[Bjarn]

"The snakemen of Fierdswain? Hardly snaky at all. More barbaric than anything. Brutally honest and steadfast, though."

House Motto: Be True.

Favored House Characteristics: Honesty, Lawfulness, Brevity, Stoicness, Just.

The origins of House Askadel are rooted deeply within a conflict Chaturanga had with a nearby grouping of clans, whose head general was a Glykin known as Agamemnon. Agamemnon was stoic to a fault, with an incredible capacity for military planning that aided the clans time and time again. Eventually, however, Agamemnon was betrayed from within due to rising concerns that he was going to seize power through his popularity. He was to be slain by, in an incredible show of ignorance by the parties involved, poisoned wine. Upon drinking the wine, he immediately noted that it was poison, and quickly took himself and his family and made the trek towards Chaturanga, fighting for his and his family's life the entire time from assassins. Reaching the safety of Chaturanga, he was instantly imprisoned and brought before the noble council in chains.

Records exist of what transpired, and are likely a part of the average educational curriculum for history, but the gist is that at the end of it, Agamemnon was granted a noble title and the land as a vassal that he, for them, was about to conquer. Failure meant death. Busying himself with preparing what soldiers he could how he could, he managed to utilize cavalry to reposition a contingent of Black Knights to the flanks in much faster time than marching them, allowing them to suddenly lock down and grind forwards that flank while the other side held firm, a pincer technique that is still taught in Chaturangan military academies to this day.

As a result of his success, he was granted the title Count of Fierdswain, the lands that made up the former clans now, ironically, under his control.

Little more than an uplifted barbarian with a penchant for brutality and hardness, he stayed out of politics and mostly tended to his own realm, setting a standard for future Counts to follow. There have been a few Counts since then, many of them assassinated by siblings, an odd tradition, of sorts, of the family.

The most memorable count, however, was Achille Askadel, the Black Beast. The beginning of his reign didn't seem to mark much at all, until something happened. His first wife was taken by bandits, and, after a small army was assembled to kill them all, killed by the bandits in retaliation. This shocked and stunned Achille, to the point where he now obsessed himself with the physical security of the lands. He started and kept a stern thrift on everything in the castle, usually eating peasant fare with only self caught meat allowed, all the while taxes being steadily raised to nearly unbearable levels. Money began to get raised quickly, and stored exceedingly quickly as well, saving up for the grandest military buildup Kysei had seen in years.

Infrastructure, such as Barracks, wells, and other sundry security places were put everywhere, and military academies sprung up as Fierdswain tried it's best to empty it's coffers to attract the best and brightest of the day to the task of making Fierdswain safe. This resulted in an incredible focus on the military in the country, and a number of Black Knight academies to be formed there. Indeed, outside of the Capital, Fierdswain has the most Black Knights in Chaturanga.

The crowning achievement, however, was to be the castle he built upon a cliff near a moor. The castle was an utter marvel of engineering, considered widely by many to be impregnable. Rumor has it, however, that the castle has a way to self destruct, so to speak, to deny it's use to an enemy in a last act of spite. Another rumor says that he fed the wells with traces of his own blood to ensure it could not be poisoned.

Achille grew increasingly and utterly intolerant of anyone incapable of following the law, and as revolts began to arise from the taxation, he dispatched his newly grown army to crush them. And indeed they were crushed, and as a lesson, all men, women, and children involved had their pinkies cut off, to remind them of their folly.

The nickname of the Black Beast came from actions such as these, and his soot black armor, with a helmet shaped as a terrible beast. Many other harsh punishments were to be meted out in the future, including taking a vampire that had been feeding in the villages and torturing him with his blood for years, keeping him alive just to inflict more pain on him. Some say he was inspired by Azorus to do this, although Achille was never known to be a deeply religious man.

Despite having cast such a grim spectre across the land, Achille was exceedingly long lived, having fathered his last child at 142 years old. He left a markedly changed and deeply developed County behind to be inherited by his firstborn son, Paris Askadel. Plotting on securing the throne, and knowing the youngest, Hector, was his father's favorite, he quickly exiled the young man, rumored to have a touch of the same madness as his father, to Sigrogana. The rest of his siblings, he butchered or forced to flee.

Primary Members:

~ Count Achille Askadel, The Black Beast: Even in death, his influence remains.

~ Count Paris Askadel: Educated in Karatynn. Conniving, clever, intelligent, sadistic.

~ Hector Askadel, The Black Beast: Arrogant, Hot Tempered, Honorable, and a Warrior through and through. A true Askadel.