* Restricted Information: Valdrean Archdruids before the Year 1000 and from the Year 2505 only
Before the Proclamation of the First Valdrean Empire by Valder I in the Year 500, the ancient Druids had established a network of Sacred Circles across the Forest of the Valdrean Plain. Their Sacred Heart was a Stone Circle on the top of a hill on the shores of what is now Lake Zarak, just Anarwards of the outflow of the River Alma. A settlement grew up around it, known simply as Oppidum Lagunae ("Lake Town") in those days. It eventually came under the dominion of the Kings of the local tribe, the Almati, although at first they left the Druids to their own business.
But in the Year 500 Valder, King of the Almati, seized the Sacred Hill from the Druids and his Clerics dedicated the site as a Temple of SARAN. In the Consecration ceremony, it is said that SARAN Herself placed the great Artefact of the Sun Diamond in the Temple, to mark the heart of Her new Empire. The Druids fled to their traditional sanctuary on a small island just offshore in the lake nearby, where Valder and the Temple of SARAN allowed them in the subsequent treaty to establish a new Stone Circle as their Sacred Heart.
There was still a Stone Circle and a small Druidic presence on the island (now known as "Druids' Isle") by the Year 1000, when the City of Valdra, which had grown up around Valder's Citadel on the Sacred Hill, fell to the Bandit King Hector. In the rape and pillage that followed, the Bandits attacked and drove out the Druids from Druids' Isle. When Zarak of Aven subsequently relieved the city and challenged Hector to a duel, it was held in the Stone Circle on the Isle. The victorious Zarak proclaimed the Second Valdrean Empire as he held up Hector's head on that spot.
Following the slaughter on Druids' Isle in the Year 1000, which so far as is known resulted in the death of all the ArchDruids, there was no longer an organised Druidic Cult in Valdrea. No new Sacred Heart was established, and the other twelve Sacred Sites gradually fell into disuse. But the two former Sacred Heart sites remained sacred in different ways to the Empire. It was in the Temple of the Sun Diamond on the Sacred Hill that in the Year 1500 SARAN Herself Demarcated the 1000 mile radius Boundary of the Empire. The Temple of the Sun Diamond thus lies at the exact centre of the Sacred City of Valdran, of the City of Valdran and of the Empire itself. The Circle where the Emperor Zarak I of Aven defeated Hector in the first Duel subsequently became the Arena in which Duels for the Lion Throne were customarily held, and at other times Circuses were staged there. Although latterly the main Circus was established in the New City of Valdran, many thousands of animals were still slain in the Arena over the years.
On 4 XIV 2504 a Duel in the Arena for the Lion Throne between the Emperor Arril I of Tarm and the challenger Arador of Carrilon was disrupted by a surprise Evil assault by orcs and Ghosts using the Waypoint of the old Sacred Heart to attack out of the Dark Heart. Both contestants, the Emperor killed, were lost, believed Ghosted. In response to this and other Evil raids out of the Dark Circles, the Privy Council now took an interest in the "lost" Druidic Circles of Valdrea. On 1 I 2505 with the assistance of the Druids of the Three Rivers and the High Elves of Mírlinnyrn they founded a new Sacred Heart Circle in the depths of the Imperial Hunting Forest (not shown on above map).
The other twelve Sacred Sites of the Valdrean Plain were as follows:
Alma Estuary Circle
Downs Circle
Ox Circle
Caldrick Circle (Wolf Cult Site)
Greenwoods Circle (Rat Cult Site, "taken out" by the Valdrean authorities 18 XIV 2504)
High Yarmen Circle
Western Plains Circle
Torel Circle
Hazki Circle (Spider Cult Site)
Circle of the Three Rivers (maintained by non-Cultist Druids)
Eastern Plains Circle
Bavenne Circle
Most of these Circles were of Stones, but some were of Trees or of Totem Poles.
After the destruction of the Sacred Heart in the Year 1000 local Druids maintained some of the other Sacred Sites for varying periods, and different Cults emerged at some of them. But as the Empire became more urbanized, more of the land came under the plough and more of the forests were felled for timber, the power of Nature waned in the old Forest of the Valdrean Plain, and Druidism became a little-favoured adventurer Magic-Using speciality rather than an organised Cult and vocation in its own right. Amongst Valdreans it has become customary to refer to the Characteristic of Horsemanship rather than Naturalism.
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