Seelie Tower

The Seelie Tower was an fortification in the Hinterlands of Bastonia, within a day's march to the west from Unseelie Tower. Like much of the rest of the Hinterlands, territorial jurisdiction over the tower is a complex affair. Until very recently, it was the seat of County Seelie, and the headquarters of the Companions of the Light, a Chivalric Order dedicated to the martial worship of The Almighty. The tower would ultimately be destroyed in an assault by forces originating at the Unseelie Tower on 12th of Eirafall, 1641 Age of Bastion, after which it eventually became the subject of an investigation by the Royal Osmic Order.

The fortification was originally supported by a large town of the same name, but ultimately this settlement dissolved when the fortification fell.

History

The Seelie Tower takes its name from the somewhat-nearby Unseelie Tower, an ancient fortification that was thought to predate the Battle of the First Wall, usually considered to have been built by the forces remaining loyal to the Enemy during the Age of Rebellion. However, unlike this "twinned" structure, the Seelie Tower itself was considerably younger.

Foundation

In 1228 Age of Bastion, the Knight Superior of the Companions of the Light was the non-inheriting child of a distaff line of House Marino, Dame Emma, who had represented the village of Mersk at tourney and caught the attention of Felicity, Duchess of the North. Through Duchess Felicity's beneficence, Dame Emma was chartered to construct a new fortification at the mouth of the Faewater River in the Hinterlands as a prevention against banditry and piracy in the comparatively lawless Hinterlands. A considerable portion of the cost of endeavour was bankrolled by the Duchy of the North directly, in part to attempt to cement the claims of the North to the region in the face of matching claims from Zeemarch. When this plan became known, it was a minor scandal at royal court, which lead to the subsequent decision of then King Velrich II to issue a royal proclamation ordering the fortification to be turned over to the Companions of the Light in perpetuity upon its completion - therefore rendering the pacifying mission a royal effort and further extending the inconclusive sovereignty of the Hinterlands.

Construction of the fortification to its recognizable configuration took 13 years, though the first year was spent in the construction of an earthwork motte and bailey that the square stone tower would later replace. As a reward for her efforts in leading the construction, on Creation Day, 1242 Age of Bastion, Dame Emma was created First Count Seelie.

Light in the Hinterlands

For over three centuries, the Seelie Tower stood as possibly the most remote example of a true Bastonian fortification, serving as a civilizing light - metaphorically and literally - in the Hinterlands. Its near-coastal position allowed it to serve as a beacon for brown-water and green-water shipping and gave some control over the Faewater River to the Knights and to the Counts Seelie. Their taxation of traffic along this river eventually became an important source of wealth for the family that bore the county's name, who in turn were often key patrons for the Companions of the Light. However, given the sparsely-populated nature of the Hinterlands, these incomes were hardly comparable to similarly-positioned fortresses like Coldwater. In fact, the relationship to the Companions of the Light was somewhat circular, as the majority of traffic on the river was either the knights and their retainers themselves, or merchants making service to locations manned, owned, or serving the knights themselves.

The remote and lonely nature of the region is a driving factor in the nature of the knighthood as a hospitalier order, and minor fortifications, smallholdings, and stronghouses are dotted all across the Hinterlands, especially along the Faewater and its tributaries, in part because the Knights of the order invested heavily in securing and safeguarding the area. Sigismund, Third Count Seelie was especially transformative in this way, investing heavily in terms of both time and material wealth in the idea that the charge of the Seelie Tower was to bring stability and safety to the entire Faewater watershed. While his vision of a hinterlands renaissance was never realized, the fact remained that for much of the time in which the Seelie Tower stood, the Companions were the proverbial knights in shining armour, whose presence brought the law, charity, and stability as far as they could reach.

However, and critically, such a top-down approach based on charity and piety was never going to get the job of "civilizing" the Hinterlands done in any lasting way, and as soon as the influence of the Companions was lost, the ensuing economic and social collapse saw a return to banditry and struggling smallholdings more or less immediately.

Destruction

You know better than anyone the gods are not always clear, never mind kind. The road from here is not always clear to me.

-Valkan Astera, Mendicant Oracle

This article (or section) contains potential spoilers for Entangling Vines.

On 12th of Eirafall, 1641 Age of Bastion, the Seelie Tower was assaulted by a force of humans, goblins, and supernatural creatures originating from the nearby Unseelie Tower, who fell upon the fort in the dead of the night. The nearby village was effectively unprotected and sacked, though Sir Thomas Keith, captain of the third squadron, was able to rally his squadron and save thirty-nine men, women, and children through a fighting retreat and then a march along the coast to the south. The main force of the knights, including Knight Superior Sir Augustine, Thirteenth Count Seelie and Sir Draven Hardgate, fought to hold the position of the tower itself until their own fighting retreat became necessary when the tower physically collapsed under the magical assault from the assaulting force. The entire sack of the tower took place in a single evening, with Count Augustine's report on the matter claiming that the attacking force "effectively evaporated with6 the first rays of the sun" as they were being pursued along the coast. In a report by the Royal Osmic Order dated 1646 Age of Bastion, a clarification was attributed to Sir Draven Hardgate:

"It was not nearly so cut and dry as that; as the sun rose and what was left of us beat our retreat to the south, the demons and whatever else in the Unseelie host were burned out of creation, leaving behind whisps of smoke and confused shouts from the goblins and the mannish traitors that fought with them. I and a few others, in the van, called out the phenomenon ahead, but before anyone could rally us the surviving mortal things returned to their senses and scattered every which way but toward us or into the sea."

The destruction of the tower and the township was considered total. The following day, from Mersk, Count Augustine issued the Mendicant Charter and ordered all knights of the order to return to their homelands, regather their strength and resources, and await further orders. He himself sought royal instruction, and in the meantime, removed himself and his household to Estburg, due to the family ties he had to the city through his wife, Amelia Estburg-Bastion, a minor royal cousin. From then on, the Companions of the Light became popularly known as the Knights Mendicant.

In 1646, the Royal Osmic Order sent one of their Chapter Proctoral wizards, Gallus Luchnos, to catalogue and report on the ruins and any information he could obtain about the destruction of the tower, in part so as not to be outdone by a contemporary investigation into the Unseelie Tower by the Scholarly Order of the Azurejay, though this assignment was not taken overly seriously by Luchnos and he was reassigned to other purposes in short order.

Geography

Seelie Tower was a modification of the traditional motte and bailey design built on an artificial hill on the southern bank of the estuary of the Faewater River. Over time, it eventually became an impressively tall, square stone keep which was topped with a light that could be seen for considerable distance at sea. It was connected to nothing but the nearby town of the same name by road, with main transit afield from the tower by river or by sea.

Economy

The economy of the Seelie Tower was driven by the needs of the Knights Mendicant, and to a lesser extent, the whims of House Seelie. Primary trade was the import of martial and medical supplies, the latter of which were then usually shipped further upriver under the auspcies of the knights to drive their humanitarian efforts further inland.

Politics

The position of Count Seelie was very often associated with, but not universally the same as, the position of Knight Superior of the Companions of the Light, though certainly many members of each generation of the House Seelie also served in the knighthood. This was made possible because temporal and military authority were not necessarily expected to be vested in the same person under Bastonian law. However, this distribution was often imperfect. Through the laws of succession and precedence of the Kingdom of Bastonia, the Count Seelie is leigeman to the Duke of the North; however, the Knight Superior's allegiance is properly to the junior spouse of the Bastonian Monarch. This split alliance is somewhat reflected in the politics of the Hearthlands, which is frequently contested between the Duchy of the North and the Duchy of Zeemarch, and is seen to be at its worst when the Knight Superior and the Count of Seelie are two different people.

The political influence of the fortification came to an end when the fortification itself did. County Seelie was dissolved with the death of Augustine, the 13th Count, and the headquarters of the knightly order eventually moved to Boischateau, though it remained a goal of the knighthood for the remainder of Augustine's life to eventually restore the foritification and overthrow the Unseelie Tower.