Balchoth

## Balchoth Khanate

Flag of the Balchoth Khanate (Ertugrul Khan)

## Flags and Symbols

The Balchoth are a confederation of Easterling clans, who have been a great threat to Gondor and Rhovanion in the past. They were known for their famous chariots, that give the Wainriders this nickname, which helped them make Rhovanion fall, and the enslavement of their people. Although later on, Gondor and Dale have pushed them back to from whence they've came.

## **Server** **History (pre-reset)**

Wainriders started out as a relatively small faction, led by a player called Titan03 who built the original city of Balcaras; it was wiped out during a server reset. From that point on, Wainriders remained dormant, until around 445 of the Fourth Age (mid 2020), when a war-chief named Atilla (Vendetta\_V), took control of the Wainrider clans and united them into a fearsome army with hordes of warriors. With this force Atilla began his conquest westwards, with the Avari elves quickly falling under his influence and control. When the Avari of Eryn Caran pledge their allegiance to Atilla, he declared the formation of the Greater Rhunic Empire. Although the GRE maintained cordial relations with Mordor and even Gondor, tensions grew higher with the Third Kingdom of Dale, which was also slowly spreading its influence over Northern Rhovanion and North-west Rhun.

Failed diplomacy and broken tempers led to insults being hurled between Atilla and King Hope II of Dale, and in the following years both the Greater Rhunic Empire and the Third Kingdom of Dale were effectively in a state of total war. Although both sides raised huge armies and a great collection of armaments, neither force had made a major foray into the other's territory yet. However, after a Wainrider strike force managed to cross the border and launch a raid on the Royal Palace in Dale during the Hope II's birthday celebrations, matters only escalated from there. And so in 451 of the Fourth Age, a great host of Wainriders, Avari elves, East Lorien elves, Red Dwarves and volunteers from Gondor, commanded by Atilla himself, crossed out of the redwoods of Eryn Caran and into North Dorwinion; the territory which the GRE had been trying to wrestle out of Dale's countrol.

The invasion however ended in a failure. The Dalish and their Forodrim Ardhin allies defeated the Wainrider armies in the field, following a series of skirmishes and bold but eventually disastrous charges spearheaded by Atilla and his chieftains. When the core force of Wainriders took too many losses and it was said that Atilla himself had been mortally wounded, the rest broke when the Dalish and Forodrim Adhin launched a counterattack. But Atilla and the Wainriders were determined to try again. They continued to build up their forces, ready for a second assault on North Dorwinion and seize it from the Dalish. However, their plans, as were the plans of their Dalish nemeses, were cut short when the Bragolmor occured. With the Andrhîw grasping Middle-Earth in its icy grip, the Greater Rhunic Empire collapsed and the Wainriders faded away from the knowledge of the West; though they would be immortalised in treatises and chronicles telling of their numerous conquests, both successful and failed.    Now the Wainriders are as they were before Atilla's arrival; a loose coalition of clans, who once again seek a leader.

## **Third Age (starting from TA 2941)**

Although the religious traditions set the "year zero" and the beginning of the Balchoth history in SA 1600, when the Blue Wizard Pallando, considered by them the only real Prophet, was said to have arrived in Middle Earth, the real origins of the Balchoth tribes are lost in history, and it would be hard to reconstruct their travels until the Wainrider War fought throughout the second and third millennia of the Third Age and won by Gondor and the Rohirrim in TA 2509. After that date, the Balchoth came back into the steppes, unable to choose a single leader who would have unified them, until TA 2941, when the chief Ertugrul Qaydum, succeeded to his father Emirhan at the lead of his clan, inspired by a reborn Illahvatarist faith defeated several rival chiefs and claimed the title of Khan of the Balchoth, basically forcing his people into accepting the Shahdah Cult as their only religion. One of the first acts of the Khan was establishing a corps of 50 priest-warriors, the *Almuqadas*, to "protect the faith against the disbelievers [*kuffar*]".

## **Lifestyle and culture**

Aside from Illahvatarism, the Balchoth culture is essentially nomadic. While most of them live in yurts and move as long horse caravans, a slightly smaller number of tribes - the most prominent ones, in fact - prefer to live and travel in wagons, without staying in a single location for too long; they explain their choice of wains rather than tents with a major mobility and shorter readying times before departing from a location, although the travel speed of these wagon caravans is a bit slower. In any case, some of these Wainrider chiefs mixed the two cultures, living in yurts fixed on huge wagons. There is, in the end, one single city, Balcharas, although it works more as a gathering place for feasting occasions rather than a truly permanent settlement.

The Balchoth have a relationship with their horses almost as close as the one the Rohirrim share with theirs; though, the Balchoth horses cannot compete in speed and strenght with their valinorean cousins. The fame of their cruelty in war inspired legends, during the third millennium of the Third Age, of them eating people alive; despite this tale is nothing more than superstition, it is true that they developed some ingenious and painful tortures.

Their language is harsh, with sounds that recall the wind blowing on the plains and the thunders on the eastern mountains they sometimes travel to, but in truth these sounds are not much more than phonetical addition that mask well enough a close similarity of the Balchoth dialects with the speech of Rhudel. Some Dorwinine scholars suppose those languages might be the nearest to the one spoken by the first men in Hildorien.