Here's something of an update for everyone:
The History of
The Ilsamiren Wars
an early draft!
Below is recorded all that is known of the great events of the Ilsamiren Wars, a period which lasted some 7,000 years between what are known to the Ilsamiri as “The Fall” and “The Coming of the Hidden Truth”. These writings also contain the religious beliefs of each of the Seven Peoples which may stretch beyond the constraints of the Wars both into the past and future. Many matters are excluded, for much may happen in such a long period, and those events of importance are only sketched, in some cases because no fuller account is extent, and in others for the constraints of time and for the sake of brevity.
THE ILSAMIRI
It all began with the Weaver, a benevolent force who controls the wind, waves and vapour. His rival was the Malice, lord of fire. Where once there was wind-swept void the weaver made a sphere of wind, and within this he set a sphere of earth. And about the earth he wrapped the clouds, woven of wind and water. Upon the clouds he set the Ilsamiri, his much-loved children. The Malice saw what had been made, and he too made a sphere. His sphere was of fire and with it he hoped to topple the Ilsamiri, to burn away their vaporous home. The Weaver strengthened the wind, and with it caught the globe of fire, holding it far, but not far enough, from the sphere of the world. The sphere of flame did what it was made to do. It destroyed the Sky City of the Ilsamiri, and sent them tumbling to the earth below. The fire then threatened to bake the earth but the Weaver called on the vapour and with it made the seas, and strengthened the clouds with rain to protect the land from the onslaught. So were made the mountains, baked into rock by the fiery orb, too far from the sea to be spared its scalding touch. This orb of fire was named Sun, Cehu, and the sphere of rock was named Weaver’s Mercy, Cleru Denaurath.
The fall of the Sky City rent the world where it fell, and into the channel flowed the new Sea. The island formed would be a haven in times of strife, another gift of the Weaver to his children.
Where the City fell became the site for a new city, a city bound to the Earth, Darineth. This city the Ilsamiri came to call their home, and they fortified it against their half-glimpsed, half-imagined rivals.
There was a people not far from the new city, they dwelt on the edges of the Forest of Dry Trees and they came out from the eaves of that place to take water from the Darineth River. It was then that the Ilsamiri saw them and did offer them peace and a safer place of dwelling beside their own city, between the walls, the Sea and the River. They were called the Morchani – Morchanin in their own manner of speech – and they accepted these offers graciously. (A fuller account of the Morchanin perspective is to be seen in their own history; the Ilsamir account is somewhat simplistic and fails to address a number of events which occurred in the process of the Morchanin resettlement.)
Soon the hunger for land, but above all food, grew too much for the Ilsamiri, and striking out in parties of 40 or 50 they began to explore the lands the Weaver had given them. Soon they came upon mountains in the north, and the continuation of the river by their city. The river they crossed with difficulty and found vast fertile plains. Upon these plains roamed a strange beast. This creature, having four legs and a long flowing mane was named thairie, horse. The Ilsamiri immediately realised the potential of these swift animals, employing them for the use of their scouts, and later, when bred to greater strength and size, as mounts for their orders of knights and noblemen.
During further forays into what were supposedly uninhabited lands to the west, the Ilsamiri encountered a primitive people, living in wooden structures, without military or social development, but with a grasp of natural forces which far outpaced their own.
These people the Ilsamiri befriended, and an oath was sworn between the Ilsamir king and the chief of those western tribes that would bind the twain for untold centuries. Protection from bandits and thieves was promised by the Ilsamiri in return for supplies of grain and horses.
Soon, with a stable source of food, the Ilsamiri struck out to the south, sending similar parties to map the vast territories that lay south of the Glemir Darinethas. Soon they came upon the wide inlet which they came to call the Beautiful Bay. In the centre of this Bay there was an island and about it the climate was such that strange fruits were bountiful there. These fruits, which grew on vines, were small and of varying colour from white to green to a dark reddish-purple and the Ilsamiri found their taste sweet and pleasant. There was another fruit also. These grew on gnarled trees and were not sweet like the others, but were pungent and leaked a flavoursome oil when crushed. The first fruit the Ilsamiri named Hyer and the second they named Hyai, the grape and the olive. These fruits the explorers brought back to the king Ilharin II and he ordered that a port should be constructed that a supply might be maintained.
Ilharin sent many engineers to locate an appropriate spot, and they chose the island of the Bay as the site. Here they built the Southern Port, Heirua Nomer. Ilharin did not live to see the port completed, but his son Ilharin III did, and when it was done he ordered that half of the population of Darineth should be relocated there and that the south should be its own kingdom with its own religion, a religion which would reflect the needs of sea-farers. To this end he ordered the Temple of the Sky to be built in the mountains to the west of the Southern Port to glorify the lights of the sun, moon and stars.
Some years later the lands of the Southern Kingdom were threatened, but that is a matter for that Kingdom’s history. Suffice to say that the warlords of the deep, uncharted south were restless and wished to claim the Southern Port and the Bay for themselves. The Ilsamiri therefore advised the new Merchant Kings to construct the fortress city of Forest Watch (Thenor Mekas) to hold the old kings in check.
Now began a period of prosperous development for the Ilsamiri. In this age they founded many mines in the ranges of the north and struck iron and gold and silver.
This new prosperity could not have come at a better time, as upon the eastern horizon stirred an enemy. They were the Seaborne. Their ships were made as great lizards, which they named jauchal – dragon. Raiders they sent to strike the ships of the Southern Kingdom and to bring fire and fear to the towns of the coast. The Ilsamiri were stunned by their ferocity, but also amazed by the numbers of those they left alive and dragged to their swift ships, though none that were taken were seen ever to return. The language they spoke was harsh and unrecognised, but after some 15 years of fighting their tongue became more like that of the Ilsamiri, but harsher. Many supposed that this was the work of the slaves they had taken, who now outnumbered their masters, and were used as teachers for the Seaborne children.
Their new metal wealth the Ilsamiri wrought finely into plates and rings of armour, and into swords to counter the Seaborne threat. Some 20 years into the conflict the famed smith Galuir forged the first steel armour and sword for the king Ilahir I and these new things were used to terrible effect in the Battle of the Haven Beach. Ilahir alone was a match for many Seaborne. Their weapons were turned easily upon the silver-etched plates of his armour and his mighty weapon, which he named after the smith and a sword Galve, was not slowed an inch by their flimsy leathers. The king alone turned the tide and the Seaborne did not return for nearly a century.
The secret of steel was kept within the Ilsamir army for many a long year, but soon the Western Kingdom wondered at the new lustrous shell in which the Ilsamiri envoys were clad and asked that they might know the secret. Soon enough Ilahir sent Galuir to them to teach them the method and they were grateful. Ilahir had feared that such an action might make them a rival, but he decided that it would simply make them better able to aid the Ilsamiri if ever they were in need.
A second age of prosperity began and lasted all but uninterrupted for nearly a thousand years. Seaborne raids became things of the past, stories with which to frighten wayward children and Darineth grew. It was in this age that the Four Towers were built. The Tower of the north was that of the Great Temple of the Weaver. The Tower of the South was that of the Dividing Sea. The Tower of the West was that of the Palace and the final Tower, of the east, was the Haven Tower. The towers were built all of grey marble and quartz and were of mysterious craft, such that the wind would sing as it passed through them and that the light was allowed entry through many openings and shallowly carved places all about them.
In the reign of Ilsean IV this was to end and the Tower of the Temple was to become a place of confused feelings. The Wars of Divergence shook the Ilsamiri to their core, and never again did they rise to the heights which they had known in the centuries before. The conflict began as so many conflicts do, with a minute act of protest.
On the third day of the tenth lunar month, a high priest of the Weaver, Ilhau, posed a question to the Council of Tempests (the highest authority in the Ilsamir religion) which would result in civil war.
The question he posed was not faithfully recorded by the Ilsamiri; for fear that it may again engender war, but it essentially highlighted what Ilhau thought of as injustices and untruths in religious doctrine. Soon Ilhau had gathered a large following for his ideas among the younger members of the priesthood as well as from many areas of society, particularly from the poor. Ilhau’s question was recorded by the people of the Northern Kingdom, and can be read in their history.
These developments were watched cautiously by the Ilsamir ruler Ilsean IV, but for a long while he tolerated them. This was to change when, precisely a year since Ilhau’s question was posed, he was brutally murdered, his body hacked and torn and left hanging from the tower of the Weaver’s Great Temple for all to see when dawn broke.
No record exists to tell us who killed Ilhau, and perhaps no-one ever discovered the culprit. It was immediately assumed by Ilhau’s followers, that the Chief Tempest, Dauril had ordered the killing, for he had been Ilhau’s strongest opposer. The Weaver’s priesthood denied these accusations, claiming that Ilhau had simply been killed by a criminal. This argument convinced only those faithful to Dauril.
Ilhau’s murder split the populace. Those faithful to the Weaver sided with the priesthood and those who followed Ilhau established a new religion. The deity at the centre of the new faith was known to the Ilsamiri as the Malice, a creature of evil responsible for their fall from grace. To those of Ilhau, the Malice was the True God for it was he who had made the sun, he who had struggled, judged as evil, to bring the truth of the Weaver to them.
So began the war, a war which would grip the Ilsamiri and the True God’s People for a century. Only with many brutal battles, lost and won on both sides, did the war end. What had begun as a questioning of dogma had ended with the divergence of the Ilsamiri and the deaths of thousands. Ilhau’s spirit was said to be seen weeping in the skies over the Haven of Darineth after the Divergence had been sealed. The populace was exhausted, and so the True God’s People marched north, founding a Northern Kingdom beyond the as yet unpassed mountains, ending a war and beginning a truce.
The war was crippling, but the Ilsamiri eventually recovered. For the next 2,000 years they remained in a state of shock induced stagnation. Their culture, while it did not grow or increase in its complexity, became set in its ways to such an extent that no new developments of any great importance were made. It was in this period that the Morchanin saw the perfect opportunity to erupt in mutiny against those who, they said, had taken their lands from them.
The Mutinous Struggle began, but it only lasted a little while. Many important Ilsamir citizens were taken and executed as the street-fighting raged in Darineth but the death of the Morchanin instigator, Kudelir at the hands of Ilregin I saw the wars end. The reprisals were brutal. Many Morchanin were driven into exile or executed, but once these acts had been committed the Ilsamiri established the Morchanin Council and allowed the Morchanin to keep their settlement between the South Wall and the Coast as a sign of forgiveness.
It was after this war that the Ilsamiri gathered the resources necessary to construct a vast network of roads and forts stretching from the capital south to Thenor Mekas and west to the Meldar Arkiris (the Mountain Fort). The People of the Western Kingdom extended these roads further to connect their settlements beyond the Arkiri Eltarise. They also fortified the Kwith Vethas (Kwith Lechan to the Northerners) with a mighty fortress city. This act would plague them endlessly.
Raids on Aneth Vethas by the Betrayers became more and more frequent and eventually the city fell to them, though it was to change hands many times throughout its history.
SPOILERS BEGIN HERE
The Seaborne were now a distant memory, but they returned and fiercely, sinking many ships of the Southern Kingdom and then striking Darineth itself from the Clomeni Prethanas. Attacks on the Southern Kingdom itself also increased from the Warlords of the south. And into this fray came a new rival – the Mekathenain they named themselves and their tongue was unknown, their armour alien and their numbers vast, seeming more so for the suddenness of their arrival.
This was not an invasion fleet; it could not be, for no invasion fleet brought so many civilians. No, this was a fleet designed to carry an entire people across an unknown sea. The Ilsamiri were rightly wary of them, for soon tensions between them and the Warlords erupted in war at Bol Clauthnoras. No word was sent for some months so the Ilsamiri sent an agent to discover the fate of the Warlord’s hold. It had been gutted by fire. No sign of life could be seen, but the earth had been disturbed in the courtyard and upon closer inspection a vast grave was found with the bodies of Mekathenain and bandit laid in honour side by side. This new folk had treated their enemies with the honour they afforded their own sons. This, more than anything else concerned the current king, Ilahir X, for an enemy who respects his opponent is far more dangerous than a mere rabble of unthinking savages.
The Seaborne raids became increasingly threatening, so much so that the Ilsamiri declared that no Seaborne should be taken prisoner, all should be slain.
But in the north the Betrayers were stirring. They struck out and recaptured Enuth Lechan (as they called it) and mustered a great army there awaiting the order to strike.
The Ilsamiri called on their allies in the West and South to come to their aid, but few came. The Mekathenain threatened the South and the West had been struck suddenly and violently from the Kwith Ulres. The allies who did come helped the Ilsamiri to arrange a massive formation to block the Kwith Vethas and to hold the Northerners back.
In the Battle of the Wall of Warriors the Ilsamiri and their allies were driven back by the furious assault of a line of massive armoured beasts. They retreated to the safety of Darineth.
The Battle of Darineth saw a second defeat, and it was after this battle that the Weaver’s Tower was toppled. Those who could fled to the Haven. They were then attacked on two sides. From the east came the Seaborne and from the west came the Betrayers. In the Battle of Endless Night a strange unknown people came to the aid of the Ilsamiri and drove the Seaborne from the shores of the Haven. Then the now free Western men came to strike at the unguarded North. Soon the world was at war. In the South the darkened sky had been seen by the Southern Kingdom as a sign that the Gods had left them. They struck out south in hopes of freeing themselves of the darkness and there they met the Mekathenain in a terrible clash – the Battle of the Clauthnor.
The Ilsamiri and their allies won the day and Ilahir met with the Chief of the Ocean Tribes to thank him and gave him many gifts. The people of the Northern Kingdom suffered much at the hands of the Westerners out for vengeance, but soon the fighting in the North ended. The Mekathenain won, but barely and fled to their ships. The Southern Kingdom’s warriors returned to their Port and the endless night broke on a ravaged world.
The finest minds of the Ilsamiri met with the people of the Ocean Tribes and they together gained a mutual understanding. The Mekathenain too headed northward, avoiding the lands of the Southern Kingdom, and came, in mode of peace to the mouth of the Glemir Darinethas where Ilahir welcomed them with feasts in a bid to calm the shattered nerves of his people and their allies. The Merchant Kings arrived in Darineth soon after to attend the Great Council of Peace, and, having heard of the honour bestowed upon their own fallen by the Mekathenain, they forgave them and a great and lasting peace was born.
The Seaborne had been driven away, but some say that they too found new lands in the wastes of the Northern Seas and were content among themselves after so many years of bitterness.
The Betrayers too never troubled the Ilsamiri again, but after many years they sent an emissary who bid them to attend a religious congress in their own city that the rifts of the deep past might be healed.
When the delegation of priests came to the North Lands they were astounded by the green that welcomed them. It was a treeless place, as the tales said, except in small places here and there where they were specially tended, but the plains were lush with grass and wild-flowers, except where war had ravaged them over the centuries. Their great city, Lechanis, was nought compared to Darineth, but it was grand after its own fashion. No lasting agreements were made, but the association between the crushed betrayers and the victorious faithful was never again so dire as it had been for all those millennia passed.
HERE ENDS THE HISTORY OF THE ILSAMIRI TO THE PRESENT DAY
Re: The Ilsamiren Wars
(just when medieval2 gets out)
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