Otto the Huntsman

Otto the Huntsman (Arviragan: Otto der Jägersmann) was the first king of Arviragus. All members of the Arviragan House of Ziegler can trace their bloodline back to him. He emerged as a leader when the Christian Drachenländer arrived in the Arvirar Peninsula in the late ninth century and helped divert the Little Arvirar River and establish Arvirar City, as well as defend his fledgling kingdom from the forces of King Alemen of Cadwal by the use of clever guerrilla tactics, skilled mercenaries, and a new alliance forged with neighboring Quibella. Before his death in 909 AD, he witnessed a significant expansion of his kingdom from a small village in the middle of a swamp to a small, but mighty nation. While a historical figure, he is the hero of many stories and legends in Arviragus and is often still honored today.

=Early Life=

Little is known about Otto Ziegler's early life, except that he was born before the Exodus of the Christian Drachenländer and was one of the few to witness life before, during, and after their forty years of wandering Eiren. Who his parents may have been is unknown, but scholars believe he was most likely a member of the Drachen peasantry. According to popular legend, he was raised by wolves before joining the Exodus, which is how he attained his instincts as a huntsman and his love for his dogs.

=The Legend of the Boar Hunt=

When the Christian Drachenländer first arrived in the northern Arvirar Peninsula in the latter half of the ninth century, the area around the Little Arvirar River Delta was considered to be too marshy for any large settlements and was of little value; it was so sparsely populated that it was several years before King Cloten IX of Cadwal became aware of their arrival. When Cloten sent emissaries to investigate the situation at the fringe of his kingdom, legend has it that Otto der Jägersmann challenged the whole lot of them to a hunt. He wagered that the land was far too worthless for King Cloten to miss and, to prove that he was the only one who could make use of the land, he would kill more boar alone between sunset that evening and sunset the following day than their entire entourage could in five days. Accounts vary over whether there were three, seven, or twenty of the king's men (and many doubt that the story is true at all), but they accepted his challenge. After the first day of hunting, Otto was ridiculed by the king's men, for he had only killed a single boar; the king's men, meanwhile, had not yet begun their hunt, instead choosing to rest in their camp after their long journey, confident that, in the four remaining days, they would easily kill more boar than the boastful Otto. The other Drachenländer of the settlement made the Cadwalian men at home, providing them with mead and women all night long. On the following day, the Cadwalian men were sick with bottle-ache and in no shape to hunt. On the third day, they were given a breakfast of bacon made from Otto's fresh kill, but the pork was not fully cooked and the men returned early from their hunt, clutching their stomachs in pain and accusing the Drachenländer of trying to poison them. Otto insisted to them that they were simply unused to the exotic Drachenkochen and proved his point by eating more (fully-cooked) bacon in front of them. On the fourth day, the men were still too ill to hunt. On the fifth day, while the Cadwalians were still sleeping, Otto sent his trusty hound, Arnulf, into the forest to chase all of the boar away. When the Cadwalians returned from their hunt at sundown on the fifth day, they had not even seen a single boar. Otto had won the wager, fair and square, and the Cadwalians returned to report their loss to Cloten, who found the whole ordeal so amusing that he allowed the Drachenländer to stay in their swamp.

=Discovering Gold in Arviragus and Building an Army=

In 902 AD when fishermen discovered a small amount of gold in the dirt along the banks of the Little Arvirar River, which, it was determined, had washed down from the Great Cloten Mountains from which the river was fed. King Otto, then in his twilight years, knew that his tiny kingdom existed on a knife's edge; the danger that King Alemen II (who had succeeded his father, Cloten IX, after the latter's passing eight years earlier) would return to reclaim the Delta for his own was very real. The Arviragans began quietly panning for, and eventually constructing mines to extract as much gold from the surrounding hills as they could, as quickly as they could. Otto sent traders abroad with this gold, on a mission to procure as many weapons and mercenaries as they could discreetly buy. At the same time, he engaged in negotiations with King Karl II of Quibella, his neighbor to the east and long-time enemy of the Cadwalians. He couldn't remain unnoticed by Alemen forever, but he would be ready when the time came.

=War With Cadwal=

Rumors about unexplained riches and a secret army in the marshlands of the Little Arvirar River Delta finally reached Alemen II in 907 AD. If that land was indeed valuable, Alemen considered himself entitled to it. He dispatched an army to deal with King Otto and reclaim the Delta for Cadwal. However, Alemen II was young, inexperienced, and was not well-versed in the art of war. Rather than depend on seasoned generals for guidance, he appointed his friends and faithful followers into roles of military leadership. Between his generals' mismanaging of their men, the Arviragans' clever use of guerilla warfare, and, thanks to the reinforcements sent by the Quibellans, numbers far greater than the Cadwalians were prepared to face, King Otto's men not only successfully repelled the Cadwalians, but began pushing into their territory, burning farms and villages and brutalizing the locals. With the sacking of Ænonton, Alemen frantically dispatched a messenger to beg for an end to the carnage. Otto ordered one of the messengers' fingers be removed before sending him back with a message to his king to make a deal with him, man to man, or the next messenger would lose two fingers. The young king complied and arrived in 'Ænonton, hoping to negotiate with the "barbarian." Things were far less civil than Alemen had hoped; he left Ænonton without his left eye and without regaining his lost lands. Otto threatened to remove his other eye, and perhaps more, as well as sack more and more towns all the way up to and including the capital city of Cadari if Alemen reneged on their agreement and failed to allow the Arviragans to exist in peace. For thirty-seven years, the Cadwalians honored the treaty.

=Death=

While most scholars agree that Otto probably died in his sleep of natural causes (his age was unknown, but he was believed to have been in his sixties), such a death was considered too undignified for such a leader. In pop culture, he is commonly depicted as an old man with a sword drawn, preparing to fight a dragon. It is said that he defeated the dragon in mortal combat, but was fatally wounded in the process, leaving the throne to his eldest son, who would become Konrad The Great, who had his father's remains placed into a flat-bottomed boat, which was set ablaze on the shores of the Little Arvirar River, which had given him and his people the means to survive and thrive, and sent downstream and out into the Favonian Sea.