Schants

Player History
(Player History talks about what actually happened in game while the Player Lore talks about the lore reasoning behind everything)

Arrival in Rathnir
Schants would initially enter the world of Rathnir on Sunday, June 12 2022, quickly after joining he would be recruited by PhantomRC, a talented recruiter from Featherian Federation, Schants was granted an apartment in Lunalia and promptly began engaging with the community, forming new friendships and connections, He met a number of people, including UnitedDoggo, TieCy, Ivan_From_Ivan and Ythorin. Ivan invited Schants to join the mercenary organization from Daelyria called Hand of Vhagar after realizing his potential in PvP. After a while, Schants made the decision of moving to Ythorin's town of "Solaris" (later known as Sollenburgh) because most of Lunalia's active players were from different time zones than Schants, making it impossible for them to communicate with one another.

Life in Sollenburgh
A small, recently constructed town west of Lunalia, Sollenburgh was built by Ythorin and a few of his pals. It was easy for Ythorin to swiftly bring in a big number of new recruits, for he was an enthusiastic and bright man who was also a very active player. The principles outlined in Ythorin's book "Cobble and Logs" guided the city. In essence, Cobble and Logs advocates for the freedom to build and share resources, arguing that "if everything is available, there is no point in stealing" and that the community should have a public storehouse accessible to everybody.Twinkycome and Diarria, two players, would arrive to assist Schants and Ythorin as they began constructing the city and reconstructing the old walls of the former village near Sollenburgh. After a few days of really hard effort, it paid off; the city was bustling, there were new buildings rising everywhere, and people were cheerful as ever. After some time, Schants would become less active than previously because of disagreements with Diarria and Twinky as well as rivalry between them, Ythorin had some issues with them both in the meantime. Their relationship was cold therefore Ythorin made the decision to sell Sollenburgh to Taufi for 40,000 dollars. Following this, Ythorin was granted a new town inside Soumere-Serenus under the name "Mediolanum"; however, he eventually changed the town's name to "Pravdamir"  once Serenus's leadership judged it worthy. After a while, Schants returned to being an active player. He joined Pravdamir and began working on it alongside Ythorin and a few of their friends. Meanwhile Twinky and Diarria established their town of "Edenville" in North Frostmarch and because of their prior foolish feud with Schants and Ythorin, Twinky and Diarria would often raid Pravdamir. This continued for a while, but finally they ceased raiding; still, Ythorin remained enraged with them for starting the raid in the first place, which caused him to become less and less active over time. As a result, Schants decided to try founding his own town for the first time. He approached the leadership of Serenus and requested them to provide him some land, but they declined. He then went to the leadership of Frostmarch and asked them to grant him some land so that he could establish a fresh settlement, and they agreed.

Founding of Schantsstadt
Schants and a group of his friends founded Schansstadt, which would later be renamed Farløarn. They had grand plans for a massive city, were constantly planning, and their ambition only seemed to grow. However, after a few months, his friends stopped being involved, leaving him alone to carry out his ambitious plans—many of which were nearly impossible for a single man. Schants's ambition was shattered for a while after this, although he continued to work on some of his plans.

Independent Frostmarch
After a protracted absence, Schants eventually returned and started to interact with the Frostmarch community. He strengthened his connection with Twinky and the two of them supported one another with each other's cities and plans. Knowing that Temsyod, the Grand Jarl at the time, wouldn't proclaim independence because he could consider it too dangerous, Twinky saw an opportunity to declare Ederian Kingdom's independence following the collapse of The Horde, which would compel Temsyod to do the same. Ederia would eventually return to Frostmarch, first as a vassal and then fully reintegrating into the Grand Jarldom. Around this time, a new town named "Venator" was established west of Farløarn. GH_Eagle, Denix, and emperor_of_war, also known as Leoric, were in charge of this newly established settlement. After a short period of silence, an old Jarl who had been banished from Frostmarch due to his loss of the civil war. He desired to be reinstated as the Grand Jarl of Frostmarch and founded a small island to the north of the Frostmarch's mainland, which he would name "Venzor" and "My little Elba". Especially once most people realized that Temsyod was too inactive to manage a nation this active, Voske and his collaborators made a new Frostmarch nation claim as a symbol of rebellion. Several mayors, notably Schants, supported Voske's return as a Grand Jarl. Observing Voske's resounding support, Temsyod made the decision to speak with Voske and those who supported him in an attempt to reach a solution. Temsyod and Sir Voske would both become Grand Jarls under the new "May Constitution of Frostmarch" that Fraz created as a solution to this problem. Temsyod agreed after some persuasion.

Parliament of Ældres final meeting
After a while, the two Grand Jarls had become inactive, the populace was furious, and the Parliament of Elders was trying to find a solution to this. They met in the attic of the Farløarn Parliament building to discuss this. Schants, FrazSays, Twinky, Hohe Tannen, General imi, MoskauMaster, Bman, and Pope Francis were present at this gathering. Schants proposed a plan that would require the current Grand Jarls to step down or to be active again. He proposed holding Grand Jarl elections and requiring each candidate to state his or her qualifications, short- and long-term goals for Frostmarch, and a deadline of one to two weeks to finish them. People could then determine whether they are deserving and active enough to govern the nation based on that. After seeing this Temsyod official resigned from the postion of the Grand Jarl on 29th of June 2023. Voske, on the other hand, responded differently to this; he became inspired to play once more, tearing down the parliament and claiming to be the sole real Grand Jarl. Schants would carry on improving his city and having fun with other citizens during this period.He was also promoted to the rank of Jarl, and his Jarldom—the "Jarldom of Odemark"—was located in the center of the country. Frostmarch would see prosperity during this time, but with a few bumps along the way. Notably, one of those bumps were the Heimrian revolts, although they weren't particularly noteworthy. Schants would also lend Fraz some assistance when excavating his quarry in the Erðvald outskirts.

Evermorii invasion
Jarl RoseHost's decision to provide the former Bardonian Emperor Shanks some land so he could establish his new town and "settle down and chill" led to discussions about a potential invasion of Featheria, in which Shanks would assist Frostmarch purely for fun. Host who had been considering quitting for a quite some time but still wanted to make things better for the country, saw this as a fantastic opportunity to secure  Featheria for Frostmarch and made the decision to try and persuade the other Jarls. Despite their initial skepticism, the majority of Jarls chose to put their faith in Host due to his extensive background in Stoneworks politics. All of them appeared to have trust in Host, with Voske being the exception. Shanks persuaded the Jarls that he would receive assistance from Lorent, their former overlord, and that as a result, Shanks would have to pose as an independent entity from Frostmarch in order to receive aid from Lorent. Shanks would progressively stop speaking to the Jarls when Evermore declared its independence, and it became increasingly clear what was truly happening. After a while, Evermore would begin to threaten Featheria with war. Understandably alarmed, Featheria sought assistance from Tortuga. Shanks would then pay Serenus to stay out of this and not annex Featheria in order to keep them safe from him. Following this, the desperate Featherians began the talks with Voske. Seeing this as a serious danger to his plans, Shanks instructed Voske to end the negotiations with the Featherians so that they might take complete ownership of their claims rather than only being subjugated. Voske complied. The last resort for the Featherians was Lorent. They reached a consensus that Featherians would join Lorent and come under their guard. Following this, Evermore and Lorent (known as Lautine at the time) invaded Frostmarch under the "The Snowfall War and the Invasion of Frostmarch".

Great Valdic Migration
Schants and other Valds would look for refuge wherever they could; they moved to Andorn but soon fled due to changes in the weather and emerging diseases. After coming back to their home continent of Sørligste, They then instead traveled to TEK. in need of a new place to live. The Kaizer granted them land in the Northern Sørligste, and the recently established settlements would act as an millitary frontier and cordon sanitaire against incursions from the Realms of Evermore. The newly founded settlements are : Vajkland and Kylasholmar Schants managed to make a name for himself in the Iron Empire by uplifting the Tengalii Nationalist spirit among the TEK citizens gaining the titles of "Propaganda Lidt" and "Ministur Durgejzr" and by also constructing the new settlements along the Northern Coast making him a "Kount".

Player Lore
Schants's birth was a result of an affair between Grand Jarl Sir Voske av Aldver and his mistress Myonå, Myonå,was just one of the many Voske's mistresses, so when Myonå got pregnant those news didn't even reach to Voske all the way from Lunalia to Hafnarfjoll, Schants (Schänts Ælfric av Aldver) was born in Suðerlindt, Lunalia in Spring of 156 TE. After Schants was born him and his mothers would endure significant discrimination from Featherians because of their Valdic ethnicity

, but as Schants grew older, he grew bigger and stronger and his ambitions grew with his age. When he reached early adolescence he would join a mercenary group in order to provide for his mother who's only gonna grow weaker and older as the time passes by, and by doing this he gained respect of the other Lunalian locals, his mother would still tell him stories about Voske, trying to reassure Schants that he's gonna come back for her and solve all of their problems, his mom was suffering from erysipelas at the time so needed alot of money for the treatment.Schants knew that his mom was speaking like this out of desperation and out of fear that her only child is going into a dangerous profession just to earn enough money to sustain them two.

Suppressing the uprising in Serenus
One of the first Schants's combat experiences was in the mountains in Northern Serenus, he and his mercenary band were supposed to kill the rebels and destroy the rebelling settlement of Damannia, but this task was quite tricky because there was a number of factors that needed to be included, firstly the terrain itself was snowy and extremely mountainous, there was an active volcano not far away from the rebelling settlement as well, and also the whole thing was nestled among mountains. However Schants, coming from the snowy tundra of Frostmarch already had some experiences when it comes to icy and snowy terrains, so he lead the way to for the other warriors. They were going around volcano and were going to attack the city from the north, where they had the least amount of fortifications and the mountain was the least steep, While they were marching northwards Schants saw a Kruikryð (Fungina Valdica) a type of fungi which makes you don't feel any pain for a period of time if consumed raw, and can be mildly hallucinogen if not cooked properly.

This is fungi's primary use in Valdic culture was for culinary purposes. However there were old folk tales that during the Conquest of Vandalah (Winter of 59 TE) Frostmarchian berserkers used Kruikryð to enhance their combat abilities, some people say that's the reason why they won the battle so swiftly and why the The King of Vandalah, along with his closest confidants would flee the battle, it was speculated that The King saw that berserkers went bananas after they consumed the mysterious fungi and gained an unhuman levels of strength. With this in mind Schants would put few of the fungi into his pocket just in case. fter they had arrived to the northern side of the mountain they started to descend onto the city.

Enemies were overrun and they quickly saw that there was no chance of winning, but they were not that unprepared they still had a tunnel that would let them out of the city in case of an emergency, the tunnel went trough the slimmest part of the mountain which was situated in the north-western bit, they planted TNT on the entrance so if the opposing side would try and follow them they would be crushed.

Schants saw that enemy forces would try and escape, so he and another 10 of his comrades went and tried to pursue them, as his comrades entered around 6 meters into the tunnel chasing after the fleeing enemies, the TNT went off, killing 2 of his brothers in arms instantly, spines were flying, so did the boulders, one of his comrades was crushed from the knees down, screaming in agony, Schants was filled with rage and adrenaline, he nearly forgot that he had Kruikryð in his pocket, he instantly reached out for them and gobbled 3 of them in a second, the effects were immediate, he started digging out his comrade with his bare hands throwing huge boulders behind him, as soon he managed to free the wounded warrior, Schants would start sprinting in order to avenge his fallen brothers.

After couple of minutes sprinting at maximal capacity he managed to catch up to the fleeing rebels, jumping on them and slashing trough them like they were just worthless pieces of paper. After killing all of the remaining rebels, Schants would start seeing things he never saw before, it ends up that if you consume Kruikryð while having high levels of adrenaline in your system it enhances it's hallucinogen properties.

Schants would try and go back to the rebel's settlement but he was not feeling well, he started seeing odd patterns ,shapes and colours.

He would hear faint voices, like someone was struggling to breathe, then as he continued to walk trough the tunnel, he saw a figure on the end of the tunnel, he couldn't tell who was that, he could only see the silhouette, as he was approaching closer and closer, he could see more and more clearly, it was a bug? Ælfric was extremely confused, the bug's face started to shift into Ælfric's and it opened its mouth as its going to say something, but before it did Ælfric reached for his axe and threw it at the bug, it just went trough it and the bug disappeared into the thin air. He was so confused of what just happened and hyst stood there for a hot minute.

"Whats up with you Schantsy Ælfric? We won! Give me a smile you bastard!" Said one of his war buddies.

These words sobered up Schants a bit.

The Terrible Blizzard
After the battle Schants still had hard time grasping what just happened, who was that bug, was that some kind of a message from the Gods? It must have a meaning.

After engaging in these activities for a few hours, Schants would begin to feel ill, possibly from consuming too much alcohol on an almost empty stomach. He would go outside to try to feel better, so he went to a small pond behind the tavern, but it was frozen. In the frozen pond, Schants saw a reflection of a familiar face that was not his; it was the Bug person. Confused and scared, Schants said:

"What are you? What did i do to you? Who casted this curse onto me, have the Gods forsaken me?"

He was shocked when the reflections said the same things he said in the exact same voice and tone.

Schants was so disturbed and disoriented that he would start to run out of confusion, but it didn't work out so well since, well, he was still rather wasted. After traveling about 200 meters, he would stumble over a tree root and land on his face and would pass out.

The following morning, he awoke in one of the huts and found himself surrounded by pilgrims. It seemed that shortly after Schants lost consciousness, a severe blizzard began. The pilgrims were traveling from Kronesia to Erðvald when the terrible blizzard struck. They entered the city and were greeted by the mercenaries, who were primarily composed of followers of the same religion, Nostíkur.

They grabbed Schants, who was coated in snow when they arrived at the town, and brought him into a cabin to see how he was feeling.

The only thing upsetting Schants was how hungry he was. Other than that, he was largely uninjured.

People were predicting that this blizzard would continue for a week and that they wouldn't be able to return directly to Lunalia after it stopped since it had wrecked the bridge that crosses the Dain River on the road between Not-Venice and Gooseburgh. Due to this, Schants and his group would have to stay in Damannia and wait out the blizzard. They would also need to go to Vesturperla, from which they would travel to Hafnarfjoll, after which they would go south till they reached Lunalia.

During the last day of their stay in Damannia, just as the blizzard began to calm, a messenger arrived, notifying Schants about his mother's passing. ''Kvejúr Ælfric,I hope this letter has reached you in good time, and blessed be your strong health of body and soul. I write to you with great sorrow as I must bring you the most unfortunate news.It has come to pass that your mother’s soul has passed on, and in its wake has left but the husk of the woman we all knew and loved.May you find solace in the knowledge of where she is now; feasting and drinking to her heart’s content with the almighty Solvera. Let us pray that the Allurthræl may give her a new life thousands of times greater than that of before. A Blóðvin ritual will be taking place in Erðvald on the night of the winter solstice, so as her soul may have a better fortune in her next life; I dearly hope you will be able to join us.May the Gods forever bless your soul; may the all-seeing Áhorfanim never look your way, may Vlangolar aid you in your righteous cause, and may Glefa bring gold before you on the night of our ritual.''

Yours Sincerely, Cassius av Havardr, Grandes Fiðmänn av Nostíkur

Schants would read this and immediately travel to Erðvald to bid his mother farewell for the last time.

Meeting the Grand Jarl
Schants would hear an great abundance of people cheering and applauding as he arrived at the Holy City gate; the commotion was so loud that it could even be heard through the tallest and strongest walls Erðvald had to give. He was wondering what or who could have caused such a commotion.

His question was quickly answered when he saw who was parading trough the crowd on a beautiful white steed, as white as snow, it was no other than the Grand Jarl himself, Sir Voske av Aldver.

The Grand Jarl noticed Schants moving through the crowd and almost immediately recognized his eyes, his eyes were a spitted image of his mother's.                                                                                                                                                                                              "I am very sorry to hear about your mother's passing, can we speak privately about this matter inside the Grand Hall, son?" Voske would calmly say as he stopped and turned to face Schants.

They went inside of the Great Hall and Voske ordered everybody else to leave, Voske then would go on and explain that he didn't know Schants's mother was pregnant and expressed regret for what had happened to her, but that didn't mean he would have accepted her as his wife because he already had a wife when Schants was born, but unfortunately Voske's wife passed away years ago. That being said Voske offered Schants to live in Hafnarfjoll and to join his army which Schants gladly accepted. Later they would go on and do a proper Nostikur ceremonial burial for Schants's mother.

In The Grand City of Hafnarfjoll Schants would meet another son of Voske, Gunnar av Aldver, Gunnar was older than Schants so he tried teasing him about it but they ended up having a truly brotherly relation. They trained together and they went to battles together.

Over the course of 2 years many incursion happened trough the Grand Jarldom Schants and Gunnar were renowned for their fighting skills, many men wanted to fight alongside them just because of the sagas they heard from the bards. However, Gunnar was tired of fighting and wanted to rest from the constant battles, Schants tried talking Gunnar out of it but to no avail. Schants go to Voske to ask him to talk some sense into his brother but the Grand Jarl agreed with Gunnar, saying that there is more to life than just fighting, and if Schants wants to go and risk his life out there then he should go and do it without his brother, he even started yelling at Schants for wanting him to convince Gunnar to go with him and told him to get out of hall. Schants was greatly hurt by this but he knew that Voske favored Gunnar far more because he raised him, but Schants was still hoping that he could make his father proud.

The Lost Valdic Brothers
Then he went out and raised a decently sized raiding party to go sailing, they went and raided several coastal towns of Sørligste, but nothing grandiose enough to come home with. So they decided to continue sailing until they have something awe-inspiring to show off to the Grand Jarl. Schants and his raiding party were sailing for days untill they reached the shores of the new world of Eldham, Schants has heard about this new world before but he thought it was just a myth, a legend, but there he was, with his raiding party traveling trough its seas. They noticed a somewhat familiar architecture at one of the island they were passing by, curious, Schants decided to visit the Island.

When he and his crew arrived on its shores, they were greeted in a familiar language (with a strange accent though). The nation that Schants arrived in was the Jarldom of Solycia or ;Jarlstjarn av Solycia; in the Valdic language. As he was talking with the locals about their similar cultures, they would get interrupted by someone, it was the King of Solycia Jacob Bjorkson Liberatus, he was worried that Schants and his party came here to raid the Island but he was pleasantly surprised. Jacob would then feed Schants and his men and gave them a place to sleep. The next day the two would talk about their customs and traditions and seeing how similar they are.