<div align="center"> An excerpt from Cliotan's report to the Department of Recorded Information, <em>The Sundering Wave,</em> largely considered a sharply revisionist history of the events in the years following the Empress' disappearance.  </div><br/>Because of it's role in the era of the Sundering, we must understand the establishment of the Great Solar Kingdom of Chiaroscuro.  As such, while this report generally looks at major trends and events in the scope of these many years, the development of this Kingdom deserves a certain amount of specific attention.  While it was not the first major Solar Kingdom established- that particular place belongs to the Bull of the North's Kingdom- it was the first established so close to the Blessed Isle, and was, really, the only effective government of the South that managed to contribute greatly to future events.<br/><br/>As is well known, the City of Chiaroscuro fell into Solar hands after an attempt by the Warden of the Dark Threshold's Abyssal minions to seize the city, presumably in order to recover the secret of Chiaroscuro Glass, or other materials located in the defunct manufactories there.  Since, so far, those Exaltations have not been interrogated (Or, if they have been, Lytek isn't talking), we do not know for sure.  Famously, the Solars established their rule after Bone-Ebony Lion, the Warden's warlord, attacked the city in the company of an army of ghosts and tribesmen of various desert groups.  What is not well known is that there had already been a campaign of subversion in the city, led by Empty Eye Mask and Dirgeful Rose, who had operated inside the city, working to fracture the city's order and to create devoted death cults to ease the path of Bone-Ebony Lion into the city.  It seems that these activities had attracted the Circle of Solars there in the first place, which makes it the appropriate time to begin our history of this kingdom...<br/><br/>