The Seven Peoples

Oldest of the seven peoples, the elven Highkin alone remember the age before the Sundering. They are ancient, patient, and haunted by what they have seen. Their cities are woven into the silver canopy of the Vaelindrel — hidden from ordinary sight, lit by lamps that have burned since before the First Watch.

Queen Miraeth has held the Silver Throne for three hundred and twenty years. She has watched every Watch since the twenty-fourth. Those who meet her describe a woman neither old nor young, with eyes the colour of deep water and a voice like wind through leaves. She does not laugh anymore.

In this Watch

The Highkin are dwindling. Fewer children are born each generation. Miraeth weighs whether to bind her people to alliances that will outlast every individual who forged them.

The dwarven Stoneborn are the builders of Thairen. Every great fortification, every enduring road, every deep mine was begun by their hands. They are a proud people who record grievances in stone ledgers that outlast the grievance-holders. They fight reluctantly, and well.

King Thorin has held the throne of Ardenhold for eighty years. His beard is gray; his eyes are sharp. He wears no ornament except a ring forged from the shield of the first Stoneborn king who fell to Ulgareth in the First Watch.

In this Watch

The great forges below the earth are weakening. Fires that have burned for a thousand years are dying. Thorin suspects Ulgareth is drawing upon the deep places, sapping the Stoneborn's strength.

The orcish Warhost were once the feared invaders of Thairen, sweeping out of the southern Ashflats in the Second Age to burn cities and break kingdoms. After the seventh Watch, they were reluctantly accepted into the alliance against the Horde. Three centuries later their ferocity is unbroken — only turned outward.

Grakshur is only thirty-two years old. She claimed her seat by combat three years ago, killing her predecessor in fair challenge. Fearless, brutal, and more politically astute than she appears.

In this Watch

The old generation remembers when the Warhost were reavers. The young know only the Long Watch. Grakshur must hold both — elders who believe their people have been tamed, and warriors who see the Watch as their sacred duty.

Humans are the youngest of the seven peoples, arriving in Thairen only nine hundred years ago. They are fractious, ambitious, short-lived, and inventive. Between Watches they war with one another as often as they cooperate.

They have no single ruler. The Five Kings — Edmund Valorsteel, Mira Ashheart, Lord Commander Cassian, Prince Aelric of the Broken Crown, and Lady Vesper Greymantle — answer to themselves and to no one else. Every Watch begins with the humans spending its first months arguing over command.

In this Watch

And yet the humans always find a way — a reluctant compromise nobody likes but everyone accepts. The question this cycle is whether the Five can agree in time, or whether the Horde reaches the Middlemarch first.

The halfling Wandersfolk are small of stature, great of heart, and everywhere. They have no homeland. They move in caravans, circling Thairen in patterns known only to their elders. They trade. They tell stories. They carry news from kingdom to kingdom. Without them, the other peoples would not know how to find each other.

Halla Greenstep is one hundred and twelve years old, tiny, kind-faced. She knows more secrets than any assassin. She has never revealed one.

In this Watch

Ulgareth has begun targeting the caravan roads. Raiding parties ambush the Wandersfolk specifically. Halla weighs an unthinkable thing — whether to seek protected territory with one of the other peoples, ending her people's ancient freedom.

The dragonkin Wyrmsworn are the last of the race descended from the Great Wyrms of the First Age. Scaled, amber-eyed, and touched with dragonfire — some breathe small gouts of flame; all resist ordinary fire. Their civilization is ritualistic and austere. They are the most martial of the peoples, and the most disciplined.

Lord Emperor Kravos has held the throne for seventy years. Silver-gray with age, but his flame still burns. Formal, distant, feared by his own people for his willingness to spend Wyrmsworn lives for strategic advantage.

In this Watch

The Wyrmsworn are aging. Their birthrate has collapsed across three Watches. Kravos has begun bonding Wyrmsworn children to human and elven lineages — heresy to traditionalists. A schism is forming in the volcanic halls.

The Ferrum are not a race. They are a sworn order. They take their members from every other people — elf, dwarf, orc, human, halfling, dragonkin — and bind them by oath to serve not a king or a nation, but Thairen itself. And specifically the war against Ulgareth.

They wear no colours but iron gray. They live austere lives in the Ironkeep between Watches, training, studying Ulgareth's patterns, preparing for what is to come.

First Lord Malachar Vorn was human by birth. He has served the Ferrum for fifty-three years; he took the oath at seventeen. Quiet, implacable, regarded by other leaders as the most dangerous man in Thairen — not for his strength, but for his knowledge.