Eronidas Elven Wars
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| Part of Eronidas lore. |
The Eronidas-Elven wars cover the roughly thousand-year series of on-and-off wars between the Eronidas and the Allorn Empire following their arrival in Daen. Important to understand is that while this is not a continuous war, broken up owing to domestic instability in the Allorn Empire and a general inability to supply large armies in the northwest of Daen, the Allorn state never saw fit to recognize the Eronidas a legitimate nation with a right to statehood of their own, a sentiment that persists in some way or another even to the modern day. This page examines the details of the war as well as the important role the Eronidas played in sealing the destruction of the Allorn Empire following the Void Invasion and Cataclysm, two Magical disasters that put it on its knees but did not finish it off. This page is considered Expanded Lore, meaning it is not required reading for a roleplay experience on MassiveCraft but can be used to add additional depth and content to Roleplay.
Background
Having fled their native continent of Guldar to escape ecological collapse and persevered through a century-long journey across the Drifting Isles, the Eronidas looked for a new place to call home. While some fleets split off (and others later joined them due to wishing to escape the war), the majority of the seabound population disembarked in the mountainous northwestern region of Daen now known as Kezzeret Artamon. Framed to the south by the Suvial firelands, considered unsuitable for settlement due to the baked volcanic ground, and to the north by jungles and then Ithania, considered unsuitable for settlement due to temperature, it was considered ideal by the hardy captains who chose it following scout reports. While de jure a part of the Allorn Empire, an Elven state and hegemonic power of the Daen continent at the time, de facto the Allorn Empire did not have the means to enforce rule there and had barely managed to settle it, building a few scant castle towns.
This did not stop the Elven Princes, reeling from internal instability and growing cracks in their Empire, from voicing their seething outrage at the idea of being colonized by barbarians. There was effectively no attempt to establish diplomacy with the Eronidas, an idea the Elves considered themselves above, and immediately sent forward armies instead. This was something of a rude awakening for the Eronidas, who up until this point had not been exposed to the kind of advanced weapons and especially not advanced Magic that the Allorn armies wielded, but one to which they quickly adapted nonetheless. It is a testament to Eronidas stubbornness that the shock of the initial years did not wipe them off of the map, and their first disembarked fleets dug in for what would be a long war.
The Long War
While there is a long and storied Eronidas tradition of sagas recounting the tales of brave ancestors who fought to secure their survival in the face of Allorn dominion, the war itself follows a rather predictable pattern. Allorn logistical failures meant that it was impossible for the Elves to supply more than a hundred thousand men in northwestern Daen where the Eronidas had disembarked into the hills, and so one Prince or another would send in armies piecemeal while being intentionally backstabbed and undercut by the other Princes, leading to that army’s destruction, its patron Prince’s fall from favor and ejection from the Court, and the cycle restarting with the exact same thing inevitably happening to his successor.
The Elves’ decision to treat the Eronidas front like a plaything, however, was an immense mistake. Some two hundred years into the war, at which point the Eronidas had already established the framework for what would eventually become their famous Pol cities and separated into Ahazu cultured on the frontline and Zabar cultured behind it, the Allorn Empire got its military act together. With a reshuffling of the general staff provoked by the beginning of the internal war with Dragon worshipers that would eventually lead to the creation of the Isldar people some centuries later, a capable General with access to resources and reliable subordinates was installed on the Eronidas front. Only, armed with both their own advances including the creation of Black Metal and intelligence carefully snuck to them by their fellow Dragon Worshiper rebels in the northern Allorn provinces, they were completely ready.
To save face, Allorn records make no mention of what happened to the Azure Legion of General Maëlan, but the Eronidas remember the tale well. Glittering ranks of Fin’ullen spears met with towering Ahazu ones, and the supposedly invincible Allorn line broke on the Eronidas one, its famous cavalry equally unable to turn the tide and its Mages useless in the face of the complete collapse of their infantry. Eronidas physical superiority completely neutralized the experience advantage of the average Elven soldier, while the tactical difference had long been made up by the Eronidas’ careful study of Allorn stratagems, going so far as to hoard libraries of tomes stolen from Allorn officers’ ransacked tents and put to good use fighting their successors. The war, however, was not a complete cycle of repetition.
The continuing long war allowed the Eronidas to draw their borders closer to the modern perimeter of Kezzeret Artamon. As they did so, they came on the boundaries between the Eronidas highlands and the Allorn flatlands proper which held the marble spires and the large, populated cities, leaving them vulnerable to raiding. Having a settled state of their own and a complicated economy which had no particular need for Magic-based Allorn resources, the Eronidas raided instead to provoke a sense of fear, and also to begin liberating what Asha and other Allorn slaves they could find in a bid to invite them to settle together. Oftentimes this was taken up, both depriving the Allorn state of labor and scoring a propaganda victory, spreading worry that further slave unrest might be provoked when the nation was already unstable.
Generally speaking however, as Cataclysm approached, the line of combat had largely fossilized. Even though they were able to raid into the flatlands, the Eronidas were not able to hold the cities there, especially not in the face of overwhelming Allorn numerical superiority as the Dregodar were driven to Ellador and most internal civil wars ended (even if it was far too late for the increasingly patchwork Empire). Likewise, though they were able to apply pressure, Allorn efforts to counter-invade the highlands were always stunted due to the commanding officers’ fear that they would be the next in line to suffer a major defeat at the hands of the Eronidas and lose all the favor they had spent so long building in the Imperial court. Both sides were as comfortable with the status quo as one could be in the face of such a long-running war.
Cataclysm and The End
The Void Invasion can best be understood as the sudden descent of Demons meant to provoke the end of civilization, a storied apocalypse that has occurred multiple times over the course of history. Though this outcome was averted in the end, it did not stop the Allorn army from being mauled in battle against the Demonic hordes and in large part destroyed. It also did not stop the magical curses which ripped across Allorn land, sinking entire Principalities into the sea with their populations still in the cities or sending twisting wildlife across once-pristine metropoles, turning every person outside into vines.
Worst of all was the excess of Magic in the world dulling the average Mage’s ability to cast a spell, those who had once been able to move mountains now barely able to throw rocks. For the Allorn Elves, whose expansionist enslaving Empire was built on their Magical superiority, it was a complete disaster to be robbed of it. With Ailor and Asha slave revolts ripping through many other parts of the nation, the Empress’s line extinguished, and Allorn power broken, the state effectively ceased to exist and dissolved into a number of different warlord nations who each attempted to declare themselves a legitimate Allorn successor.
The Eronidas never interacted with the Suvial who they had bypassed on their way in, or the Void-Worshiping Kathar to their south, the two strongest Elven states in the region. Rather, the lands south of Kezzeret Artamon had fallen under the sway of a powerful Allorn administrator of the Sälarna family who declared himself dictator in perpetuity of the surviving provinces and scraped together a force of Silverhelm regulars to face the descending Eronidas in battle. This Song of Shattered Stars the Elves teach well, because while Sälarna did not blunder and was not betrayed by his own people, he could not overcome the Eronidas.
History teaches on both sides that they drew up on either side of a meadow around dawn, a hundred thousand soldiers strong on each side, a hundred fifty thousand if reserves were to be committed, evenly matched. Sälarna’s Mages were useless, but he had the majority of the finest Allorn cavalry - the Silverlances - present in his name. The battle began with the two spear lines clashing and Sälarna himself riding forward to ensure the morale of his men would hold, the Elves even driving the Eronidas back in a few places and Sälarna slaying a regimental commander or two in single combat.
It is when he attempted to commit his cavalry in a finishing blow, that it all went wrong. Wheeling around according to plan and slamming into the Eronidas left, Sälarna expected that they might roll up the line: but the previous week’s rains had not properly abated, and with his flanking movement stuck in mud, they were largely unhorsed and brutally put down by the Ahazu reserves who wheeled to face them and bested them man to man. Seeing the Empire’s most prestigious unit broken by supposed barbarians, much of Sälarna’s army wavered and ran, leaving the General himself to flee and retire in disgrace.
This act of victory won the Eronidas the first meaningful peace that they had known in a thousand years. Though the Eronidas and the Allorn Elves still look on one another poorly, with the Eronidas posturing armies on their border and the Allorn Princes making a show of keeping Eronidas as slaves, there was an opportunity for some individual diplomacy with more reasonable Princes. However, this was all swept away with Talea’s return and the declaration of a new Empire. Most unfortunate of all is the continued survival of their old nemesis General Sälarna, who survived the Eronidas Wars, the political chaos of the Allorn Empire’s collapse, the damage to his reputation from his defeat, and the three centuries of maneuvering since.
Most recently, having escaped the violent destruction of the important provincial capital Fallaÿa by an ancient weapon and the deaths of millions of Elves in the blast radius of the ensuing disaster, Sälarna has been spotted still alive and rallying men for some unknown purpose. The stoic Teledden administrator appears to have waived what little acts of goodwill he might have extended the Eronidas during the centuries prior, and prepares for the resumption of hostilities in some form or another.
Trivia
- Regalia has an informal alliance with the Eronidas states, but both Eronidas and Regalia have frequently ignored the call to arms. The agreement exists more as a deterrent for future war, and acknowledgment of mutual distaste for the Elves.
- Over the centuries, there have been Elves who joined Eronidas society, despite the wars. All of Allorn society is not so reprehensible and evil that there were not those who pitied the Eronidas, or even respected them. There is a somewhat healthy mixed Eronidas-Fin'ullen population in Kezzeret Artamon.
- The Asha who come from the Kezzeret states and fled there during the rebellions against their Elven Masters are called Zirat Asha. Many Asha traveled on to the Ashal States, but many also stayed in Kezzeret Artamon and Kazubasha.
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