Prologue
Start writing here…The Unnamed Saga
Four Thrones
Mary, off-screen: “From the very start the people of Fiona found great comfort in violence. Their neighbors were hunters or farmers by trade, but Fionans were forever raiders. So much so that they once called their city Blackwell, worshipping war and death and sacrificing to it viciously.”
Show a map of the island of Albion, surrounded by a crescent of land that is the mainland, Fiona situated at the eastern side. A dark shadow spreads across the map with Fiona as its origin.
Mary, off-screen: “From its infancy, Fiona has been led by the Ferenn family, who won the right through the usual means: violence. Killing their way to the crown, they then built their throne on the corpses of the fallen.”
Show villages burning.
Show people being slaughtered, hungry soldiers in wolf pelts stabbing them with stone and twig spears or bludgeoning them with fat wooden cudgels.
Show an entire village bound by rope and chain, faces gaunt, arms thin, bearing wounds and lesions.
Mary, off-screen: Fiona spread as disease does: one village at a time. They subjugated their neighboring tribes and, as time went on, their neighboring cities. While others learned trades or practiced medicines, the Ferenns and those that followed them focused exclusively on war. They made weapons from wood and stone and from the people they felled, and just as mankind once stole their fate from the gods, Fiona, too, took the land from those who had cultivated it and reaped the rewards.”
Show the ruins of Red Wall, a fractured dome of glass and gold sitting in the center of water soiled by blood.
Show the ruins of Emeraldine, the sky a blazing red, the fountain dry, empty, and cracked.
Show ancient ruins scattered among the trees, grown over with moss and vine, skeletons scattered among the stones.
Mary, off-screen: “This was their way. This was their history. They knew only murder and how to inflict it upon others. But people don’t tell stories only about what is, do they? No, we speak always of what changes, and this story doesn’t end here, with the bloody hands of Ferenn’s Fiona, known more for its cemeteries than for its cities. No, things changed, as they often do, and the arbiter of that change was a single boy, a young prince with whom our story starts.
Show baby Zelos resting in the arms of a mysterious female, her frame slender, her hair long and curly.
Mary, off-screen: “Zelos Ferenn, fourth son of those who would next succeed the Ferenn throne. With his birth a change came to Fiona in the form of a new era, an era of peace, but things do not change easily. Fiona had one last city to take should they want to make Albion their own, and while the passing of the last king brought peace, Zelos’ parents took the throne intent to finish what was started. In this era of peace, however, they used diplomacy as their new weapon...”
Show Silvara, its castle seeming to glitter in the light of a full moon.
Cut to the Black Castle cast in the darkness, its hard angles an imposing figure that swallows the frame. Scattered lanterns light the night, showing pointed angles and square frames.
Mary, off-screen: “And this is where our story starts, in the winter and at a celebration held in honor of the unification of two people with very different histories. Before the story begins, allow me a piece of advice—and remember this, for you will be tested on it later—Fiona’s history is both long and violent, for that is its nature, and though Fiona is changing, it should be noted that change cannot and shall not come without cost.”
