Kingdom of Tol Barad

*This page deals with fanon created by Everen and its history may differ with the alternative story of the region on the page Tol Barad. The two sources disagree on various points on the island's history but are up to the reader's discretion on what to use in character.*

The **Kingdom of Tol Barad** was an early human kingdom centred on the islands dotting Baradin Bay. Conquered late in the 5th Century by the Kingdom of Stromgarde, the Kingdom has never recovered. Today, the former centrepiece of the Kingdom is a hotly disputed battlefield between Alliance and Horde forces.

## History

### Imperial Period

While the history of the Kingdrom proper begins only in the Dissolution Period, the islands were first settled by men during the early Imperial Period. Predominantly pirates and monastics, these early peoples left no trace following the invasion of the isles during the declining years of the Empire and the construction of Caer Barad. In the final years of the Imperial Period, the fort was abandoned and the legion recalled to address the internal security of the declining state, leaving the isles nearly uninhabited. Caer Barad became the centrepiece of the later settlement.

### Dissolution Period

Unlike the Seven Greater Kingdoms, the Kingdom of Tol Barad was not built on the foundation of an Imperial City-State. Instead, it rose out of a coalition of exiles from the nascent Kingdoms and anti-Imperial rebels who, seeing the declining power of the Empire, banded together on the small island now known as Tol Barad in order to declare their independence from both the Empire and its fledgling successor states. Between the criminal elements and the anti-Imperial policies of the new settlement's educated class, an anti-centralist doctrine quickly came to characterize the so-called Kingdom, culminating in the dispersal of the initial settlement into smaller bands throughout the islands.

#### Founding of the Petty Kingdoms

These small bands quickly diversified into a wide myriad of political structures, with essentially anarchistic kin-groupings forming the largest part of these micro-states. Small direct democracies and theocracies formed the next largest, leaving the very smallest number of these bands - only a half dozen - to count themselves as 'kingdoms'. While the history of these early micro-states is extremely hazy and unclear, what is known is that over the following two centuries the Petty Kings absorbed the bulk of their neighbours either by force or by diplomacy, with only the Baradur remnant remaining dedicated to their pagan theocracy.

### Warring Kingdoms Period

With the final collapse of the Arathorian Empire, the petty kings and chieftains of the Baradi looked to the coasts of the Bay. Where the Imperial Navy and the Legions had once held the region in an iron grip, there was now such great uncertainty and instability that many of the coastal settlements lay almost entirely unprotected. The time for revenge had come. While the initial settlers were long dead, the poetry and musical traditions of the Baradi retained the strongly anti-Imperial essence of those first seperatists and left the Baradi with a strong cultural hatred for 'mainlanders'. Coupled with the religious tensions between Baradi Paganism, Mainland Deus and Light Worship, and the poor soils of the islands, the most ambitious of the tribal warlords saw a great opportunity. 1501AD saw a great meeting of those same warlords and petty kings in the temple-city of Baradur, the end of many internal conflicts, and the birth of a tradition of piracy and raiding that would endure for over a millennia.

#### Annexation

The death knell for the last of the petty kings was sounded with the invasion of the islands by the Kingdom of Stromgarde in 470KY. Under a new, more expansion minded Trollbane monarch, the Stromic turned their eyes to their weaker neighbours in the Bay and began a series of annexations of outlying islands, culminating with the final invasion of the Baradin peninsula in the summer of 477KY. The army of Aethelrick Dover, High King of the Baradi clashed three times with the revitalized Third Legion and the forces of a number of noblemen, securing one minor victory in the first clash on the coast before being driven back in the second, and ultimately defeated in the third, just outside the city of Baradur.

The High King was subsequently led to Stromgarde in chains as a prisoner (where he was publicly executed for his resistance to the 'rightful claim' of the Trollbanes over the isles), the bulk of the population of the Isles put to the sword, and the ancient temple-city razed to the ground - save for Caer Barad. Tol Barad was declared to be a province of Stromgarde and settled by families from the overpopulated capital and its surrounds, and served as the centre of the short-lived Duchy of the Sea.

### Recent History

#### Second War

During the Second War, the lands that once made up the Kingdom were a key point in both the Orcish Horde and Alliance battle-plans. The island was stormed by the Horde and sacked, and after its reclamation converted into a prison by the Kirin Tor of Dalaran in conjunction with remnants of the original Kingdom's inhabitants and forces from Stromgarde.

## Rationale and Disclaimers

Tol Barad is expressly referred to as a kingdom, and as we all know, is a battleground today. The bulk of this article is fanon focusing around its rise and fall, its role prior to that collapse, and the effect it had on other nations. The decision to give the Baradi a sea-faring and raid-heavy culture is based on the apparently poor soils of the islands and their ideal location to raid Kul Tiras, Stromgarde and Gilneas.

While we don't know exactly how Tol Barad came to ruin, we do know Stromgarde controlled it by the time of the Second War. Warfare seems a reasonable explanation given the militancy we see from Stromgarde (not that it does them much good of late), and ties neatly into the idea of the Baradi as oceanic raiders and pirates. After centuries of causing trouble, the Trollbane kings decided to settle the matter permanently.