The Von Kessel Succession

"Everyone has a theory about who should sit a throne that doesn't exist anymore." — Kosta Stavros

House von Kessel ruled Westemär from Drakkenheim for one hundred fifty years. Whatever else changed in the city since the meteor fell, the story of how the crown was lost is one every old Drakkenheim family still tells over dinner — usually with a different ending, depending on who's pouring the wine.

The Last King

Ulrich IV was ten years into an unremarkable, comfortable reign when the meteor struck. By most accounts he was a capable if indulgent ruler, more interested in architecture and education than statecraft, content to leave the details of governing to his administrators. He had married a foreign princess, Lenore, and the two had three children — Leonard, Katarina, and Eliza.

None of them were ever seen again after the night the sky broke. No bodies were ever conclusively identified. To this day, what actually happened to the royal family inside Drakkenheim remains completely unknown.

Mannfred, Cecilia, and the War

Not everyone with von Kessel blood was in the city that night. The King's younger siblings, Mannfred and Cecilia von Kessel, survived — and spent years and a great deal of their family's remaining fortune trying to learn the truth. They commissioned diviners from the Sacred Flame and the Amethyst Academy to no avail, and financed several large military expeditions to retake the city, all of which failed outright.

Eventually Mannfred concluded further effort was pointless. He proposed taking the crown himself and relocating the capital elsewhere. Cecilia refused to accept it — there was no proof, she argued, that her brother and his children were actually dead, and no throne to claim while that remained true.

The nobility split down the middle. What followed was a civil war that dragged on for nearly a decade, bleeding Westemär dry of money and soldiers with nothing to show for it.

It ended the way it began — badly, and without a clear winner. Mannfred von Kessel and his children were assassinated, betrayed by people close enough to reach them. What was not disclosed fully in Augustine's luncheon, but history has settled upon is two names: General Piers Halworth, commander of what remained of Mannfred's household guard, and Sister Ilsabet Kray, a Sacred Flame cleric who had counseled him in his final years. Halworth reportedly took his own life within days of the killing; Kray died soon after in a fire that consumed most of what she might have said in her own defense. Tidy deaths, by most accounts, for a war-weary court that wanted the matter closed.

Old rumor insists there was a third conspirator — someone who arranged for Halworth and Kray to take the fall rather than stand trial. No one still living seems to agree on who that might have been, if they were ever real at all. Cecilia died unexpectedly only days later, leaving no heir of her own.

With both claimants gone, the war simply stopped. There was no one left to fight it over.

No One Has Claimed the Crown Since

Fifteen years later, there is still no acknowledged heir to House von Kessel, and no other house has made a credible claim to replace it. That hasn't stopped people from wondering out loud, especially at tables like Kosta Stavros's — old names resurfacing, old fortunes questioned, the occasional pointed silence when the wrong family gets mentioned. Most of it is idle gossip. Some of it may not be.

First surfaced in campaign conversation: Session 16 - Old Debts, Old Doors