History of Balthimore

Balthimorean history is a sequence of conquests repeatedly retold as reunions. Its western pageants describe a realm naturally destined to become one country beneath one crown. Older sources reveal a more difficult story: rival human and elven rulers, conquered communities, catastrophic defeat, refugee survival, and a dynasty created only after the old order had disappeared.

The First Unification

Ancient Balthimore began when human and elven rulers formed a combined army against the smaller kingdoms and independent territories surrounding them. Their campaign mixed diplomacy, marriage, siege, purchase, religious pressure, and open conquest. The resulting realm stretched from the western sea across the central mountains into fertile eastern country.

Later histories call the campaign the First Unification. Chivalric dramas portray its leaders arriving at each city to receive willing vows beneath gold-and-crimson banners. Surviving provincial records make clear that many of those vows followed military defeat.

The conquerors established their capital at Caer Belladon, an eastern city positioned near important roads, rivers, and sacred sites. Humans and elves became the most politically influential peoples in the new kingdom, while conquered nobles were gradually absorbed into its hierarchy.

Caer Belladon

Caer Belladon was both royal capital and symbol of the early realm. Accounts describe high walls, gardens watered by mountain channels, human and elven palaces, and a ceremonial avenue aligned with the dawn. Its royal eagle carried a star-like mark that later became the dawnstar emblem of House Balthimore.

The city's precise location has been lost. Maps disagree, surviving roads terminate unexpectedly, and magical attempts to locate it return contradictory results. Scholars believe the ruins lie buried somewhere east of the Crownspine beneath Demon War destruction and centuries of altered landscape.

The Demon Wars

The Demon Wars devastated Balthimore. Caer Belladon fell, its royal court disappeared, and eastern communities were destroyed in succession. Surviving journals describe civilians fleeing south and west while soldiers remained behind to delay the demonic advance.

Garth Halfsmith's account is among the most personal surviving records. He wrote of sending his daughter away with other refugees, returning wounded to an abandoned farmhouse, and believing Balthimore entirely lost. His testimony represents thousands whose names did not survive.

Western ports, upland refuges, and isolated fortresses endured. They preserved enough population, law, and shared identity for Balthimore to exist after its capital and dynasty were gone.

The Reconstruction Crown

A celebrated defender organized the western refuges, secured food routes, reopened Eschbron's harbor, and united surviving armies. With the old royal line presumed extinct, nobles, officers, clergy, and community leaders crowned this war hero as the first ruler of the reconstruction dynasty.

From that moment onward, the reigning royal bloodline took the surname Balthimore. A spouse, adopted heir, distant relative, or successor entering the kingly line surrendered their former dynastic identity to the name of the realm.

Eschbron became the new capital. Royal imagery gradually blended the First Unification, the fall of Caer Belladon, and the reconstruction into one uninterrupted story of noble kingship.

The Prophecy of the Dawnstar

Thousands of years ago, a prophet of Grandal described a future conflict centered upon the bones of a dragon god. The surviving prophecy speaks of a leader marked by a dawnstar, a realm divided by mountains, an uncrowned defender, and a final battle at the threshold between two Balthimores.

The text is widely known but rarely taken literally. Its language has inspired art, sermons, royal symbols, and the emblem carried by Balthimore's eagle. Competing theologians disagree about whether the “uncrowned defender” represents a person, a military order, or the kingdom itself.

The Age of Chivalric Peace

Long periods of stability allowed western Balthimore to cultivate its idealized identity. Tournament orders, royal theaters, furniture workshops, domestic engineering guilds, religious schools, and merchant houses grew around Eschbron. Real military service increasingly occurred at distant borders or under allied banners, leaving ceremonial knights to dominate western public life.

The Crownspine remained difficult to cross, but east and west still understood themselves as parts of one realm. Families traded, married, studied, worshipped, and served across the divide.

Discovery of the Bones

Decades ago, workers in eastern Balthimore uncovered a colossal draconic skeleton suffused with celestial energy. The remains were ancient enough to predate reliable local records. Falmathian scholars connected them to prophecies concerning Grandal and petitioned for access.

Balthimore permitted supervised investigation while retaining sovereignty over the land. When the evidence failed to produce a definitive identification, Falmathion's Chromatic Council demanded the entire territory. Balthimore refused.

The War of the Forgotten Bones

Falmathion declared war and seized the excavation. Its armies continued beyond the supposed sacred site, capturing roads, settlements, and defensible terrain. The conflict became a war of conquest regardless of its religious origin.

Lord Protector Isaac Balthimore assumed command of the east. Coalition forces slowed the invasion, but they have not reversed it. Bruxlee remains the principal front, while Chessla, Freehold, Dawngate Keep, and dozens of smaller communities prepare for further advance toward the Crownspine.

Modern Balthimore now resembles its oldest histories more closely than its public romances admit: a country held together by conquest, memory, sacrifice, and the conviction that its survival justifies nearly anything.