The Rime Crusades
The Holy Wars for the Sepulchre · 1095–1270 A.F.
The Rime Crusades were a series of holy wars (1095–1270 A.F.) in which the armies of the western The Hoarfrost Communion, summoned by the The Rime Pontiff, marched to reclaim Wintermere and The Glacier of the Sepulchre from the warm southern powers that had seized them. They are the most contested and sobering chapter of Frostian history — venerated by some, lamented by most modern Frostians as a “great going-warm of the cold faith.”
The Cause
The holy places — Wintermere, the Sepulchre, The Sunstone, Mount Hoar — had fallen under the rule of the warm Sun-Caliphate of the south, which (the western reports claimed) barred and abused Frostian pilgrims. In 1095 the Rime Pontiff Hoarban II preached the First Crusade at the Council of Frostmont, promising a thaw-pardon (remission) to all who “took the frost-cross” and marched to free the Sepulchre.
The Course
- The First Crusade (1095–1099) took Wintermere and the Sepulchre, founding the short-lived Cold Kingdom of Wintermere.
- Later crusades sought to defend and recover the holy places as the tide turned.
- The Fourth Crusade infamously sacked the eastern Caldhaven — Frostian armies destroying the chief city of the The Glacial Orthodoxy — deepening the The Great Schism beyond healing.
- By 1270 the holy places were lost again, and the crusading ardor faded.
The Orders of the Crusades
The Crusades gave rise to the warrior-monks of the The Order of the Blue Vigil (and others), who vowed to guard pilgrims and the holy places; in later, chastened centuries these became charitable and hospitaller orders.
The Frostian Reckoning
The Crusades are the great moral wound of Frostian history. Modern Frostians of all rites overwhelmingly regard them as a betrayal of the virtues — the faith of the Boil and the Glare masquerading as zeal for the Cold; the gravest irony being that the followers of the Thawless one shed warm blood and burned a sister-church to “free” the tomb of the Prince of Peace. They are studied as a warning of how easily even holy longing can “go warm.” A penitential Day of the Crusades’ Sorrow is now kept by some for reconciliation.