Hello Everyone! With all the talk of the #Odyssey going around, it inspired me to do an in universe equivalent for my Æthernia fantasy campaign. So in the spirit of the #illiad, I present the tragedy of Ar, in three parts. Hope you enjoy!

Part A – This Video
Part B – https://youtu.be/S3eVHa_S1yQ
Part C – https://youtu.be/p5q1r0rb3EA

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Video made with: vizzy.io
Audio: Suno
Lyrics: Written, arranged, and edited by me
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[Intro]
Sing now the banner — and the breaking of the banner.
Sing the sword-arm of the world, and the sea that closed above it.
Sing the Deceiver, whose true name we burned — I am of the house they cast out.
I alone am left to remember.

[Verse 1]
Before the map, before the mourning, in the cold clans of the stone,
came Aruk, called the Unbroken, who forged the many into one.
He gave them iron. He gave them oath — a season sworn to spear and throne —
and every hearth from herd to hall raised up a banner of its own.

[Chorus]
Raise the banner! Name is honor, cloth is soul!
To lose it is to die twice over —
to leave it is to lose the whole.
So sang the Iron Banners. So swore the sons of Ar.

[Verse 2]
Aruk-Kel upon the high seat, blood of the Unbroken king.
Varn of the eastern marches, and the thunder their horses bring.
Dral of the forge and the furnace, who armored the marching dead.
And Arn — the scholar-generals — who read the war before it bled.

[Verse 3]
To the south rose gentle Numinar, all temple-smoke and grain,
where Ar raised halls of banners, they raised oracles to the rain.
Two pillars of one heaven: the praying hand, the fist —
no two lands were less alike, and none were closer than they kissed.

[Pre-Chorus]
But a fortress fed on worship is a fortress fed on breath,
and the brightest of the servants learned to love his makers’ death.

[Chorus]
Raise the banner! Name is honor, cloth is soul!
To lose it is to die twice over —
to leave it is to lose the whole.

[Verse 4]
We name him now the Deceiver — his true name we do not keep,
for Arn has burned it from the world and drowned it in the deep.
The brightest of the servants, raised the nearest to the throne,
who walked as light before the gods — then hungered for their own.

[Verse 5]
He would not strike the deep well; the deeper well was barred,
so the Deceiver poisoned friendship, where the roots grew soft, unguarded.
No blade, no host, no herald — only omens, only lies:
false oracles in the war-temples, and murder wearing patriots’ eyes.

[Verse: 6]
“Your dead are drained to feed them! Your friend was faithless from the first!”
To a nation built on fidelity, no wound was ever worse.
The high oracle lay slaughtered upon the sovereign stone —
and each land read the same red death in a language all its own.

[Bridge]
Then rose Kaelen, Lord of Arn, with the Codex in his hand,
and spoke the words the children still are made to understand:
“I have studied every war that Ar has ever fought —
and this one has no author among mortals. We are caught.
Look how perfectly we are goaded. Look how our fear is fed.
When the foe knows your heart the better —
you march to a grave already spread.”

[Verse 7]
For this they named him craven. For this they named him thrall.
They burned the halls of Arn while the watchmen watched it all.
They stripped him of the Codex, and they cast his kindred far —
to a salt-bitten grave at the world’s edge, and washed their hands of Arn.

[Outro]
They meant it as a tomb, that lonely tower by the foam.
They did not know — they could not know —
they had sent the last of Ar safely home.