Fall of Thanes

There is a ruin at the heart of the Lannis Blood: Kan Avor, the drowned city where once the Thanes of Gyre ruled, and where the creed of the Black Road was nurtured and tended. It stands now empty and silent, in the cold embrace of still waters and marsh. Birds roost upon its crumbling walls and bats hide in its broken towers.

The people of the Glas Valley treasure this ruin, and all but venerate it. They think it a token of their determination, a glorious symbol of their past triumphs over the Black Road. They imagine that its persistence invigorates them. “See,” they say to one another. “See these broken and shackled towers. Here is the fate of our enemies. So strong is our grasp upon this land that we can tame mighty rivers and with them drown the cities of our foes.”

It would have been better to unpick this city: to break it apart, stone from stone, carry away its every timber, plough its streets back into the soft earth until nothing remained. Kan Avor is the constant shadow of the past upon the present. It commemorates not glory but unforgiven and unforgotten hurts. When men venerate the memory of war and strife, and make temples of its relics, and seek to learn from the ruins of yesterday how they should live their lives today, then they have made themselves prisoners of the past, condemned to fight its wars again and again. For few wars are ever truly finished. There is always some remaining vein of bitterness for those who can neither forgive nor forget to mine.

Time works many wonders, but they are not all to be treasured. It makes shackles out of past triumphs, burdens from victories. Bonds from memories. And it heals only if those who ride its currents are willing to be healed.

From Hallantyr’s Sojourn