The life of Penni the White
The life of Penni the White
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Overview
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To commemorate the glory of Dawn's triumph in the Barrens, the noble historian and troubadour Hugh de Veran proposed the restoration of the Throne Room of the Castle of Thorns. When this work was subsequently commissioned and completed, Ser Hugh redoubled efforts to produce a history of the pre-Imperial Dawnish monarchs. Events in the Untrod Groves, involving the wicked manticore who names himself as Earl of that cursed manse, brought a timely relevance to this work. The National Assembly of Dawn asked Hugh to focus his efforts on the life of Penni the White, the king of Dawn who infamously seized the throne with the assistance of heralds of the Winter realm - and, it appears, the aid of the beast known as the Earl of the Groves. A manticore is not a creature of the realms, but a sentient being of the mortal world - one whose heart is steeped in a vile wickedness, and whose tail is said to contain a venom that rots the spirit itself. Legends claim King Penni killed as many Dawnish as he did orcs during his reign - his control of such a wicked beast as the manticore must have been key to this power.
Hugh has taken his task quite to heart, and has produced an in-depth history of King Penni the White, as well as providing a little insight into the monarchs who followed and preceded him: Queen Eriette of House Stonecall, and Queen Simone of House Fayer. Hugh is making noises that he feels there are yet more stories of the Dawnish monarchy still to tell; however, for now he has returned to his regular duties working at the Castle of Thorns.
There seems no research more timely than this. While there are rumours that Penni the White was recently called back to the threshold of the Black Gate at the Imperial Regio. What passed between the ritual magicians and this terrifying shade pulled from the bloody past of Dawn is known only to the witches themselves. What follows is Hugh's account of the tragedy of King Penni the White, a story few troubadours knew in full - until now.
Before the king of monsters
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The man we know as King Penni the White is a figure of near-legend from the deep history of Dawn. We do not know exactly when he lived or died, as it is difficult to date specific reigns of Dawnish monarchs. The pre-Imperial practice was for the date to be counted from the length of the monarch's current reign - for example, a document might be dated from the Third Year of Queen Simone, rather than an absolute year number. We know from a few accounts that Penni's life was lived after the March, and that the later years of his reign combined with the Highborn civil war. That places him in a certain window, but it is not a window we well understand. Before the Empire, it becomes increasingly difficult to line histories up against one another, in part because of the aforementioned lack of a universal dating system.
### Penni and the old queen
We do know the name of the monarch that directly preceded King Penni the White: Queen Eriette. She appears to have been from the small Weirwater house (in truth, a collection of minor houses who operated collectively on the national stage) of House Stonecall; Stonecall have recently re-engaged with Imperial politics, but their pedigree is a long one, and Queen Eriette may be one of their most notable historical members. Queen Eriette's reign was a difficult one. In her time the noble houses of Dawn were particularly divided by political scheming: some troubadours attribute this to the influence of the Realm of Autumn, but this may just be a singer's fancy. Queen Eriette chose the path of diplomacy in managing the nobility, and by all accounts was skilled at it - nevertheless, during her time Dawnish holdings retreated to the historical core of Weirwater and Astolat: indeed, even Weirwater was at times under threat from surges from the orcs of Semmerholm. One member of Queen Eriette's court was Earl Penni duBlanche - later known as King Penni the White.
### Penni the youth
It was during Queen Eriette's reign that Penni grew up, made his nobility, and rose to lead his house. A few songs do exist of the life of the young Penni. They were not much sung after his reign - and so exist only in very old records; they are ballads written before his ascension to the throne. The young Penni was said to possess a rare and burning ambition which alarmed his uncle, the Earl of House duBlanche. Therefore, when his nephew asked for a test, the Earl set one he thought was impossible - to claim through strength or guile the dagger of Morza the Crimson, then the leader of the "Ulvenkin" of the fortress of Arnet in Ulvenholm. With the aid of a figure known as the "Boar of the Black Woods" (probably Sadogua), Penni - a formidable enchanter - is said to have concocted an enchantment of Night which aided a daring night raid on Ulvenholm. Their forces disarmed but did not kill Morza, and the dagger was retrieved. Newly ennobled, the achievement made a name for the "Young Ghul" - it established him as the de facto successor to his uncle and was a great morale boost for the Dawnish at a time when clear victories against the Ulvenkin were hard to come by.
### Penni and the strange fire
There are other stories of Penni's early life that feel more likely to have been told after his death, when he had become a dark legend. They say that he possessed inexplicable powers that could allow him to surround himself in a strong aura at will, enhancing his natural force of will into something truly fearsome. He is said to have been able to imbue a room with a profound sense of purpose that commentators at the time found quite inexplicable. In one tale, he is said to have had within him "a strange fire, that at will he could breathe onto others so they might partake of its terrible heat and share in it". Some troubadours theorise that this seems to resemble nothing so much as the spiritual powers unlocked by liao - at least, a poetic description thereof - but at this time liao usage was unknown in Dawn, and confined only to the pious but insular Highborn chapters. The Highborn civil war itself broke out in the latter half of Penni's reign, as mentioned, and it was only afterwards that missionary efforts to spread the Way truly began in earnest. Dawnish spiritual beliefs before the Way are not well-recorded - this appears to have been carefully elided from many historical records - but it is likely Penni engaged in some mixture of idolatrous devotion to a "deity" (possibly the Sun itself) and the worship of the concept of glory as its incarnation.
### Penni the courtier
House duBlanche were a house from the Garthmoor reputed to take only draughir as nobility; they had a reputation for being somewhat standoffish but loyal supporters of the crown. Their heraldry was a bloody drop on a silver field, and to this day such iconography in a house's colours can certainly raise eyebrows. Penni was said to be loyal to Queen Eriette; however, he publicly advocated for a totally different approach to the recalcitrant and rebellious houses. He was said to advocate for purges "hard and most brutal and bloody". While Penni was allegedly well-intentioned, Queen Eriette was eventually forced to exile him by nobles angry at his threats. House du Blanche moved their holdings to Dawnguard - then, as for much of history, an outpost of Dawnish control across the Semmerlak, and legally not considered "Dawn proper" for the purposes of the laws of exile of the time.
The white earl in his exile
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The years of Penni's exile were long. Notably, while his house moved to the Barrens, he did not. He named a regent-earl, chosen from House Fayer (a subject house) - from this same house would come Simone, his lover and assassin. Of House Fayer little is recorded, but the practice of naming a regent from a subject house was not uncommon: it separated rivals within the master-house from true power, and gave the Earl-in-absentia a chance to evaluate whether a talented noble might be suitable for marriage into the master-house.
### Penni in the east
Penni spent his exile travelling. He is said to have first travelled to the east, possibly as far as Axos (by ship), and possibly beyond - although that would be an unlikely distance in those days. Some tales say that he visited the desert-wastes of Xira, which certain tales call "the crucible of monstrosity"; however, this may just be literary flair. Commentators claim he learnt "strange arts" from the necromancers of the citadels, and it is true that he demonstrated in power a breadth of magical talent and technique that even the most critical accounts cannot help but laud. It is probable, if indeed he did travel to the south-east, that this is where he first learnt of manticore-lore: Xira is after all said to be the homeland of such beasts.
### Penni in the groves
At some point - probably after his journey east - he returns to the Barrens for a season or two to manage his house. The legends say that this is when he first journeyed into the Barrens, hunting "the manticore of the deep groves" - until that time a legend only. It is said he encountered the manticore, and lived to tell the tale, but no more than that: this was not the occasion on which he tamed the beast and bound it to his service. The same songs that talk of his "strange arts" in his youth say that that "self-same fire" burned away the manticore-sting from him and his companions: exorcism is known to be effective at relieving the effects of that strange curse, so again we see this persistent theme of him exhibiting ceremony-like powers not achievable without liao. This might indicate a deeper link to Highguard than the historical record describes.
### Penni in the west
After the battle with the manticore, he travels westward, journeying eventually to the lands of the Ushkans, to Kallavesa and Sermersuaq (discussed in a little more detail in the People of the North essay). We know this because a figure not unlike Penni appears, rarely, in some tales of the people of the swamps and the lakes. It is unclear whether his visit happened before or after the coming of the Steinr and the Vard - it seems as though it is before, simply because it is only Ushkan, Kallavesan, and Suaq tales that this figure appears in, but one might equally argue that the Steinr and the Vard simply had a steel-edged solution for strange monsters, and Penni duBlanche gave them a wide berth. When he does appear he is "the strange knight from a distant land", who bears unfamiliar magics and a monstrous fire inside. They seem to have regarded him, and possibly all Dawnish, as in essence some kind of monster from the east - to be handled, carefully, bargained with, perhaps, but certainly never to be trusted. He is said to have spent several seasons with the icewalkers of Atkonaroq, and may even have met with the hylje of the north in their company: in the stories, this visit presages a period of relative distance and hostility between the Suaq and the hylje, for reasons that are unclear.
### Penni returns
He then begins his journey back east. Navarri records sadly do not seem to record his passing through Miaren, though presumably they would if he had been in conflict with them at the time - the reality is that the Navarr, while their histories are deep and accurate, tend to focus on their own past and that of Terunael more than that of others. There is some suggestion that he may have at one point travelled south to Highguard, but the Highborn do not record anything of him in their own histories, save dark tales of the evil king of Dawn who conquered much of Casinea while the civil war raged - territory they only regained after his eventual death. There is one biography of the paragon Lepidus which claims as one of his miracles that he prophesied this invasion, which would happen only after his death.
The horrors of the knight of ghuls
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Rope-Chewer is an eternal villain, and remains in the stories of Penni the White up to the present day. At some point, we can be certain, he made a bargain with Agramant. It isn't clear when - perhaps, in fact, he did this at an early age, and this was the source of these reported abilities that suggest access to liao. Perhaps these abilities were not spiritual, but were some fell magic of the Voice of the Pines - though magic has always struggled to replicate the talents of the exorcist. Whatever the fact of the matter, the bargain happened, and it was on his return to Dawnguard that it came to fruition.
### Penni and the monsters
This period of his life is the best-documented and thus most-mythologised. Many fearsome and strange creatures began to fill the halls of House duBlanche, and yeofolk went missing with some regularity. In this time, however, the right of an Earl over the life of their yeofolk was considered all but absolute - certainly it was no business of the other houses, so long as the predations of the Hungry One were kept only to those yeofolk who served duBlanche. And many did still serve - whether out of fear or reverent loyalty, it is hard to say. It is probable he made deals with other eternals; certainly, his long travels seem to have given him a vast wealth of experience and nous when it came to treating with the realms.
### Penni masters the manticore
His battle to master the manticore happens at this time. This is described only in earlier versions of the tales: as centuries passed, and the beast we know today as the Earl of the Groves became quiescent and slipped out of time and memory, the threat became a less immediate one, and later tellings of the reign of Penni elide the beast of the Groves entirely. Very few details of this fight are known, save this: thereafter he never again showed that "strange fire" he had once shown. He was changed by his encounter in the Untrod Groves, forever less at ease somehow. Perhaps this is simply the nature of what it is to rule. One thing is of note: he is said to have complained often that he never dreamed. A dreamless sleep is a symptom of many things, but in legends that includes the manticore's venom. Could he have been nursing a wound that never truly healed? We may never know.
### Penni seizes power
What follows is well-known. Queen Eriette dies of a short illness. This is, on the balance of probabilities, probably natural causes, though there are certainly attempts during and after Penni's reign to blame him for this. His loyalty to the Queen appears to have been strong in his time at her court, and even during his reign he is recorded speaking of her with fondness. Regardless of the truth, he marches on Astolat, probably taking the low road through Holberg and sailing the Semmerlak to Weirwater before moving south. By the time he has reached the Castle of Thorns, he has amassed many followers, who it is widely agreed were attracted to his display of fulsome and glorious power and ambition. He issues the challenge of the crown and handily wins the ensuing tournament - he is sometimes described as having "seized" the crown, and certainly it seems that the result was something of a fait accompli. He sits the throne of Dawn with the open support of Agramant and his minions and begins ten years of bloody rule.
The rule of the cold king
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"He killed as many Dawnish as orcs", they say - and this is probably true, although if you also count the Navarri, Karovites, and Highborn he killed, it probably does weight it more in favour of the enemies of Dawn. His reign is characterised by two things: military success against his enemies without, and tyrannic repression of his enemies within.
### Penni the victor
Soon after his reign began, he initiated a massive push by the armies of Dawn in every direction at once (in those days they numbered perhaps four, but after his initial conquests he is said to have raised a fifth - its name is not consistently recorded, but the most common name is the Howlers of the Sun). He pushes into Semmerholm, Karov, Temeschwar, Miaren, Casinea and even Brocéliande. None of the neighbouring nations are quite prepared for this level of coordinated assault, especially as he seems to strike at times when they are suffering periods of internal weakness (such as the Highborn civil war, previously mentioned). It seems likely that the dark whispers of Agramant told him where he could make most effective and bloody strikes. His campaigns are characterised by the use of fell enchantments on a great scale - he seems to have welcomed into his court every enchanter and weaver cabal of Dawn who had even the slightest association with darkness. It is possible his assaults on what is now Varushkan and League territory were motivated by attempts to claim the power of the darkness of those strange lands. Holberg escaped his predations; that may simply be because he never truly held Semmerholm with enough confidence to march on the burgher-citadel, or possibly it reflects a genuine if temporary alliance made during his time in exile nearby.
### Penni the tyrant
His military success was paired, however, with brutal purges within Dawn. It is in his purges that the origin of many modern "Barrens houses" is found - many nobles move to the Barrens to escape his scouring. He shows little interest in the Barrens itself, and there are many houses that weather the storm by spending the years of his rule questing in that vast land. While the Dawnish obsession with that territory long predates Penni, in many ways he sets up the real foundation for it to become a lasting concern in the many centuries to come. In the "home territories" of Astolat and Weirwater, every house that had ever given Queen Eriette trouble is crushed without remorse. He rarely wipes a house out entirely, but he is said to have delighted in reducing them to a shadow of their former selves. Of course, Glory is irrepressible: among the legion of houses he targets is House de Rondell, and any keen observer of Imperial politics will tell you that they were far from destroyed on that day.
Despite the purges he seems to have enjoyed a popularity with surprisingly many yeofolk, who were rarely victims of his killings. The yeofolk of houses directly targeted, of course, despise him, but many others seem to have regarded his conquests and even the purges themselves as an expression of glory. In some songs it is said that this was the true aim of Agramant in aiding Penni - to sow seeds of darkness in the hearts of the Dawnish themselves, and warp the pure pursuit of love and glory into something darker and more fearsome. However, popular as he was, there was a distance between Penni and his subjects. He remained unmarried for nearly all of his life. While he had many suitors, it seems he truly struggled to connect with others, and courtships never seemed to last. It is true that there are tales of youthful romances in his youth that never become true love, which seem to reflect the ordinary courtships of a Dawnish noble. However, after his ascent to the throne, he seemed to struggle with friendship and connection of all kinds, which seems quite natural in the circumstances. There is always a burden in rulership - how much more so, for one who ruled such as he?
### Penni in love and death
In the tenth year of his reign, he met a young yeofolk from House Fayer. A grand-niece of the current Earl from a cadet-branch of that house who has not made her nobility, Simone of House Fayer is said to have been beautiful and charismatic in equal measure - a troubadour's troubadour. She managed to connect with King Penni where no others had. They had a brief and passionate courtship. Yet in secret she had taken a test from the Earl of Fayer - "to end by any means the reign of the tyrant-king". On their wedding-night, she gutted him with a dagger. All the songs agree - perhaps because many were written by Simone herself - "Penni died content, some irrepressible force released at last, a great weight leaving him".
The fall of the house of duBlanche
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After his death, there was a long period of interregnum, during which Earl Fayer served ably as part of a council of regents who worked to restore relations with Dawn's neighbours and purge the monsters from their lands. House duBlanche was formally disbanded: most of its nobles were exiled. Dawn's holdings retreated back to Weirwater and Astolat (and their long partial holdings in Semmerholm and the Barrens). Despite this, overall the borders were more secure than they had been in a century. Therefore, Penni achieved the goals he had begun with, but at a terrible price. By the end of the regency Dawn was more stable and prosperous than it had been since the time Queen Eriette took the throne.
Simone is said to have travelled to Highguard almost immediately after her act, where she became an early convert to the Highborn Way (at least as it existed then). She is said to have held a powerful dedication to Ambition thereafter, one she fulfilled by ending the period of regency with a short but well-regarded stint as the Queen herself. This detail has been lost from many legends, which more than anything else is because of the tendency of Dawnish tales to cease at the end of a monarch's life - but the records in the Castle of Thorns confirm the fact. Of her erstwhile husband she spoke little, but there are some sad ballads ascribed to her in the twilight of her life that suggest a surprising respect for the man - or at least the man he could have been, had he not chosen the darkest path for the fulfilment of his ambition.
Further Reading
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Dawn monarchy Dawn monarchy update
Best beware my sting - 387YE Autumn wind of fortune detailing the opportunity to research a monarch of Dawn Hard to find - 386YE Winter wind of fortune introducing the manticore known as the Earl of the Groves Dog days are over - 385YE Autumn wind of fortune introducing the proposal to restore the Throne Room
