Today is the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the defeat of the Terrible Five and the end of the Terrible Years.
In honor of this, speeches and ceremonies are being held at Roanoke Academy.
Rachel, poor dear, is still recovering from yesterday’s heroics, and she has to stand by and see someone else rewarded for her accomplishments. (But she doesn’t mind. It’s better than being the center of attention.)
In honor of this event, a short history of the Terrible Years and their conclusion:
Sometime in 1996, Aaron Marley, a descendant of Scrooge’s partner, Jacob Marley, an archiomancer who studied archeology from the point of view of the World of the Wise, came upon a group of stone statues that he realized were living people who had been turned to stone—as a kind of prison. He figured out how to turn them back. Not only did he do so, but he also freed Aleister Crowley who had been frozen in the same manner. (Readers of the series know that Mr. Crowley had been frozen due to being possessed by the same demon who later possessed Mortimer Egg.)
Some of those he freed joined together and formed the Terrible Five. They were: Simon Magus, Baba Yaga, Koshchei the Deathless, Morgana La Fay, and Crowley.
On July 25th, 1996, Marley and the Terrible Five attacked the Wisecraft Annual Dinner, killing all the Agents of the Wisecraft—the International Law Enforcement body of the World of the Wise, including Herodotus Powers, the Grand Inquisitor of that era. (Grandfather of the Powers boys currently at Roanoke.)
Every single member.
Basically, they took out the best and the brightest of those who could oppose them.
The reign of terror known as the Terrible Years began.
Only one member of the Wisecraft survived. He was a young man named Cain March. By right of seniority—being the only survivor—he instantly became the Grand Inquisitor, the head of the Wisecraft, and began recruiting.
In the fall, the Terrible Five hunted down many of the members of the Order of Odin, which is a bit like Interpol of the Wise. The members of the Order of Odin fought back. Quite a few of them were recruited by March to fight back at higher pay.
March recruited some of the best sorcerers alive, but the Terrible Five had magic no one had ever seen. They could do things no one else had ever done or stop magic that no one else had ever stopped.
Later, it was learned that one of the sorcerers March recruited was a young man whose skills at enchantment impressed him during an attack on London. The young man was an extremely talented recent Roanoke grad whom everyone called Falc, but whose full name was Ambrose Griffin, Lord Falconridge.
On April 1st, 1997, the Terrible Five tried to wipe out Her Majesty’s Royal Watch. They showed up at Loch Sidhe Castle during a Fairy New Year celebration, when everyone was drunk, and murdered everyone there. Again, the magic of the sorcerers, and even the fairies, was no match for the powers of the Terrible Five.
However, the Watch had learned from the mistakes of the Wisecraft. Alexander Ridel, the Duke of Caledon and Lord of the Watch, had split up the Watch, only allowing a third of them to attend the festivities.
So instead of destroying the Watch, the Terrible Five massacred the Ridel Clan. Two hundred and fifty-three people were killed, over a hundred and fifty of which were Ridels. The duke was killed as was his uncle, Douglas the Lad, the Fairy King of Scots.
Alexander, the duke, was killed along with his son and his grandson, and his great-grandson and his great-great-grandson. In fact, eighteen of the duke’s direct heirs were killed in the slaughter. All his sons, all his grandsons, all his great-grandsons, as well as the descendants of the elder two of his four younger brothers.
The nineteenth in line for the ducal title happened not to be there and survived.
The next day, the Dean of Roanoke called in fifteen-year-old Magnus Ridel and informed him that nearly everyone he knew was dead, and he was now the Sixth Duke of Caledon.
The death of the Fairy King of Scots was a huge blow, as many of the more monstrous fey, who would not have dared disobey Douglas the Lad, flocked to the banner of the Terrible Five.
The Terrible Five now had two bands of followers: The Morthbrood—an ancient order of witches, warlocks, and monsters who had been loyal long ago to Morgana La Fay, and Veltdammerung (Twilight of Worlds) a collection of those who wanted to break the limits of the Society of the Wise and practice black magic.
These they let free upon the unsuspecting world, devastating magical folk and murdering the Unwary and then changing the memories of their families.
The pillage and slaughter of the Terrible Five continued. They slaughtered or tried to slaughter other families, clans, and organizations as well.
In May of 1997, the great sorcerers of Europe fell at the Battle of Ittoqqortoormiit, in Ultima Thule (a Country of the Wise in Northern Greenland taking up the territory that the Unwary world knows as Northern Greenland National Park (an area bigger than all but 32 countries.)
In August of 1997, the great sorcerers of India fell at Mohenjo Daro.
And, in April of 1998, those of America—both the USA and Canada—at the Battle of Detroit.
In November of 1998, the Terrible Five were forced back in northern Prester John’s Kingdom, by the arrival of the Library Sages of Timbuktu, but tremendous damage was done. Still, the famous Scryery was protected.
Then, in late April of 1999, the Terrible Five and their forces attacked Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts (which is in Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY or Cold Spring, NY, depending on which side of the Hudson you think Roanoke Island belongs to.)
Their first action was a sneak attack in which the seven greatest sorcerers at Roanoke were slain, including the father of current tutor, Mr. Tuck.
They then told the remaining staff to leave if they wished to live. All but two did: Dean Moth and Maverick Badger, then an Art tutor and a proctor.
Sarpy (Umberto Sarpento), the custodian, also stayed, but he hid in the catacombs beneath Roanoke Academy and helped the students surreptitiously. (Some say he stayed due to bravery, while others claimed he had been sleeping and woke up to discover that the school was occupied and he had lost his opportunity to flee.)
The Terrible Five held the students as hostages while they dug up the campus looking for something. (In Guardians of the Twilight Lands, Rachel and friends finally discover what they were looking for.)
At that time, the student branch of the Young Sorcerers’ League was headed by an intrepid young man named James Darling, a descendent of one of the children who had traveled with Peter Pan. He and his five friends, later known as the Six Musketeers, organized a resistance. The other five were Finn MacDannan, Ellyllon MacDannan, Wendy MacDannan, Scarlett Mallory, and Crispin Fisher.
The Six Musketeers told the rest of the YSL that the students had at their fingertips all the resources an adult sorcerer might call upon and that they could mount a defense. Together with the rest of the students, they scoured the library, discovered the weaknesses of the Terrible Five, and created five great talismans, almost as powerful as those of the gods: the Tarnhelm that turned the wearer invisible, the Tarnkappe which granted shapechange, the shield Svalinn used to stop Morgana La Fay’s deadly fire, the sword Nothung that cut through the charmed life of Baba Yaga, the dagger used to destroy Simon Magus, and a ring, the nature of which they never shared.
In reality, Wendy MacDannan had visions, and it was her visions that instructed them as to how to make the great talismans and learn the spells they used to defeat the Terrible Five.
On May 1st, 1999, the students attacked. They had worked out what had to be done to defeat each of the five. They broke into teams and carried out their plan.
They succeeded, though at great cost. Later that afternoon, the combined armies of the rest of the World of the Wise arrived to mop up the Morthbrood and Veltdammerung. (For the story of why the military did not arrive earlier, see Guardians of the Twilight Lands.)