Cold March

The Cold March is an extension of Isldar lore and Aldurism religious lore. It describes the Civil War between the Allorn Dregodar (Draconists) and the Empire itself in the heartland, their failure, the death of their ruling Prince, their flight northward through increasingly hostile territories until reaching Ellador, fight with the Dwarves, second defeat, and eventual survival.

Origins

The Arch Era of the Allorn Empire was a hostile and unforgiving place where entire Principalities and cities could sink into the ground overnight as a result of a cataclysmic battle between vicious Archmages. With the Estelley Gods absent, silent, or unwilling to intercede, the Elven people looked anywhere and everywhere for faith to repair the situation they were in, or for new providence to follow to a better life. With the patronage of a few key figures, the Dregodar or Draconism cult grew exponentially in the Allorn Court as people began to look to Dragons, the mechanical architects of the world, as figures of worship: something Dragons at the time resented and scarcely accepted.

Civil War Phase

Tensions rose when Prince Varendracar, cousin of Empress Vinnalea, converted to Draconism after witnessing the Anglian tribes’ devotion to the Dragon Regulus in the Sollerian colonies. He then began lobbying at the Allorn Court, believing a society could be built around the Dragons. Depending on whether one trusts the Allorn or Dregodar narration, it is either the case that Varendracar was caught by the Empress in the process of planning a coup against her power and exposed, or that the Empress preemptively set him up and attempted to squash him to silence his dangerous cult. Modern historians think that both things are true, that in the long term if left up to his devices the Prince would have affected a coup, but that in the short term, he was being framed.

Varendracar is remembered as a saintly man, a smiling Elf with soft eyes and long unbraided red hair that fell to the middle of his back. Though he lived more than 700 years ago, the Elves who met him and still live describe him as a uniquely kind presence for the awful age when he lived, someone with sweet words that did not have guile lurking beneath. In the same breath, they would say that a lack of cruel competence was his undoing because after he rallied his followers to his banner and attempted to march on the Allorn Palace, he ultimately failed. He also failed to centralize them by properly nailing down what a Dregodar was. Some of them were still Estellians with heretical sympathies to Dragons, some of them were Draconists of just one Dragon, and some of them tried to worship multiple Dragons. There was no priestly hierarchy and no direct recognition from Dragons to profit from, a situation he did not have enough time to solve.

After his military defeat against Vinnalea near the capital, Varendracar retreated northward, picking up the Dragon Gaia on the way and an increasing number of refugees who joined his Warband. Historians speculate from the testimonies of his inner council that he was marching towards Amontaar in the hopes that he would be able to conquer it and steal the Amontaari Fleet to sail eastward and set up a new capital in the colonies at Solleria. However, with a contingent of powerful Archmages from the state of Bel-Hammon, Vinnalea cut him off outside the walls of Amontaar, defeated his army a second time, and slew him in single combat atop her hippogryph against his wyvern mount, and permitted the Archmages to use their dark Magic to kill the Dragon he had brought with him. That day, remembered as the Battle of Singing Stones, as the rocks heated so hard under Magic that they boiled, was the definitive end of the Civil War. Varendracar's broken followers and the remnants of his council began to flee ever northward across the land, and Amontaar's gates closed to them.

Flight Phase

The remaining councilors made the snap judgment after losing their prince that they would flee ever northward as far as land would take them, until Vinnalea and her armies either tired of pursuing them, or they could plant their heels in the ground, turn around, and win a military victory. With the refugees not in a position to disagree, knowing they would all be killed if they turned around, the Cold March began.

The Selvath

It was the Selvath that the Dregodar ran into first, begging them for entry into their walds so that they could hide from the Allorn armies and potentially resist together. The Selvath immediately refused, saying that while they had sympathy for what had happened the Dregodar were still outsiders, and additionally guilty of apostasy against Estelley, of which they were still faithful worshipers. As much as their God, Gilan, did not necessarily like the Estelley Empresses or the Allorn Empress, he could not tip his hand against the deal he had made with them by siding with the Dregodar, and so they kept marching.

The Maquixtl

While the Maquixtl as an idea did not properly exist yet, the beginnings of the idea that would lead to their creation were being experimented with in the Soronsiven Plains of central Daen, where the Genos-editing Prince Suel tinkered with his followers in the hopes of creating an ultimate army to then use to build a state of his own out of the decaying realm of the Allorn Empresses. As the Maquixtl succeeded in destroying Allorn patrols, Suel took in the fleeing Dregodar and swelled the ranks of his army. The idea of Dragon Worship hopped from the refugees to his soldiers, who would eventually turn to Caius when they too later left the Allorn Empire, and for a time it looked like they would stay with Suel. However, as Vinnalea and her armies approached, a combination of Suel deciding they weren't worth the trouble and the councilors of the old Prince resenting Suel's attempts to replace him in their legacy led the Dregodar to eject and continue running.

The Eronidas

For several centuries, when the Dregodar began passing through the provinces, the Dragon-worshipping Eronidas had been invading the sparsely populated northern provinces of the Allorn Empire to carve out their own state, generally with success. The Dregodar councilors attempted to establish a sense of camaraderie with the Eronidas kings, based on their shared worship of Dragons and their mutual opposition to the Allorn crown. However, they were met with laughter and forced to continue their march. In the eyes of the Eronidas, religion alone could not absolve the Elves of their heritage, especially since the Eronidas had only recently been followers of a cousin of the Empress they were trying to conquer.

Ravala

By this time, while the Aldurism God, Ravala, had already ascended to the Pantheon, the Dregodar passed through her old principality in the south of what is now Ithania. Her fellow god, Onalinn, read the threads of destiny and whispered to her that the Cold March would ultimately fail. The Dregodar would perish, along with the Dragon Aurora, whom they managed to persuade to leave her nest and join their march. Once they were gone, no record of their existence would remain in the world. Ravala put together the workings of a plan that would preserve them but under her dominion instead of the Dragons, usurping them with a trick. While the Dregodar felt that they had abandoned Allorn sensibilities, some things do not truly leave any Elven society. Ravala manifested to speak with the Dregodar and gave them several Artifacts, gifts, and blessings to stoke their fear of death at the hands of Allorn armies and rekindle their hunger for Magic. She laid the first seeds of her long plan to come and sent the Dregodar on their way.

The Drovv

Before Cataclysm, the Daen continent was still joined to Drowdaby a neck of low swampland that has since been swallowed up by the sea. As the Dregodar began to leave the Allorn Empire entirely, they crossed into territories beyond its borders. The first regions they entered were the Drovv provinces, located in the gray, rocky Drowda craglands. While these lands were poor and sparse, their inhabitants were proud of their martial spirit. The Drovv considered the idea of joining the Dregodar and unifying with them but ultimately decided there were not enough resources to go around, so they sent them on their way wishing them well.

The Skags and Cains

The division of the Velheim Ailor scattered them around the world, leading to the Skags and Cains being filled with various Jarls and clans that blocked the path to Ellador. The Dregodar initially tried to negotiate, but the Velheim, fueled by centuries of suffering under the Allorn Empire and the hostile words of Asha refugees, were bitter and ready to fight. As a result, the weary Elves faced battles through the Skags and Cains. The Dragon Aurora watched from above, more a spectator than a protector, as the tattered banners moved toward the world’s edge, pursued by Vinnalea’s armies.

Ellador Phase

Crossing the grinding, freezing straits in the dead of winter between the last of the Cains and Ellador, the Dregodar eventually arrived at the end of the world on all known maps: the continent of Ellador. Steep mountains with deep valleys and difficult-to-pass terrain blossomed green and beautiful with the summer. The only people in Ellador were the Dwarves who kept to the underground in their tunnels and Holds, and so while initially just as mistrustful of the Dregodar as the rest, they ultimately agreed with a great deal of trust to a treaty where the Elves would stay aboveground and they would stay belowground, with neither interfering in the other one's area of influence for any reason. The Dregodar settled in and founded the Spire Cities that still stand under their descendants' rule, ultimately regrouping for one long breath of peace. However, being as far as Ellador did not deter the still scornful Empress Vinnalea from sending patrols after them, which would likely be followed by an army.

As a long shot, they sent dignitaries to the Suvial Elven realm, Elves from the far western provinces whose unique mastery over Demons had allowed them a great deal of autonomy from the Allorn Empire throughout history. Hoping that some shared Draconism population, Elven heritage, and anti-Allorn sentiment would see them through, they were surprised with warm approval from the Suvial. Together they outlined a plan that involved using schematics left behind by the grace of Dragons to connect an old tunnel that ran rapidly between the continents, joining the Suvial realms and Ellador together by a quick transport plan that would then let the Suvial blackmail Vinnalea into staying out of Ellador, or they would start meddling using the tunnel. There was only one issue: breaching the ground to connect the tunnel would mean violating the treaty that the Isldar had made with the Dwarves.

One can take an Elf out of the Allorn Empire, but one cannot necessarily take the Allorn Empire out of the Elf. All too easily, the Dregodar councilors agreed that security from the Suvial was worth betraying the Dwarves, who they supposed might never find out anyway, and dug the tunnel behind their backs to complete the deal with the Suvial. All at once, the distance between continents was shortened into a mere few days, enabling the two factions of Elves to send people back and forth between the west and the farthest north, further endearing their already somewhat close cultures to each other. It backfired, in the end. Vinnalea turned around with the information used to blackmail her and had her diplomats present it to the Dwarves who, with a little poking, prodding, and a little Mind Control Magic inflamed their reasonable outrage into a genocidal hatred of the sneaky Dregodar for betraying them, and commenced the Dwarven-Dregodar war against the unprepared Elves.

Against the Dwarves and their allies the local Velheim Kingdoms and jarldoms, the exhausted, divided, and depopulated Dregodar began to lose again, and all the more horribly as their settlements were put to the torch and Spires leveled with fine siege artillery. Even though the Suvial sent some Mages to help, this was ultimately not enough as their coalition forces were driven out of spire, after spire, until their last stand at a place now infamous in history, the Valley of the Long Song, where the entire population of every single remaining Dregodar pitched camp against the Dwarven armies and resolved to face their doom together, Aurora still circling overhead, watching, and unwilling to inflict mass-death to save her followers. As the battle commenced and the final defeat unfolded, Ravala's Spirit which was mingling in secret the whole time whispered into Aurora's ear about the failure she was to her people and how she would never be able to unsee their death that she could prevent but refused.

Ravala’s plan succeeded when the Dragon’s panic reached a peak, giving her the chance to shatter its soul. This unleashed a wave of frost that devastated the Dwarven armies and covered Ellador in eternal ice. The Dregodar followers thrived in this harsh environment, becoming the Ice Elves, or Isldar. Her powerful Spirit, Iskaldor, was bound to Aurora’s corpse and led the survivors in nation-building. The corrupted Dragon Worship transformed into a belief in Ravala, with the Elves easily swayed to follow her. For more on the historical developments, please refer to the Isldar page.

Legacy and Meaning

The Dregodar are indisputably the movement that came the closest to toppling the Allorn Empire and replacing it with something else. Their leader, Prince Varendracar, stood on the steps of the Allorn Palace and nearly took it. He had a powerful claim to the throne by bloodline with several hundreds of thousands of followers devoted, skilled officers, and a powerful army. The tragedy of their story and the Cold March is that “almost” is not good enough, and Varendracar's failure to do the important things that mattered is why he is buried in a cairn near Amontaar, and his followers are cast adrift to the other side of the world, most of them worshiping a goddess he would have considered an agent of damnation and corruption.

As much as the Dragon loyalists among the Isldar would like it to be otherwise, it is indisputably true that without Ravala's scheme and intercession, the Dregodar would have died to a man in Ellador, killed by the Dwarves as the conclusion of Vinnalea's final revenge against her treacherous cousin. Despite their efforts to distance themselves from everything Allorn, the Elves’ inherent tendencies, such as their hunger for Magic and their fear of death and being forgotten, ultimately led them to an ending reminiscent of the very state they sought to escape. The actual details of the Cold March are hotly contested between the Dwarves, Isldar, and Allorn narrators because all three sides see themselves as victims.

To the Dwarves, the betrayal by the Dregodar was an act to be both despised and remembered for generations. The foundation of the Dwarven state relies on a strong sense of nationalism and a united front against the treacherous Ice Elves. This unity is crucial for reclaiming distant provinces and long-abandoned Holds from them. Even though the Dwarves’ response to the Dregodar betrayal may have been disproportionate, it is important to note they were partially manipulated by the Allorn Empire. Meanwhile, the Isldar tend to downplay the responsibility they had to their ancestors both callously betraying the Dwarves without any dialogue, and in Varendracar's culpability for getting in so far over his head and getting tens of millions of Elves killed because he was not careful enough, deifying him as the irreproachable saint of history. While most Regalians lack sympathy for the Allorn Empire of any kind, it is true from an Allorn citizen's perspective that the Dregodar betrayed the Empire when it needed its citizens most. Vinnalea was a powerful Archmage and a competent Empress, but her cousin's treachery made her obsessive and drove her mad. Allorn inheritors blame the Dragon followers for the Empire’s collapse because the war they caused deprived a powerful Empress of precious years to mend the ailing Empire, depopulated whole provinces, and killed millions in an avoidable act of secession.