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Rise of Tharwain

It was the year 1105 of the Cadan.  Over five hundred years had passed since the War of Elders, and not even an elf of Nisyrra yet remembered those times.  Much of the old history was slipping from knowledge, even of scholars.  Only the vaults of the high wizard towers and the libraries of Nisyrra - now closed to outsiders - yet held even a mention of any period before the Dacadrin.

The hearts of the common man were divided.  The unity felt under the Dacadrin and during the brief period of cooperation in the War of Elders had quickly dissipated.  After the war, there was relatively little infighting, for no one was left with the taste for it.  Time passed, tempers flared, and new grievances were brought to bear.  Once again the realms of Maridacan were plunged into chaos and tense divisions.

In the northern rim, however, things were particularly bad.  The wizards had made of all things their focus the eradication of the druids.  More than any they held those groups responsible for the war of elders, and never again would they allow such to happen.  Devoid of the protection of the druids, the rim became a place of banditry and lawlessness.  Only a few tightly knit communities thrived, and they dared not venture far from their boundaries.

It was in this period that the fore-runner of the house Balkurn came to the human lands.  The dwarves saw that mankind had abandoned the northern edge of their realm, and sought to claim it as their own.  They, too, had suffered during the War of Elders, but they had persevered and in time rebuilt their great citadels throughout the mountains.  They came into the lands of men and they brought order.  Abandoned by the wizards, the druids, the lords of men and elves, and any other who might have offered any shelter, the people welcomed the dwarven lords who ushered in prosperity to the region.

Even as the dwarves consolidated their new realm, a particularly bloody feud was ongoing in the realm of mankind.  The eight Wains were the largest states, each with relatively unstable feudal hierarchies, and they had turned on each other in a vicious civil war.  The combined stretch of their territory now spanned nearly the entire subcontinent from east to west.  From the encroaching desolate wastes (a growing desert) to the western plains inhabited by a small population of lesser elves upon the borders of Nisyrra, they had reached the limit of expansion, and they now turned upon each other to further their power. 

The five towers of the wizards were not pleased with the new chaos, and they convened to speak of how to end this meaningly infighting.  They agreed upon one thing; a King was needed to unify the squabbling Wains.  They debated for many weeks as to which of the Lords of the Wains should be named king, and in the end they came to no agreement.  So the wizards decided to manufacture a ninth Wain, with a ruler who would serve as a puppet to their advice, but they wondered as to where he would find his army to combat the other eight in a decisive manner.  The wizards knew that they could not interfere directly until the final chapter of the conflict, and also they could not afford to plunge the lands into an even greater chaos.

In the end, they turned north to the lands consolidated by the dwarven lords, and knew well that it would be the perfect power base for any who would defeat the eight Wains.  Yet the dwarves held the land with an iron fist, and seeing as they were united, defeating them would likely be more difficult than overcoming the eight Wains would be.  So the wizards turned to their craft of guile and deceit, and they found the perfect way to bend matters to their will.

The wizards granted their magical aid to an ambitious young dwarven captain.  His name was Ryus Balkurn, a name that would one day haunt the wizards again.  He was disenfranchised with his superiors, which gave patronage to those of lesser merit.  Time and time again he had been passed by for his great work and effort, unrewarded for faithful and efficient service.  All the same, he had seen nobles promoted for doing nothing, passing him by despite complacent and even irresponsible service.  He wanted change, and the wizards came and offered him the means to forward this change.

The house of traitors was selected - begrudgingly and yet appropriately - to aid Balkurn in initiating this change.  The house of traitors was the second oldest of the wizarding towers.  It had come to fulfill its own name by no fault of its own.  Whenever any of the other towers suspected one of their kin of a breach of faith, they would send them to the second tower, and unknowingly it accepted these talented, yet untrustworthy, members into its fold.  Over the generations it slowly adopted the culture of these members, and became its namesake.  They were adept at deception and assassination far beyond the means of the other towers.

Several senior dwarven generals on an expeditionary mission mysterious passed away over the following weeks, and Ryus Balkurn was named tentative leader of the expedition until a new general could be instated.  Ryus had until that time been cautious about the plans of the wizards, but his fury at being named "tentative" leader despite his fine credentials sealed his resolve.  In accordance to the advice of the wizards, Ryus began to reassociate the ranking hierachies and replace officers.  Before thew new generals arrived, their army had become seeded with superior officers with a secret desire for sedition.

At the same time, the wizards had made certain that the fifth Wain had sent his forced into the same region to secure the mines that the dwarves coveted, and ensured that dwarf and man would come to conflict.  By carefully advising both sides as to what to do next, the wizards ensured that a stalemate ensued, and a call went out for reinforcements.  In the meantime, all officers deemed too loyal to the state of dwarves by the wizards were mysteriously ambushed, while Ryus and his officers were always informed well ahead of time when they would be ambushed, allowing them to turn the hunter in wait into the prey.  For his countless successes - which were all rigged by the wizards by sending the human forces to certain death - Ryus was finally made general of the region, but this he knew was not because he had finally been recognized for his work, but because no dwarf of noble birth would dare enter such a dangerous battlefield.

After two years of bleeding any officer too loyal to the dwarven state out of Ryus' army, the wizards knew he was ready to return to the lands from wence he came.  Convincing his army that they had been sent into an unwinnable war by a corrupt and careless regime, Ryus turned his forces against their common master.  The dwarven civil war was no less terrifying than the human one which existed not far to the south.  With that goal achieved, the wizards then initiated the second stage of their plan.

In truth, the wizards had no desire for Ryus Balkurn to succeed in his goals.  All they desired was to fracture the stability of the dwarven politics in the realm, and Ryus had done even better than they had hoped.  It seemed there were many dwarves in waiting for a charismatic and talented general like Ryus Balkurn to lead a revolution, and they rallied behind him.  Under the cover of this chaos, the wizards created a human resistance movement to push out the dwarves entirely from the region.  They knew well that the humans yet outnumbered the dwarves in the highlands, and if they could be unified into a single fighting force, the splintered dwarves would be defeated.  All the while they continued to keep their agents with Ryus and convinced him that they were supporting him, and all the while he played into their palms, even supplying the future human army at their behest.

The coup-de-grace was very short-lived.  The wizards convinced Ryus to make a decisive blow at the regional capital, and assured him that they would play their trump card should the battle turn ill for him.  The siege was not overly long, and true to his tactical genius, Ryus Balkurn overcame all the odds and broke down the walls and captured the city without any direct intervention from the wizards.  Yet even as his rams battered at the inner keep of the citadel, a third army emerged, cutting off his supply and retreat routes.  The wizards had played their trump card, and even as Ryus was cut off form his main armies they were being destroyed by the humans, even as they still blindly listened to the wizards who sent them into waiting ambushes.  Understanding that the wizards had made him their pawn, Ryus rallied his men and broke through the human forces.  He and only a small handful of his best soldiers escaped the battlefields there, but one day his descendants would return, not with just a dwarven clan, but the entire dwarven nation under the banner of Balkurn, but that is another tale all of its own.

The remaining dwarven forces surrendered in the coming weeks, completely overrun by a perfectly executed offensive.  Emerging at the forefront of the human armies was a man who named himself Bariche.  He was a fine commander with strong credentials and very popular with his men.  Yet at the same time he was naive and trustworthy.  He was the perfect pawn for the wizards.  Quickly crushing any opposition to Bariche, they ensured that the new realm would be thoroughly under his command, and from the throne occupied not long before by a dwarven magistrate, Bariche became the lord of the ninth Wain.

The consolidation of Bariche's realm was swift and efficiant.  Strangely, many dwarves chose to remain, unwilling to leave their homes.  Under advice from the wizards, Bariche gave them leave.  The dwarves were fine labourers and architects, and with their aid much of the damage dealt by the recent civil war was repaired.  Within only three years Bariche was ready to make clear his intention to become king over all the Wains.

Matters turned out well for the wizards.  The lord of the seventh Wain, one of the strongest, had become irritated by Bariche's neutrality.  He liked allies behind him, or enemies before him, no one undecided.  So he sent a manifesto to Bariche; that should the Ninth Wain not join him in his spring offensive, then that offensive would be against the ninth Wain.  The wizards quickly advised Bariche to allow this, and to draw the soldiers of the seventh Wain deep into his lands, destroy his armies outright, and then counter his offensive.

Bariche did exactly as the wizards commanded, and by the late summer the lord of the seventh Wain was thrown into Bariche's dungeon, and his lands assimilated.  This was not unnoticed by the other Wains, which became disconcerted with the apparent dominance of Bariche's power.  However, the wizards had planned far ahead, and the lords of the three weakest Wains they approached and offered allegiance from Bariche should they fight with him.  Thus once more then ensured that their enemy was divided.  Four Wains, the strongest and the three weakest, against the remaining four Wains.

The war went well for the enemies of Bariche.  The five towers suddenly entered the conflict in full support of Bariche, and in several surprise attacks they incapacitated the leadership of two of the Wains and ensured that they would pose no threat.  The confused armies mostly submitted to Bariche.  The remaining Wains were offered Bariche's manifesto: submit before his benevolent judgement, to whatever its whim, or be stripped of all their titles by force.

In an instant and with very little blood, the long political divisions in Maridacan were cast to history, and a King of Tharwain - the "One Wain" - was at last crowned.  The wizards, at last, had succeeded in bringing unity to the realms of men, and for many years to come Tharwain would be the predominant power far beyond the reach of the Maridacan subcontinent.  The wizards returned to their aloof watchfulness, not interested in the day-to-day operations of the kingdom.  Occasionally they would pass their 'requests' to the king, but for the most part, they simply sat back and enjoyed for perhaps the first time in their history, an age of peace.

[the enemies of Bariche]

Interesting. When I read the War of Elders, I saw the wizards as the good guys. In this story they are more evil, except for that tiny bit at the end, with the "age of peace". Care to explain?

The war went well for the enemies of Bariche.  The five towers suddenly entered the conflict in full support of Bariche, and in several surprise attacks they incapacitated the leadership of two of the Wains and ensured that they would pose no threat.  The confused armies mostly submitted to Bariche.  The remaining Wains were offered Bariche's manifesto: submit before his benevolent judgement, to whatever its whim, or be stripped of all their titles by force.

shoudn't that be "Bariche"?

Yes, that's a typo.

The wizards are Machiavellian.  For them, the ends justifies the means.  They will go to any lengths necessary to complete their objectives.  They are not intended to be either heroes or villains, but given the right incentives they will act the part.