The Withdrawal Decree ended the Great Orc War for the Elves who signed it. It created the Hidden City, sealed away from the Circle, where the surviving High Houses rebuilt in silence.
It did not end the war for everyone.
Of the twelve High Houses that survived, only ten agreed to withdraw. Two refused: the Houses of Scaethon and Thalionn. To the Hidden, they became the Narethai, meaning the Fallen. The word is not a description of defeat. It is a judgement that permanently marks their disobedience.
This Chronicle is about those two Houses, and about what it means to remain in the Circle after your own kind has judged that choice a betrayal.
A Name Given as Judgement
The Hidden use the name Narethai to make a point: that withdrawal wasn't just a strategy, but a law. In their account, the Circle had become too dangerous, the Saelith too unstable, and Elven survival too fragile to permit continued exposure. Anyone who refused that conclusion did not simply disagree. They endangered the future.
The Narethai reject that judgement. They do not claim the war left them untouched. They do not pretend their losses can be set aside. They simply refuse to accept that withdrawal was the only lawful answer to the ruin.
They remained because they believed that abandoning the Circle meant failing to protect it, that neglect would deepen the damage done by the war, and because they remembered Elven banners at the Gate and along the roads.
In that sense, the division was never only about survival. It was about duty, and about who had the right to define it.
What They Are
The Narethai are not a formal court or public authority. They are what remains of the Houses that refused withdrawal, and they are defined by action rather than ceremony.
They do not move in the manner of conquerors, nor do they seek to restore Elven dominion. They avoid raising armies or proclaiming territory, acting deliberately and discreetly, as both the Circle and the Hidden resist Elven intervention.
They are disciplined rather than mystical. They treat magic as a controlled and costly tool, used to contain danger and preserve stability rather than to inspire awe.
This makes them difficult to place within the politics of the Circle. They are not a crown. They are not formally an enemy. They are a power without a seat, acting where the seated powers cannot or will not act.
What They Do in the Present Age
The simplest way to understand the Narethai is this: they go where the world is on the verge of breaking, and they try to hold it together.
Sometimes that means quiet repair. After the Sundering, when thin places in the Saelith produced fear, disorder, and uncontrolled incidents, the Narethai intervened in small, careful ways. They did not arrive with proclamations. They listened. They measured what others could not name. They worked at night, in riverbeds, along stone lines, and at old boundary sites, anchoring instability back into the land.
Sometimes it means containment. There are places across the Circle where the legacy of the Great Orc War and the Sundering still lingers: ruined sites, broken wards, old thresholds, and places where the world does not sit easily on itself. The Narethai cannot always close such wounds, because some damage cannot be undone. But they can often make them less dangerous, less likely to provoke panic, and less likely to spill harm onto those around them.
Sometimes it means restraint. The Narethai do not seek power for its own sake. They focus on consequences, watching for acts that might turn a local danger into a wider threat.
That is one reason they are feared. They are not governed by the Crown Law. They do not always explain themselves. They intervene, do what they judge necessary, and leave. They do not ask the Council for permission, and it is unlikely they would receive it if they did.
The Elves Who Still Walk the Circle
Not all Narethai act alike.
Some remain hidden, moving quietly through places where the world is strained, damaged, or on the brink of failure. Others are more visible, among the best known being the Elunara Wanderers.
The Elunara belong to one of the Houses that refused the Withdrawal Decree and were thereafter named Narethai by the Hidden. They are not a separate people, nor do they stand outside that judgement. They carry that inheritance on the road rather than behind walls.
They move as wanderers, mercenaries, healers, singers, and sworn blades. They gather neither as a formal host nor as claimants of dominion. They go where oath and necessity lead, carrying memory, skill, and old loyalties where the Hidden would rather not dwell.
In the present age, their name is most strongly associated with Byland.
When the Orcs came again, broke Byland, and seized its land, the Elunara did not turn away. They came to fight alongside the Broken Warhost, not as saviours, but as companions in a war already defined by ruin and loss. They fight beside Byland’s dispossessed not only to resist the Orc occupation, but also to help recover what was taken in that second coming.
Their role isn't only martial. It is also to witness the conflict. They sing the dead into memory while helping to bind scattered survivors into something that can still be called a warhost. In doing so, they make plain one of the central convictions of the Narethai: that the Circle is not healed by absence, and that land abandoned to the enemy is not protected at all.
This is why the Circle notices them. A lone Elf may pass as rumour. The Elunara marching with the Broken Warhost is something more direct: proof that one of the Fallen Houses still chooses the fight and the cost of standing beside Humans on the bloodiest frontier of the age.
Why the Hidden Hate Them
The Hidden do not condemn the Narethai simply because they remained. They condemn them because they illustrate that another choice was possible.
If the Narethai survive and act with discipline, withdrawal appears as doctrine rather than a necessity, a discomfort for those who built their world around the decree.
The Hidden also fear what the Narethai represent: Elves acting without the court's restraint, without consensus, and without the internal controls the Hidden believe are necessary to prevent Elven magic from repeating the mistakes of the war.
To the Hidden, the Narethai are not only disobedient. They are a danger that cannot be supervised. That is why the word Fallen remains in use. It is meant to settle the matter before any argument can begin.
Why Humans Distrust Them
Humans have their own reasons.
Some believe Elven rule was an age of stability. Some believe it was one of dominance. Most believe it was a time when Humans were smaller, less lawful, and less in command of their own fate. In the Age of Fractured Crowns, the kingdoms regard the Circle as something they now hold, govern, and defend. They do not welcome an older power moving through it without leave.
There is also the simple fear of magic. Magic is not casual in the present age. It disturbs seasoned soldiers and common folk alike. A figure who arrives, speaks little, and alters the feel of a place by acts no one can properly understand will always draw suspicion.
So the Narethai are tolerated at best, blamed at worst, and turned into rumour whenever a crown finds a use for accusing a very foreign hand.
The Elunara, being among the most visible of the Narethai, attract a different kind of suspicion. They are more often seen, more often entangled with Human communities, and therefore more easily drawn into local disputes. A crown may side with them in one season and denounce them in the next, depending on which side of a quarrel their service has strengthened.
What They Want
The Narethai do not declare a common cause; declared causes become political in Ardenfell.
Yet their conduct reveals certain priorities. They want the Circle to remain livable. They want the Saelith to stop tearing at the seams of the world. They want the consequences of the Great Orc War contained rather than ignored. And they want the Hidden City to understand that withdrawal is not the same as healing.
That does not make them heroes. It gives them a committed purpose. And as we know, in the Circle, commitment is often the most dangerous burden a person can carry.
Pronunciation Guide
Narethai - NAH-reth-eye
Three syllables. The final sound is “eye,” not “ee.” The rhythm should feel deliberate.
Saelith - SAY-lith
Two syllables. The first syllable rhymes with “say.” Keep the second short and clean.
Elunara - eh-loo-NAR-ah
Four syllables. The stress falls on “NAR.” Let it sound fluid rather than sharp.
Scaethon - SKAY-thon
Two syllables. The opening sounds like “skay.” Keep the second syllable short.
Thalionn - THAL-ee-on
Three syllables. Stress the opening syllable. Keep the ending light rather than heavy.
Byland - BY-land
Short and direct. A frontier name that does not soften itself.
On the Tabletop
The Narethai are best used as a warhost on their own or as straightforward allies, lending groups of warriors where needed, which serves their purpose.
Use them to shape games that feel the Circle is under strain:
• Quiet Repair: A Narethai working party attempts to stabilise a thin place while a human warhost tries to drive them off, fearing what they may be doing. Victory depends on controlling the site and guaranteeing the safety of the ritual team.
• Witness and Denial: An envoy from Ardenfell carries testimony that the Narethai intervened in a crown’s lands. One side wants the witness silenced. The other wants the truth carried to the council.
• The Unwanted Ally: A battle against Orc raiders shifts when a small Narethai band appears. They will fight the Orcs, but they will not take orders. Both players must pursue their objectives whilst deciding how far they are willing to trust a force they cannot command.
• Artefact Interdiction: A warhost attempts to seize an ancient bound item. The Narethai intervene to prevent its use. The scenario should centre on capture, escape, and control of the object.
• Hunted in Plain Sight: A crown has declared the Narethai unacceptable within its borders. A Narethai band must cross the table and reach safety before the patrols close around them.
And for the Elunara Wanderers in Byland:
• Stone and Song: The Broken Warhost raids an Orc supply line while an Elunara band tries to recover a named dead from the field. Victory is divided between denying supplies and preserving memory.
• The Shield Call: A Byland captain is required to rally scattered troops and hold a road long enough for refugees to escape, with Elunara blades anchoring the line where it would otherwise fail.
• Witness of Ruin: The Elunara must carry a roll of names or a recovered banner from the table while a rival crown’s patrol attempts to seize it, arguing that Byland’s war is not welcome on their soil.
When you use Elves in the present age, keep the distinction clear. The Narethai are the Hidden’s judgement. The Elunara are just one visible expression of the Narethai in the present age.
What is written here is remembered.
