Athelstan Valarion was once a renowned noble of the Vanir courts in Itelion, a luminous high elven civilization which ruled Tolria during the third age (Age of the Elves). A visionary with bold ideals, Athelstan sought a path beyond the rigid hierarchies of elven purity and tradition. He grew fascinated by the ancient, whispered lore of undeath—not as a perversion, but as a transcendent state. In his search, he consorted with the followers of the Night Mother Nyx (a clandestine cabal of aristocratic vampires), and was brought before her veiled altar beneath moonless skies.
There, in a moment of defiance and longing, he drank from an obsidian chalice, a vessel filled with the blood of Nyx herself. This act granted him eternal life—and in doing so, cursed him and all descendants born of his bloodline with the burden of the Valar: a race neither fully mortal nor wholly undead, gifted with eternal longevity but bound to a creeping curse of hunger and longing.
Exile and the Voyage East
When the truth of his transgression came to light, the Vanir elite of Itelion declared Athelstan a heretic and abomination. His name was stricken from their ledgers, and his House (House Valarion) exiled. Shunned, but not broken, Athelstan led a voyage of exiles, cursed refugees, and loyal kin across the treacherous eastern seas in search of a new homeland.
Tragedy struck the voyage when his beloved wife, Seralyth Vaenyra, a pure-blooded Vanir noblewoman, succumbed to a fever aboard the ships. Despite Athelstan’s own immortality, Seralyth had not been touched by Nyx’s blood, and so death claimed her. She was buried at sea beneath a mourning veil of moonlight, and her passing forever darkened Athelstan’s soul.
The Immortal Isle
At last, the exiles found solace on a forgotten archipelago cloaked in mist. Here, Athelstan founded Valheim, the capital of The Kingdom of Valarion, and proclaimed himself the first King of the Valar. His rule saw the birth of a strange, yet wondrous civilization—half elven, half cursed, immortal yet solemn, whose members turned to art, alchemy, sea mastery, and the pursuit of transcendent beauty to fill their endless days.
Yet the price of this vision would be terrible.
Curse of the Night Mother
The gift of Nyx was not freely given. As Athelstan crowned himself with a black circlet forged from onyx and silver—a relic gifted by Nyx’s hand—it became the focus of her will. Her curse bloomed fully. The air surrounding the isle thickened into impenetrable fog. The seas turned restless. The dead refused peace.
Any Valar who perished in the sea would rise again as Draugr, bound to the currents and fated to turn on their kin. Their isle became both haven and prison. The freedom Athelstan sought had transformed into a shrouded labyrinth of undeath and sorrow.
In time, Athelstan, wracked with guilt and tormented by the whispering crown upon his brow, ascended the cliffs of Crown's End and cast himself into the sea—taking the cursed crown with him, in a futile hope to end the cycle.
Legacy
Athelstan’s death did not lift the curse.
Instead, it worsened it. The Night Mother, in a final act of scorn, sealed the Valar’s fate, ensuring that their immortality would be marred by eternal numbness and a slow decay of meaning.
His eldest son, King Cyrus Valarion, inherited the throne and the burden. Athelstan is now remembered with both reverence and sorrow—a tragic patriarch, whose hubris birthed a kingdom of shadows. His image still looms in the great oil portrait halls of the Spire of Valarion, and in the crumbling statue at Crown’s End, where he once stood resolute, now broken by waves and time.