Bloodheir

Put ten Kilkry men in a Kolkyre tavern, ply them with drink for a time, and you will hear ten different views on how it came to pass that their Blood meekly surrendered its authority to the Haig line. And there will be a seam of truth running through each one of those views, for no single blow broke the strength and will of the Kilkry Blood. Rather, it was an accumulation of wounds and ill fortune that undid their rule.

Some fifty years before, Kilkry had led the other Bloods to victory against Gyre and the Black Road cult. Their immense losses in battle, and through defection to the Black Road, had still not been entirely made good. And even as Kilkry laboured beneath those lingering wounds, Haig was rising to new heights of strength and prosperity. It had taken a century and a half, but the lands around Vaymouth — ruined during the Storm Years — were at last restored to the bountiful fertility that had seen them called The Verdant Shores in the days when they fed half the Aygll Kingship. The Thanes of the Haig Blood had grown rich, their armies numerous, their influence over the Taral and Ayth Bloods pervasive, on the back of those lands.

When the time came, the men of Kilkry, and of Lannis, would willingly have taken up arms, but Cannoch oc Kilkry could not bring himself to return the Bloods to the horrors of civil strife. He bent his knee, and with nothing more than that Haig became highest of all the True Bloods. Hundreds — most likely thousands — would have died had Cannoch not humbled himself so, but you will find few people in the backstreets of Kolkyre prepared to thank him for it. The memory of better times suffuses this Blood, undimmed by the passage of time. Each generation is heir to the resentment and bitterness of the one before. These are people whose pride runs deep; they bred High Thanes once, and they are not likely to forget it.

from Hallantyr’s Sojourn