Vensill Liantus Crowe

Overview
Vensill Liantus Crowe was the first duke of the Fiefdom of Tharsis, staying in power from the years 368 to 422.

Legacy
Originally put into place by the Teris Empire following the War of the Lilies, Vensill Liantus Crowe was the first ruling monarch of the Fiefdom of Tharsis, and was charged with establishing the Fiefdom both commercially and culturally. After the ruling warlords were defeated by the empire, Vensill Liantus supervised the construction of settlements in Swordsfield and Lyenne, among others.

His name is most associated with the construction of Skyscour Castle, the main government building for the Fiefdom, starting from the year 370. To accomplish the task, he had displaced thousands of elvish slaves and their families from the Twyst Lands into Tharsis, and his administration is responsible for the significant elvish population within current-day Tharsis.

As construction of the castle continued, written reports from castle workers and his son, Mareth Liantus, began documenting some of Vensill's slips from sanity. From talking loudly in his sleep to muttering to himself in public, it was unclear whether age, stress, or some other factor was directly responsible. As the years went on, his condition worsened, and on multiple occasions he was caught standing in one of Skyscour's several courtyards, gazing upwards into the sky. Some say that the duke went blind, staring straight into the midday sun.

By 415 Vensill Liantus was duke in name only, the majority of his business and affairs being managed by his son Mareth. As such, Mareth's official advancement to dukedom was made rather seamless, following Vensill Liantus' strange disappearance in the winter of 422. His son would later complete construction of Skyscour in 462.

Trivia
Letters and journals from Vensill Liantus' inner circle paint the duke's temperament surrounding the construction of Skyscour as not a simple experiment in vanity but as a crucial task that needed to be done. Vensill was always searching for methods of speeding up construction, whether it was the displacement of elvish slaves, the utilization of the Circle of the Blue Rose, or even the disputed implementation of a Macralith Crystal. Regardless of the intensity of each method, it seemed as if the duke was fearing some sort of deadline for construction.

When asked by other nobles why Skyscour needed to be at least 100 stories, the duke would "fly into a rage" and order his guards to throw the curious lord or lady out his sight. From the years up until his disappearance, castle workers would often observe that the duke was constantly sweating and staring up above him, as if he was at risk of being struck down by lightning at any time.