Sometime in the latter part of the 1st Century AD, a certain outlaw band on the run from Roman
authorities took a small galley into an Atlantic storm. The ship was destroyed by the
weather, but one outlaw survived, washing up on the shore of a heretofore unknown island.
He found himself on the shores of a bay, where a river drained into the sea from out of a
dense, dark forest. With what equipment he could salvage from the wreck, he set out to
explore his new environment.
On a rocky hill overlooking the bay, the outlaw found ancient ruins, and below them,
within the hill, a maze of tunnels and chambers created by some long-lost civilization.
He explored the tunnels, and eventually discovered a treasure hoard of silver jewelry and
other items. One item, a silver pendant set with a large sapphire, immediately caught the
outlaw's eye, and though he reburied the treasure, he kept the pendant on his person from
then on.
Time passed, and the outlaw began to realize that the pendant was magical, and with it he
could influence the weather as well as perform other apparently miraculous things. Soon
he learned that the pendant could even allow him to return home, back to his ancestral
lands, simply by walking the narrow, ancient road that ran inland from the bay. The
pendant allowed him to focus on the place he wanted to reach and simply walk to it.
But on returning to his homeland he discovered that more than three hundred years had
passed since his shipwreck. The outlaw decided that his best opportunity was to return to
the island, which he had begun calling Eo (for no particular reason he could think of),
with followers to become his subjects. He brought some of the silver treasure with him to
convince the peasants he approached that he was a true king fallen on hard times; though
most he approached turned him down, he was able to assemble more than a hundred followers
on his first attempt. Those who followed him were the misfits, unhappy with their current
liege lords, and they set to work with gusto building farms and houses on the edge of the
forest of Eo.
The outlaw was called Argentus by his earliest followers; this became King Argent as time
passed. He made many trips back to various parts of Europe, each time bringing a few new
settlers with him.
Eventually there was dissention among his subjects, and some of them followed the road or
the river inland to found new villages. Some of the new villages continued to recognize
the King, but others declared themselves independent. By this time King Argent had a
small but loyal force of warriors, but he discovered that, without his magical guidance,
he could not rely on them to find the rebellious villages. Still, King Argent had a good
thing going, and he knew it.
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