HISTORY OF DUSK HOPE HOLD

Lying deep into the southern continent, Dusk Hope Hold looks much like a tall brave fortress against the backdrop of mountains and dense southern vegetation. In its youth this southern continent Hold buzzed with life and vitality run by its Lord and Lady Holder but time and age have taken their toll and nature has begun to reclaim the area for itself. Two turns back the Lord Holder died suddenly leaving the hold in the hands of his love and wife Lady Morlayna. While they had given life to one child, a son, named Kunler, the boy did not make it passed his fifth birthingday and no others were ever conceived. This left the Hold in some peril unless its Lady could find a suitable heir. Morlayna a brassy but capable woman took a strong hand to her hold residents and staff but had never run a hold, having left that work to her capable husband.

Soon the economy of the Hold began to fail and its residents began to leave fearing that the hold would no longer be able to support them. As more left, and still more Morlayna found herself forced to work alongside her residents and staff to just keep the hold from starving. After one particularly grueling fall rainstorm where Morlayna had run into the rain trying to save the last of the crops from the cold, she came down with a heavy cough which began to steal away her life bit by bit.

Being half way into her eighth decade, Morlayna was not able to shake the cough nor the wet rattle that developed soon after and found herself restricted to bed. The last of the drudges and residents disappeared from the Hold leaving only a few staff members, and handful of healers that had come to tend to the Lady Holder. Knowing she was dying and not wanting her lands and the Hold to turn into dust after all the turns of work and love her devoted husband had put into it, she began to search for a suitable heir, turning to her own family for help.

When she wrote the long shot she had in the brother-in-law she'd never met of a sister that had died 38 turns before, she was reaching for clouds and was surprised when a letter was returned that her nephew would be responding to her summons for relatives of her blood to appear. Even though he was the only one, she would not give over her Hold so easily to one yet known only as a stranger so upon his arrival she set a challenge to prove himself worthy of the task. A sevenday later, content with her choice, Lady Morlayna simply never woke up again.