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In ancient days a young and handsome knight named Validus served an aging, ill-tempered king. The knight's selfless and faultless behavior increased his popularity at court and among the people of the kingdom. In due course, the king grew envious of the knight's popularity and sent him to live in virtual seclusion at Mountain Home, a castle on an island in a lake high in the nearby mountains.
There, the knight filled his first two years reading every scroll and book in the castle's ample library. When he had read them all, he sent a servant to a nearby monastery for something to read. The monks sent him book after book, including the monastery's rare and ancient texts, and he devoured them all. As the servant returned the very last of these to the monastery, word arrived that the king had died and several princes were raising armies to claim the crown.
As civil war swept through the kingdom without a king, the knight, freed from his sentence of seclusion by the death of the king, remained at Mountain Home to remain above the fray. He was visited frequently by the monks, who discussed many things with him and discovered he had obtained wisdom beyond his peers through his years of reading. Soon word began to spread of his stellar wisdom, and people began calling on him for advice and counsel. Several of his old friends came to visit and stayed so as to reap the nuggets of wisdom he dispensed. In time, these friends became an informal court around the knight, who was treated as an unappointed king.
After three years of civil war without an outcome having been decided, the monks approached the contesting princes and asked them to set aside their claims for the good of the kingdom and proclaim the knight as their king. After much thought and discussion, the princes agreed to do this and traveled to Mountain Home to avow their allegiance. Thus began the reign of Validus Rex, the Mountain King.
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