The Throne of Highvale

This story is set three and a half centuries before Mage Errant.

The ascent of King Harahld, uniter of Highvale, is an epic one, full of great battles, epic feats of mage-craft, dragon-slaying, betrayal, intrigue, and grand romance.

And, for all that it makes for a wondrous story, it is, in many ways, far less significant to history than what came after.

That is to say, the design and construction of King Harahld’s throne.

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In the fractious decades after the fall of the Empire, the people of the Stoneknife River pass found themselves under ceaseless threat. Bandits from the plains, river pirates traveling in great fleets, rampaging mountain clans no longer pinned down by Ithonian Legions.

The people grew skilled at building hidden fastnesses and well-guarded keeps, and as the Thirty Duchies rose up along the length of the river, grew ever-more skilled.

And, once Harahld ended the endless feuding of the Duchies, united them into one, that skill would see its greatest expression yet.

It was in Harahld’s fifth year of reign, once the first great incursion by the clans in his reign had been thrown back, that he first began work on his palace, the first of Highvale’s great fortresses.

It should, in retrospect, have been obvious that the throne room would be an issue of some contentiousness. The architect-mages of each of the conquered duchies vied for the privilege of designing and building Harahld’s throne, even to fist-fights between academics.

Harahld, a warrior king born, fonder of battle and sleeping under the night sky than he was of any luxuries, had little patience for such matters, and issued a proclamation. In six months’ time, there would be a great conclave, and any who wished to enter a design for Harahld’s throne-room could do so.

As the day approached, however, there were so many entrants that the conclave was forced to move outside, to claim an unused farming terrace. It was a sunny, cool day, but windy enough that seeing architects chasing blueprints was a common sight. Eventually, they called in wind mages to solve the issue, much to the disappointment of the entertained crowd.

History doesn’t say whether the five judges felt similarly to the crowd on the issue, but it is fun to imagine so.

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History neglects many of the entries in the competition, but we still have detailed descriptions of many of the others. 

Some of the larger and wealthier former duchies had entered fully working models of the proposed throne room, enchanted works of art worthy of museums- and, indeed, several of them survive to this day, though only one is still in working condition.

One of the ones that was lost to us, sadly, was the Hall of Blades.

The Hall of Blades was a great barrel laid on its side, with its majestic throne at one far end.

The judges had spent all day weighing different metrics for construction. A throne room should have, at the very least, the grandeur to impress foreign dignitaries, the space for great meetings, acoustics or spellforms to carry the King’s voice, and the security to defend from any assault.

The Hall of Blades, on first sight, had plenty of grandeur, but there were significant concerns on many of the other accounts— most notably, security and floorspace. The curved cylinder shape of the room offered little flat space to stand, and there were no obvious defenses to present.

The question of defenses was answered readily enough— which also explained the name.

At a gesture by the architect, immense blades erupted from the cylinder’s walls, and the whole room, save the throne itself, began to spin. Different segments rotated at different speeds in different directions, and within heartbeats, the whole hall was a nightmarish grinder of flesh.

“Impressive,” the first judge offered, “but not a particularly discerning defense.” 

“It’s a throne room fit only for a mad tyrant,” the second judge growled. 

“I worry about the maintenance costs involved,” the third judge said.

“I worry about the cleanup involved,” the fourth judge quipped.

The fifth judge said nothing.

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The next design we have records for was the Lens Throne. 

The Lens Throne sat deep in a maze of glass, crystal, and mirrors, armored by countless ward and enchantment defenses. Its occupant could use the glittering diamond throne’s enchantments to shift the maze, to spy upon its occupants come to speak with him without their knowledge, to project the royal face into conversation, and even to annihilate intruders with focused light.

It was a masterwork of mathematical precision, an enchantment comparable to anything built by the old Empire. It was as much art as engineering, and the enchanted model outshone any other design in the field, quite literally.

“Utterly magnificent,” the first judge declared, immediately in love.

“Utterly impractical,” the second judge growled.

“The controls hardly seem easy to use, and I worry that controlling the maze would be too much of a distraction for the king, when his mind should be on politics,” the third judge said.

“Half the glass will be covered in smudges before the first day is out,” the fourth judge noted.

The fifth judge said nothing.

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The next throne had no hall of its own— the Strider Throne was built to roam.

The model strode about its table on its enchanted clockwork legs, striding down the streets of a model village. It bore enchanted ballistae on its back, and great hemispherical shields that could close around the king.

“A fascinating paradigm shift, one that allows the heart of the kingdom to follow the king anywhere,” the first judge said.

“It could already do that with a boat or a horse,” the second judge said, rolling their eyes.

“How much maintenance will this require?” the third judge asked.

The fourth judge knocked the model of the Strider Throne over with a finger and snickered.

The fifth judge said nothing.

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The next model was, so far as the judges could see, merely an empty room.

When they gave the architect puzzled looks, the woman smiled, then lowered a figurine of the king into the model, where it came to rest atop… nothing, merely floated in the air.

Then her smile grew broader, and she began to exhibit the model’s functions.

It was an entire room intersected by invisible wards. The throne itself was a ward, surrounded by grids of protective wards, sound carrying wards, and more. The king could walk about above supplicants’ heads, seemingly in mid-air. He could imprison assassins and traitors in glowing ward-prisons. He could even conceal the presence of audience members from one another, if he so wished.

“Magnificent,” cried the first judge.

“That many wards will surely interfere with one another,” the second judge groused.

“I believe this to be my favorite design yet,” the third admitted.

“Nothing to do with the architect being your cousin?” the fourth judge asked.

The fifth judge said nothing.

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On and on the competition went, as the judges went through dozens of proposed designs.

Some were models just as complex and impressive as those described so far. Other models were nonfunctional, albeit impressive. Some architects had only blueprints to show off.

There was a throne built of great angular girders, ones that stretched out in an open grid to the size of a palace itself, with all the halls and rooms of the palace suspended inside.

There was a great throne carved from a dragon skull, levitated above the floor of the throne room. Crude, but undeniably impressive.

There was a throne of enchanted hovering turtle shells that could recombine and shift into any shape the king chose.

There were thrones of bone, steel, and ice. Thrones of alchemical wax, thrones built of living elementals, and thrones of warped space. Circular throne rooms that cast illusory copies of the king and his throne all about the outer edge of the room, facing in towards supplicants. Throne rooms that forced supplicants to their knees with gravity magic, throne rooms with no gravity at all, and throne rooms that hovered thousands of feet above the fortress.

There was even a model throne room designed by a local village child and built out of clay. It was neither particularly impressive nor well-crafted, but received the warmest reception from all the judges, and from most of the competing architects.

We don’t truly have any records of the child after that, but we’d like to believe the apocryphal stories about being apprenticed to a great architect later in life came true. And perhaps it did— history can, on rare occasion, be a kind thing.

At last, though, the judges came to the last entry, one signed up at the last moment by a single, poorly-dressed architect.

Despite the man’s patched clothes and scraggly hair, there was a peculiarly intense look in his eyes, and he stared each of the judges directly in the eyes with no trace of humility.

The model itself was, with perhaps the exception of the child’s model, the least impressive shown there that day. It was a simple stone hall with a simple stone throne, with a few crude models for the king and some guards. So far as magical defenses went, the only thing visible was a simple protective ward around the throne itself.

“Profoundly unoriginal,” the first judge said.

“A waste of our time,” the second judge said.

“Our kingdom isn’t so strapped for cash as this,” the third judge said.

“Are you sure this wasn’t intended as the design for a barn?” the fourth judge said.

The fifth judge stared curiously at the model, then spoke for the first time. “Explain.”

The architect shifted his piercing eyes to the fifth judge. “I’ve looked at all my competitors, and they all have magnificent designs, to be certain. I don’t pretend to rival any of them as an architect.”

“For the best,” the fourth judge said. “I’ve seen horses that make better architects than you.”

The architect ignored the fourth judge and continued. “For all their brilliance, every one of those entries, however, miss the point entirely. They are, all of them, wasted expense.”

“Miss the point?” the first judge demanded. “A throne should glorify its occupant. Yours is just a chair.”

The architect shrugged at that. “If you wanted a more impressive chair, you could certainly swap it out. But in the end, a throne is just that— a chair. Every one of the other architects here has forgotten that.”

The second judge, hardly one to speak kindly of most of the entries, still felt compelled to speak up to that. “A throne is the heart of a monarch’s power, it’s far more than a simple chair. I think you are the one who has forgotten its purpose.”

The architect smiled at that. “Does the power of the king come from a throne, or does the power of a throne come from the king?”

“The power of the throne should come from a king,” the third judge admitted, “but even so, a proper throne should protect a king. You just have a simple ward, one that would shield the king for no  more than a few moments against dedicated assassins.”

The architect smiled even wider at that. “You miss what lies right in front of you.”

He gestured at the crude figures of guards in his model. “The greatest defense of any ruler should be the loyalty of his own people.”

The architect pulled out a thick stack of pages. “What I propose is no static defense, no wall separating the king from his subjects. What I propose is a guard unlike any other, a military force raised from the people, trained to utter professionalism. One where skill matters above all else.”

The other four judges mocked and derided him, but the fifth judge merely looked through the architect’s plans, peering through training regimens, mage recruiting plans, tactical routines, and more.

And finally, the fifth judge looked up from the plans and met the architect’s piercing gaze.

“Yes,” King Harahld said. 

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King Harahld’s decision was, of course, protested by the other judges, by the other architects, and even by his own wife.

Harahld stood firm, though, and his decision echoed down history.

Where other kingdoms toppled to corruption and invasion, their impressive thrones seized or destroyed, the throne of Highvale has stood strong for three and a half centuries. Never stolen, save by other members of the royal family. Never broken, always protected by a living wall of loyal soldiers.

And that throne guard? Its methods spread throughout the kingdom. Replaced the old ducal forces, became the standard for training throughout the Stoneknife Canyon.

Highvale might not have the most powerful mages, nor the most numerous soldiers, but those they do have are better trained than any on the continent. Their tactics and strategies are perfectly polished, their supply lines free of any corruption or profiteering, their professional conduct peerless and unquestionable.

And all of that rose from Harahld’s choice of a throne, in a windy field on a cool day early in his reign. Without that choice, it seems likely Highvale would have collapsed into ducal squabbling again on Harahld’s death, would have fallen to the mountain clans, roving dragon flights, or a resurgence of the river pirates. On his death, however, his military, still following the principles laid out by the architect Jheronian Wilde that day in the field, stood firmly by the side of his heir.

And they’ve remained so firmly beside the throne ever since, through weak kings and strong, through queens mad and brilliant alike.

There is one further piece of this story that should be noted.

The throne of Highvale has no jewels, no gold, no dragonbone or spellforms.

It’s a simple stone chair, identical to the one in the model.