Based on the search for resources, and later Directorate pressure, westward expansion in the decades following Advent was strong. Thousands went west, fought, died, and slowly carved out civilization from the lands lost to the Rending. The first official areas established, the midland Provinces, remained defended and controlled (as much as anything in those days) by the Directorate. But as expansion continued and the leagues and generations between east and west grew, the control by, and protection of, The Directorate stuttered.
When the Territories rose up along the frontier and rulers more interested in their own power than service to the Directorate took control, law in many places broke down. With no unified source of order, chaos bubbled up in the cracks between spheres of influence, and the Directorate on the other side of the realm, could do little to stop it. Some even say, perhaps they let it take place to prove their worth.
The crime and violence built for years, turning the west into a dangerous morass of robbery and murder, until one man stepped into the gap. The revered Swordmaster Elderow, fed up with regional bickering, and Eastern posturing, took matters into his own hands. He raised his own House. Not for lineage, or glory, but for justice. The House of Reckoning would do what others could or would not, and would restore order to the western lands. In only months, those who had run rampant learned to fear Elderow’s sigil and the warriors who soon joined his House.
