Letter from Chardon for Samso on the Umbral Covenant

Dear Samso,

It is my pleasure to pass along the research I have been able to gather concerning the Umbral Covenant and the strange sigil you have found in several places. I am currently stuck dealing with political troubles in Chardon, but I hope to return to Voltara soon and speak with you and your companions again. Rumors of your prowess reach me even here.

The sigil, I must report, is a puzzle even to our most knowledgable scholars. There is nothing like it in all the records of the Great Library, nor have my colleagues at the University of Chardon found any copies of an identical sigil in their records. All I am able to report is the information from a arcane linguist, but what she says makes little sense. She claims it resembles a glyph used in spellcasting, but it is unrelated to any known spell. Stranger, one can potentially deconstruct it into three runes of the ancient Northros language, which, if true, mean “Sleep Nevermore”. But how an extinct language might be connected to an unknown spell glyph is far from clear!

The Umbral Covenant is a more fruitful topic. There are of course many records of the War of the Dark Rift, which you must have access to the most popular in Voltara. Thus I need not summarize the details in depth. Suffice to say, the Umbral Covenant swept out of the mountains of Apporia, and quickly conquered the people of the coast. In a few short years, they had constructed a massive armada, and sailed in force for Chardon itself. Chardon’s victory over the Shadow Armada is widely seen as a turning point and the beginning of the Chardonian Empire.

While I am sure that your sources speak of the lost dwarven kingdom of Enderra, what you may not have found is detailed records that seem to prove two unusual facts. First, the dwarves themselves seem to have brought the Umbral Covenant somehow. Sources are unclear as to whether the dwarves accidentally opened a rift to another dimension, or awoke sleeping enemies long buried underground, or drew the attention somehow of a dark power that cursed them. Second, many scholars of the War of the Dark Rift believe that the Umbral Covenant was primarily concerned with something in the mountains, and only turned their attention to Chardon later. No one has been able to uncover exactly what might have lurked hidden in the mountains the Umbral Covenant desired so deeply.

Finally, and most strikingly, I have received reports from two independent scholars that seem to conclusively show that the Umbral Covenant, as we call them today, is the same enemy associated with many wars dating back thousands of years. We know that the name Umbral Covenant was first used to describe the enemies that the people of Apporia fought against during the War of the Severed Dream five hundred years ago. But, the research seems to support the claim that not only was the name reused in the War of the Dark Rift, but somehow it was the same enemies. Other texts refer to them as the Shemra-Azem, and suggest that they have fought wars in Apporia going back thousands of years. The figure of the Wolf-Queen, called the Queen of Eternal Waking, seems like a folk legend, perhaps describing a trickster fey. But I now believe she is a real person, perhaps from one of the first human tribes to settle Apporia thousands of years ago, who somehow has returned again and again to fight against us.

These first settlers spoke the Northros language, so one wonders if the sigil you found is somehow connected to this queen.

While I do not know if this information helps you, if you wish to learn more I would suggest a journey to Apporia. The city of Castrella may be a good place to start. Rumors of the Wolf-Queen likely are dismissed as folk legends and mythical tales, but from Castrella you might have more luck finding the source of these tales.

Archivist Lyra