Firestorm Citadel
From SpiralKnights
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Lore
The Citadel originates from a war-stricken land of three competing kingdoms. The smallest of the three, known as Almire, was a land of lush, beautiful trees and golden fields. It was ruled by a young and determined king known as Lord Vanaduke, and, despite its small size, Almire was recognized as a powerful nation for its military tradition and disciplined armies. Given time, it could expand to a mighty empire. For this, the other two kings feared him and formed a truce to invade Almire.
From atop the highest tower of the Grand Citadel of Almire, Vanaduke watched his kingdom crumble. His army was stretched too thin and it was not long before Almire would completely fall to the weight of the two combined armies. Going mad from the pressure, he fled from the citadel and vanished into the mountains, vowing that he would one day reclaim his throne. Leaving behind his family, his people, and his homeland, Vanaduke journeyed into the mountains to the east, driven by superstitious tales of ancient gods within their dark depths.
He tirelessly searched the mountains for many years, no longer the man he was before, but a mad hermit. Then one day he discovered a small cave that radiated with unnatural warmth, smelling of ash and sulfur. Within it he discovered a great chamber whose floor was waist deep in ashes. They were warm, and Vanaduke soon felt the sting of hot coals through his tattered boots. At the center of the chamber was a blackened shrine, whose deity's features were worn and indistinguishable.
Vanaduke began to whisper, reciting the names of his family, the names of the kings before him, and all the towns of Almire. He repeated this like a chant, increasing in intensity until he was shouting. With this he began screaming the names of the rival kings and all the wrongs they committed against his kingdom. He cried out to the god of the mountain to punish them, to give him the strength to take his kingdom back. In his frenzy he looked to the face of the deity and in it he began to see the face deform. The image burned into his eyes and brain like cinders, and contained that which sounded like the screaming of foreign tongues and war drums. With this, Vanaduke began to sink into the ash. He choked on the ash as it pulled him below, tasting sulfur his screams now sounding of roaring flames.
Many days later the citizens of Almire watched as fire began to erupt from the mountains. Leading an army of terrible fiends, Vanaduke returned to his kingdom, destroying the occupied forces of the two opposing kingdoms in a single day. In time the two kingdoms fell, Vanaduke's legion burning everything in their path. When he returned to Almire, it burned as well, for everywhere he went, and everything he touched was doomed to ash. With nothing left to destroy, his legions left him and returned to the mountains, leaving the king to sit in his throne of ash and cinder, all the people of Almire dead around him.
There the cursed king has remained since, ruling a burning kingdom from an ashen throne, surrounded by the lost souls of those that once served him. It is there that the king still mercilessly destroys any who dare enter his kingdom, however much the ashen shadow of what is was the rivers flowed with clear water and the leaves of the trees glittered like emeralds under the shining sun.
