The Age of Expansion

For over a thousand years, darkness reigned, and war wracked the world. With the dawning of a new age came new opportunities. There came at last a semblance of natural order, new kingdoms rose from the ashes of the the old kingdoms. 
It was men who recovered fastest, they quickly began to explore new lands, found new colonies, and seek allies and trade partners across the world. For that, they needed seapower, and so the first great merchant-fleets were built. The men of the north still favoured oar-pulled galleys to navigate their treacherous waters. But elsewhere, men relied more and more on sail-ships – cogs carried goods across the sea, protected by sleek caravels and heavier carracks. Dwarfen innovation soon led to the construction of massive galleons – unwieldy vessels with swollen bellies, laden with cannon, and holds designed to carry a full complement of marine soldiers rather than trade goods.
Such prizes upon the oceans meant rich pickings for pirates and privateers. Warships were notoriously ponderous, forcing merchant fleets to sail slower, and this often proved too tempting a target for light attack craft. The greater the naval presence in support of a merchant fleet, the greater the prize they must surely be guarding, and the more ardent the attacks. Soon, cannon, ballista and trebuchet proved little deterrent at all, especially from enthusiastic goblin flotillas and fearless northmen, and so new tactics were developed.
As no pirate worth their salt would deign to sink a prize-ship, they would always attempt to disable it and board it instead. Thus, all Primovantor merchant vessels began to accommodate a contingent of mercenaries, and the most prized of all were ogres. No orc, man, or elf of the Twilight Kin could hope to defeat a band of such hulking brutes at close quarters, and so ogre warbands made a fortune as hired marines, and continue to do so to this day.
As with any arms race, the threat of hostility soon became more profitable than actual fighting, and so as political borders changed and kingdoms grew from the ashes of the old order, accords were drawn up, and most nations began to line their coasts with strong towers and batteries of war machines, understanding that the threat was now as likely to come from the sea as from an army on the march.The elves, too, rose to meet the challenge from those they saw as lesser races. They had lost much during the God War, and now had faced the ultimate betrayal as the Twilight Kindreds revealed their true allegiance. After assassinating King Therinsor Leafblade, the Twilight Kin kidnapped his twin children and took them to the Bloodshrine in the Wailing Spires, whereupon they sacrificed them to a Fiend of the Abyss. This prompted a campaign of aggression by the other kindreds – an outpouring of anger and spite rarely seen in all of elven history.
Now without a king, the hot-headed princes of Adaren vied for the throne, attempting to prove their worth by rebuilding and reclaiming what was once good and proud in the world in the name of their kindreds.
They beseeched the trees for aid, and crafted the first of the Stormcallers – triple-hulled, lateen-sailed warships, each bearing a slender mage’s tower rising from its stern. No vessel of its size in the world could match it for speed and manoeuvrability, and the elf mages aboard had studied long in the arts of weather control, turning the winds to their favour, and besetting their enemies with lightning, fog and squall.
The first such warship sailed at the head of a formidable fleet to Vieshlar, where centuries earlier the elves had been expelled by tribes of human barbarians alongside hordes of brutish trolls. There, two princes – Iansalor and Larongar – each staking a claim to the throne of Adaren, laid waste to the coastal encampments, and the Sea Guard of Adaren landed in such numbers that finally Vieshlar was reclaimed, and the barbaric invaders were driven back into the southern jungles whence they had come. The pursuit of the troll hordes, however, lasted for several years, resulting in the death of Prince Iansalor in the final battle in the ruins of Ej. Victory was at last seized by Prince Larongar, who returned to Adaren a hero, and was soon after crowned king.
The Reclamation of Vieshlar was the first step in what King Larongar the Vengeful hoped would be a return to dominance for his people. However, the world had very much changed, and the upheavals were not yet finished. Ironically, the naval history of Pannithor as we know it only truly began with a cataclysmic event which all but halted sea passage entirely…
Category:Timeline