As recovered from fragmented records and outlawed historical texts by the Rebellion's Archive Division
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📜 PART I – THE ASH-BORN ERA (Years 987–1012 P.R.)
P.R. – Post-Renewal Calendar, marked after the Great War
> "They did not rise from nobility. They crawled from ash with bloodied teeth." — Anonymous Archivist, executed in 1103 P.R.
In the smoldering aftermath of the Collapse War, the world fractured. Nation-states, corporate enclaves, and old alliances fell into chaos. Cities burned for years. Governments vanished. Out of the silence came survivors. Among them: a soldier of fortune named Ricthard Descovinio I.
Born in 987 P.R. in the slums of the port ruins of Verath, Ricthard was not of noble blood, but of relentless mind. He survived the war not through force—but cunning. He began as a courier for underground tech smugglers, navigating across zones where relic tech was banned. By his late twenties, he was already brokering deals between collapsing militias and remnant industrial factions.
Ricthard's rise began with a betrayal. In 995 P.R., he organized a massive resistance unification effort known as the Soot Accord—allegedly designed to bring peace between fractured rebel leaders. Secretly, Ricthard had already sold each rebel cell's location to the Dominion Remnant Forces, who then executed a brutal, synchronized purge.
The Remnants hailed Ricthard as a hero. The rebels remembered him as "The Gravedigger."
But Ricthard didn't stay in the shadows. With the wealth gained from betrayal and a newly earned reputation for tactical genius, he married into what was left of the influential Caldor industrial family—owners of the last operational skyrail infrastructure. This union marked the beginning of the Descovinio-Caldor Dynasty.
In 998 P.R., Ricthard formed the Iron Pact, an alliance of city-states unified by trade and armed security under his personal authority. He introduced a pseudo-constitutional structure—publicly democratic, but privately absolute.
> "They called it a pact. But only one name signed every law." — Professor Merian Holtz, executed in 1015 P.R.
By 1005 P.R., Ricthard I had absorbed three major territories under the banner of the Crown Initiative. He began adopting the title "Warden of the Realm," carefully avoiding the word "king."
His strategy was methodical. He used a three-tiered approach:
1. Public Welfare Projects – Introducing food redistribution, universal shelter schemes, and jobs for post-war survivors. These earned him loyalty from desperate populations.
2. Private Security Armament – He trained a new generation of enforcers called the Iron Hand, equipped with relic-augmented armor and riot suppression tools.
3. Data Consolidation – Ricthard's tech experts developed a surveillance system known as Blackroot, capable of facial recognition and voice tracking through all public terminals. This system evolved into the modern CrownNet.
Meanwhile, dissenters began vanishing. Universities burned down during mysterious "gas leaks." Historians and scholars disappeared mid-lecture. Rebels found their networks dissolved overnight.
By 1008 P.R., Ricthard had effectively erased all democratic legacy structures in the Iron Pact territories. One by one, opposition leaders either bent the knee—or were buried.
The Iron Hand became more than enforcers; they were symbols. Gold-plated masks, reinforced pulse-sabers, and black armor signaled not peacekeepers—but executioners. Propaganda reframed their role as "guardians of the future."
> "We do not rule with a crown. We rule with a promise: never again shall the world fall." — Ricthard I, public address, 1009 P.R.
The man who once crawled through burned cities now stood above them, elevated by a narrative he had crafted himself.
His greatest act of consolidation came in 1010 P.R., when he established the Civic Restructure Act. It redefined citizenship, assigning ID numbers based on loyalty history, bloodline, and employment record. Those marked "unstable" were relocated to isolated "rehabilitation colonies."
Between 1010 and 1012 P.R., nearly 60,000 civilians vanished from census records.
When questioned internationally (as weak as foreign powers were), Ricthard dismissed it as "necessary reconstruction."
He commissioned the Tetra Spire in the new capital of Solerra—a towering structure symbolizing "order rising from chaos." It housed his central government, relic research divisions, and the CrownNet AI core.
The final move came in 1012 P.R., when Ricthard declared the formation of the United Crown Sovereignty—a name symbolizing peace, but forged in fire.
No one called him king. But there was no doubt: the world now revolved around the house of Descovinio.
A coronation was held. No crown was used. Instead, he pressed a sigil into his palm—branding himself with the Crownburn Mark, a scar he would pass on to every heir.
The first era of control had ended. A dynasty had begun.