HoP Overview -New Name Plz-

Hand of Peace

Overview

World

I haven't quite named the planet nor the continent that the story takes place on, but I have worked out some of it. The story takes place on the easternmost portion of the western continent (there is an eastern continent, but that's for a later story). On the western border of this portion is a mountain range which is considered 'impassible' though the humans who eventually found the Typherion empire did cross them hundreds of years ago. The eastern side is the coast, which wraps down to the south. The north is mostly very cold and inhabited by humans who tend to kill just about everyone who isn't them.

Now, the majority of the continent is held by the Typherion empire. Along the eastern coast are the three Rivvern countries who form a greater coalition during the war.

Though this is a fantasy world, there is no real magic, at least, not anymore. The Rivvern used to have what the Typherions call 'Lost Magicks' but even then, that's not necessarily 'magic', just science and technology more advanced than the current people's comprehension. Currently, the technology level is at early guns, with flintlocks, pistols, and muskets (most of which are fairly inaccurate), cannons, old style siege equipment, swords, bows, automatic crossbows, and armor. Horses are still the best way to get around on land. Fossil fuels are still a mystery, and most use various forms of oil, coal, and candles for light.

Races

Basically, it's humans and elves, or the Typherions and Rivvern/Aeda. There isn't much difference physically between the two, besides Rivvern having pointed ears and a bit taller than most Typherion, but the two really ought to not interbreed. They can, but it produces mules who typically die in childhood from deformations. Typherion range in skin color from fair to very dark, though most are a muddy tan with light to dark brown curly hair. Rivvern can be fair to olive and tend to have either black or reddish hair and can't grow facial hair. Typherion live up to almost eighty years, barring injury and illness. Rivvern/Aeda can live up to 145 years, barring injury and illness. It is very rare, though, for either of these people to live that long.

Typherions:
The people of Typher originally hailed from the other side of the Western mountains, driven out either by war, persecution, or Typher's guiding light (depending on what interpretation one hears). Once in their new-found home, they slowly conquered as many of the native surrounding people they could.

Typherions span their empire as far and wide as they can, spreading the belief of their god. They believe that only through converting the whole of the world can their god truly be manifest to them and they shall not only dwell with him in death, but also in life. Traditionally, church and state are one, but in the last fifty years, a division has arisen, creating a great deal of tension in the government. This hasn't, however, impeded the Typherion expansion.

The empire has been at war with just about every other native people for five hundred years, slowly devouring the other human holdings and kingdoms around them. Until the last twenty years, they hadn't really looked at the Rivvern countries, seeing them as, though no doubt heathens, a benign group of people who were not human. The holy books of Typher make no mention of elves, so obviously, they can't possibly return to Typher's realm after death, even if they are believers. Not all believe that the Rivvern are so impossible to save, so many missionaries traveled to their lands in an attempt to save them, and were greeted with hospitality as guests until a certain event involving the public execution of a number of missionaries led to the eventual war between the two (getting ahead of myself a little).

The average Typherion centers their life around two main drives: their devotion to Typher and their devotion to duty. They believe that the greater they perform at their duty, the closer they will be to Typher in death and possibly might become Uphyda, higher souls who are Typher's court, servants, and messengers. A Typherion is born into his given duty and cannot move outside of it, for that would be sacrilege. However, a Typherion's father may change his child's duty, say, sending his son off to become a craftsman rather than a farmer. If there is no father present, the child may seek out a cleric, called a Typhonyt who will vouch for them and send them off to a different duty. Women are generally meant to keep the house and be good wives, however it's not completely unheard of for a woman to take her deceased husband's place if he was a landowner or to join the clergy (for example).

The Typherion government is headed by a king who is 'allowed' to keep power by his nobility, who, if the king is disliked enough, can remove the current royalty and elect a new king from the family (usually by removing the king's head). However, this is practiced rarely and usually is used as a threat to keep the king from taxing his nobility more than they believe is warranted or removing prominent members from their positions. Most of the nobility are either the descendents of the clergy or are ex-Typhonyts who gave up their religious positions in order to retain their noble standing when [name pending] (Gevin's father) split the government from the clergy (mostly political reasons) 50 years prior to the start of the story.

Typherions speak one unified language called Thidrian, which is possibly the most complicated language on the planet. Thidrian is a bit like English. It jumps other languages in back alleys for loose bits of grammar and spare nouns. So much of the language is overly complicated for the simple reason that certain words and sentence structures contradict the rules of the language and in order to learn it, you just have to know that it's 'just so' but only for that part of the language. Typherions also refuse to learn any other language besides their own, with the rare exception of translators for the Rivvern tongues during the war (as it's difficult to do an interrogation when one doesn't understand the answers). Those conquered by Typherions have their language and culture assimilated and their religious practices turned to more Typher-oriented worshiping.

Note on pronunciation: Thidrian 'y's are pronounced as long 'i's at all times, all 'f's are pronounced as 'v's (unless otherwise noted), all 'ph's are pronounced as 'f's, and 'ei's are pronounced as 'ee'. Double 'vv's are pronounced as a long 'v' sound (though casual 'lazy' Thidrian makes it a simple, short 'v') and double 'ff's are a buzzed 'th'. There is no 'c' in Thidrian, only the letter 'k'.

Now, for the part that's really quite fun: Cuisine! Typherion foods tend to be heavy on beef, venison, and mutton, with pork being used as a red meat substitute, and poultry and fish being used only for a poor man's meal or a rich man's appetizer. Typherion cooking is very rich and filled with powerful flavors, usually brought about by heavy spicing, marinating, smoking, or pickling, sometimes multiple at once. Pickled bird's eggs of varying species is commonly found on a Typherion table, as are olives, herbal and bean pastes, pickled onions, garlic, and other small, munch-able items, oat- and grain-based foods, such as breads, pastries, and meals, various forms of root vegetables, especially turnips, quite a bit of cabbage and leeks, beans, and peas, fruits such as dates, oranges, tangerines, small sour apples, only one variety of grape, cherries, various bitter berries, peaches, lemons, and most forms of nuts. Almost every dish has at least honey or lard in it somewhere, and just about everything gets covered in sesame seeds. A common treat is a sesame seed cake held together by honey and baked until crisp.

Chewing cloves is a common habit among Typherions and most tables have a dish of cloves somewhere, with the very rich having a dish at every place setting. Chewing tobacco is another habit, though only a portion of the Typherion do so, as it's slowly becoming considered a 'filthy habit' after enough mouth rot was recorded.

Typherion clothing is mostly made of hemp and leather, especially cow leather. In the southern parts of the Typherion empire, swamp crocodile hide has become a common replacement for cow.Their armor is leather, and some of it is hardened to a near steel-hardness, with metal being reserved for chainmail and officer's armor. The majority of their armor is lightweight, carefully constructed to allow breathability with protection due to the severe heat the central Typherion empire can experience (on very hot days, over 100*F).  

Rivverns/Aeda:
Called 'Rivvern' by the Typherion (meaning 'River People'), the Aeda are immigrants from the far eastern continent, exiled by their own people (legends are a little fuzzy, but most agree it was due to war), bringing with them the 'Lost Magicks'. A hundred years after they settled, they were attacked once again by their own people, who attempted an invasion (which failed). A few hundred years after that, the Aeda came into contact with the Typherions for the first time.

The Aeda believe in a god of the earth, an 'All-father' who creates and lends them their physical forms, and a goddess of the sky, an 'All-mother' who breathes their souls into these forms and eventually gathers them to herself after death. Aeda believe in a form of reincarnation, where their souls are forever being reborn again in new forms, since the physical form is only lent and eventually will decay yet the soul is eternal but needs to be with the physical form in order to continue to exist. If a soul is not reborn, it is assimilated into the all-mother from where it was birthed. The Aeda are not sure what causes a soul to not be reborn, but their sages occasionally inform them at a death that the soul is no longer to be reborn and has rejoined the all-mother.

The Aeda consider one's honor to be the most important virtue, quickly followed by personal freedom of the body and soul, and then by hospitality/generosity. Aeda believe that to die without honor or in a dishonorable way will mar their soul and make it more difficult for them to be reborn whole (dying dishonorably is usually achievable by committing treason, then being executed). Most Aeda PoWs will withstand most forms of torture in order to keep their soul pure of dishonor by possibly revealing information to the enemy. Personal freedom of body and soul is a point where Typherion and Rivvern disagree the most. See, Aeda do not take prisoners, as they believe to imprison an enemy is the worst for of dishonor for that individual's soul (regardless if they're Typherion or Aeda), so most PoWs that the Aeda take are executed. Very rarely, a prisoner is allowed to live, being called a 'guest' of their people, but this 'guest' usually cannot leave and if they commit any crime, are executed. Typherions find this practice of executing helpless prisoners appalling, just as the Aeda find the idea of torturing a prisoner for information despicable (doesn't mean they don't do it...they just loathe to and only do so when desperate). Giving a guest space in one's home is considered the highest honor an Aeda can perform closely followed by giving another a gift (one gift, usually, so it doesn't degrade into a gift-giving spree, and it's also only done out of one's surplus).

Aeda are a prideful people. Proud of their heritage, their religion, their land, their culture, their people as a whole. Most Aeda would rather die than renounce their ways. The greatest threat to them is not death, rather the loss of what they were, and so they fight the Typherion, who would impose upon them a destructive unity, even in the face of utter annihilation of their kind.

The Aeda government is a rather complexly simple democracy. In essence, the people 'vote' a king into power once every fifty years. If a king dies before those fifty years are up, his chosen successor reigns for the remainder. The chosen successor can, after that term, run again for kingship, which is usually barred for those who had already been king previously. If a king resigns, the election process begins again. Simple. The complexity is in the myriad of political parties (four major and at least sixteen minor parties). These parties, during the election process, each decide whether they shall be running or supporting another party. Those running then choose a king-elect with a back-up should their primary choice die or be forced to step down before the election process in complete. Running parties then try to solicit the support of backing parties in order to increase their possible voter pool. Usually, only the major parties have the resources and the ability to solicit support needed to run for kingship. The minor parties are usually backers (though occasionally a minor party can take power if, for some reason or another, the major parties' choices are deemed unworthy of kingship). Once the running begins for roughly four months, the major parties duke it out on the political floor, battling for the support of the minor parties by any means necessary. Throughout the four months of this, the minor party allegiances change almost as much as the direction of the wind depending on what's offered and who promises what to whom. After those four months, the people are presented the choices and their political parties' alliances. They then vote on the king-elect they feel is most qualified. Again, the running parties battle for the people's votes by any means necessary. On the fifth day after the presentation, the people then cast their votes. This is a rather messy process, as parents often vote for  children (even the unborn, so long as they can prove the woman is pregnant), family members vote for those unable to, individuals invent family members in order to gain more votes, bribery/black-mail/other persuasive measures are used to secure more votes for a particular individual, ect.

King elections are considered the most dangerous time of year. Murder rates soar, fights break out, people vanish unexpectedly only to reappear later with their political alliances shifted to a more 'favorable' position, bribery and coercion are at their highest, and the entire Aeda people go mad. They consider it 'patriotic'. During the War, Typherion nobility, especially the younger generation, take bets over the outcome of the Rivvern elections, especially on which running party will win and which minor party will side with what running party.

There are three Aeda countries (the names are currently under revision due to being mostly unpronounceable) all of which have their own unique dialect of the Aeda language. These dialects are only considered such due to the same basic rules and about half of the vocabulary being similar. Most Aeda can understand another speaking a different dialect, but unless they speak the other dialect fluently, they can only get the gist of what is being said (sort of like someone speaking Spanish could work out what someone speaking Italian is saying, to a certain degree). It is a great honor to be able to speak all three dialects fluently and most high-ranking Aeda make it a point to learn all three, sometimes along with Thidrian if deemed necessary.

The basic Aeda language is a great deal simpler than Thidrian. There is a base word vocabulary of about three hundred words. All other words are made up of a combination of two or more of these base words, resulting in a compound word that has the meaning of all base words contained. The language is also a little more forgiving with words. A speaker can combine two base words to create the meaning needed, even if this particular word doesn't actually exist as an official word, it is accepted since the meaning of the new compound word is clear. There are very few alien words in the Aeda tongue and are only used to describe things that aren't native to the Aeda or has a greater meaning in another language. They rarely  borrow.

Note on the Aeda language pronunciation: The apostrophes within the words are simply a way to mark the space between the parts, as when it is written, the words are marked with a division, usually a floating dot or small line between the base words, so that the meaning of the compound word is clear (as it is very possible for a base word and a compound word to be spelt the same way, even if they are not pronounced the same nor work in the same context, so for clarity's sake, the Aeda mark the space). Apostrophes are not pronounced, they are just an easy way to mark the space between words as an English keyboard doesn't have a floating dot (besides the asterisk, which would probably get more in the way than an apostrophe).
All 'c's are pronounced as hard 'c's. The Aeda do not have the letter 'k'. The Aeda language can often be a lazy language, with the speaker barely moving their mouth to speak, giving it an almost mumbled, slurred sound. Pitch is often highly important, as certain base words when said at the higher pitch have a secondary meaning than when said in the lower one. These words are generally marked with a small '^' above the base word.

Aeda Cuisine now! The Aeda, being a sea-faring people and much of their lands being bordered by the ocean, tend to eat an awful lot of fish and seafood. Only occasionally do they eat poultry or lamb, and they avoid heavy red meats such as beef or venison like the plague, convinced that it will kill them (it makes them ill, but that's mostly due to never eating heavy red meat). Aeda spices are delicate and the food is cooked in 'layers' of flavor. The more levels of flavor complexity, while still maintaining its delicate taste, the greater the meal and the more skilled the chef. Aeda eat a great deal of various species of seaweed, wheat and grains, mostly for stuffed dumplings and breads, chives (more so than onions), lettuces and other green leaf plants, fruits such as grapes (many, many species), sweet apples, berries, limes, peaches, and pears, and some southern islands can grow bananas, though the trend hasn't caught on due to import costs, peanuts, and boiled tree bark (a particular species which's bark produces a sweet, spicy flavor when boiled).

Aeda clothing is mostly made of cotton and occasionally shark or sheep leather. Crocodile hide is exotic, but often crops up in Aeda clothing (though it now requires them to travel into Typherion lands in order to get it) and is usually a sign of wealth. Aeda armor is usually simple hardened leather with, occasionally, some steel bands to reinforce it. Aeda officer armor is very layered, starting first with a simple shirt and leather reinforced pants, covered by a scale-mail leather tunic that laces up the front, then covered by steel pauldrons, cuirass, gauntlets, and boots, covered then by a cloth 'skirt' and cloak. While the Aeda are in Typherion lands during summer, a number of their soldiers, especially the officers, suffered heat stroke until they learned to strip themselves of the armor during mid-summer.

Main Characters

Gevin: Prince of the Typherion empire and youngest child of the king. He was 'sacrificed' to the army at fifteen in order to appease the nobles who had grown tired of sending their sons off to die while the king remained untouched by death (which later became a policy). He was meant to die, to become a martyr to his people, someone for the grieving families to rally around. Gevin did not die. Instead, he became a feared commander (though most of his tactical victories were at the advising of a slew of generals), most noted for walling up Wynder's Pass/Lurae'tur with the bodies of his own army's dead as they fought to halt the Homeguard's advance (they did succeed, though it earned Gevin a bit of a reputation).
After meeting Aegonnel and being brought to the Rivvern homeland, Aegonnel becomes Gevin's host and eventually, the two become close friends, intent on stopping the war before either of their people is rendered extinct.
Throughout the years of serving the military (for almost his entire life), Gevin has come to the conclusion that there are no gods, no Typher, no Rivvern All-mother or All-father, just a vast expanse of nothingness and the Typherion and Rivvern are alone in the universe. He supports his claim by demanding how any god which created life could ever allow such death, destruction, and agony of it's children. He still says the prayers and invokes Typher's name, but it's more of a habit than a belief.

Aegonnel: Commander of the Homeguard (considered the most elite of the Rivvern/Aeda army), Aegonnel has served his country as a soldier for 56 years of his life, most of it spent clawing his way up the ranks. Born to a poor box maker, the army was Aegonnel's only chance of making a name for himself. Eventually, after being promoted to captain, he met the woman who would become his wife, the daughter of an admiral (the connection jumpstarted his career and had him as commander in less than ten years after the marriage).
During the War, Aegonnel became increasingly plagued by nightmares, which he first solved using herbal teas, but found that they didn't solve his problem thoroughly enough. Later, he discovered that by getting himself extremely drunk, drunk enough to pass out on his cot, he could avoid the nightmare days and wake up the next morning without a single dream he could remember  (and a useful little brew to mostly cure his hangover). Slowly, his dependence on the alcohol changed from a medicinal treatment to a vice. After returning home and retiring from command, he continues to drink, though Gevin repeatedly pushes him to stop and look at what it's doing to his family (after many, many years and a number of failed attempts, he gets himself sober permanently, though the bottle always tempts him for the rest of his life).

Naleana: Aegonnel's wife. When they first met, she thought him to be the most attractive, heroic man she had ever met and fell hopelessly and completely in love with him. Through her father's connections, she secured for him 'friends' who would put his name forward for him to rise in rank (as the higher ranking he was, the more likely he would come back to her alive). After Aegonnel receives kingship, Naleana does all that she can to be the face of the Aeda people, as is the duty of the king's consort. Secretly, she thanks the All-father that Aegonnel is no longer on the battle lines and is quite safely tucked away in the King's Hall, which is rather quite protected by guards.

Calias: Calias barely knew her father. Except for a few early memories, mostly of him carrying her,  all she had was the stories her mother told her of when Aegonnel and Naleana were newly-weds. Calias was greeted with more than a little disappointment when her father returned and he was a weak man, rarely leaving his bed and sleeping for most of the day (eventually, he got well and she got over her near-magical imaginings of what he was really like). Just prior to Aegonnel leaving for the Typherion lands, Calias meets Taegan, a young man, son of a lower class fisherman. Taegan fears Aegonnel, mostly at what the man will do to him if he asks for Calias' hand in marriage. He imagines, despite Calias' assurances, that he'll be chopped to tiny bits and fed to the eels.

Duncain: Gevin's elder brother (the middle son). During Gevin's seven-year exile in the Rivvern lands, their eldest brother (name pending) was thrown from his horse and broke his neck, making Duncain the heir apparent. Soon afterwards, their father died of illness and Duncain ascended the throne. Duncain struggles with keeping peace amongst his nobles, so far as to send his son (and only child), Roben, to certain death as a soldier. He also charges Gevin to protect his son, even if it means Gevin must lay his own life down.

Roben: Duncain's son and Gevin's nephew. Roben was sacrificed to the army in order to keep peace amongst the nobles and maintain his father's position as king. He attended the Academy and graduated with honors, giving him the immediate rank of Lieutenant (which Duncain had hoped would keep him safe).  

Elaina: Gevin's elder sister by two years. Soon after Gevin was sent off to military life, Elaina was married off to a distant relative of the royal family, a nobleman twice her age. She eventually outlived her husband, who died of a heart attack during a match-of-arms, and has taken control of his holdings, caring for them until their son reaches the age for inheritance. She has twin children, one son and one daughter.

There are various secondary characters I haven't fleshed out yet since I haven't had the necessity to do so yet. Mostly, they're Duncain's nobles, the various leaders of the Aeda political parties, some of the soldiers, and so on.

Plot

The PLOT is...to stop a war before it destroys one people and ruins another. Okay, that's the sentence short version. Basically, the story is divided into three parts due to the span of years it takes place over and how dull many of those years would be if I actually narrated them. And this is the short version:

It starts with Gevin ambushing Aegonnel's army. During the battle, the conflict awakens an Elven Wargolem, which had been buried for centuries and a relic of the Elven Wars. The Wargolem, obeying its original programming, begins destroying both armies. Gevin and Aegonnel, seeing certain destruction of both their armies if neither can retreat out of the valley, attempt to distract the golem with a very small coalition force (this is organized very quickly). They attack it, distract it, and Aegonnel takes a glancing blow from the golem. Gevin throws Aegonnel's Lost Magicks spear into the energy core of the golem. The golem disintigrates, taking out the ceiling of the cavern it was imprisoned in and collapsing the surface of the valley floor. Gevin and Aegonnel both fall into the newly made cavern, which seals up behind them with the collapsing slabs of earth. The two find each other and Gevin insists that they work together, even though Aegonnel is too injured to do much, in order to find some form of escape. After a number of days struggling for survival, they are uncovered by Aegonnel's Homeguard. Aegonnel is taken away for healing and soon afterwards, so is Gevin. By the time Gevin regains consciousness, the Homeguard is already on the move to the Rivvern homeland and soon after that, he becomes the Rivvern's 'guest' as he has already crossed their border and seen their secrets, which they cannot let fall into others hands.

Seven years pass. Gevin remains in the Rivvern's lands, learning their culture, language, and people, discovering they are not a bunch of murderous heathens after all, just a bunch of heathens (which, at this point, he doesn't really care about anyway). Aegonnel is forced into retirement by his king, though not entirely unwillingly, and rejoins his wife and daughter.

Gevin sees that, eventually, the Typherions will win, regardless of how much the Rivvern fight, and a whole people, a people he has come to understand and respect, will be wiped from the face of the planet, probably at the cost of the majority of his own people's lives. During his seventh year of exile, in the months before the start of the new election time, Gevin confesses his concerns to Aegonnel, who shares that, he too, has seen the signs of the annihilation of his people. They then begin a little conspiracy to stop the war. They eventually convince the Labor Party (one of the four major parties) to side with their peace treaty idea. A respected member of the Labor Party is made king-elect with a hot-headed fool as their secondary choice (due to an agreement for the backing of a prominent leader of a minor party with a great deal of money). Gevin and Aegonnel then sneak out of the Rivvern homeland and travel to the Typherion capital to convince Duncain (though Gevin thinks he'll be talking to his father or eldest brother instead) to side with their peace-treaty (basically, conditional surrender that leaves the Rivverns untouched and the borders the same as before, without restitutions on either side). Though difficult, they manage to get there and present their plan to Duncain and the nobility (most of with insist the lot is a load of shite and they sure as Hel won't be bowing to any Rivvern demands). During this little visit, they receive word that their chosen Labor Party leader had died rather mysteriously of natural causes. Left with only a fool no one would back nor vote for, Aegonnel returns home hopeless, sure that their plan had failed.

One and a half years pass. Gevin is in Duncain's service as an Intelligence Officer. Aegonnel has been crowned king of the Rivverns (due to his military career and the fact that he's a war hero, he got the entire War Party to back his campaign, a major party and a major player in Aeda political circles) and is most certainly not enjoying the restrictions of his position. Gevin is stationed by Duncain at the Typherion main host, guarding Duncain's son, Roben from certain death or possible capture. Gevin continues to communicate with Aegonnel and Duncain, both of which are secretly working together through Gevin to bring about some kind of peace agreement, though neither can openly admit this--Duncain due to his nobility, who would oust him the second he said anything like 'peace', and Aegonnel, who is being forced by the political alliances he made in order to secure his position to continue the war effort without question. With some careful doing, Gevin puts himself in a position where Roben finds him and asks him to become the young man's sparring partner (ensuring that Gevin would be following Duncain's order without revealing his own identity). After months of a carefully maintained stalemate, an Aeda operative under Gevin's command comes to him with information and an arrow wound that eventually kills the young elf. The coded documents he carried held the names of conspirators within the Typherion nobility, who have been slowly inspiring rebellion against the king, and have been suspecting that Duncain has been holding back (quite a few times, Duncain could have wiped the Rivvern main force out, but narrowly avoided a true victory through some rather creative means). They intend to finish the War. Gevin cannot allow this, but before he can send any information to Duncain, the traitors on the Typherion side send orders for the army to move to a more stratigically sound position, where they then meet the full force of the Aeda Homeguard (which had not been expecting such an attack, as Duncain had assured them none would come). Only through superior numbers and Duncain's order for the Typherion force to retreat, do the Rivvern win the combat. During the battle, Roben's horse is shot dead and breaks Roben's leg as it falls, trapping the young man beneath it. Gevin defends Roben until the tide starts to turn, after which he throws himself over Roben to protect him from a Rivvern soldier seeking to end the enemy's pain. Gevin is knocked unconscious by a passing Rivvern, who kicks him in the head.

After the battle, Gevin and Roben are 'taken captive' by Rivvern forces (Roben is certain he's going to die a horrible death). Gevin sends word through the Rivvern soldiers to speak to their king to verify his story. Soon afterwards, they are brought before Aegonnel. During a little conversation in which treachery is revealed and certain destruction is imminent, Roben brings up a rather little known fact of Typherion law: the Heir Apparent is considered a representative and ambassador of the Typherion people in all matters outside of Typherion lands, and that, as long as the Rivvern king and the Rivvern army is sitting on this particular grassy knoll, it is considered conquered territory by Rivvern forces, thus not Typherion land, and thus Roben is now an ambassador. Though the king can only sign a peace treaty, any ambassador of the Typherion people, when acting in the name of the royal family, as conferred to them by a member of the royal family, can sign a cease-fire agreement. Roben, needless to say, having discovered his father has been seeking a way to end the war and that Gevin, his uncle, and Aegonnel, have been working in coalition with Duncain, signs a certain little cease-fire with an awful lot of little concessions for the Rivvern people, including the agreement that a peace treaty would be secured. Roben, being a guest and not a prisoner of the Rivverns, is able to do so with Gevin as his witness that the signature was not coerced from him through desperate means.

Duncain receives word that Roben has fallen into the hands of the Rivvern and, knowing the Rivvern's reputation for executing all prisoners, suspects his son is dead and Aegonnel has betrayed his trust. He personally marches his army out to witness the final destruction of the Rivvern forces. Before the battle comences, Gevin sends word to Duncain that Roben is indeed alive and will be returned to Duncain the next day. He also conveys Roben's promise of a peace-treaty and the cease-fire agreement, which would enable Duncain room to maneuver around his nobles, especially with a certain little package of black-mail regarding a plot to assassinate him and his son. The next day, everything is going quite well, until Roben is being escorted by Aegonnel and Aegonnel's personal guard, one of which is Gevin in disguise. Roben is a mock-prisoner, bound and blindfolded, though his bindings are quite loose and, should danger present itself, can escape and reach for the sword concealed on Gevin's horse. Now, a Chekhov's Gun shows up in the literal form of a gun: throughout the entire later part of the book after Gevin returns home, there has been talk of an arms-race for an accurate sniper-musket, as the current muskets on both sides can barely shoot straight and a flintlock lacks the power to kill someone at a real distance. The Typherions had finally succeeded a number of months ago in producing the first accurate musket and had been slowly perfecting it before making it standard-issue. As Roben is about to be returned to his father, an insurgent on the Typherion lines, loyal to the nobility's conspiracy, lines up his gun to shoot Roben, for if Roben were to die still on the Rivvern-side of the armies' divide, the liklihood that he was shot by a Rivvern would no doubt convince Duncain to destroy the rest of the Rivvern forces (and since these bullets tend to shred through things, a shot to the head would obliterate Roben's skull and make it impossible to judge from where the bullet originated from). Gevin, at the last moment, sees the gun lining up the shot, and pushes Roben back. The gunman fires and all hell breaks loose.

Duncain barely holds his army in check, as it certainly does look like Roben had been shot, up until Roben sits back up, pulling off his blindfold, demanding to know what in Hel is going on, and then finds Gevin, collapsed and unconscious across his lap, a hole the size of Roben's fist through his left shoulder. Duncain guesses what has just transpired and ordered that any Typherion man who raises a gun will be shot on sight. Roben is escorted back to his father, Duncain begins peace-talks with Aegonnel and uses the threat of the exposure of a conspiracy to keep his nobles in line, and eventually peace is found in the form of a conditional surrender on the Rivvern side. All of this happens while Gevin is unconscious, battling for his life. He eventually awakes to discover the war is over, peace has been made, his nephew, brother, and closest friend are extremely concerned about his wellbeing, the Typherion nobles are just about ready to murder Duncain, the War Party is getting pretty close to marching on the King's Hall, and Gevin can barely move his left arm and can't feel his left fingers. All in all, a pleasant, though tenuous end.

Epilogue: Gevin becomes head of the Intelligence Office and marries the widow of a nobleman for her companionship. She marries him for the same reason. They never have children. Duncain continues to rule as king, though now considered a hell of a lot more shrewd and a power which one would be wise not to cross. Roben becomes the face of his people and is rather well-respected and most identify as the royal family more than they do Duncain. Aegonnel continues to rule as king, though he knows that he can't step down until the end of his term since the War Party is still a little too angry about surrender, and is resigned to ruling for the rest of his natural life. Peace is found, though, of course, more conflict rests just beyond the horizon.