The Old King

The following is the most widely known and cited resource for King Kveykva, ruler during Thorenguard's golden age. It is taken from an excerpt in Defavo's journal.

## Journal Entry

If you went back 400 years ago, there'd be a twenty-year-old boy, standing 5'6 with red hair and ragged, peasant clothing torn to strips covering him with a rusted dagger at his hip, standing at the gates whilst our kingdom was locked in the valley it is now. If you asked him his name, Kveykva of Sotra, or something of the sort, he'd likely have answered. We asked, and he answered with words like those..But with a little something extra that noone there was expecting; "I've come to claim your throne" he'd said, but the captain of the guard at the time, Tinky the elf, laughed, calling " You come to duel me for the Throne in such a pitiful state, with a dagger and nothing but straps of cloth for armor...Aye then, take out your blade and I'll knock you down quickly." The two duel then, and within ten minutes, it's said, Tinky was thrown down without his shield or blade. Kveykva towered over the elf who lied on the ground.
"I believe that throne is mine now."

With that, Kveykva became the king of Thorenguard, and within that fortnight, with little more than his dagger and new clothing, he'd brought the military up to a legion in size and allied with the Elves, Dwarves, and even the Orcs as the kingdom so expanded under his directions, past the mountains in all directions by a league. With the bustling land populated with nearly ten thousand now, and everyone busy busy busy, we were directed to take a year to stabilize with our numbers growing.
 In that time, Kveykva had a Royal Guard form for the first time in Thorenguard, taking fifty of our greatest men into the ranks; I was one of them as I was already enlisted in the normal Guard, along with Tinky. During the year, we Royal Guards and our legion of the normal ranks held off four attacked on the castle with the King leading us, now with a sword than a dagger, against forces from the South and a kingdom called Jeogoph. Our casualties hardly went about five-hundred.

Over the course of the next sixty years, King Kveykva had gained a Queen and a two-month-old Princess, though of course they'd planned for a prince; great royalty themselves, but alas, this tale be not about him does it? Kveykva and the other Royals ruled greatly, him one of the greatest kings Thorenguard had, and likely every would have. Held off unprovoked attacks from the other lands around us and countered with out own forces, expanding our own land by leagues. As any good king should be, he was educated in diplomacy indeed, but a good king he was not; no, he was a great one, the greatest, and he used diplomacy more than any I'd ever seen. Using it as well as countering other hostile lands with force, we expanded by twelve leagues away from the valley which we'd inhabited only for so long, the population growing to nearly one-and-a-half million and the army to twenty-five legions of five thousand each, ourselves, the Royal Guard, to five thousand itself. And I was the new captain of it.

It was some time around then that an assassin had been sent to gather Kveykva's head, and during the duel, right when they were about to finish off the King with a second man from behind, Tinky gave his life. The body thunked onto the floor with a horrible noise and myself and the King went berserk. The assassins, no need to be said, were now dead. As much as I hated Tinky, I still don't believe he deserved to die, but he did his job. Better him than the King, right?  It's our job to protect the Royal family, and if need be, lay down our life for them. And exactly that Tinky did. And we soon all would do, as we were about to find out. That next dawn, four-thousand five-hundred wen out to scout and conquer new lands, all of them Royal Guards, and they went out into the unknown.

We soon realized that was the worst mistake we'd ever made, as only one of the men returned; luckily I wasn't among those large numbers. According to him, it'd seem our bourders had hit Capitol. They had declared war for our trespassing into their land; our warning was that one-and-a-half million of their men were coming our way, and would be arriving in the fortnight. Dead men be we, eh? Turns out the dwarves had decided it was time to go. They'd begun moving North towards the far mountain ranges, and Kveykva gave the Royal Guard one last order. We were told to go with them, and bring the Princess and Queen with us. Of course we followed his orders, but what happened after makes me question.

Nothing of ours stood anymore on that land. Anything housing citizens was completely untouched by the VK, and anyone who decided to fight back as militia was slaughtered. It wasn't unlikely that most of the population decided to form an army of their own. But we couldn't find any of the Guard or the King.
We could only assume that they'd rallied to the castle to put up one of, if not the, greatest last stand in the history of Thorenguard. I would expect nothing less of the Old King..
But as I said before. Sometimes I wonder if we really should have followed that final order.
            - Defavo, Captain of the Royal Guard