DiamondKing2024

Caintu Contadamana (born ), in-game username DiamondKing2024, is an author and poet associated with the Culture Guild of the Kingdom of Galadonn.

Family History
Caintu Contadamana was born Mondas Resac Vif in an unknown location in the jungles around the Serene Republic of Carvay in the ninth year of the eigth decade of the Second Century of the Travellers' Era. His father, Tartros Contamanada (Summer 155-Autumn 191 TE) was an impoverished itinerant who wandered throughout Rathnir. Tartros was the great-grandson of a settler of ambiguous ethnic origins who created a homestead just east of Rodheros, Jeghosi Eglisar, Sironia, just across the river from the swamps of Myanker Eglisar. This settler, named Mondas Resac, was given the epithet "Arbomover" by his successors due to his near-total deforestation of a Myanker island north of Noukasalth and planting of trees in the mountain pass between the river to the Ombra Gulf and the river to the Sea of Slaves, as it appeared that the forest had been moved. While the trees in the valley have since been removed, the forest has not been replanted in the swamp to its former extent. After threats against squatting from the Sironian government, lack of mining success, insufficient crop yields, and a brief raid undertaken by Arbomover into Rodheros around the 90s TE, Arbomover was thrown from Asourtherak's River Castle and died of his wounds. The family, meanwhile, was expelled from their squat and banished to far Sørligste near World's End. Arbomover's son, recounted in family stories as "Zegodos", led the family back home on a great long-distance trek, but the grain they grew was insufficient to satiate their hunger. He drowned himself in a fit of despair, and his family became landless migrants. Zegodos's son and Tartros's father, Thracos, seemingly to spite the gods for his despair, attempted to climb to the top of the Apasiril Mountains when he was an older man, but when he proved incapable of doing so, he threw himself down their steep cliffs in defeat. This left Tartros to wander to Vastallos, carrying only with him basic necessities and a few volumes of epic literature, which Vif would read voraciously in his childhood.

No information is known about his mother, who died due to complications regarding his birth, though it is speculated that she may have been the illegitimate daughter of a Carvay sailor. Vif in his recollections gives her the name "Julia".

Early life
Tartros was a benevolent and wise father to his son, and Vif remembers him fondly. While Vif never went to school, his father made sure he was sufficiently self-taught, and provided him books and practical skills instruction to that end. His favorite childhood pastimes were hunting, fishing, writing, and drawing crude maps of his environment. Despite the dire circumstances of his childhood, he was not in want for much.

Migration to Galadonn
When Vif was twelve years old, his father died during a Carvay border patrol at the age of 36. This undue hardship led him to continue in his family's tradition of aimless migration for better opportunity, and he began to make his way east around the beginning of 192 TE. His travels took him to the shore and on a boat across the Ombra Gulf, across the deserts and savannah of southern Yimmu-Audal, and then south into eastern Aldovir. He did not stop until his heart was content, which happened to land him in the town of New Kasrin. When he stopped there in the fall of 194 TE, he applied for citizenship for the Kingdom of Galadonn, and a Senator called Ghostclimax accepted his application and guided him to the nation's capital, Lagos. As part of the naturalization proceedings, he changed his name by taking his birth name, which he translates as "Fifth King of Diamonds", and writing it in Galadonni. While the renamed Caintu was first offered temporary lodging in an apartment underground, he was given his own house the following year. He married a Carnian resident of New Kasrin not long after.

First Galadonnian Tour
Soon after he became a citizen, Caintu embarked on a grand tour of the Galadonnian nation, going to the western island of Accratonn, then east through the recently annexed territories of Licritia and Lantstein to Hartend, Guslandia, and Morvanne, then further east to the historic cities of Roscella and Lestria, then north through Ivertheirak to Illevaine, but he could not stay there long as it had just reverted hands back to the Imperial Federation of Aldovir. He recorded the status of these towns and will be happy to publish them upon request.

Return to the Homeland
In the spring of 197 TE, Caintu travelled into Aldoviri territory to find his great-great-grandfather's homestead. When he arrived, he found that other squatters and itinerants had used the shelter, which was a dwelling cut into the rock and extending down multiple levels to near bedrock, connecting with a patchwork of mine tunnels. He walked through the nearby abandoned settlement of Rodheros, strangely still intact, and chopped down the bamboo that had grown since his absence. During his entire journey, including his return, he encountered not a single soul, which indicates that that part of Sironia is nearly devoid of people.

Career
Caintu first major contribution to the culture of Galadonn was his proposal in the spring of 200 TE to construct booth-like monuments at locations pertinent to Galadonnian history. The structures were built by Senator Skinny and continue to stand as monuments to the history of Galadonn. Caintu was rewarded with a minor cash payment, which set up his career as a cultural innovator.

Caintu entered a writing contest to create a culturally significant work of writing for the Kingdom, and in doing so spent the entirety of 204 TE writing and publishing a narrative poem about four fictional brothers who travel to their grandfather's old homestead. The location and the first part of his travel were largely based on his own expeditions early in his residence in Galadonn, which he related to his countrymen. When published, the writing was a minor hit, and is somewhat familiar to most scholars of early Galadonnian culture today.

Caintu intends to continue writing, but in the meantime he and his family have temporarily moved to New Kasrin due to the demolition of Lagos.