Valén

The Saint Emperor is the
most glorious ruler in the history of the west and is one of the few men who
could claim utter ownership of the entirety of the west.  A man who arose from obscurity, to supremacy,
and finally to madness.

The Emperor was born to
the Laurë Arraz, a branch of the clan that ruled the former capital of the clan
after the fall of the eldest branch of the family.  He was a second son.  His mother raised him in a sheltered and
sparse lifestyle, devoted to the cult of Créspienism. When Valén was a child,
he once claimed that he had a dream, in which a saint, wearing the clothes of a
courtier, said that the godhead had chosen him to hold authority over all
Arraz.  But his faith was in peril in the
court of the Reya.  For the prince of the
Laurë was known as Reya Aulas the Apostate, a Reya who had returned to the
divine ancestor of the Laurë for strength.
He despised the Arrazëans and particularly Valén’s orthodox father.

His father, once the
master of the Palace of Aleron, found himself banished from the royal court
after being accused of treasonous religious beliefs. They were left ruling the
ruins of the capital and so, the Reya soon threatened to banish them from
Arraz.  His entire caste prepared to bid
farewell to their titles and their lives.
But Valén ran from home and rode to the court of the current Laurë
Reya.  He was accompanied only by his
loyal childhood friend: Relen.  The
future Reya then made an impassioned appeal for his father’s sake.  He echoed that divine providence had placed
his caste in command of Arraz and that this divine providence was the same that
placed the Reya upon the throne.

The Reya then dethroned
his father but raised Valén to his place as head of the caste, proclaiming that
the will of the Reya was providence. It was this act of malevolent generosity
that changed Valén into the autocratic personality to would conquer the
world.  He proved himself to be an
extremely skilled administrator and he eventually returned to the court. The
Saint came again to him in his dreams, wearing the armor and arms of a paladin,
giving unto him command over the whole nation. And so he supported the Laurëan
Reya against a rebellion, and was rewarded with the highest rank in the entire
Reyan: Depalatine, the Deya of the Paladins.
Paladins were the caste of retainers who served the nobility and to be
put in charge of the Paladins was to be given power over the whole of the lower
nobility.

Valén served the Reya
faithfully but his ambition could not be sated and he never forgot his
vision.  And then, he received a vision
of the Saint standing over a field of corpses outside the besieged the city of
Aman and proclaimed that by that city, he would be given the whole world.

Valén assembled the whole
host of the Paladins in secret and rode to the city Aman, besieged by the pagan
forces of all the Princes of the west.
He mustered all of the paladins and ordered them to paint the hand of
God upon their shield and led a great charge into the host of the pagans.  It is said that the divine saints possessed
the bodies of the Paladins and that the Paladins drove the pagan host before
them.  It is said that not a single
paladin fell.  After the battle, Valén
stood among the corpses, kneeled, and sang a song to the Godhead.

The Paladins, seeing the
miracle of their victory, followed him into Aman.  There, he kneeled before the Ecclesiarch, and
pledged his loyalty to Aman.  The host of
Paladin also kneeled and seeing the miracle of the battle, they dedicated their
lives to the Ecclesia.  The successors to
the saints welcomed them to the city and granted upon him, the banner of the
Saints and proclaimed him to be the Reya of Laurë.  And he returned to the Laurë with the
Paladins at his back and met Aulas in a field outside of Sallé.  There, Valén’s head was covered in a
magnificent halo and as he spoke to the apostate, Aulas was filled with wonder
and fell on his knees.  He gave his royal
crown unto Valén and devoted his life unto that of a hermit.

Now called Reya Valén, he
gathered the entire host of Paladins and the Laurëan Phalanxes and set about
the claiming of the whole world.  He
first marched into the northern lands and fought the Mallanë, conquering their
fortresses one by one until the climactic Battle of the Grey Fields.  The Mallanë clan’s remaining forces fled and
joined with the Rélinë.  The latter,
seeing an opportunity to destroy their former vassals drew their swords and
invaded the Laurëan Reyan and besieged the city of Orëcien.  Valén’s counter-attack was swift, for he
split his force, leading the phalanxes and a third of his paladins across the
north to Marën itself.  Immediately, the
Rélinë gathered their hosts to meet Valén, but the Paladins of the Laurë
harried them until they reached the fields of Ourane Fields, known as the
Battle of the Magnificent Radiance, where Valén personally led his troops and
called beams of heavenly light down from the skies and burned his enemies.  And it was over the scorched remains of the
Reya of the Rélinë that Valén was proclaimed Reya of the Rélinë and determined
the nature of his vision.

He marched into Marën
unopposed and “released” the hostages he took during the previous battle.  There, they all proclaimed him to be the
Repalatine of the Rélinë and he was made emperor for the first time in his
life.

The
massive Laurëan expansion seemed to be at an end, but Valén was visited by a
man from the Palatine and was met by Pethenon Pallas. No one knows what
happened during this period, but one Palatine, Pethenon the Devout, was moved
by the Godhead and he did the unthinkable and offered Valén kingship over
Pallas.

The Saint-Emperor Valén
was stunned and amazed.  He immediately
rode to the city and cast out the Palatines and prepared to proclaim himself
king.  But he soon found that the people
of Pallas identified completely with their Palatine.  He set to reconquering all of the former
city-states, placing his own men as the new Paladins.  He then held an election and the Paladins
elected Valén as the Répalatine and Reya of Pallas.  Inspired by the crumbling ruins, he moved his
capital from Arras to Pallas.  There, he
appointed a new Council of Palatines. Valén was celebrated and (much to his
shock) the populace and the new council of Palatines crowned him as the
Palatine Emperor.

And finally, a final
vision appeared in his mind, and the Godhead himself revealed himself to him,
and proclaimed that he was no longer the Emperor of any of the realms of the
West but the whole of the West.  And so,
he rode once more to holy Aman.  There,
the Ecclesiarch himself greeted him and proclaimed him to be Répalatine of the
West.  Thrice was he emperor, once by
kings, once by the people, and once by God.

In his remaining years,
he conquered little, adding the Lenorë clan by force and losing his childhood
friend, Relen in the process.
Distraught, he took it upon himself to unite the west by diplomacy and
conquered the southern princes through his very words and the cities of the
south kneeled.  Seeing the whole west bow
before him, he chose to bring law unto his new empire and did that which amazed
all men:  He declared that no clans
existed and that all the clan in his empire would be called Laurëan and that
everyone would live under the same laws.
He reformed the caste system and created a new world order.

In the Emperor’s final
days, it is said that he walked throughout the halls of the Palace of Summer,
as he desperately sought to preserve his empire, despite his own laws.  For he had set up the law, and yet he was now
bound to it.  At one point, one story
claims that he grew so deranged that he commanded that the Paladin’s execute
all of his children by his eldest, so that there would be no need to violate
the law.  This was not done.

The Secret
Histories of Valén