The Seneschal was founded about a knife-scarred table deep in the back shadows of the Twisted Bulls Tavern in Carlon some fifteen hundred years before the time of the Prophecy of the Destroyer. It began as a nascent political movement around dusk and during the third round of ale, but had progressed to a religious movement of peculiar fervour by moon rise and the arrival of the ninth round of ale.

Well ... that's the way the current proprietor of the Twisted Bulls tells the story. In reality, the rise of the Seneschal predated that drunken conversation (which actually happened, but five of those men grouped about the table that night never realised the extent of their manipulation by the sixth), and it occurred in far distant Smyrton ... not amid the indolence of golden-roofed and pink-walled Carlon.

For thousands of years stolid but reliable peasants eked out a living from the poor soils of the plains and valleys of ancient Tencendor. To the west and south lived the magical Icarii and Avar, but the plains held little appeal for the Peoples of the Wing and the Horn, and they cared even less for the subsistence agriculture of the peasants. The humans of Tencendor lived in small villages or wandering groups, raising sorry herds of cattle and sheep, and eking what wealth and food from the soil they could with inadequate digging sticks powered by apathy. These were days when the forests spread over much of Tencendor - even the west of the continent beyond the River Nordra was heavily forested - and the plains were kept well in the shadow of the trees. Crop-raising and cattle-slaying came a poor second to soaring the skies and divining the true nature of the trees, and it was left to the human peoples to provide what grain and meat the Icarii and Avar required.

Far to the north where the Nordra roared out of the confining chasm in steep hills lay a pitiful collection of huts called Smyrton. Here eleven family groups did what they had to in order to survive ... and not much else. They spent their days dragging their feet through the dust of their two fields or wandering behind their thin-ribbed herds of cattle, they spent their nights huddled silently about fires, and day and night their minds ranged vacant ... and vulnerable.

One dull autumn day the Goodman from family Hordley was shuffling his way down the path between summer field and winter field towards Smyrton. His back ached, several small blisters on his left hand had broken open, one had a splinter in it, and his upper left molar was pounding with the pressure of the abscess above it. Hordley hoped his wife had stewed the turnips well this night, for he did not feel like chewing overly long about them if she hadn't.

And if she hadn't stewed them well enough, then perhaps he would beat her - just a little - to make sure she did her task well enough the next time.

His left hand twitched, and his mouth twisted, anticipating.

His foot caught against a stone, and Hordley stumbled and almost fell. He cursed low and foul, invoking the black words associated with blood and death, and the idea that he should beat his wife in any case firmed into near certainty in his mind. It would do her good. And it might well relieve the frustration of his tooth ... nay, of his entire life.

Hordley pulled his tattered cloak a little closer against the sharp northerly wind and strode ahead with renewed purpose, narrowing his eyes into the dusk. After a few steps he halted, unsure. Feeling the change ... the presence ... but not understanding what it could be. Then he slowly turned about.

Something was coming up the path behind him. Hordley peered ... and the pain of his tooth vanished abruptly as he saw what approached. He tried to run, but couldn't find the will to accomplish it. He whimpered, and drooled terrified and slightly blood-stained spittle down his chin.

There were beasts advancing upon him. Two great cattle bulls, white, red-eyed, razor-horned and hooved. Their heads tossed wildly, furiously, their hooves pounded into the path, driven by bunched haunches powered by fury.

Behind them thumped and thudded a contraption that Hordley was sure would grind him into the soil. It had wheels that rolled to shoulder-height, their nail heads glinting in the red and orange rays of the sunset. A great beam ran down between the wheels, and in the belly of this beam Hordley could glimpse metal blades and shaped keels that knifed into the packed soil of the path and tossed it to one side.

It was truly a ferocious beast.

And yet none of this was any match for the terror of what drove bulls and contraption. A man, and yet no man. He stood half as high again as any man Hordley had ever seen, and his countenance was more terrible than those of the bulls. He wore a short leather cape, a dirty cloth girt about his loins, and muscles bunched and rolled about his all-but-naked body. Sandals clung to his feet, and there was a goad in one hand that the ... man? ... now raised threateningly above one shoulder.

The bulls screamed.

Hordley screamed with them, his jaw quivering with such horror his abscessed tooth gave way and sprayed out in blood- and pus-flecked ivory shards across the path.

The bulls were now so close the heat from their eyes burned his face, but Hordley still could not move.

"You will gather your companions about," said the power behind the wheels.
"Yes," Hordley whispered.
"You will listen to what I have to say."
"Yes."
"I bring you joy." Hordley believed it, but he found himself unable to answer.
"And I bring you power."
Hordley smiled.

And so Artor the Ravener spoke to the good folk of Smyrton, and set them on their long road into Hell. He spoke to them of the contraption His bulls pulled, and it was named Plough. It would give them straight lines and square fields, He promised, and it would eventually give them power.

Every one of the villagers smiled.

And Artor the Ravener was so pleased with the good villagers of Smyrton He presented them with the Book of Field and Furrow so that they might the more readily interpret His wishes and obey His commands.
"For I am Artor," He said, "and I raven."
Hordley clutched the Book to his breast. "How might we serve you, Artor?"
"By ploughing the earth and preparing the way," Artor replied, "so that one day I might multiply."
"We shall spread the word and cause a Plough to be built in every village and glade, Artor."
"And you shall build an edifice to house My name and My will."
They were silent, puzzled.
"You shall call it the Seneschal, and it shall watch over the hearts and souls of those who cling to My Plough."
"Ah," Hordley breathed. "As Your will dictates, Mightiness."
Artor came as close to smiling as he could. "Furrow wide, My good people, furrow deep."

So it was that after the villagers of Smyrton had struggled with the Plough for nigh on six months and learned of its ways, they sent one of their sons, Egerly, on the long journey down to the lands of the far south to garner more souls for the pleasure of Artor and the Way of the Plough. Egerly took with him many plans, some on parchment - and these he showed in villages as he went south, praising this strange new device called a Plough - and many in his mind, and these he disseminated more subtly with the help of his god, Artor.

The Way of the Plough was fruitful. It spread from the villages and the sorry wandering groups to whom Egerly had taught the uses of the device Plough, and it spread from the Twisted Bulls tavern in Carlon, where Egerly had first gathered to him the seeds of the Brotherhood of the Seneschal - he its first Brother-Leader.

The Way of the Plough spread like a smoldering fire across an unguarded hearth, fingering at the hearts of a people who had always felt inferior to the bright feathered Icarii and the shadowy Avar. Artor and His Way of the Plough gave them hope, hope that one day they might best the Icarii and dispossess the Avar. Hope that one day they could claim the entire land as their own.

"Ours," Brother-Leader Egerly whispered through the minds of his growing band of listeners. "Ours, and we shall name it for ourselves. Achar."

When word of the new faith reached the ears of the Avar, they shrugged and forgot it, for it did not concern them - but then, they had not heard all of what the new craft preached.

When word of the Way of the Plough reached the ears of the Icarii, they did not even deign to discuss it in the Assembly, for they could not recognise the threat, and they laughed that the stolid humans should even aspire to a faith.

"The next we know they'll be claiming knowledge of magical crafts," laughed one of the Enchanters to the Talon as they rode the thermals above Grail Lake, and then both birdmen dismissed the subject, not realising the Acharites aspired not to magical crafts, but to their complete destruction.

None among the Avar or Icarii knew or understood of the storm fomenting. None realised that within a generation, the Wars of the Axe would tear their complacency apart.