Why even is there a rift in the Ravenlands?

Zygofer and Merigall found the rift in Shadowgate pass in 850 (GM’s Guide, p. 27). Faced with a huge army from Alderland, a desperate Zygofer opened it wide open in 874 (ibid., p. 30) before slamming it almost-closed again in 877 (ibid., p. 31). By 880, “Zygofer was old and decrepit”, and Merigall warned Therania that “control of the nexus would be lost if Zygofer passed away and demons would be able to freely enter the world”, so Zytera was created (ibid. p. 32).

“If Zytera dies, there is a risk that the Protonexus will run amok and turn into an uncontrolled portal for demonic invasion” (Raven’s Purge, p. 33); Zygofer can also trigger this by “a ritual in which a being of royal breed is sacrificed to the portal. It would mean that demons could pass unchecked into the Forbidden Lands, just as it was during the Demon Flood in 874”.

That… doesn’t obviously follow? How does Zygofer inherently control the rift?

How do rifts even work?

The dwarves were victorious in the First Alder War in 821 (GM’s Guide, p. 24), but a few years into the Second Alder War, probably 827 or 828, they realised they were losing, and decided to call upon the orcs (ibid., p. 25). My headcanon says this is when the original elven circlet was reforged into Stanengist, and in direct reaction, a rift opened between the Ravenlands and Churmog. It took someone of Zygofer’s learning and powers a mere 20-odd years to find it.

This feels like a classic order vs chaos setup to me: most worlds just muddle along without any great manichaean conflict, but any time order or chaos are peculiarly strong in a particular world, that sends out a big bat signal to the other side. Typically, in a world with the Ravenlands’ tech level, order reaches an unbalanced level of power when someone declares themselves supreme ruler, and puts together armies that could crush everybody else put together. At that point, a rift opens to one of the demon worlds, demons come rushing out and start murdering people, then sticking their body parts back together in crazy combinations etc.

And equally, in a demon land where everyone was getting along fine, gently recombining each others’ genetic make-up according to long-standing patterns, if some potent virus triggers a frenzy of uncontrolled mutations in everyone, you’d expect a blinding white portal to open to a shining city on a hill. Before you know it, noble plate-mail-clad paladins are building castles and forcing all the local demons to swear a series of oaths that makes there only be one possible way to live your life (but plenty of ways to die honourably).

How do you resolve an order vs chaos conflict?

Once you’re in an order vs chaos situation, situational ebbs and flows will bolster one faction and thwart the other. If the armies of the Emperor quash the rebellion of the hundred city states, and a new King swearing fealty to the Emperor is crowned, you’d expect that to benefit order. If the King is assassinated and his realm fragments back into tiny city states, chaos is resurgent. Maybe victories will reinforce each other; or maybe, once the land is a battleground of order vs chaos, order winning means chaos will just get stronger, and vice-versa?

Either way, it feels like, short of a rare decisive blow, the conflict should continue ever on. And, indeed, it’s hard to see how one side could win. A victorious army of demons arguably relies upon order to be organised and effective. Before the paladins bend everyone to their will, they need to understand how the unruly think if they’re going to defeat them on the battlefield. Maybe the only solution, after a few generations of army commanders on both sides have said things like “I don’t like them but in a twisted sort of way they have a point”, is to say “nobody can win, so let’s stop trying, and get on with our life”.

That’s what I think it means to combine Stanengist and the rift: to accept that this conflict was pointless, unwinnable by either side, and agree to a draw. You take rival warlords, or governments vs terrorists, and turn both sides into diplomats and politicians. Sometimes it works (South Africa, Northern Ireland), sometimes it doesn’t (Red Army Faction, Israel).

Some actions should nonetheless have a great impact

Back to our example of the hundred cities from earlier. Kings die all the time; a King being sacrificed is something else. Especially if this isn’t one of those Golden Bough-style “being a King means that you’ll be sacrificed” deals, but it’s a deliberate attempt at a change, and everybody understands that to be its meaning. If you say “by this ritual ceremony, never shall there be another King of the hundred cities”, that’s the sort of thing that could tilt the balance pretty strongly towards chaos. If there’s a rift, you absolutely expect more demons to start pouring through it, and to have a better time existing in this world.

And conversely, if you build a round table, and invite to it knights of the realm of all types to sit and deliberate in peace, including even some less-bloodthirsty demons, you’d expect the rift to start closing up.

In the modern world, when paramedics triage people who’ve been in accidents, they ask them “who’s the Prime Minister / President?” because that’s something everybody knows if they’re at all with it. There’s a lot of emotional, political, cultural energy invested by a people in their leader, and when tapped and use wisely it can be channelled towards truly uniting the realm. Conversely, if the leader is killed in a shocking fashion, that’s a lot of energy that suddenly has nowhere to go, and if you’ve ever seen a dam burst you know how devastating that can be.

I think things like uniting kingdoms or sacrificing rulers are well-understood gambits. They’re decisive, but time-limited, tactics. A demon who’s been involved with a few of these will understand that the kingdom is impregnable for now, but will start to explore the psyche of neglected heirs and powerful Dukes, try to sow doubt, discontent, ambition. Eventually, once the King dies, the succssion might be unclear, or the chosen heir less than convincing: vassals will start to stake their claims, machinations will start up again, assassinations will break out, strife will re-emerge.

Meanwhile, in a land beset by unruly bandits, where warlords are constantly being overthrown by their rivals from outside their walls and/or deposed by their overly-subtle courts plotting from within, there is a mythical Saint that paladins regularly pray to, and who blesses them with holy wisdom from time to time. They may spot a wellspring of nationalistic fervour that could be used, and inspire minstrels to dust off the old songs of the glorious kingdom. That may inspire one of the new leaders to forego mayhem and destruction, bringing a city they conquer into their realm as equals rather than sacking it and killing everyone inside. Within a generation or two, a Count will unite enough titles to become a powerful Duke, start calling himself a Prince, and men will rally to his banner as he seeks to restore the glory of the old Kingdom.

Per the Fisher King, the Land and the Ruler are one. Sometime that means a virtuous circle: the people believe in their ruler, granting them strength to battle the rift and close it. Or it can be a vicious circle, where the rift inflicts chaos on the land, causing the people to doubt their ruler, in turn weakening them in their fight against the incursion.

What happened in the Ravenlands?

In the Ravenlands, I think it’s reasonable that if Zygofer could sacrifice a major ruler of Ravenland, like Soria, Arvia, Virelda, or of course Kalman Rodenfell, that would be a huge win for Camp Demon, and major loss for Camp Anti-Demon. You’d expect the rift to open wider.

I just think it’s not needed, because it’s happened already. Almost 400 years ago.

Ravenland isn’t a hierarchical feudal Kingdom (arguably the attempt to make Stanengist the crown of a King of the Ravenlands when there hadn’t been one is what triggered the rift), but if in 850 you were to make a list of potential candidates, local warlords or other kinds of leaders with significant power and following, phrases like “Zygofer was able to rule Ravenland with practically absolute power” (GM’s Guide, p. 27) would be pretty indicative of what the humans thought of him at the time.

So if you sacrificed Zygofer, that looks like what you’d need to open the rift wide open. And if you found a ruler to unite the realm again, disperse the unruly demons and bring them to his will, that would be pretty effective at closing the rift a lot.

Uniquely, Zygofer appears to, probably unwittingly, have done both. He sacrificed himself in favour of the demon forces, but, unusually for a sacrifice, didn’t die (although how quickly he went from perfectly healthy to decrepit should indicate the toil it put on his body, sorcerous force of will and superior Frailer genetics notwithstanding). Eventually, thanks to some quite hideous demonic magics, he managed to stop dying. And now we have a conundrum.

Because Zygofer, with his chaos hat on, wants to disrupt the staid stuffy order of the elves; but with his order hat on, he wants to stay in charge of his sizeable chunk of the Ravenlands. He wants to meld demons and humans together and produce something new and weird and unholy, just like he’s been doing for the last 300-odd years. In all of his contradictions he quite possibly literally embodies the rift.