Cenhelm the Vigilent

Cenhelm Serodiil, or Cenhelm the Vigilant as he was called in his later days, was the famed King of the Deornoth who was instrumental in the victory of the Free Peoples over Limryn in The War of Ages, and was also the first Emperor of Haven. His famed armor of White Steel and his sword Imperium still lie within the walls of the Imperial City. The Human Kingdom of Cenhelm was named after him in honour of his bravery and leadership.

History
Little is known about the early life of Cenhelm Serodiil before the Deornoth's great exodus to Haven, yet it is known that he was the acting Commander of the Deornoth armies upon their arrival to the continent. Described as charismatic, intelligent and an unparalleled warrior, Cenhelm was a popular commander and a very influential man at this time.

In the months immediately following their arrival on the shores of Haven, Cenhelm and his troops were kept busy mainly by the construction and protection of the budding human villages and cities dotting the northeastern regions of the continent. They had clashed multiple times with the undead warriors of Limryn's horde, but they had only run into small scouting parties in the rural areas and had dealt with them relatively easily.

When traveling to oversee the completion of the Deornoth’s new capital city Ostanor, Cenhelm and his small company of warriors arrived to a city set aflame. Hours before their arrival, a large contingency of Limryn’s horde attacked the city from underneath via long forgotten entrances to The Subterranean Highway created by the Dango hundreds of years previously.

The then king of the Deornoth, Riandur, was present in the city at the time of the attack, and was beheaded at the base of his own statue by Limryn’s men. The city itself took heavy casualties as the guards present had no time to formulate a counter attack, and most of the civilians and warriors inside the city were slaughtered. The entire city would have been burned to the ground if it were not for the arrival of Cenhelm and his knights, who quickly organized a counterattack and created time for the remaining civilians to flee. In the end, Cenhelm was successful in driving the tainted warriors into a retreat and subsequently saving most of the city. It is also said that Cenhelm himself killed the Dark Commander atop the city walls and piked his body at the main gates, but this could also be an embellishment of the story.

Cenhelm was aided also by the timely arrival of a number of Dango warriors as well as a Wood Elf scout near the end of the conflict who had been tracking the movements of that faction of the Horde. The Dango warriors killed the remaining fleeing undead.

This was the first contact of humans with the other races of Haven, and once the language barrier was broken, the Humans made an alliance with the other free peoples to combat Limryn’s evil. The Dango sent stonesmiths and architects to Ostanor to help rebuild the damaged city and make its walls last a millennia.

Following the events of the Battle of Ostanor, the remaining members of the High Council of the King elected Cenhelm as the new King of the Deornoth for his bravery and leadership.

Under Cenhelm’s leadership, the Deornoth united as one and the plight of the Free Peoples was reinvigorated. He fortified the walls of his villages and cities and created strategy to systematically beat back Limryn and his Horde.

Cenhelm was present at the arrival of the Galiard people to Haven nearly ¾ of the way through the War of Ages, but he was most well known for organizing the retaking of the Subterranean Highway and the rest of the Dango Empire, which had slowly fallen under Limryn’s control early in the war. It was the strategic benefit of controlling the Subterranean Highway, which Cenhelm witnessed at the Battle of Ostanor, which would be instrumental in winning the war for the Free Peoples. He recounted many of his experiences in the Highways in his memoirs years later. They were described as some of the most frightening and appalling places he had ever seen. “It was where the beauty of craft and ingenuity had been twisted by Limryn’s taint. What were once great halls of laughter and beauty became hives of breeding undead, where there was once light, there remained only darkness; darkness, screams, and blood.”

Cenhelm was present too at the storming of Limryn’s Castle, leading the combined forces of the Deornoth and the Galiard to victory and glory on the battlefield. Upon the conclusion of the war, he was elected the first Emperor of Haven.

He remained Emporer for only three years, and as he balanced the resulting Summerset War with the expansion and oversight of a budding Empire, he taught to all his famed doctrine which would become the statement on which the Empire based its entire dogma. "In war, victory; in victory, peace; in peace, vigilance."

Cenhelm died in 3 SA while fighting to clear the remaining areas of the Subterranean Highway still under the control of Limryn’s Taint. He fell off of a small ledge in the Highway’s deepest reaches and wedged his massive plate armor between two stones, immobilizing him. He was beheaded by the desendant of one of Limryn’s tainted soldiers. His body and armor were retrieved by the Dango warriors with him that day and were then moved to the Imperial City.