Girbala was the 31st tegnu (king, ritual and war chief) of the Varumani in the Ardis Vala Mega-Dungeon around 2759 AEP, who ambushed and destroyed an imperial army in the Massacre of the Cave of Blood.
| Type | Character (historical figure) |
| People | Varumani |
| Title | 31st tegnu |
| Era | ca. 2759 AEP |
| Known for | Massacre of the Cave of Blood; the throne of shields |
| Spanish entry | Girbala |
Name and number
The meaning of the name in the imperial language is not known with certainty. The Varumani do not make individual portraits; they honor the tegnu in oral memory. They keep an exact succession from a remote founder, and each tegnu receives an ordinal placing him in the continuous dynasty. Girbala’s predecessor (30th) and successor (32nd) are not named in the imperial archive. The Varumani cite this unbroken line as proof that they are the valley’s original, permanent people, not late invaders.
Varboka, First Thegn, is the tegnu of the present cycle; his ordinal is unconfirmed, provisionally placed as the 40th or 41st.
The Massacre of the Cave of Blood
The Cave of Blood lies in the dungeon’s middle levels. The imperial force — the elite 3rd Cohort of the Tagmata and the 2nd Legion of escudaros — advanced in column, with clerics of the Decadian faith in front and mages of the Order of Thoth at the rear. Varumani scouts feigning flight lured them into the cave; Girbala sealed the entrance with a controlled rockfall and attacked from every flank with warriors hidden in the side fissures. He knew the dungeon better than any Archontean.
Losses:
- Adrienic perished — or disappeared; the archive keeps both versions.
- The 2nd Legion was annihilated.
- Much of the 3rd Cohort was captured alive.
- The Decadian clerics died in greater proportion, including several of the Church’s most experienced ritual operators.
- The Thoth mages were partly killed, partly captured; some were handed over with the Tagmata.
Lady Deino, an ancient witch of the valley allied with the tegnu, received the captured cohort and turned it into beastmen through ritual blood magic. The beastmen in the dungeon today, scattered and disorganized since Deino’s death, are those soldiers; their armor still hangs partly fused to their mutated bodies, and some imperial scholars try to recover it for commemoration.
The throne of shields
After the victory Girbala sat on the heaped Archontean shields, in a hall set up as a temporary throne of victory: by Varumani custom the victorious tegnu sits on the defenses of the defeated enemy, not on a carved throne. The hall is roughly identified with the Court of the Thegn. The shields stayed there through his reign and after it as dynastic relics; later tegnus sat on them at major ceremonies and at their coronations. The practice lasted until the Fifteen-Year Hiatus.
Imperial fear
- The Cave of Blood became a taboo place, avoided by the rare imperial patrols of later centuries.
- Lady Deino’s name became a nightmare rumor in rural broadsheets; some Decadian clergy forbade invoking her.
- The Seekers of Ardis Vala of the present cycle still meet scattered beastmen in the middle levels, dangerous singly but not as a body.
- The Empire gave up taking Ardis Vala by force for generations; the eastern frontier froze, and adventurers worked it under individual contract from Ritornello.
Death and legacy
Varumani tradition suggests he died in old age, under a Varumani roof, in the throne-of-shields hall, never defeated in war. The 32nd tegnu continued the dynasty without visible break, and Varumani hegemony over the dungeon held. Until the Defeat of the Varumani during the Hiatus, Girbala was the founding figure of their dynastic pride. Varboka was the last tegnu of a defeated people.
Conflicting accounts
- Adrienic either died in the cave or vanished.
- Varboka is provisionally placed 40th or 41st in the line, yet the same source counts “thirty-one generations” from Girbala’s founding pride to the dynasty’s close.
Open questions
- Whether the Archontean shields are still in the hall, were scattered, or were recovered by the Seekers is unknown.
- The exact date of Girbala’s death and the names of the 30th and 32nd tegnus are not recorded.
See also
- Varumani
- Lady Deino
- Adrienic
- Phocion IV, emperor of the failed expedition
- Archontean
- Imperial Church