Chainbreakers' War

Also known as the Shadow Rebellion in Mallon. A war that secured an end to norren slavery by Gask, as well as Narashtovik's independence from the Gaskan Empire.

## Background

Up until the Chainbreakers' War, the Gaskan Empire stretched from the western coast of the continent east to the Woduns and as far south as the Dundens that mark the general border with Mallon. Norren were fairly commonly kept as slaves throughout Gask, which more than once resulted in small-scale revolts from the Territories that were quickly put down. Narashtovik had been more or less left to its own devices by the kings in Setteven for many years.

Following Samarand's failed Unlocking and Cally's return to the Council, Narashtovik began covertly funding armed norren rebellions in the Territories, angling towards norren freedom and Narashtovik's independence. Though Narashtovik's motivations were largely political, securing norren freedom would be fulfillment of a promise Cally had once made to his friend Gabe. Dante and Blays were often at the forefront of these efforts. For five years prior to the events of *The Great Rift* they ran around the Territories, often stopped by general norren distrust of outsiders, particularly human outsiders.

## Major Events

### Beckonridge

The spark that drove the war to begin in earnest. Dante and Blays arrived posing as minor Gaskan nobles with Lira, Mourn, and Gala as servants to find the final location of the Clan of the Green Lake, cousins to the Nine Pines, and, in theory, the Quivering Bow. According to Orlen and Vee, the bow had been secured by Cassinder along with the Green Lake, making a visit to Beckonridge beneficial to all parties. After confirming the location of the Green Lake, working as slaves in Cassinder's silver mine, Orlen and Vee directed the smaller party to a tower in disrepair on the Beckonridge estate to find the bow while the rest of the Nine Pines freed the other norren. The final result was a large skirmish that cost at least Gala her life and vocal pushes for war in Setteven. Beckonridge itself was burned to its foundations by the Nine Pines.

### Wending

While visiting Gallador to try to convince the merchants to pressure Setteven away from war (on the basis that wars in general and against the norren in particular would be messy and expensive), Dante and company found that Cassinder had gotten there first. He had already convinced Bil Jocubs, the current head of the TAGVOG, and the louder portion of the body of the TAGVOG itself to side with Setteven. Despite this, Dante received a proposal from another faction in Wending through their agent indicating support for the norren could be encouraged if Jocubs was no longer at the helm of the TAGVOG. After some debate, Dante, Blays, and Lira snuck into Jocubs's home by climbing up a toilet and killed the man with poison in his ear. Things went smoothly until the very end, when Cassinder appeared. They discovered Cassinder was an ethermancer- and revealed Narashtovik's involvement in the unrest in turn- shortly before jumping out a window and swimming across the lake back to Lolligan's home on Bolling Island, where they had been staying. Soon after, Cassinder led an attack on the island and was driven back, injured. Dante and his friends left Wending immediately afterwards for Narashtovik.

By the time they made to Narashtovik, a heavy-handed decree was handed down from King Moddegan intended to either drive the norren to open rebellion (leaving Gask no excuse not to invade and subjugate the Territories by force) or else break their ability to fight back in any meaningful way (by means of "tribute" in flesh from each clan). The clans- officially outlawed by the 'treaty' from the capital- rioted in Dollendun and crossed from general quiet resistance to open rebellion.

### Borrull

Normally a norren village grown up inside what used to be a fort, the citizens had been ousted by Gaskan soldiers who intended to use it as a fort. After some urging from Hopp of the Broken Herons, an alliance of norren clans formed to take the fort back. With two sets of heavy double doors blocking the entry, the fort posed a significant challenge, especially to any smaller groups of clans. The plan was then for Dante to use the nether to cut through the hinges holding the gates in place before the allied clans stormed through. This went well until a lone archer, acting on information from a traitor among the clans, shot Dante. Despite the arrow, he managed to get the gates down and the norren took the fort.

Inside, they found Orlen killing unarmed Gaskan soldiers who had surrendered in order to cover up the fact that he was the traitor. Blaming Dante for Vee's death at some time between the attack on Beckonridge and the formation of the alliance of clans, Orlen had told the Gaskans when and where to strike to kill Dante. On hearing this, Mourn killed Orlen and was promptly selected as the new chief by his former clanmates of the Nine Pines. Outside, in the remains of the village, the other norren warriors were putting out fires and discovered buildings filled with the bodies of norren women, all with broken legs and either burned or bludgeoned to death. In retaliation, the remainder of the Gaskan soldiers who had surrendered were marched off the edge of cliff on which Borrull was perched.

A few days after the norren took the fort, a force of Gaskan soldiers led by General Varrimorde arrived. They were in theory sent to bolster the garrison already in place. The new force was admitted to the fort under the illusion that the original Gaskan garrison was still there. Once a large enough portion was inside, Dante sealed out the rest with his newly acquired earthmoving abilities. Those inside were cut down by the norren warriors who had been hiding.

### Dollendun

Following the clans' victory at Borrull, the alliance grew as other wandering clans rallied at the fort. The clans began raids on smaller norren towns and villages currently occupied by Moddegan's men, further bolstering norren numbers. In some towns, the Gaskan soldiers fled before the clans could arrive, but in at least one case they massacred the norren of the town first. Following the alliance's raid on Cling, Hart and Somburr arrived with twelve hundred norren gathered from the grassy northern stretches of the Territories. Encouraged by their numbers, the alliance marched on Dollendun.

The initial strategy was to strike the human fortifications on the norren side of the Cricket River with support from norren citizens of the city. However, upon the clans' arrival, they found that the Gaskans had retreated from the eastern shore entirely and burned all the bridges across the river. The clans opted to fortify the eastern shore and send an offer to Setteven (wherein all norren slavery would cease and the Territories would remain a holding of the Gaskan Empire subject to regular taxes that didn't include people as slaves) instead of launching an assault on the western shore. Two weeks later, the messenger that had been sent with the treaty returned with Setteven's sound refusal and the news that the full might of the Gaskan army was marching on Dollendun.

In addition to sheer volume of troops, Gaskan reinforcements included fifteen war galleys intended to ferry soldiers from the human shore across the river and a number of ethermancers. While some additional clans continued to trickle in on the norren shore, most of their reinforcements came from Narashtovik in the form of nethermancers- Varla, Ulev, and Wint from the Council along with Nak and nine other less powerful monks.

The day of the battle, Gaskan soldiers boarded the war galleys while another contingent circled to the north of the norren side of Dollendun. Half of them were crippled soon after launching by norren teams equipped with several bomb-bags assembled by Willers, a young norren. Unable to land anywhere strategically convenient, the Gaskans from the galleys were thrashed by the norren waiting for them on the shore. On the northern edge of the city, the battle went much more poorly, largely due to the effectiveness of the Gaskan cavalry. Cassinder was busy causing mayhem further in, collapsing buildings with the ether until Dante cut the balcony out from under him, taking him out of the rest of the battle.

Both sides paused to regroup. Soon, the Gaskan troops charged down two of the larger boulevards towards the norren's position. Despite the norren's unquestionable advantage in any one-on-one physical combat with a human, the Gaskan numbers soon drove the clans back and out of Dollendun. Between the loss in the city and Cally's assassination- less than an hour after the norren retreat- the alliance splintered. Unable to communicate once the loon network, routed through Cally, went down, the clans retreated into the hills to harass any Gaskan party that made its way into the Territories. Dante and the rest of Narashtovik's surviving nethermancers returned to their city.

### Narashtovik

Following Cally's death, the Council fell to infighting over where to place the blame. Dante and Kav were at the haert of this, encouraged by Cassinder through his agent, Amwell, and Wint, who turned traitor. This revelation came just before Wint threw himself from the balcony of the Council chambers. The survivors made their peace and turned their attention to preparations for the inevitable Gaskan attack. Eventually Olivander arrived with reinforcements gathered from smaller towns and settlements within Narashtovik's sphere of influence, and later, Mourn with four hundred norren, including the Nine Pines, the Dreaming Bears, and a mix of diverse survivors that had lasted through the weeks of guerrilla warfare since Dollendun. Two days later, the Gaskan army arrived.

Late morning on the day of the battle, Cassinder, who was leading the assault, presented the king's terms to Narashtovik's defenders stationed at the Pridegate, the city's outermost defensive wall. The terms were total surrender- dissolution of the Council, surrender of all norren in the city, and surrender of the city itself to Cassinder's control. When these were rejected, Cassinder signaled his ethermancers, taking the priests of the Citadel by surprise and knocking a massive breach in Pridegate. The defenders retreated to the Ingate in a practiced maneuver.

As the day progressed, there was some exchange of arrows but nothing flashy. Closer to noon, the invaders rolled in trebuchets, which were quickly taken out of commission by Narashtovik's nethermancers. Further along the wall, a Gaskan ethermancer chiseled crude stairs into the stone of the wall, allowing a flood of soldiers that had to be beaten back step by step by Olivander. A little after two in the afternoon, the defenders repelled a number of siege ladders and an attempted run with a battering ram. As the afternoon continued, the intense heat and humidity began to take its toll on both sides. As the heat began to wane, signal horns announced that the Gaskans had finally broken through the Ingate- largely the result of the enemy's ethermancers. While a skeleton crew remained on the walls, the rest of the defenders retreated towards the Sealed Citadel. The rest of the crew from the walls retreated soon after. At the gates of the Citadel, the retreating defenders found a force of Gaskans blocking their path. Dante signaled for the gates to be closed and led the retreat instead to the carneterium and the tunnel Dante had created leading from the catacombs into the Citadel's basements.

Two hours after the retreat, archers appeared on the roof of the Cathedral of Ivars, shooting down into the courtyard of the Citadel. They were replaced as quickly as they were knocked down. At the same time, the ladders appeared again, this time with two rolling staircases as well. The Gaskans pulled out a ram again, but this was a cover- inside, Cassinder waited to blow the gates of the Citadel open with the ether before retreating to safety behind his own lines. The majority of the surviving soldiers of Narashtovik were ordered back to the Citadel by Dante, who used the nether to open a massive rift stretching from the middle of the Citadel's courtyard nearly to the steps of the Cathedral, dropping five thousand mostly-Gaskan soldiers to their deaths, including Cassinder and Lira.

## Aftermath

Immediately after the rift opened, the Gaskan army fled Narashtovik. Dante collapsed, netherburned, and remained unconscious for a week. Blays left the city and stayed away. Mourn led the norren back to the Territories, where they set to driving the last of the Gaskans from the Territories. After Dante recovered, he gradually refilled the rift, which took another week to finish. The same day, a messenger arrived from Setteven with a treaty offering an end to the war and norren slavery. The Council- less Cally, Varla, Wint, and Kav, after everything- rejected the treaty, opting instead for full independence from Gask both for themselves and for the norren.

In the wake of the battle in Narashtovik, Gallador Rift rebelled as well, in what came to be known as the Lakeland Rebellion. In the end, they didn't win their full independence, but neither were they completely subject to Setteven's rule.

After consulting Cally's notes, Dante crafted new sets of loons which were then distributed among the clans, the new system to be routed through Nak.

In Mallon, political and religious authorities alike grew nervous after Narashtovik's display of power and began looking for anything new and flashy that could be used against Narashtovik- either defensively or in another Scour. Their quest led them to the Plagued Islands and the events of *The Red Sea*.