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A Hollow Hearth: Timeline
#1
Compiled from the research notes of one Anwid Chiselfist, Explorers' League, preeminent historian, biographer, and lead author of The Tragic Saga of She-Thane Rockharrow and her Lines. Included here with his permission. Published in the fourth month of the thirtieth year after the opening of the Dark Portal.

When abstracting of such ancient times, it is difficult to draw clear and opaque lines between the folkloric traditions of oral history and the concrete facts of realities past. The editor encourages that the reader regard the information provided herein with a degree of scepticism.


Their Time of Waking Wrote:2,530 Years Ago: The dwarves, former Earthen all, awaken from their thousands of years of slumber to find themselves unfleshed and without memory of their past lives. They ascend to the surface and settle there, eventually founding the kingdom of Khaz Modan under the steady-handed stewardship of the Anvilmars.

2,330 Years Ago: The Rockharrow Clan emerged as a distinct entity, a family of hard-working miners toiling in virtual thralldom in the service to greater clans.

2,160 Years Ago: On his death bed, blind and feverish, the lowly Thane Uthred Rockharrow uttered a mad prophecy concerning a daughter of the clan who would rise to lay low an impossible evil and lift their line to greatness.

2,060 Years Ago: Amidst the cries of ravens from the mountaintops, a lunar eclipse of the White Lady, and other fell omens, Angharad Rockharrow was born, her mother dying in childbirth.

Their Time of Dark Wrote:2050 Years Ago: As she matured, clan sages noted several of Angharad's unusual abilities – supreme resistance to great heat and cold, strength and endurance far beyond her age, and barely shedding a drop of blood when cut with a razor. In hushed voices, they were ascribed to be inherited traits of the Old Earthen, markers of the Great Ancestors' favour.

2040 Years Ago: Angharad Rockharrow, now working in the mines with her family, began to grow a beard, a mark of celebrated beauty among dwarven women. Despite her lowly station, she attracted a great number of suitors, but took the company of none.

2030 Years Ago: A mining accident in an impossibly deep cavern unearthed a thing that was never meant to be. With many eyes and many mouths, it spread a curse of contagious madness amongst the Rockharrow labourers, driving them to murder one another with their own pickaxes. Angharad, however, was impervious. Evading her brothers and sisters without harming them, she took her mining pick to each of the creature's unblinking eyes and one by one freed her family members from the curse. The creature retreated, but somehow Angharad knew it would return.

2028 Years Ago: The monster was rediscovered on several occasions in the caverns where Angharad had been working, and once again Angharad knew almost instinctively how to fend it off. The fortunes of the already-impoverished Rockharrows suffer for these attacks, however. Word of these manifestations brings uproar and panic to the land – eventually, she was called up by High King Anvilmar himself, who bade her tell him what she knew. When she left his chambers, she did so with a task.

2027 Years Ago: Angharad was announced as the tenth member of a band of nine great heroes of the land, all clanless and famed for legendary deeds, called together at the High King's decree. Though young and inexperienced in the ways of battle, she accompanies them into the deeps where the monster is said to reside.

2026 Years Ago: For ten days and ten nights they are said to fight – and on each morning, as the sun rose upon the surface world, another hero fell in the darkness against the nameless horror. On the tenth day, however, Angharad emerged victorious over the beast. In the short time they knew her, the nine champions were said to have come to love Angharad so dearly that they imparted upon her in their wills their enchanted armour and weapons. Although enemies of the Rockharrows would claim that she had stolen the gear from their corpses, these voices were swiftly silenced by the chorus of praise that she was drenched in from across the land.

Despite this, some doomsayers would insist that she had not managed to destroy the monster, merely imprison it in the earth whence it came -- or worse yet, as her enemies would later allege, perhaps came to some kind of pact with it, allowing it to live free in return for unnatural longevity of life.

The Rockharrows profit from their prodigal daughter's great and mighty reputation.

Their Time of Rising Wrote:2025 Years Ago: Upon the cairnstones of her nine companions, Angharad swore to wander the world, setting to rest their unfinished business, resolving their scores and completing their works in their honour. These were undertaken as her Nine Great Deeds, the topics of many ballads and eddas in the centuries since.

She earned many heroic names in this period, all recounting her deeds – She-Thane, Giantkiller, Trollsplitter, Elf-thiever, the Lady of the Deep Hearth, the Mother of Blades, Watcher-against-the-Dark.

2017 Years Ago: Angharad was married in a solitary ceremony to one of her adventuring companions, Owain, an honourable cleric of Khaz.

2016 Years Ago: Angharad's first son, Kettil, was delivered back to the Rockharrow clan to be raised communally by the family while she continued her adventures.

2,010 Years Ago: Owain was slain in battle against the vicious trolls of the Hinterlands, and Angharad enters ten years of mourning as his warrior-widow.

2,000 Years Ago: After twenty-five years of adventure, Angharad returned home amidst a succession dispute over the meagre Rockharrow thaneship. When she entered the clan-meet, expecting a hero's welcome, she came amidst a fierce argument – one which she rapidly diffused. By unanimous assent of every voting hand, she was named Thane Rockharrow, one of the first female thanes in dwarven history.

Subsequently, in recognition for her great services to dwarfkind, the High King Anvilmar decrees that this legendary heroine be elevated to nobility – and she takes her clan with her.

1,997 Years Ago: After deliberation, Angharad, compelled as she is by family duty, weds herself to a wealthy and well-bred suitor by the name of Rhunwyd, the son of one of the heroes she vanquished the many-eyed monster alongside. Their marriage is widely rumoured to be loveless and dry, but is politically and economically advantageous for the newly ennobled Rockharrows.

1,994 Years Ago: Angharad gave birth to her first and only child of Rhunwyd's, a boy by the name of Harald.

1,991 Years Ago: Rhunwyd was killed in a duel of honour against the champion of a rival clan. Henceforth, Angharad publicly forswore remarriage and devoted her efforts instead to the preservation and support of her clan.



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