Ségnous Slave Revolt

The **Ségnous Slave Revolt** was a rebellion of Ruawi Orcish slaves in the town of Ségnous (pronounced /sɛːɲu/) in in Dragon-ruled Roulonne, occurring in the spring of 61 AD. Though it is disputed whether or not it was the largest slave revolt in Roulonnais history at the time, it was certainly the bloodiest. The high death toll, as well as the well-organised nature of the revolt, was a major contributing factor in prompting the Dragons to collectively punish the Orcish race and cull their numbers, which soon rapidly got out of hand and became the Ruawi Genocide.

## Rebellion and Massacre

The Ruawi slaves planned their operation well, and were initially highly successful. During a large feast which the local mayor Mauriche vou Aberin was throwing for his 50th birthday and the 47th birthday of his wife (as the two shared the same birthday), the Ruawi slaves tasked with cooking and serving the food spiked the wine and the soup with Blackleaf, which induces sleeping. They did the same to the meals of the guards on duty, and silently killed those who could not be poisoned. Once the guards and local prominent families who were attending the feast fell asleep (or fell dead), the slaves seized the armoury and equipped themselves whilst the waiters and cooks tied up all those in the feasting hall.

When the attendees of the feast awoke, the slaves demanded written declarations freeing them from bondage. When one man - whose name is unrecorded - spoke out and protested, a slave immediately slit the throat of his daughter next to him. The other slaves, realising that the event was going to turn bloody, proceeded to kill all the sleeping guardsmen whilst the other aristocrats were harassed. The mayor Mauriche vou Aberin spoke up and said that even if he would give them freedom - which he would not - his "scrap of paper" would be meaningless, and the slaves would be hunted down and executed. At this, multiple slaves stabbed him to death. The increasingly angry slaves came to the conclusion that making demands of the aristocrats was fruitless, and they instead turned to their boiling fury at the men and women who had owned and humiliated them, murdering all of the attendees of the feast - including the children.

When inquisitive townsfolk came to investigate why the feasting hall had very suddenly gone silent, the slaves agreed that they were not going to allow witnesses to go free, and directed their blame at the commoners for being complicit in the systematic shaming of the Orcs. Individual killings quickly turned into mass slaughter, and eventually the slaves began to revel in the bloodshed as they hunted down and murdered every single Human they could find. Approximately two thousand slaves rose up in rebellion and participated in the massacre, leaving approximately three thousand dead.

## Reprisal

When Lord Sakan Ristanex, the ruler of the local Red Fang Governorate, heard of the revolt, he personally commanded a force to put it down and destroy the rebels. He brought with him two other Dragons and approximately one thousand Human retainers. When Sakan discovered that the Ruawi slaves had not merely rebelled, but slaughtered all the Human inhabitants of Ségnous, he ordered the Humans to stay put and, alongside the two Dragons accompanying him, set Ségnous alight with his breath. The Orcs, who were powerless to fight back, were mostly reduced to ash - though twenty escaped the blaze on horseback and rode at full speed towards the neighbouring woodland. Lord Sakan spotted them, however, and easily chased them down before they reached the cover of the trees, killing most of them with fire but preferring to deal with the final few with his bare hands, tearing them to shreds with his claws.