes and river men to the east.

The legendary founders of the city were Raxos and Regulos, twin sons of the priestess L'nirr and the war-god Argos. Left by their rapacious great uncle to die on the banks of the Thybrine River, the twins were rescued by a boatman who served the river god. He took the twins to the shrine at the foot of the Y'lixirian Hill. They were afterwards adopted and raised by a simple herdsman and kept in ignorance of their ancestry.

It was during a dispute with some of the herdsmen that the twins learned of their true ancestry. Told they were not the real sons of the shepherd, the brothers went to the Shrine of Y'lyxa to learn the truth of their origin. But what they encountered was an even deeper mystery. The Oracle of Y'lyxa told them they would find their answer in reassembling the fragments of the Crown of Tarsus that had been taken by Phoenikian raiders to the City of Khart-Haddag. Traveling in the guise of Tyrrian merchants, the brothers came upon a forgotten shrine in the bustling city. There are no tales of their adventures within the shrine, but it is said that they made a deal with the gods therein. In return for the gods' help in recovering the Crown of Tarsus, the brothers would install them in the Shrine of Y'lyxa. In the fulness of time, the descendents of Raxos and Regulos would lay waste to Khart-Haddag and thus the curse of the gods would be complete.

The brothers agreed, and they smuggled both crown and reliquary out of Khart-Haddag. But in regaining the crown a prophecy was discovered. The ancient scrolls that led the brothers to the crown were also inscribed with magical runes depicting the story of the twins themselves, including the treachery of their great uncle, his usurpation of their grandfather's throne, the taking of their mother by the god of war, the false king's attempt to take their lives, and a doom that lay upon them-they could neither thrive apart from each other nor share a kingdom. Rather, they would jointly rule the earth and the heavens from the hill that sheltered them.

The brothers returned home with renewed purpose. With the aid of their grandfather, rightful king of Ilea, they gathered supporters and overthrew their great uncle, hurling him to his death from the cliff of Tarpeia. They then took the reliquary of the Nine Gods to the Shrine of Y'lixa as they had promised. They poured their efforts into developing the settlement around the river ford, and it rapidly grew in population. Exiles themselves, the brothers welcomed outcasts and vagabonds of all sorts, as long as they were capable. The men who made their home around the river ford quickly developed a reputation as wily traders given to brigandage but fiercely loyal to each other, and supported by the might of the city-state of Ilea. In addition to trade with the hill and river tribes, the merchants of the ford traded imported goods from the Tyrrian Islands with the rich dwarf holds that had long been hidden in the hills.

The aggressive posture of the people of the ford brought them inevitably into conflict over control of the river trade with the powerful Targonian city-state of Veii. The merchants of Veii were filled with jealousy over the trade with the dwarfs as well, for the dwarfs despised the Targonian cities. The brothers prepared for war and made sacrifices to the Nine Gods for victory. The gods granted their request, but warned that a greater sacrifice would have to be made soon. The brothers then fortified their position on the top of the Y'lixirian Hill. Aided by the forces of Ilea, they were able to repulse the Targonians, although not without cost. Raxos, the more fiery of the two, was unwilling to take up a defensive position behind the palisade. He charged out among the Targonians, laying them low but suffering his own grievous hurts on the field. When Regulus beheld his brother's broken body, he cried out to the gods for justice. Mortally wounded, Raxos was taken to the Shrine of Y'lyxa, where he passed out of all knowledge in this world.

Shattered by the loss of his brother and haunted by the doom of the Nine Gods, Regulus refused to leave the Y'lixirian Hill. He established the pomerium at the summit and made the first wall. He built his own residence there; then, donning a habit of mourning and smearing his face with ashes, he visited the Shrine of Y'lixa to inquire after his doom. But the augurs at the shrine told him that Raxos' body was not there and that the Nine Gods commanded him to raise a temple to his brother by the time of the New Moon. To meet these demands, Regulus sent emissaries among the dwarf-holds of the eastern hills. With the promise of gold, the dwarfs built the shrine in a fortnight. Meanwhile, Regulus laid out the pomerium of the city. And it was named Augusta, for it was completed in the month of harvest. Regulus was proclaimed king and Raxos revered as a god. Thus first the prophecies of the Nine Gods were fulfilled.