Chronicles of Volten: The Early Days
Before the Crown
As set down by my hand in this year 647 of the First Founding, I, Brother Marcus of the Imperial Archive, have been granted the honor of chronicling the origins of our glorious empire. What follows was gathered from ancient merchant ledgers, songs sung in taverns from here to the borderlands, and the testimony of elders whose grandfathers' grandfathers remembered the time before crowns. May my humble pen do justice to the magnitude of these events.
The Hamlet by the River
In the time before records, when the Bryga River ran wild and untamed through forests dark and deep, a hardy hamlet grew upon its southern bank. No grand ambition drove its founding—merely the practical wisdom of river folk who recognized where waters met and paths crossed, trade would follow.
The settlement's original name is lost, perhaps deliberately forgotten when greater glories came. I have searched for it in every record, every song, but like smoke it eludes the grasp. But the family who led it would be remembered: the Voltri, stubborn as river stones and twice as enduring. They were not nobles in those days, merely the strongest voices in the moot, the steadiest hands in crisis, the ones others looked to when decisions needed making.
How strange to think that the blood that now sits upon the Imperial Throne once counted coppers in a riverside trading post!
The River's Blessing and Curse
The Bryga gave them everything—fish and fowl, rich soil renewed by flooding, routes for trade. Merchants poled up from southern ports, hill folk descended from the heights, and at this nameless settlement, all met to barter and trade. The Voltri grew wealthy, not as kings grow wealthy, but as successful merchant-warriors do—enough to build stone halls, enough to arm their fighters well, enough to attract envy.
For the river that brought trade also brought raiders. They came in lean years and fat ones alike, knowing that where rivers met, wealth gathered.
The Age of Raiders
The raids grew worse as the hamlet grew richer. What had been seasonal threats became constant menace. The Voltri response was typical of their line—they didn't merely defend, they prepared. They trained every able-bodied adult in basic combat, built watch towers at key approaches, developed warning systems of horns and flames.
The old songs speak of Aldric Voltri standing watch himself through entire winter nights, his sword never leaving his hand. Whether true or embellished, it speaks to the character of the man.
But one family's strength could only reach so far. The raiders learned to strike at neighboring settlements first, taking supplies and slaves before the Voltri fighters could arrive. They burned farms that supplied the hamlet's markets, murdered traders on roads the Voltri couldn't patrol.
The Great Gathering
It was Aldric Voltri, Rudolf's father, who proposed what seemed impossible. Rather than wait for attack, rather than respond to each crisis separately, why not bind themselves with sacred oaths? He sent messengers to every settlement within twenty leagues, calling for a gathering at the summer solstice.
I have stood in the great plaza where this gathering took place—now paved with imperial marble, then merely packed earth. Even now, knowing what would come, I feel shivers imagining that moment.
They came cautiously—proud village elders, suspicious hill chiefs, wary river captains. Some had feuded for generations over boundaries and water rights. But they all had suffered from raiders, all had dead to mourn.
The gathering lasted seven days. Seven days that would reshape the known world, though none present could have guessed it. Aldric didn't demand submission or offer domination. Instead, he proposed a sworn pact of mutual defense. The Voltri settlement would become the heart of this alliance. They would train militias from every village, maintaining standards and tactics. They would coordinate patrols, share intelligence, respond as one body to threats against any member.
The Defense Pact Forms
The plan required trust, and trust required sacred oaths. A common tongue emerged from the mingling of dialects—not imposed but evolved through necessity as militia members from different villages trained together. Standard signals were developed, patrol routes established, response protocols practiced until they became instinct.
The Voltri settlement transformed. Training grounds sprawled where orchards once bloomed. Barracks rose beside merchant halls. The finest fighters from allied villages came to learn, then returned home to teach others. Strategies were debated in councils that grew to include voices from every settlement bound by the pact.
When raiders came that autumn, expecting easy prey, they found coordinated resistance. Villages that should have been isolated were reinforced within hours. Ambushes waited on previously safe routes. The raiders retreated, bloodied and bewildered.
The Success That Doomed a Peace
Word spread of the alliance's success. More settlements sought to swear the pact. The protected lands grew from twenty leagues to nearly thirty before Aldric, aged and satisfied, passed leadership to his son Rudolf.
Here I must pause in my writing to marvel—Aldric Voltri created something from nothing, forged unity from division, built strength from scattered weakness. Yet he died thinking himself merely a successful protector of trade routes. He never knew he had laid the foundation of an empire.
Rudolf inherited more than his father's position—he inherited a sworn alliance that controlled key rivers and trade routes, that could field trained militias thousands strong, that had begun to think of itself as one people rather than many peoples.
This success did not go unnoticed. In the great kingdom of Tarin, at the height of its power and hungry for expansion, eyes turned toward these allied lands. Here was wealth, organization, and strategic position—everything an empire desired.
The envoys would come soon, bearing Tarin's demands. But they would find something unexpected: a people who had learned to stand together, who had tasted self-determination, and who had in Rudolf Voltri a leader who understood that some moments in history come only once.
The hamlet by the river had become something more. It awaited only a crown to make the transformation complete.
And what a crown it would be! But that tale belongs to the next chronicle, and my candle burns low. I set down my quill knowing that I have only begun to tell the glory that is Volten.
Set down in the Imperial Archive at Alexburg, in the blessed reign of His Imperial Majesty
By the hand of Brother Marcus, Junior Chronicler
Who begs forgiveness for any errors and gives thanks for the privilege of recording such magnificent history
First chronicle in the history of the Volten Empire
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