THE SCHISM AT SAUDIENT

The Schism at Saudient was the rift among the Celeste that founded their settlement in the Saudient Mountains. It came before the Great War, and the war followed close upon it — the Schism made a crack in the world, and out of it in short time poured the war.

It began as a royal inheritance dispute: the crown princess, Aria, was pledged to wed one of the Regency set out for her, keeping the royal Celeste line unbroken. But her heart was set on a stranger — not a Celeste, and of a kind not known to any of her people — and for “foul consort with other beings” the King, her father Cadfael, stripped her of her title and banished her. She left the ancestral home in the Lor’Sha’Une, and many Celeste flew in the night to remain true to the outcast princess, settling in the gray peaks of Saudient — from which they can still see the forest they cannot return to, a span of old battlefields lying between.

When the Great War came, the King’s decree reached even the exiles: every Celeste was to go to war against the Vaenir, the very beings that had made them. The Saudient Celeste went, alongside their people, under the banner of the Aesir.