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Footstool Brigade

The Footstool Brigade was an elite group of soldiers from Kelembad who were comprised of the knights and levies serving as the personal guard of the Kelembadian royal family. They were known as the most famous of the Battlebards, husband and wife teams who fought with both force of arms and of music. Although Battlebards were dispersed amongst the units of the armies of the other Twelve Realms to ensure their effectiveness against the Torvold regiments of the Vampyre lord Vhadxi, the Footstool Brigade remained a single coherent unit. All members of the brigade were required to swear an oath to always follow the example of their beloved rulers, King T'n'r and his wife Queen S'pr'no. The Footstool Brigade however was rooted firmly in the tradition of the kingdom of Kelembad and existed prior to 803.

Towards the end of the Vampyric Wars it was becoming clear that the Twelve Realms had little hope of prevailing over the massed Vamypric legions. King T'n'r and Queen S'pr'no no longer controlled their realm by the early summer of the final year of the final great war (and it is possible that King T'n'r was already dead by this time). Vhadxi sensed the weakness of the remaining nations of the Twelve Realms, and in the hopes that the alliance would crumble had launched his greatest attack late in the winter of the year 1,002. The assault fell hardest on Kelembad and Mandleclang, the only two realms who had recovered sufficiently from the previous war enough to fight effectively. Though Mandleclang was overrun with great loss, the forces of Kelembad learned from friendly Pixlie spies that the enemy was advancing, and fled the kingdom with the entirety of their people, leaving Vhadxi to march into an empty land. Though the Vampyre lord dispoiled the kingdom, he had sewn the seeds of his own destruction - just weeks later the exiled army of Kelembad, spearheaded by the Footstool Brigade, attacked the enemy as they picnicked near the Chasm of Eternal Sorrow, effectively ambushing them during the rare stellar alignment of the Moon with the constellation O'nv'ience'C.

The armies of the Twelve Realms rallied and fought for months, but in the end the outcome was inevitable. King T'n'r was horribly eviscerated and slain by the jaws of a Torvold captain when his voice grew scratchy from months of constant singing, whereupon his wife Queen S'pr'no threw herself off Lemmings' Bluff in the Chasm of Eternal Sorrow, unable to bear the grief. Although the Footstool Brigade continued to fight valiantly for a time, they were bound by their oath to follow the example of their rulers, and eventually helplessly followed them over Lemmings' Bluff and unto ultimate ruin, preventing them from being absorbed into the Vampyres' swelling ranks. It is said that their screams still echo in the Chasm of Eternal Sorrow.

The final days of the Footstool Brigade are detailed, with minor discrepancies, in Garth Ennis Presents: The Vampyric Wars and The Lost Tales of Shattered Kelembad.