In the year 3886, by our reckoning, our colonies threatened open rebellion against the Crown of Elvenholm. The High Governor of the colonies neared the end of his life. With the support of his provincial governors, he declared that his half-elf son would rule after him. Since men multiply much faster than elves, the population of Sudea was far higher than that of Elvenholm. Additionally, the spread of elvish blood among men introduced the talent of sorcery to their number. The elvish King realized he would be unable to sustain a drawn out war with the men and elves of Sudea, so he acquiesced and allowed them to go their separate way. Apart from the few who took an active role in the rebellion, the pureblood elves left Sudea and returned to Elvenholm.
By the year forty-five fourteen, elves became aware of the return of the Adversary to the world and once again, ships travelled to the shores of Sudea. We discovered there, a great kingdom of men, stretching from the west coast to the east coast and surrounding the Great Southeastern Desert and far eastern mountains on three sides. They were great maritime traders, sailing far up the eastern coast and into the inland sea to trade with the men of the far northeast and up the far northwest coast to trade with the westmen, as the inhabitants of that region became known. Their ruler was the grandson of the High Governor who had rebelled. They had retained and established a half-elf ruling class, by only allowing marriage among other half-blood families. Half-elves, though not as long lived as elves, often surpassed five centuries. Unfortunately quarter-elves and below tended towards the usual lifespan of Man. The two kingdoms agreed to resume friendly relations and the Kingdom of Sudea agreed to help Elvenholm establish new colonies on the continent. Though difficult fighting ensued for several years, we pushed the fierce men of the coast, north of the Blue Mountains, into the deep jungle. Elves established colonies along the west coast, up unto the lands of the westmen.
Over the ages of our association with the lands outside our fair isle, we became acquainted with many other creatures and beings of which we knew not before. These were the children of the Adversary and his minions, their failed attempts to copy the fair creatures of the Creator and his faithful children. Foul beasts stalked the dark and lonely corners of the land. Trolls wandered the mountains and goblins haunted the forests. Cold, slimy creatures crawled the swamps. Worse than these were the minions of the Adversary who walked the land, just as the faithful grandchildren of the Creator did. These did always seek to bring havoc onto the fair creation of their sworn enemies. After the departure of the children of the Creator, the Adversary himself walked again across the land, setting himself as a god over ignorant tribes of men.
In the year six-thousand, nearly fifteen centuries after our return to the continent, the Adversary brought war upon the lands of men and elves. The wild men of the jungle were long under his sway and he brought three kingdoms of men under his control, as well. The war lasted four years, ending when the Adversary was vanquished by the Crown Prince of Elvenholm, who would become King Aelwynn. The final battle of the war took place on the shores of Lake Bul at the heart of the jungle, where the Adversary raised his black fortress, Immin Bul, as the seat of his power. King Aleron of Sudea perished in the fight with the Adversary, but his death allowed the prince to cleave the enemy’s wrists with his great halberd, disarming him and then slashing his throat. The Adversary’s minions were routed and driven from the field. The Adversary himself was bound to his dark throne with chains forged with high sorcery and his gates we sealed behind us, with wards indissoluble even for the ones who set them. So was the one who would usurp the dominion of his Father, imprisoned within his own unassailable stronghold, forever to wail in darkness. His weapon of cataclysmic power, the axe Zadehmal, proved indestructible, even to the hottest flame. Fearing to secure it in inhabited lands, lest it work to corrupt the denizens thereof, or to cast it into the sea, lest it find its way into the hands of a minion of the Adversary, it was spirited to the most desolate spot in all the world. None other than the High Sorcerer of Elvenholm, Goromir, shrouded the way to all who undertook the journey. It was he, who led the party to secure Zadehmal and he alone knew the location of its hiding. Upon the journey’s completion, Goromir put his affairs in order and disappeared forever into the high peaks of Elvenholm’s Alban Mountains.
In the years that followed, elves, men, westmen and dwarves returned to life much as it had been in the years prior to the Great War. The minions of the Adversary still abounded in the world at large, though they lacked the common focus they enjoyed under their Master. The hobgoblins and half-trolls, bred from crosses with men in Immin Bul’s heyday, multiplied. Their number was many times more cunning and dangerous than the original flawed creations of the Adversary. The Children of the Creator stayed always vigilant to incursions of these most foul creatures.
The Kingdom of Sudea began its slow decline. The halfblood line of its kings dwindled and eventually expired. Upon the demise of its last king, in nine-thousand four, the kingdom fractured, with a new kingdom established to the north and a steward minding the righteous throne of the lost line of kings. Over this time also, elves and men grew apart, most forgetting the indomitable alliance of the Great War. Westmen and dwarves kept to themselves as they always had. Now, in the ten-thousandth year of our kingdom, we have little contact with the other races of the world. Sudea, our once mighty ally among men, is but a shadow of its former glory, and the line of stewards still minds the throne in the absence of its king. However, scholars have read in the stars, that a new age is upon us and the fortunes of men will change, we know not for better or for worse.
Appendix C
Historical Synopsis of Elves, Dwarves and Men of Sudea
Dwarvish History
In the beginning, we dwarves lived among the westmen in the Iron Hills far to the north. They were similar, yet different, from us at the same time. We preferred to shelter ourselves in caves year-round and seldom built shelters out of doors. The westmen took shelter in caves, in wintertime, but preferred to range across the land during the summer, chasing the herd beasts they hunted. Our people stayed in one place, making due with whatever game was available and storing food against leaner times. For many centuries, we knew only the westmen as our neighbors. They were half a head taller than we were and lacked a chin, but otherwise looked much like us. We, each people, kept to ourselves for the most part. The day came, when we became aware of a new people, Men, inhabiting the jungle to our south. They were a dark people, taller even than westmen, but fragile in appearance. They proved to be of vicious temperament, as if in compensation for their frailty. They hunted and ate, like animals, any stranger entering their territory, displaying the heads of their victims at the entrance to their lodgings. All those living on their northern borders feared their poison darts.
Because of our sensible, settled nature, we discovered the working of metal when others still fashioned tools of stone. First came copper, then bronze and finally steel. Bronze and steel tools enabled us to enlarge our dwellings and dig new dwellings where no caves existed. We became skilled miners, stone carvers and smiths. Soon, we found that our homeland could no longer support our numbers. Our hunters were forced to venture further and further afield, bringing us into conflict with our neighbors. Therefore, our Clan Chieftains met together as a single body and came to a momentous decision; eight-hundred summers after we first began counting the years, our people embarked upon the thousand-league trek, which would bring them to the Blue Mountains, south of the Western Jungle. The journey lasted a full year, as we slogged through swamps and crossed wide rivers, hacking our way through the trackless jungle, pulling our carts behind us. We fought off marauding bands men the entire time and they learned to fear our swords and axes of bright steel. We lost many of our number to the cannibals of the jungle, they making no distinction between the helpless maiden or child and the able fighter. Finally, in what should have been the spring of the year eight-hundred one, we climbed out of the jungle, into the foothills of the Blue Mountain
s. We encountered few men in the foothills, but we pressed on for higher elevation, because we knew the men would come eventually. We found that we were still deep in the tropics, where seasons have no meaning and we settled in a fertile river valley, where the climate was as springtime was in our native land, high above the lands of men.
Our people prospered and multiplied and we spread throughout the northwestern slopes of the Blue Mountains. At the northern part of the range, we were deep in the tropics and could settle at very high elevations, where the air grew quite thin. However, as we spread to the southwest of the range, we left the tropics and saw the return of the seasons. It was then that we discovered that the seasons inverted in the southern half of the world. What we had thought should be the months of summer, were in fact, the winter months. We had crossed the equator, but we grasped not the concept at the time, thinking that the world was flat like a plate. It was not until most recently, that the Sudeans sailed eastward from the inland sea, only to come, many months later, upon the western shores of the jungle, proving that the world was round. The southwest reaches of our mountains were dry and harsh, but they were rich in good iron, so they drew our people there as well. Soon we found our way through the mountains and settled the southeastern slopes as well. We dug deeply into the mountains in search of metals and precious stones. Our excavations expanded into cities, deep within the earth. We learned to tame the wild oxen and goats of our mountains and as well, we began to till the fertile soil of our mountain valleys, clearing the great forests to grow barley and rye for bread and beer. Our people multiplied and spread throughout the Blue Mountains. The separate clans united into two kingdoms, the Northern and the Southern, which in turn were tied together in bonds of kinship and mutual cooperation. It was thusly that we stood in the year fourteen twenty-five, when the gods of men and elves found us.
The Gods came to us in our mountain holds and we greeted them cordially, for they spoke to us in our own language. It soon became apparent that these were beings much like the nature spirits we had already encountered, but of greater magnitude. We did not worship the nature spirits as some among men and westmen had, so we were not inclined to worship these new arrivals either. They told us as much, saying that they did not require our worship and that we should venerate only their Father, the Creator of all things. They said that they would soon leave our world, to go on to build their own worlds, as their Father had done. They came only to instruct the peoples of the world in those things that they needed to prosper. The peoples of men and westmen were still living in savagery at this time and we knew not of the elves, who were civilized, but had not yet come to these shores. The Gods saw that we had already learned much of what they had come to teach us. They helped us to refine our methods, but spent much more time among men and westmen; as they had much further to go in becoming civilized. One of their number, however, Gurlach, was intrigued by our people and spent much more time among us than the others did. He is known among the other peoples, as the God of the Forge, for it was he who was tasked by his father to teach the working of metals. Since we were already accomplished smiths in our own right, he was able to teach us much more advanced methods than he could to the other peoples. He taught us to work metals unknown to the rest of the world, in crucibles sealed from the outside air, over fires of unimaginable intensity. Dwarves learned to work metals lighter than steel, but many times tougher, and to make incredibly tough steel that would never rust, or steel that could withstand the heat of a typical forge without deforming. It is because of this relationship and our thankfulness, that dwarves venerate Gurlach alone among the Gods, along with the Creator.
The Gods departed our lands exactly five-hundred years after their arrival, in the year nineteen twenty-five. We were saddened for Gurlach to leave us, but he said it must be that way. He warned us of the likely coming of the Adversary, who only awaited their departure to begin his quest for dominion over our world. He told us also of two new mountain ranges far to the east, as yet unsettled by men. In the year nineteen thirty, we mounted expeditions to colonize the White Mountains of the northeast coast and the Green Mountains of the southeast coast. The men of the east, living on the shores of the inland sea, were long friendly to our people and let us pass unmolested. The mountains, on the other hand, we found to be infested with trolls and other foulsome creatures. The creatures of darkness had multiplied in the empty lands, which we had not allowed to happen in the Blue Mountains. Two brigades of warriors were sent from the twin kingdoms, one to each range, to clear the way for the colonists. By nineteen forty, the task was complete to our satisfaction in the Green Mountains and a thriving colony was established there. The task proved much more formidable in the White Mountains, however. That range stretched far to the north. The trolls of the far north grew larger and more ferocious than their southern cousins. Though we established a strong colony in the south of the range by nineteen forty, it took an additional twenty years of vicious fighting to subdue the northern trolls sufficiently to allow our expansion in that direction.
By twenty one sixty, the Green Mountain colony had advanced to the point of self-sufficiency and an independent kingdom established under members of the Southern Kingdom’s ruling family. Soon afterward, in twenty-two hundred two, was the White Mountain Kingdom established, under a branch of the Northern Kingdom’s ruling house. Thus, the White Mountain dwarves share stronger kinship with the Northern Blue Mountain dwarves, while the Green Mountain dwarves are more closely connected to the Southern Blue Mountain dwarves. Due to their separation by five-hundred miles of open sea and our dwarvish mistrust of boats, the Green Mountain and White Mountain kingdoms have not grown closely together, though they are closer geographically to each other, than either is to their parents. This does not mean, however, that there are no bonds between them, as all dwarves the world over are bound through kinship to one another. We have accounted for our lineage since we were but few in numbers, living in the Iron Hills and have retained that record now for ten-thousand years.
The world remained relatively peaceful, with the exception of some minor wars among men, several of them caused by elves, for nearly two and a half millennia. We kept the wild men of the jungle at bay and had generally good relations with our other neighbors among men. As ever, we labored to keep the dark creatures that haunted our mountains at bay. Our first contact with elves occurred in twenty forty-one. They were tall and much fairer in complexion than men were, more like unto us in that respect. They seemed to us a strange people, aloof in their dealings with others, projecting always an air of superiority. They were indeed far more advanced than men were, but upon comparison, our calendar was one-hundred seventy years older. In addition, they, like men, lived in savagery until the Gods came to teach among them. They claim to be the elder race of our world, or so the Gods told them, but they have no concrete evidence to support that claim. They do possess uncanny powers of perception and sorcery and so they seem to share some kinship with the Nature Spirits or the Gods. Aside from anything that may be true of the elves, dwarves were the first Race of this world to rise from savagery by our own wits. We stayed out of the wars of men and elves that occurred over the ages, letting them settle their own scores among themselves, that is, until the coming of the Adversary.
Sometime after the year five-thousand, we began hearing rumors of a new sinister power moving in the world. He roamed among men, swaying many to his cause, especially those primitives who had rejected the Gods and continued to worship the unsavory spirits inhabiting the dark corners of the world. When he came to us, we had been warned already of his coming and we rejected his overtures. What needed we, power and dominion over the other Races? We had dominion over our mountains and that was enough. In sixty-one seventy, outright war broke out with the Adversary, involving every kingdom of this world. Suspecting, rightly, that our extensive tunneling connected the northern and southern Blue Mountains and thus provided a direct route from his jungle stronghold to the southern lands
of men, his forces attacked the Northern Kingdom. He had early brought the men of the Jungle under his sway, arming them with weapons of steel. Along with them, he had also the men of Kolixtlan and goblins and trolls he had bred by the thousands. We held the Blue Mountains from him, thus doing our part for our allies among the free peoples of the world. Our kin in the White Mountains harassed the men of the Thallasian Coast that had also come under his control. The Adversary was finally defeated in sixty-one seventy-four and the sorcerers of elves and men imprisoned him within his own fortress at Immin Bul. Our friend, King Aleron of Sudea, lost his life in the final battle, as did many of his kinsmen. His line lasted another three millennia before dying out just over eight centuries ago, but his kingdom never regained the splendor it had in the days before the Great War, when it was the mightiest of the kingdoms of men.
Our lives returned to much as they were before the war. We kept to ourselves, as we always did. The elves retreated to their coastal lands and their island in the west, meddling no longer in the affairs of men. Men, as they always had before, began once again to squabble among themselves in petty conflict. Westmen, always peaceful, returned to their placid, pastoral existence in their northwestern lands. Therefore, it stands, in our ten-thousandth year that the free peoples of the world, who once united against a common enemy, are again fragmented and concerned only with their own affairs.
The Halfblood King: Book 1 of the Chronicles of Aertu Page 26