A Timeline of the Marnic Federation

This article shall attempt to cover the entire history of the Marnic Federation (a span of over six hundred years), from its foundation in Pre-Marnic Year 5 to its final collapse in Free Year 10. As such, it is both very long and somewhat obsessively detailed. Read it if you like: it is background lore meant to give a historical framework to Kerlonna, not critical information.

=The Early Years=

PMY 5: An agreement is reached between the High Senates of Marnoz and Amvidra, the King of Herarzä, and the Speaker of Cil Adasiga, to unite under the guidance of the High Senate of Marnoz. Marnoz declares war upon Eädreñ.

Spring of PMY 3: The King of Eädreñ surrenders to Marnoz, and the Eädric military is abolished.

PMY 1: The Marnic Federal Legions are officially created. The Marnic Federation of the Tlankuram is established, and the Marnic Count of Years is instated.

MY 25: Herarzä is raided for the first time in the Federation’s history, by tribesmen from the Kruvates Plains. The Third Legion is stationed within the city. In late summer, the King of Herarzä is assassinated by legionary officers, and the royal family is imprisoned, based on an accusation of selling grain that should have been kept in the city granaries.

MY 26: The High and Main Senates of Amvidra are dissolved by decree of the Marnic High Senate. This begins the Senate War between the Federal Legions and the local militaries of Amvidra, Eädreñ, and Cil Adasiga.

MY 28: The Speaker of Cil Adasiga is executed by a rebelling mob, due to his attempt to conscript soldiers from the city’s population. Voluntarily, the Eädric King abdicates goes into exile in the Sea of Injil, where he later dies of illness. The Fifth Legion, originally drawn from Eädreñ and stationed in Amvidra, is decimated for dereliction of duty. The Senate War ends with the Marnic Senates reigning as the sole authority in the Tlankuram.

MY 41: The Federation enters a military alliance with the Injili city of Tarok Mezalin, and thus engages in a longstanding war between that city and Šarrabdu. The Fourth, Sixth, and Seventh Legions are deployed from Marnoz to commence a siege of Šarrabdu together with forces from Tarok Mezalin.

MY 44: The Siege of Šarrabdu ends with the surrender of the city, and its annexation by the Federation (along with all of its vassal cities). Alarmed at this sudden expansionist move, Tarok Mezalin breaks its military alliance with the Federation. The third great Injili city, Kulgril, soon sends forth soldiers to assault the Seventh Legion and preclude a possible attack by the Marnic forces at such a time as was more advantageous to the invaders.

MY 45: In the winter of this year, the Battle of Zapor occurs between the soldiers of Kulgril and the Seventh Legion. It is a seemingly decisive victory for the Injili, but the three legions rapidly regroup in Šarrabdu and assault a vassal city of Kulgril, Galsir. The city quickly falls, and fresh forces sent from Marnoz aid in seizure of the navies of both Galsir and Šarrabdu. Overland, skirmishes continue between the legionary forces and the soldiers of Kulgril.

MY 46: The commandeered fleets are sailed to Kulgril, where they blockade the city’s harbour. The entire army of Šarrabdu submits to the direction of the legionary officers, who then send the Injili soldiers towards Kulgril in order to combat its armies.

MY 49: The city of Kulgril falls. Its Lord is executed, and the original invasive legion forces sent by Marnoz are withdrawn to the Tlankuram, replaced by fresh forces recruited from both the Tlankuram and Šarrabdu that are stationed in the defeated city. At the same time, expeditionary forces are sent from the Federation to begin exploring the Crihur Plains south of the Burtajao Hills and north of the Àŋerwoi Forest.

MY 51: The Lord of Tarok Mezalin signs peace treaties and trade agreements with Marnoz, ending what will later become known as the Injili Campaigns (MY 41 to MY 51).

MY 59: Commencement of the construction of the High Geñkaryic Road between the Tlankuram and the Sea of Injil.

MY 60: The First Cleansing begins as a universal bounty is declared across the Federation for the hides of the Duhumor, a genocidal attempt to both appease the Injili people and protect settlers of the wild regions in the vicinity of the Dustplains.

MY 62: A new trade-post is established far from the Tlankuram along the eastern coast of Kerlonna. Its name is Askalris.

MY 64: Legionaries of the Eighth Legion are sent by sea from Šarrabdu and are stationed at Askalris, to protect the Marnic merchants there, as well as (clandestinely) investigate the possibility of eventually annexing the region.

MY 65: After a count of nearly eleven thousand hides, the bounty for the Duhumor is ended by Marnic decree and the First Cleansing ends. Meanwhile, Marnic vessels travelling from the Sea of Injil to Askalris investigate the Twelve Isles, an archipelago off of the eastern coast of Kerlonna discovered by the Injili centuries before, but dismissed by them as being unworthy of settlement. Although intrigued by the total lack of inhabitation by any speaking peoples, the Marnic explorers do not take the time for a more thorough investigation of the region.

=The Jailyurenni Campaign=

MY 70: Legionary forces, acting under the pretext of “protecting the territories and people” of the regions surrounding Herarzä, travel northeast from that city into the territory of the Jailyurenni, a tribe dwelling along the shores of Lake Nursai (in modern southwestern Drecitou). Skirmishes quickly break out between the Jailyurenni and the Marnic soldiers, growing soon into pitched battles as the legionaries invade deeper into the heart of Jailyurenni territory.

MY 72: By decree of the High Senate, the current territories of the Federation (at this point only the regions of the Tlankuram and the Sea of Injil) are divided into various provinces, each ruled by a Provincial Governor elected by the Main Senate. The qualifications for a Governor, being both military and political experience without a need for Marnic citizenship, are the points of two months’ vociferous debate within the Senatorial Halls. Meanwhile, the Jailyurenni continue to violently resist the legionary forces, based in Herarzä, that have already claimed their main settlement and now attempt to build military roads between the city and the captured town.

MY 78: In late winter, after eight years of warfare against the Marnic legions, the chieftain of the Jailyurenni, Warsuna, is captured by the legionaries. With the wooden collar of a slave tight around his neck, Warsuna is taken south to Marnoz, where he is knelt before the High Senate and beheaded. As for his family, records show that they were captured alongside him, and they were later sold into slavery in the Sea of Injil. The Jailyurenni remain a threat in the region about Lake Nursai, but they no longer dare open battle with the legionary forces, and their threat becomes confined to that of ambushes and raids.

MY 79: Affected by his childhood experiences of the Marnic invasion of his home city, the Šarrabduyo philosopher Xarimates authors the foundational text of philosophy in the Federal Era: On the Qualities of Knowledge, a concise and plain-spoken discourse addressing ethics, religious disparities between the Injili and the people of the Tlankuram, and epistemology.

=The Ahrese Crisis, the First Invasion of Tefaruq, & the Settlement of the Twelve Isles=

MY 80: A disaffected faction in the Guild begins to take shape, mainly consisting of conjurers. They name themselves the Ahrese for Ahren Basritha, a conjurer who was executed in MY 78 by the order of the Archmasters for “treason against the Guild.” The Ahrese openly agitate against the rule of the Archmasters, demanding that restrictions on their research in conjuration be lifted.

MY 81: Accused of impiety because of his religious reflections within Qualities, Xarimates leaves the Sea of Injil and, after nine months journeying, resettles in Marnoz, where he authors a response to this experience: Transmigration, a far more abstract and metaphysical work than its predecessor which speculates on the mechanics of reincarnation and the origin of the world.

MY 82: Oganim Äulu’Orian, a chieftain of a small tribe known as the Fahalenni that dwells in the land to the north of the Jailyurenni, departs his homeland alongside his family during a severe drought. They gain entry to the Federation and eventually settle in Cil Adasiga, where Oganim takes up the blacksmith’s trade. Meanwhile, in the Guild, all conjurers who have affiliated themselves with the Ahrese are banished from Teogene, with many of their ranking leaders being imprisoned.

MY 86: Oganim’s grandson, Teyor, is discovered to have arcane potential, and is taken to Teogene for training as a wizard.

MY 87: As Askalris continues to grow in both wealth and population, it is declared by the High Senate to be Marnic territory (despite its great distance from the rest of the nation), and the capital of a new province in that region. During that same year, the banished Ahrese infiltrate Teogene under cover of darkness and rescue their imprisoned leaders from the Guild, taking them hundreds of kilometres to the south, to the Burtajao Hills in what is now southern Drecitou. There, the terrible truth is discovered: the Ahrese have created all the necessary conditions to open a gate to the realms infernal, and unleash a horrific tide of fiends to overwhelm the mortal world. This madness is averted only at the last moment by the heroism of a traitor to the Ahrese, Vathel the Swift, a gnome who desperately warns the Masters of Teogene and is then murdered by the rest of the Ahrese. As the gate is about to open, the Archmasters of the Guild themselves manifest in the Burtajao Hills, banishing the fiends that spring forth, and then slaughtering the Ahrese conjurers. However, they are too late to prevent the gate’s corruption from searing itself into the land. The trees surrounding it wither, and a great pit is burned into the earth, down to the bedrock dozens of metres below. The few Ahrese that survive the general destruction of their movement enter accursed pacts with fiends, twisting their souls and transforming them into the Unburnt: warlocks.

MY 89: As the births of tieflings become increasingly common throughout the regions around the Burtajao Hills, a law is declared in Crihuram Province (the former territory of the Jailyurenni) that all “abominations of the womb” must be put to death by burning at a pyre.

MY 91: As a matter of pragmatism, the High Senate of Marnoz adopts a similar measure as the Governor of Crihuram Province chose two years before, following the sensation surrounding a single tiefling birth in Herarzä in MY 90.

MY 95: After five years of advocating the measure, a High Senator by the name of Livara, High House Riġuzan, succeeds in passing a decree through the Senates ordering an invasion of northern Tefaruq by soldiers from Tarok Mezalin. Legions from across the Federation contribute soldiers, who gather at encampments surrounding a town southeast of Tarok Mezalin, and who are joined by Injili soldiers. Though the Injili nobility gravely warns against any attempt to invade the strange realm of Tefaruq, they are ignored by the Marnic Senates and legionary officers. After spending the summer encamped, the soldiers begin moving in early autumn. It is a catastrophe as soon as they cross the border. The counterattack is more savage than they could possibly have imagined. The invasive force only manages to get about sixty kilometres beyond the border before the officers defy the Senates’ orders and begin retreating. As soon as the invasive force crosses the border and leaves Tefaruq, however, the Tefaruqi cease their resistance and return to their homeland. Of an invasion force of some six thousand soldiers, meant to capture the peripheral regions of Tefaruq and establish a forward base for later attacks, two thousand are dead. Most of the remaining four thousand will later be honourably discharged from their respective militaries, too traumatised by their experiences in Tefaruq to continue serving. Livara Riġuzan is disgraced, and the Legions are left ashamed of their failure for many years.

MY 103: At the age of 26, after seventeen years of training in the Guild at Teogene, Teyor (with his surname now rendered Äl’Orian) is permitted to depart from the university, and travels back to Cil Adasiga. His grandfather dead for eight years, he finds his family already integrating into the Marnic society. Disappointed with the mundane life to be had in the Tlankuram as compared to his training in the Guild, Teyor spends time contemplating various careers before finally settling on one of the most dangerous: explorer-adventurer.

MY 104: Teyor leaves Cil Adasiga with his family’s blessings, sailing along the coast of the Tlankuram together with a band of equally odd and daring individuals. They arrive at Marnoz, where they study the most current maps to be found, and decide on the Twelve Isles, east and southeast of Askalris, whose interiors were never penetrated by either early Marnic or Injili explorers. In Marnoz, Teyor meets a misfortunate young nobleman named Kriyata Maknid, of twenty years, who is intensely interested in both escaping an arranged marriage and in adventures. Teyor eventually names Kriyata his second-in-command, and together with their crew, they leave Marnoz in the summer of 104 to attempt what has never been done before: sail down the entire lengths of the Rivers Rau and Geñkaryo, and from the Mouths of the Geñkaryo then make their ways to the Twelve Isles.

MY 107: After two years’ sailing, an extremely violent incident with the Duhumor, an accidental elven marriage, and a replacement of their vessel for one more seaworthy, the crew serving Teyor and Kriyata finally arrives at the Twelve Isles. They land at a particular island, in the northern end of the archipelago, that fascinates Teyor’s arcane sensibilities, for it is cloaked in unnatural mist even in the heat of the summer sun. On foot, Teyor goes alone to the island’s interior. Two days after his departure, the unnatural mist suddenly breaks apart, as if by a great wind, and Teyor returns in satisfaction, announcing that the island will be the site of their first settlement.

MY 111: A strange delegation arrives in Marnoz, led by Teyor Ältorian (his surname having become garbled by his crew during their journey to the Twelve Isles). He officially declares the foundation of a new nation covering the entirety of the Twelve Isles, which he names the Fahala Alliance, after the tribe into which he had been born. He further declares that the Alliance, as a new nation, wishes to peacefully incorporate itself into the Marnic Federation as a province. The High Senate eventually assents, after working through its initial suspicion. Teyor’s family, when contacted, chooses to follow him back to the Isles. However, when Teyor approaches House Maknid with a similar proposal, they refuse: they are ashamed of Kriyata fleeing his marriage, and want nothing more to do with him.

=The Vorda Wars=

MY 118: In the city of Jailyurenni (the same settlement that was captured from that tribe over forty years earlier), the Governor of Crihuram Province proposes annexation of the territories of the eastern Crihur Plains which lie about the valley of the Vorda River. When he is assassinated only a month later by poisoning, the High Senate retaliates by accusing the Vorda tribes of the crime, and orders the invasion of the region. This begins the Vorda Wars, as legionary forces are deployed from Crihuram Province into the Vorda Valley and Askalris is heavily fortified against possible attack.

MY 119: An explorer named Uträmvi (formerly a slave-scholar, who won his freedom by escaping his merchant owner in Eädreñ) becomes the first traveller to write concerning a crossing of the Vrotispal Range. Under the cover of summer night, he leaves his hiding place in the city of Amvidra, taking a stolen vessel up the Yiceil River. Around a hundred kilometres south-by-southwest of the city, he sells his craft at a fishing village and, on foot, begins trekking into the Vrotispal foothills: in this period, utter wilderness. Keeping a journal in anticipation that he will die, he records his discovery of a broad mountain pass, with ruins of fortifications and even a roughly built road lying at its base. In fact, it is the Kyosan Pass, formerly a vital trade route between the Tlankuram and the southern plains, left abandoned after the Heart-Plague laid waste to the region in PMY 220. Three hundred and thirty-nine years later, Uträmvi details how he makes his way through the ruins and new-grown forests, finally descending the other side and rediscovering the lands beyond the Vrotispal. For three centuries it had been assumed by the people east of the Vrotispal that the Heart-Plague had utterly destroyed the southwestern lands, but Uträmvi soon discovers that all races of the southern plains have revived.

MY 121: As the Vorda Wars grow increasingly savage far to the northeast, Uträmvi arrives in Marnoz, at the head of an exotic delegation of southern humans (of the K’usar peoples) and halflings, offering a great swath of southern land as a gift to the Federation. Namely, this consists of all land east of the Jayasaro River, and the three great swamps along the coast of the Sea of the Sun. Uträmvi neglects to mention the inferiority of this territory, instead donating his journal to the Great Library of Marnoz and using the money he is given by a gratified (and deluded) Senate to go on another adventure, which eventually carries him to Idroslekh and an unknown fate beyond the Great Western Dakylsthas.

MY 122: In the northern reaches of the Jayasaro River, the first settlement is established by a small number of hardy legionaries. They name it Darvonuls: in Old Marnic, “the fist,” for its solidly constructed stone walls. Meanwhile, in the valley of the Vorda River, the local legionary forces manage an astonishing victory over the Wisarenni when their chieftain is discovered to have kept a secret tiefling daughter alive. Hundreds of his warriors simply defect, and he is later found drowned in his bath, his daughter burned alive in the cooking fire of his home.

MY 124: The Fifteenth Legion overwhelms a tribal fortress on an island at the point where the Vorda and Geñkaryo merge. The Legion appropriates the fortress and names it Vordañgrati: in the native language, “defeated Vorda.” This name proves prophetic as the native resistance begins to rapidly crumble and reinforcements begin to march northwards from Askalris.

MY 125: The Vorda Wars officially end as Vordañgrati is declared the “transitional capital” of a new province covering the valley of the Vorda, as well as the eastern regions of the Crihur Plains. This new province, Veruna Crihuram, is placed under military rule “until such time as the Marnic law may be established there.”

=The Settlers’ Years=

MY 132: After a decade’s exploration of the Jayasaro River and the southern swamps, the settlers of Darvonuls bitterly report that the land granted to the Federation by Uträmvi and the southern tribes is either disease-infested, infertile, or both. Rather than forsake territory, however, the Senates command the creation of a line of six fortresses along the Jayasaro River: ostensibly for the defence of their border, but in truth a preparation for an eventual invasion of the K’usar and their plains. The southernmost of these fortresses, the Bear-Tail (named after a colourful jest among legionaries of the period that need not be repeated here), is built right upon the mouths of the Jayasaro.

MY 134: The Second Cleansing (again an organised attempted extermination of the Duhumor through bounty upon their hides) begins in an attempt to establish an overland route connecting Kulgril and Askalris along the coast. Legionaries as well as hunters and trappers all partake in the slaughter, which is at is most vicious near Askalris, which had not participated in the First Cleansing.

MY 140: Veruna Crihuram, after fifteen years’ rule by the legions, is placed under the rule of a Provincial Governor, and Vordañgrati is made its proper capital.

MY 142: Nearly one hundred and twenty years since the raid that began the Senate War, Herarzä is attacked once again by tribesmen of the Kruvates Plains, who penetrate the city’s walls and loot its temple. The local legionaries are decimated for their failure to defend the city, and a punitive expedition is prepared by the order of the High Senate, meant to retaliate against the raiders.

MY 143: The punitive expedition collapses about one hundred and twenty kilometres to the northwest of Herarzä as the legionaries are hounded by the Altuvei tribe, the preeminent tribe of the Plains. The Second Cleansing is ended at a count of twenty thousand hides and a satisfied pronouncement from the Main Senate that the Duhumor have been expelled from the regions about the River Rau.

MY 148: The construction of the Eastern Highroad begins, being a mammoth project to link Askalris and Kulgril over a span of nearly eight hundred kilometres of wilderness. Meanwhile, at the age of 72, Teyor Ältorian abdicates from his reign as Lord of the Fahala Alliance, and departs from the Twelve Isles, returning to the adventurous, exploratory habits of his youth as he journeys across eastern Kerlonna.

MY 150: After having studied many cryptic accounts of “the Hidden City” and following the guidance of ancient folk-tales told by the low people of Amvidra, Teyor discovers the Nyadegtaan city of Ezluthai. Though he fails to gain entry to it, he climbs (with the use of some potent magic) to the rim of the mountain and sketches out a fragmentary portrait of the city within the mountain’s basin. He sells his journal to an extremely wealthy gold merchant in Amvidra, then heads northwest, to explore the regions around the Owamtu River beyond the northern foothills of the Vrotispal.

MY 155: The Eastern Highroad is completed, the largest road that the Federation has yet constructed, and rapidly swells into a major trade artery linking the Twelve Isles, Askalris, the Crihur Plain, and the Sea of Injil, despite its considerable length. Darvonuls, after a span of uneventful watchfulness, is attacked by K’usaran forces that are considerably more organised than the tribesmen of the Crihur Plains, led by a powerful warlord known as the White Crow.

MY 157: After driving back the forces of the White Crow for the third time, the commander at Darvonuls requests that the Senates provide some sort of aid for his beleaguered post. He is supplied with engineers and Injili legionaries, to redesign and strengthen the fortifications as well as bolster the stronghold. Some of these legionaries are eventually deployed southwards to the Bear-Tail, considered the weakest point in the chain of fortress along the Jayasaro.

MY 160: Teyor Ältorian, now 84, resurfaces in Eädreñ a decade after his departure to the northwest, now extraordinarily prosperous. As it soon turns out, he spent the last ten years locating the skull of Nyadeg, which in 159 he sold to the Guild for an undisclosed sum. This being the last piece of Nyadeg’s complete skeleton that the Guild was seeking, the news quickly travels through the Guild concerning Teyor’s exploits, inspiring both admiration and deep envy. Using his newfound wealth, Teyor travels from the Tlankuram down to the Sea of Injil, and from there back to his home in the Twelve Isles. Finding it little changed from the time of his departure (that is, it is still a rustic settlement surrounded by forest with only one road to access the sea), he begins a massive project to build roads, encourage settlement, and cultivate crops in the thin island soil. Though he officially serves as an advisor for his grandson Yukaima, who is the proper Lord of the Fahala Alliance, it is clear to the people of the Twelve Isles that Teyor is the true power in the land. The island on which he dwells soon takes on the name “Teyoram”, and the man himself does nothing to dispel this.

MY 161: Kriyata Maknid dies at the age of 78, and Teyor Ältorian, in remembrance of him, grants lordship of the four southernmost of the Twelve Isles to Kriyata’s family. Teyor then petitions the Main Senate to ennoble Kriyata’s descendants as a separate family from House Maknid of Marnoz (which regards its eastern cousins as little better than half-mad survivalists descended from a coward).

MY 162: The news reaches that the Maknids of the Twelve Isles have been granted the official name House Marutna Maknid: “southern Maknid”, in Old Marnic. This occurred to the sharp dissent of House Maknid, which was left with little choice but to angrily accept the news.

MY 164: Teyor Ältorian, writing in a letter to the High Senate of Marnoz, first proposes a radical idea soon to be known as “investiture:” the fusion of temporal and arcane governments, and the assimilation of the Guild as an organ of the Federal state. The idea is received with polarised responses from both the Guild and the Senates: many of the Senators respond with outright shock, while a few proclaim it genius; and the Masters of the Guild find themselves deeply troubled by its suggestion, given the extremely rapid expansion of the Federation’s territory and military might since its foundation less than two centuries earlier. No official events take place because of Teyor’s radical suggestion, but the news travels rapidly through the Federation, and the people of Marnoz begin to look at the Guild in a new light: that of acquisition.

MY 165: A column from the Eighteenth Legion, consisting of a hundred and three legionaries, goes missing during an exploration of the wilderness due east of Cil Adasiga. Their bodies are not found.

MY 166: After having crossed into K’usaran territory west of the Jayasaro thirteen days earlier, the Twenty-third Legion discovers the White Crow, hanging from a tree, with his soldiers sitting by him, having cast down their weapons and surrendered after they despaired of their eleven years’ struggle. The Federation annexes all land fifty kilometres west of the Jayasaro River, now giving it complete control of the river.

MY 168: Teyor Ältorian, now at the age of 92, partakes in what will become his greatest spectacle: the revelation of the Adamant Spire. It was originally discovered deep underground in a cave on the island of Teyoram by Teyor during his initial exploration of the island sixty-one years before. For decades the Spire had remained hidden from general knowledge while Teyor and his descendants (many of whom also possessed arcane power) carved out the cavern, cleaned the Spire, and studied its properties. By 168, the cave had been completely excavated to the surface, and the Spire now sat in a great pit at the centre of the island, not far from the main settlement. Teyor informed the Guild that the Spire possessed many bizarre arcane properties and was immovable, even by the greatest magical force. Meanwhile, the low people of the Twelve Isles begin to worship the Spire as they glimpse its most astounding feature: an eternally burning azure flame, without fuel, locked in the crystalline depths of the white pillar.

MY 170: Teyor Ältorian, a wizard, explorer, and political leader, dies at the age of 94 in his home upon the island of Teyoram. Beginning a tradition of his family, his son buries Teyor at the immediate foot of the Adamant Spire, and the bodies of Teyor’s two wives are exhumed from their original grave out in the forest and buried alongside him. His grandson then demands from the Marnic Senates a motion to ennoble Teyor and his descendants.

MY 171: In late winter, a messenger arrives from Marnoz at the island of Teyoram, carrying an official proclamation of the Main Senate: the foundation of “House Elthorian,” the name altered to match the common rendering of the name found in the population of the Twelve Isles. Somewhat vexed by the fourth alteration of his family’s name in less than a century, Teyor’s son does not even offer the messenger a cup of wine.

MY 172: A major construction effort is undertaken by the Federation’s engineers that will soon link the eastern and southern halves of Kerlonna after four hundred and four years of separation: the reconstruction of the Kyosan Highroad. With the highroad beginning at the city of Amvidra and terminating at the settlement of Darvonuls, it will run to nearly the same length as the Eastern Highroad between Kulgril and Askalris.

=The Third Cleansing / The Elven War=

MY 174: The lost column of the Eighteenth Legion is discovered, all one hundred and three of the legionaries dead, in the western depths of the Àŋerwoi Forest by a wandering band of halflings, under the leadership of a hunter named Mhudral. Under cover of a winter night, Mhudral’s band works to unearth the bodies and build crude wagons to carry them. A season later, the band arrives in the city of Marnoz, and presents the bodies before a full assembly of the Senates. Mhudral himself declares before the Main Senate that he believes that the legionaries were murdered by elven arrows, which he claims to have found fallen among the corpses. In a passion of outrage, High Senator Kunyera of House Dahav calls for a war of vengeance against the elves of the Àŋerwoi. The motion passes in just a week, with riotous approval from the low people of the Tlankuram, and begins what is later called the Third Cleansing: an attempted extermination of the elves. A bounty is declared for elven heads, and a force of some three thousand legionaries is assembled in Cil Adasiga, trained for combat in the forest, and deployed eastward in the summer.

MY 175: The legionaries, mercenaries, and bounty hunters operating in the Àŋerwoi begin reporting from multiple locations that the elves utterly deny any attack upon or even contact with the Lost Column, even under the duress of torture. Eight hundred legionaries withdraw from the Àŋerwoi, protesting the judgement of the Senates.

MY 176: Many of its members uneasy due to the conflicting reports between Mhudral’s report and those of their own legionaries, the Main Senate command the live capture of Mhudral, wherever he is, and place a heavy bounty upon his head. The greatest manhunt (or, in this case, halfling-hunt) yet to occur in the history of the Federation begins.

MY 177: Mhudral’s band is discovered beyond the borders of the Federation, wandering among the headwaters of the Owamtu River. They are all arrested by a band of bounty hunters (after a battle which killed perhaps a quarter of the caravan) and brought back to Eädreñ in chains, and then sailed across the Tlankuram to be interrogated in Marnoz. For four months they are tried, and at the end they are found guilty and scourged for perjury. The scourging (a whipping in which the whip is tied into knots) leaves Mhudral and another third of the band dead. The Third Cleansing is terminated two weeks later, with the number of casualties standing at seven hundred elves, and forty-two hundred human and halfling legionaries, mercenaries, and bounty hunters. Ashamed at the depth of their misjudgement, the Senates forbid any contact between citizens of the Federation and the elves of the Àŋerwoi Forest. The truth behind the destruction of the lost column has not been discovered to this day: their bodies were lost in the Fall of Marnoz, and most records of the Third Cleansing were destroyed by order of the Senates to conceal their involvement in it.

MY 184: Teyor Elthorian’s great-grandson, Aktursa Elthorian, authors a short treatise entitled On the Nature of Investiture, advocating the suggestion made by his great-grandfather twenty years before: the fusion of the Guild with the Marnic state, to strengthen both. He is given more attention than before: the idea has become popular among the more radical segments of the Senates, and there are even supporters of it within the ranks of the Guild Masters. A motion is proposed within the Main Senate to open official diplomatic channels with the Guild, which succeeds with a significant majority of approving votes.

MY 187: Tensions between the K’usar of the southern plains and the settlers at Davonuls (as the name has become known) ease somewhat with the establishment of the Inrika Measure: due to the lack of legionaries patrolling the fortresses along the Jayasaro River, permission is given by the Main Senate to the commander of Davonuls to hire K’usaran warriors as mercenaries with similar status to a full Federal legionary. The military forces along the Jayasaro rapidly expand as large numbers of previously unfriendly K’usar enlist to protect the fortresses against what seems to be the hostility of a group of renegade red dragons.

MY 189: After years of hard military service in the frontier beyond Herarzä, a legionary general named Giyursiv is stationed at the Bear-Tail, ostensibly to protect the southernmost regions of the Federation against possible K’usaran attack. In reality, the post is meant to serve as a denouement to the general’s career before his final retirement: his years now number fifty.

=The Marches of Smoke=

MY 191: The fortifications at the Bear-Tail are suddenly and overwhelmingly assaulted one dark summer night by a previously unknown force: the drow of Zresskeilt. Over three-quarters of the defenders are slain, and Giyursiv is badly wounded as he flees for Davonuls. The drow, attacking from their ships, burn down the fort and then sail up the Jayasaro River, assaulting the city of Davonuls a month later and taking some eighty inhabitants captive for slaves. The drow then sail back down the Jayasaro and vanish beyond the southern horizon of the Sea of the Sun. Similar military reports begin surfacing throughout the southern plains: Nevaiallan sacked on the verge of the White Thirst, the markets at the Isthmus of Najvirianul burned down, whole K’usaran tribes enslaved.

Winter of MY 192: Davonuls is attacked a second time by the drow, this time by land, and half of the city is burned down as the dark elves drag away two hundred captives. One of the drow is taken prisoner in turn, and after extreme torture reveals that he has come from the far southern Obsidian Empire, and that his people plan on a mass migration to southern Kerlonna, from where they will plunge the continent into war, eventually conquering it in the name of their Empress. Giyursiv, stationed there since the fall of the Bear-Tail, is so horrified that he immediately departs for Marnoz.

Summer of MY 192: After having arrived in Marnoz and sought permission to speak before an assembly of the Main Senate, Giyursiv passionately describes the threat posed by the attacking drow, as well as what little information he has gathered of their strange land in the distant south: Zresskeilt. His captive, now little more than a skeletal slave, recounts all that he has told Giyursiv, and finishes by fanatically pledging his allegiance to the Empire once more, and killing himself with a knife hidden on his person. In shock, the Main Senate immediately begins to deliberate about the potential threat. In late summer, disastrous news arrives from the south: Davonuls has fallen to the drow, and its people are in chains.

Autumn of MY 192: After a counterattack by the Federal Legions manages to put the drow occupying Davonuls to rout, it is discovered that virtually all of the human population that remained had been enslaved and suffered the worst treatment imaginable: several dozen had been starved to death, while others were forced to cannibalise one another, as object lessons in order to suppress dissent. Some parents had been forced to murder their own children to protect them from the agonies of starvation, while others saw their children lined up and hanged for attempting to escape the city. Most starkly, a young nobleman who thought to fight back against a drow soldier who was attacking him was hanged by his feet in the town square and publicly castrated, then burned to death. These appalling acts inspire such horror among the legionaries that they put all of their seventy drow captives to death by drowning them in the Jayasaro River.

Winter of MY 193: As news reaches Marnoz of the extreme cruelty with which the drow terrorised and dominated the people of Davonuls, the Main Senate is slow to action, concerned at the possibility of counterattack by the drow in the south. Due to the torpid pace of Senate politics, Giyursiv grows weary of appealing to the state, and instead incites a riot in the streets of Marnoz with lurid (yet strictly factual) descriptions of drow atrocities, inspiring the terrified people of the city to surround the Halls of the Senates and break past the ranks of the guards. A chaotic scene unfolds as Giyursiv strides ahead of the milling masses, roaring out to the Senators, “The rapists shall take your sons and daughters next!” Strong-armed by this sudden act of mob politics, the leader of the Main Senate, Eskriva of House Yertai, acquiesces to Giyursiv’s demands.

Spring of MY 193: The most massive mobilisation in the history of Kerlonna begins. More than half of the entire body of the Legions is assembled outside of Marnoz, while the Senates sign a general treaty with the herdsmen of the Kruvates Plains: in exchange for a cancellation of hostilities and a tribute weighing in the thousands of pounds of silver, the Kruvates tribes agree to join the war effort as mercenaries. Meanwhile, the K’usar of the southern plains do not need such bribery: they have endured numerous drow attacks since the fall of Davonuls, and hundreds of their people have been taken as slaves or slain by the dark elves. Unexpectedly for the Marnics, they find a fresh ally among the elves: a thousand of them marched to Herarzä from the Heiśêglu during the winter, somehow having learned of the drow attacks to their south. Idroslekhi, Janhlira from the northwest, and Elutapi from the northeast are also recruited by gold and promises of treasure in the Obsidian Empire. The Bear-Tail is reconstructed by a massive influx of legionaries, and huge shipyards are constructed there while work-gangs begin floating logs down the Jayasaro River.

Summer of MY 193: Two thousand more elves assemble in Marnoz. Taxes across the Federation double as the Senates pool the provincial treasuries to fund the shipyards at the Bear-Tail. The Bear-Tail has since swollen to a vast military fortification, with thirty thousand soldiers and ten thousand of their various retainers and assistants assembled there. In Tarok Mezalin, at the edge of the Federation, a spirited rebellion breaks out among the native nobility, angered by an attempted conscription of their young men to serve as legionaries in the south, as well as by the high increase in taxation. The Main Senate retaliates with an act of unexpected sternness: shutting down the High Geñkaryic Road and sending naval vessels from the Twelve Isles to Tarok Mezalin and blockading the harbour.

Autumn of MY 193: The official Guild ambassador to the Marnic Federation privately meets with the Leader of the High Senate, Talvenat of High House Ärigmi. Two days later, at a meeting of the High Senate, the Lord Ärigmi declares Investiture of the Guild “in the shadow of a common enemy which may yet plunge our race into utter night.” The response of the majority of Marnic Senators and military commanders is jubilant disbelief: the tactical advantage of having a full force of wizards during the invasion of Zresskeilt is almost incalculable. During Virkoli Yatimturri, a drow assault force attempts to sabotage the shipbuilding operations at the Bear-Tail, but is viciously overcome and almost entirely destroyed by the efforts of several dozen elven archers stationed there. The two captives they attempt to take kill themselves out of fear of their possible treatment by the elves.

Winter of MY 194: An independent Idroslekhi observer from the city of Kemret describes the gathering of the Federation’s army to be “the greatest assembly of humanity’s collective will in our race’s history.” At this count, over a hundred thousand soldiers have assembled along the Jayasaro River, and the fleet constructed at the Bear-Tail has stripped the riverbanks of forest for tens of miles. Rather than slow the pace of their military actions due to snow upon the Kyosan Pass the Marnic Legions clear the Highroad of snow and continue their work. The nobility of Tarok Mezalin depose the present Lord of the city and acquiesce to the demands of the Marnic Senates, offering up hundreds of young men as legionary conscripts. The blockade on their harbour and blockage of the High Geñkaryic Road are lifted.

Spring of MY 194: Ten warships, the first completed at the Bear-Tail, set forth upon the Sea of the Sun to reconnoitre the southern coastline. At the mouth of the Gulf of Dakhoiit’, they are attacked by drow vessels in the first major battle of the Marches of Smoke: the Battle of the Black Ships. Three of the ten ships are sunk, while two more are severely damaged; the attacking drow, meanwhile, are soundly defeated. Naval commanders estimate two hundred human fatalities, and about three hundred and fifty drow fatalities. It is noted that a new name has emerged for Davonuls upon the Jayasaro, due to the massive influx of hired soldiers that cannot speak Old Marnic: Davnols. Due to the mechanics of Investiture, the university at Teogene is declared Federal territory, despite being several hundred kilometres north of the border in the Burtajao Hills. A group of seven hundred wizards undertake a massive teleportation, leaving from Teogene and arriving on the opposite side of the continent, at the Bear-Tail. The army now stands at one hundred and forty thousand soldiers.

Summer of MY 194: Giyursiv, the man who first demanded that the Senates act against the drow threat, is declared Lord-Commander of the Marnic Federal Legions, the highest military post in the history of the Federation. Furthermore, he is ennobled, his family entitled after Giyursiv’s role: Riketna, or “vigilant.” The construction of the fleet at the Bear-Tail is completed. The full force of the united armies assembles for embarkation: one hundred and eighty thousand soldiers of the Marnic Legions and the Elutapi, Janhlira, plains-folk, Idroslekhi, and K’usar, as well as the elves and the Guild. On Second Rigvarneu, Virkoin Ġame, 194th Marnic Year, the first vessel leaves for unknown geographies.

Third Rigvarneu, Diontämu Ġame, MY 194: The first vessel of the fleet comes within sight of the coast of Zresskeilt. The execution of the Federation’s battle plans commences as the fleet is split into three distinct sections. One sails to the west, another to the distant east, while the third heads towards the Bay of Inzuraj and the city of Faergiliad. The first and second divisions consist of seventy thousand soldiers each; the third division, forty thousand.

Third Giran, D. Ġ., MY 194 – The First Battle of Faergiliad: The third division of the fleet (known as the “Siege Army”) arrives at Faergiliad in the late morning. Immediately thousands of human soldiers disembark from their vessels outside of the city, while the bulk of the fleet sails into the harbour and begins a ferocious naval battle there. The soldiers on land assault plantations encircling the city, wantonly slaughtering any drow they come across and freeing their human slaves. The tactics employed by the infantry rely mainly on terrorism: the humans outside of the city simply kill as many drow and destroy as much of their property as they can, while the drow naval forces are locked in combat in the city harbour. As night comes, fires encircle the city: the drow naval forces, caught entirely unawares, have been destroyed and their ships burned, while the plantation manors beyond the city are gutted by slave reprisal. Out of the original drow population of Faergiliad and environs at one hundred and twenty thousand, some fifteen thousand are dead: eight thousand soldiers (out of the ten thousand garrisoned) and seven thousand civilians. Of the invading force of humans, nine thousand and six hundred die, mostly in the naval battle in the harbour.

Fourth Tyivä, D. Ġ., MY 194 – The Siege of Faergiliad begins: The naval forces of the humans blockade the harbour of Faergiliad, while the forces on land build fortifications by destroying the roads leading from the city for stone. There is no possibility of escape for the drow within the city. Reprisals by the slaves continue. Due to the enormous number of casualties during the previous day, the bodies are burned on huge funeral pyres, where drow and human alike are reduced to ash upon the wind, in order to prevent pestilence.

Fourth Solvarneu, D. Ġ., MY 194 – The Fall of Kiyarz: The Western Army lands at the rural drow harbour of Kiyarz, along the northwestern perimeter of the Obsidian Empire. The settlement is home only to about five thousand drow, and is completely exterminated in a colossal slaughter. Of the original five thousand, perhaps seven hundred survive by fleeing in the early stages of the battle. The four thousand three hundred bodies are stacked outside of the city and incinerated by wizard-fire. Some three thousand of the original seventy thousand invaders are killed, but the losses are quickly replaced and then exceeded by the recruitment of freed human slaves. Ten thousand soldiers form the forward column, departing the city’s eastern gate and beginning a forward assault against neighbouring drow outposts that same day, while the remaining sixty thousand remain in the settlement, picking over the loot and preparing for a slow march towards the city of Faergiliad. Around this time, symptoms of malaria begin to appear among the invaders at Faergiliad.

Fifth Sartai, D. Ġ., MY 194 – The Battle of Umveryo: The Eastern Army attacks a naval harbour of the drow in the northeasternmost regions of the empire. The battle is a massacre of both sides (though not nearly as severe as the battle at Faergiliad or the Fall of Kiyarz), with a two-to-one kill ratio in favour of the drow: some two thousand drow are killed, while forty two hundred humans are slain. The Marnic-Injili commander of these forces, General Ithrantes, instantly becomes a subject of future legends about the war when he bursts into the main fortress there, howling with rage at the death of his son in combat. He proceeds to beat the drow commander to death while he is attacked by the other drow. Against all odds (and common sense), the General survives this escapade, although one of his eyes is destroyed and his left leg is rendered lame by wounds. Unlike Faergiliad’s military and Kiyarz, where almost all of the defenders were destroyed, at Umveryo a third or so of the defenders form an ordered retreat, burning their grain stores and thus denying the invaders an easy access to food before fleeing at nightfall into the surrounding jungle.

Fifth Giran, D. Ġ., MY 194: Having gained control of the harbour at Umveryo, the military commanders there begin to study the structure and design of drow vessels, which are noticeably faster than Marnic vessels. The ultimate plan in this investigation is to not only adapt this design to human ships, but also to teach human sailors to sail drow ships, and thus have the advantage of surprise when they approach other drow vessels. On that same day, many hundreds of miles to the west, the soldiers still stationed at Kiyarz discover what seems to be a table, buried deep within the vaults, built entirely of obsidian and burnished to a perfect gleam. It is determined to have strong magical properties, and Guild wizards investigating the magic of the drow confiscate it to study its powers further.

First Rigvarneu, Guetai, MY 194 – The Decree of Liberation issued: Giyursiv Riketna, commanding the siege at Faergiliad, issues the most important declaration of the war, in order to resolve a growing conflict between his soldiers and the former slaves begging them to come and destroy drow estates beyond the city. This declaration, the Decree of Liberation, rules that all human slaves of the drow are to be considered free individuals and citizens of the Marnic Federation, and men of their kind are permitted to become Marnic legionaries. Around this time, the freed slaves begin to call themselves isekor-lai, meaning, in the local dialect, “children of the phoenix.”

First Giran, G., MY 194 – The Ruin of Liirsau: The Western Army, marching to Faergiliad from Kiyarz, reaches a drow fortification on the shores of the Duvaghi River, known as Liirsau, where some three thousand drow soldiers are attempting to make an ordered retreat from the overwhelmingly vast human army approaching them. The wizards aiding the Western Army, however, use teleportation magic to arrange the human forces in a deadly ring around Liirsau. The drow then prepare for a ferocious defence. The battle that follows is sheer carnage: some eight thousand humans, Kerlonnic and isekor-lai, die, along with the entire drow population at Liirsau, and the fortress is almost completely demolished. The Western Army picks over the ruins of storage buildings for food and supplies, and then moves on, leaving its dead to fester in the tropical sun.

Second Rigvarneu, G., MY 194: A week after issuing the Decree of Liberation, an isekor-lai assassin under the influence of drow blackmail nearly kills Giyursiv Riketna. The assassination attempt leaves Giyursiv without his left hand, and military tribunal sentences the assassin to be flayed alive in full view of the walls of Faergiliad. Giyursiv himself is undisturbed by this turn of events, and instead orders a tactic that the more devout of his subordinates find to be extremely discomforting: catapulting the rotting bodies of those of his soldiers who have died of disease into the city, where they will spread pestilence among the defenders. Of the thirty thousand and four hundred Kerlonnic invaders who survived the First Battle, some eight hundred have thus far succumbed to malaria and the yellow fever.

Fourth Tyivä, G., MY 194 – The Battle of Kansao commences: As it marches towards Faergiliad, the vanguard of the Eastern Army—some fourteen thousand soldiers, under the command of Lainna Elheren, a Marnic legionary general—is intercepted by a force of drow eighteen thousand strong. This sizeable drow force has seized control of one of the crossroads upon the highways and rapidly constructed a fortification upon it where once stood a minor plantation known as Kansao. General Elheren, concerned at the high probability of a trap, holds his forces back for the morning, and orders them to begin digging mines. The aboveground forces cover the operation of the miners by rapidly assembling their own fortifications, with the intended illusion being that they mean to settle into a position from which the drow opponents will be unable to leave.

Fourth Sartai, G., MY 194 – The Battle of Kansao ends: The mines ordered by General Elheren are finished, opening up channels from which human soldiers can enter the drow encampment. While humans attacking from the tunnels focus their efforts on routing drow in the centre of the encampment at Kansao, the above-ground forces attack the walls by scaling them and killing the defenders, and then dropping down improvised ladders to aid their comrades outside. Though the human forces rush to surround Kansao, the drow destroy their own gates and cut their way through the attackers to escape. The humans slay all those drow who are unable to escape. In all, some twenty-two hundred drow fall, with three thousand human casualties. Lainna Elheren, rather than returning to the main body of the Eastern Army under General Ithrantes, defies his orders and marches forth from Kansao, with the grim intention of destroying any refuge for the fleeing drow.

Fourth Giran, G., MY 194 – The Massacre at Cevisled: General Elheren arrives at a drow plantation known as Cevisled, about twenty-two miles northwest of Kansao. There had been a slave uprising which had slain the drow rulers of the plantation, but this was aborted when a division of the surviving drow from Kansao arrived at the plantation. The walls of Cevisled are lined with two hundred and nine crucified slaves, and nineteen hundred drow soldiers wait within the plantation, ready to battle to the death to better bleed Elheren’s army dry. The general, rather than risk a forward assault that might cost thousands of his own soldiers, sends a single soldier with an offering of clemency to the four hundred drow civilians who inhabit Cevisled: they will be allowed to exit the plantation unharmed, and therefore neither side will have to be concerned with their hindering presence. The drow defenders, surprised but believing this claim, agree—they had not received word of the civilian slaughter at Faergiliad, the garbled rumours reaching them having only told them that slaves had killed non-soldiers there. When the people of Cevisled have fully exited the plantation, General Elheren personally leads a charge upon them, and three hundred and twenty of them perish there. Records indicate Elheren as having said during combat, “I will not rest until I see this monstrous race stacked upon its final pyre!” Of the eighty surviving civilian drow, fifty are taken captive and enslaved, and the remaining thirty escape into the forests. This atrocity so inflames the drow soldiers at Cevisled that they do not sleep that entire night: they are up to something else instead.

Fifth Tyivä, G., MY 194 – The Taking of Lainna Elheren: At dawn, the drow defenders at Cevisled voluntarily leave their own defences, and attack the Kerlonnic encampment in one screaming assault. After smashing through its periphery, they rush to the tent where Lainna Elheren was previously sleeping. Battling through the encampment at every step of the way, they resolutely manage to reach the general nonetheless as he attempts to escape them. Taking him captive, they then set fire to the encampment and rush out of it, battling their way out and vanishing into the wilds beyond Cevisled. Of the nineteen-hundred drow soldiers at Cevisled, eleven hundred are killed. Of the eleven thousand humans under Elheren’s command, fifteen hundred die. Elheren’s lieutenant, an Elutapi chieftain named Ðeumrir, takes command of the remaining ninety-five hundred soldiers. Controversially, Ðeumrir elects not to rescue his commander, whom he regards as “doomed to die already.” Furthermore, Ðeumrir realises that the drow will use the captured general as a lure to draw the remaining soldiers into some sort of catastrophic trap. Instead, Ðeumrir orders the survivors to rejoin the main body of the Eastern Army, sixty kilometres to the southeast, and inform it of all that has happened.

First Solvarneu, Farudei, MY 194 – The Second Battle of Faergiliad: As the Eastern and Western Armies resolutely continue their crushing marches towards the besieged city, the besieging forces at Faergiliad have thus far suffered thirty-five hundred deaths from tropical disease, and the army there stands at twenty six thousand and nine hundred Kerlonnic men, and approximately ten thousand isekor-lai soldiers.