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11 Rule over Vale Sangora
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33 Skender Dragosti held the title of Knyaz (the valley's senior lord) and ruled Vale Sangora from Greifberg Castle overlooking Svartrau. He was, by all accounts, a cruel ruler. The silver mines that gave the valley its wealth were his personal treasury. Rather than spending their proceeds on religious institutions or public works, Skender used the money to expand the dungeons beneath Greifberg Castle. The walls of those dungeons were stained with blood.
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55 Laslea, the secluded hill village where Coen was born and raised, lies among the settlements under Dragosti’s rule. Like the rest of the valley, it suffered heavy losses when the Black Plague reached Vale Sangora.
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77 Response to the Plague
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99 When news of the Black Death reached Vale Sangora from the coastal city of Constanta, Skender's response was prayer followed by brutality. He ordered Father Florin, his personal confessor, to lead day-and-night vigils in Svartrau's cathedral, seeking divine protection. When prayers failed and the plague arrived anyway, Skender resorted to wiping out entire villages to contain the spread.
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1212 Downfall
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1414 Skender's brutality created the conditions for his own removal. When Brencis and the Vrakhiri arrived in the valley, they eliminated Skender and took over. Some sources describe Skender as going "missing during a manhunt," suggesting his end may not have been straightforward. Whether he was killed outright or simply vanished is unclear.
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1616 For the surviving population, the change in leadership was not entirely unwelcome. Skender had been a tyrant, and Brencis offered something Skender never could: a cure for the plague. The irony is that the humans of Vale Sangora traded one form of oppression for another, though the new version came with better marketing.
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1818 Legacy
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2020 Skender commissioned the chronicler Albertus Taurinus to document his "valiant deeds": a version of events presumably far more flattering than reality. The chronicle survives as The Secret History of Vale Sangora, though the content Albertus actually recorded tells a more complex story than Skender intended.