As he drifted down the main hall, lighting lamps as he went, Adan merely shook his head. "I am a penetant, not a lord. Had justice been done, not mercy granted, my head would decorate the walls of Landeel Castle proper."
His face as stern as the portraits above as he looked back at them, at his ancestors, then shook his head, and began to walk towards a statue in the center of the main hall. Tall and marble, it detailed not a man, but a woman, a warrior, adorned in armor, a long blade at her side, her visage strong and noble, yet strangely angelic. Dipping, he pressed his lips to the ground at the feet of the statue, before rising, and beginning to polish the dust from it, with a soft cloth retrieved from a near by cabinet. "With the Holy Lady, our story begins. Before Jantir was even six mud huts gathered in a ring by a river, she journeyed here, bearing a sword, said to be crafted by the rhin themselves. But in those days, this land was held not by men, but by a great devil, though his aspects are lost to history. The Lady Alis slew the devil, and here, with her men, she built her stronghold, and bore children. We have been building her mountain ever since." A gesture to a portrait upon the wall. "Lutz, conquerer of Skyrim." Another gesture. "Sorn, who went to Nehpala and beyond in his adventures." Pointing not to one portrait, but to four, one of which was another stern woman, "Charl, Layalyn, Erik, and Noah, against whom the Jantiri laid siege for a century and a half." Another, to the far edge of the hall, a newer portrait. "My father, Rhys. Stern, but merciful. Of the five heirs he had remaining when I left, I am but the fourth. Two elder brothers, and two sisters, one elder, one younger."
The statue polished, the devotional completed, he shook his head. "They say the land is torn by war, it would be wisest to check the rooms before retiring to them. We may yet have need of steel."