Hi everyone! This is the third installment of my Obscure Eberron Lore series, highlighting little-known elements of the Eberron campaign setting only found in obscure corners of canon. Today, I’ll be featuring Horas Calt, better known as the Bandit King of the Whistling Woods, who was only briefly outlined in the glossary for Keith Baker's 2005 novel City of Towers. I will be supplementing that source with some details about firbolgs from Chronicles of Eberron, since the description of the "Whistling Woods" most closely matches that of the forest of Greenhaunt.
In an officer's chamber in the Daggerwatch garrison of Sharn, a wall is draped with a tapestry depicting a famous battle. In it, the Sentinel Marshals of House Deneith square off against a powerful sorcerer and his band of rogues and fey allies. This battle, the defeat of the infamous Bandit King of the Whistling Woods in 872 YK, is still celebrated today as a great victory for House Deneith. But the focus of their assault is himself celebrated throughout Breland as a roguish folk hero and friend of the fey.
Born in Breland in 845 YK, Horas Calt developed sorcerous powers in his young adulthood which he used to pursue a life of crime. He gathered a crew of bandits and brigands, and eventually became the first person to rob the lightning rail—a caper which cemented his place in the songs of bards. The so-called Bandit King eventually made his stronghold in the depths of the Whistling Woods, a forest more commonly known as the Greenhaunt today. Calt's band continued to grow, and according to the songs, he even made alliances with the fey spirits of the wood and the "children of the Forest Queen"—also known as firbolgs.
Finally, in 872 YK, the Deneith Sentinel Marshals led a great assault against the Bandit King. They left a trail of destruction in their wake as the battle pushed further into the heart of the forest. When the Marshals finally cornered Calt, it is said that the Bandit King leaped into a great fire, preferring death before capture. But some bards still sing tales that Horas Calt was whisked away by his fey friends, and that the great fire was a doorway to the Moonlit Vale of Thelanis, where the Bandit King continues to dwell.
The Whistling Woods were once part of the great Queen's Wood, which stretched from the Blackcaps to Scions Sound before the age of Dhakaan. Over many generations, empires, and nations, humanoids slowly hacked away at the vast forest, until all that was left were three pockets of woodland suffused with great primal and fey power: the Harrowcrowns, the Imistil Forest, and the Greenhaunt (the Whistling Woods). A community of firbolgs dwell in each of these forests, having protected these lands from outsiders (and vice versa) for millennia. It is likely that the Greenhaunt firbolgs allied with the Bandit King in the 860s, and as firbolgs can live for centuries, many of those firbolg allies are likely alive today. If you are a firbolg adventurer, perhaps you remember battling the Sentinel Marshals alongside the Bandit King and his company!
Next time: the Sovereign Swords!