The Forged Realm:

A History of Nemeris from Tribes to Tribute.

By Elara Voss

Edited by B. Andrew Hahn

Editor’s notes:

By B. Andrew Hahn

When I first encountered Elara Voss’s History of Nemeris, I was struck by how rare a thing it was: a chronicle that manages to be both rigorously scholarly and quietly alive. In a field often weighed down by dusty recitations of dates and decrees, Voss’s voice stands apart; dry at times, yes, but enlivened by a subtle wit and a storyteller’s instinct that turns cold facts into something that breathes. She does not merely list events; she lets the contradictions, silences, and human choices speak for themselves.

Yet the manuscript reached me in a form that reflected its origins: written in a dialect closer to the post-Arcane Wars era than to our own, with references and assumptions rooted in a world still raw from the reopening of the groves. Some passages leaned heavily on oral traditions that would be unfamiliar to readers today; others deferred, almost reverently, to works that have only recently become widely accessible.

My aim in preparing this edition has been twofold: to preserve Voss’s voice and intent as faithfully as possible, while bridging the gaps that time and distance have created. I have modernized the language for clarity, added contextual notes where needed, and occasionally expanded on points that Voss herself left to specialist texts (always with reference to those sources when available). I have also resisted the temptation to impose my own interpretations; where Voss marks uncertainty or conflicting accounts, I have left those fractures intact. In the case where the referenced material is lost to time, we can only take the judgement of the writer at her word; I will simply note the absences and let the reader make their own judgement on its authenticity.

This volume is not intended as the final word on the realm, only a foundation. Those who wish to understand the deeper workings of Magic and its costs, or the philosophical debates that shaped the Time of Magic, will find Soska’s ‘The Four Pillars’ an indispensable companion, of which I have edited and publish alongside this history. And for those drawn to the lived drama of the era’s end, I encourage you to seek out ‘The Miracle at the Block’, ‘The Fall of the Weavers’, and ‘A Shared Voice’, which provide a more intimate view of the human story of those who lived through this tumultuous time.

I am grateful to have played a small part in bringing Voss’s work to a new audience. May it serve, as she hoped, not as judgment, but as a map to a world quite different from the one we now live in.

B. Andrew Hahn, January 2026

Original Author’s Preface:

By Elara Voss, Archivist of the Reconciled Libraries, Mariven

In the Year of the Open Grove, AL 214

I have walked the roads of Nemeris for more than thirty years, from the rebuilt docks of Tralvik, to the quiet groves where Skogfolk elders speak in low tones of what was once forbidden. I have poured over cracked scrolls in Rhaevore vaults, listened to Kavire traders recount their ancestors' pacts, and sat with Skaerskot descendants who still measure time by the fifteen-year tribute their forefathers bore. What I offer here is no grand revelation, only a careful threading of what can be confirmed across sources.

The past resists completeness. Skogfolk songs exalt their mages as the true saviors of the final wars; Mariven records credit Torven's steel and strategy. Both contain truth; neither holds it entire. Where contradictions arise—such as the precise hour of Torven's death on the pendulum's peak, or the whispers surrounding Queen Dowager Morwyn's final days—I mark them plainly. Where silence endures, I leave the space empty.

My aim is narrow: to trace the choices that carried eight scattered tribes into a single, blood-forged realm, and then to the edge of its undoing. I begin in myth, with the Saedari and the cataclysm that divided the world, because no account of Lirion’s line is possible without acknowledging what came before. I end before the full fury of the Arcane Wars, for those flames still cast long shadows, and the voices of their survivors deserve precedence in any telling.

I write as one untouched by the Grid. No affinity guides my hand; no pillar shapes my sight. I have never channeled, never tasted the cost of vice or the slow boon of virtue. Magic, for me, is a distant landscape—powerful, perilous, and best understood through those who know it intimately. For such matters, I rely on the work of Soska of the Skogfolk, whose ‘The Four Pillars: On the Nature and Practice of Magic’ remains the clearest map of that realm. I cite it often, and defer to it gladly.

To those who read these pages: may they serve as a plain chronicle, not a sermon. The realm was shaped by ambition and paid in lives. What we build from its remnants is for the living to decide.

Elara Voss of the Rhaevore

In the city of Mariven, on the eve of the first public convocation of the Free Academies

AL 214