Libram of the Valiant

The Libram of the Valiant is a holy libram written by Eldanesh Kurnous, containing both biographical information and meditative philosophy upon the Holy Light.

I do not know what has truly compelled me to put my thoughts to paper. My life, my existence, has not undergone any dramatic change in the past month, even the past year. I remain, as ever, a devotee of the Light, and a servant of Lordaeron. Yet, not all change is dramatic, sharp, and sudden. It can come gradually; slowly. Creeping into your mind unseen, subverting ideas and sparking both revision and new enlightenment. In this way, we are always changing. Every idea we are presented with, every thought that crosses our minds, shapes our future. It shapes our actions in the present. And those that would deny this are fools.

I will admit further—I am a veritable unknown. My name alien to those outside of my Order, with a select few exceptions. So I will start at the beginning. And maybe then, with the full measure of understanding before you, you can begin to comprehend why I think what I do.

My name is Eldanesh Kurnous. My given name is, as I was told by my parents, Thalassian. It is apparently one of their words for ‘Valiant’. I was born close to thirty-seven years ago, in Corin’s Crossing. My early life was a happy one; my parents were attentive and loving, though we were not the richest folk in our village by far, we lived well. If there is one thing I remember from my childhood, it is the lake. Lake Mereldar, a short walk from our little house. I would swim in it every day, for hours on end, uncaring of the wrinkles that started on my fingertips and spread across my hands. I loved swimming – I can still keenly feel the adulation, the rhapsody within as I cut through the water at speed, or slowed and let myself sink beneath the waves, the lake swallowing me whole.

I realize, now, that it was these experiences that most likely prodded me towards the Light. I do not prescribe to the new interpretations of the Light—I hear people worshipping it as if it were intelligent, I hear folk touting that something is “The Light’s will”—but this is false to me. The Light comes from within; it is the beauty of our eternal universe reflected upon us. Every action we take, every emotion we feel, connects us to our fellow beings, to the world we inhabit. When I was young, careless, and enthralled by the majesty and fun of my Lake, I was perhaps the closest to the Light I have ever been in my life, including the present. There was no enlightenment about it, but that is what makes it so beautiful. I did not stop in mid-swim to ponder the theological implications of my joy—I simply reveled in it. I shouted and I laughed and I leapt and dove, and in those moments, embracing the beauty of life and the world around me.

That is the Light. Not some righteous prayer spouted by the blind. Not some pledge to annihilate the unfaithful. Not some luminary being that comes from the Great Dark to rally us against the Deceiver.

The Light is everything. It is all around us; within is. To see The Light is to gain understanding of the world around us, to see people and things and realize, deep within, that their existence is shared with you. That every action of yours affects them in some way. And to care. The Light can be frightening – terrifying, even. These revelations can be unsettling to some, once the complete measure of it is wholly comprehended. And the selfish, who think only of themselves, have no business trying to understand something which is by its very nature, alien to them.

You may read this; you may think me a philosopher, or an idiot. But the best is yet to come, I assure you. Though as a boy I did not know what I know now, about the light, I was still drawn to the mythos of the Silver Hand. There is nothing wrong with that—it was a laudable thing, to strive for Knighthood. My parents were proud as could be when I announced that I wanted to become a Paladin, to defend our Kingdom, and to right the wrongs perpetrated by the evil and profane.

My training, and the years I spent at the Cathedrals and Abbeys of Tyr’s Hand and Stratholme can be returned to, and discussed at length later in this volume. But all that you need to know is that I grew. I matured. I was strengthened in mind, body, and spirit. Not only did I come to know the Light, I studied history, learned the medical arts, debated theology and theosophy.

And I became a Knight in Shining Armor. Flanked on every side by my brothers of the Hand. We were glorious. Magnificent. Untouchable in our chivalric splendor. The mythos of the Paladin is indeed alluring—we ride through the land, defending the helpless, supported the wronged and driving off injustice.

But majestic as we were, we could never hope to beat the foe we faced. I realize this know, years later. Arthas and his Scourge were not a foe that could be beaten simply by pedestrian force of arms. In fact, we were thoroughly outnumbered. Outmanned. But it was not merely that—we fought the wrong way. I learned many things in my time as a neophyte, the first among them being obviously, our famous Virtues. But at the end, near Andorhal, as Arthas’ damned legions fell upon us, and our beautiful world was swept into a maelstrom of rage, steel and screams, I realized the truth.

That we, the Knights of the Silver Hand, the most devastatingly powerful, terrifying and puissant foe that evil has ever known...had lost before we had begun. We had all lost before we had been born.

I was there at Tirion Fordring’s trial, as a young man. I remember hearing the angry cries and shouts about Orcs. Orcs. The beaten, lethargic Orcs.

Orcs. They were not our enemies. Not any longer. Our enemies had changed. They had grown, had adapted; had invested thousands of years of study into orchestrating our demise. There is a cliché saying, “the brighter the light, the darker the shadow.” How could we think to win a war against the dark, when war itself had become the dark’s own weapon? When every one of our fallen brothers rose again as a ghastly facsimile of our old comrades, bent now on killing us? When every action we might take to contain this horrifying new enemy, would turn our own people against us?

We had been training to refight the last war. And we lost the new one. Our order shattered. Our Lightbringer slain by the Traitor Prince.

As we retreated from the disaster and rout that ensued following Uther’s death, I came across the shores of my lake. Lake Mereldar. It was infested; the clear waters a turgid brown color. Corpses floated in the deep, others were strewn out across the beach, some floundering in the light tide. All of those fallen heroes—all of them my brothers and comrades.

More than the Knights of the Silver Hand died on that day. Lordaeron died. Our majestic kingdom, for all its glory, could not stand against the darkness. It could not stand against a foe that rotted it from within and assailed it from without.

Tyr’s Hand was not so far away from Lake Mereldar and Corrin’s Crossing. I made my way there, joining with the remnants of our host, most of whom were as lost and leaderless as I was.

And there, something new was born. Something that most are wont to damn, and condemn as force of racists, of blind zealots. You called us murderers, rapists, bigots.

We called ourselves the Scarlet Crusade.