War of the Gems

the Battle of Astanta

## Participants

### Aggressor(s)

various minor noble houses, including House Aertalan and House Prainde (Ethrilians)

### Defender(s)

House Celtigar, various loyal noble houses (Affirmites)

### Notable Participants

Zerua I, Abathon I, Aerta VII, Baroness Haenya, Lord Anthor Aidse

## Logistics

### Changes

Kingdom of Thalyra granted to Zerua I and Abathon I, House Theanos founded, the Heartbound founded

The **War of the Gems** was a civil conflict fought over rulership of Thalyra from approximately 391 BFH to 380 BFH. The conflict began with the passage of the Revaena Affirmation, which declared the unilateral superiority of House Revaena over all other houses in the realm. This Affirmation also included the stipulation that any "rebellious" houses were liable to be destroyed by order of the King. This order would polarize dozens of noble houses against each other, resulting in a civil conflict that would last over a decade. The Affirmites remained loyal to the king and his edicts, while the Enthrilians, so named because the individual who prompted the Affirmation, Lucan Aertalan, owned a castle known as Enthril, sought to depose the tyrant-king.

The war came to an end in 380 BFH, when the stronghold and home of House Revaena, the Thorian Palace, was stormed, looted, and massacred. During the fighting inside the palace, the tyrant-king Aerta VII was killed, along with his heirs, leaving the title of Thalyra up for grabs. However, rather than fracturing into petty squabbles, it was decided that the title would pass to the sole survivors of the two houses most aggrieved by the war. Zerua of House Prainde and Abathon of House Aertalan would jointly inherit the kingdom of Thalyra.

## History

### Inciting Incident

In the year 391 BFH, Thalyra was ruled by a house known as House Revaena. Their numbers were many, and they held the lords of the kingdom in an iron fist for over a century. Among those lords were the heads House Aertalan and House Theanos' predecessor. The head of Aertalan at the time, Lucan Aertalan, was an influential duke in the kingdom, arguably the one that held the most power save for the king himself. With this power came an emboldened sense of worth on Lucan's part. As a result, when the king of Thalyra died, Lucan began openly and publicly criticizing his successor.

The new king, a brash young man known as Aerta VII Celtigar, did not take kindly to Lucan's boldness. At first, he ordered Lucan's arrest and trial. However, in a moment of great anger, he amended the order to include the massacre of Lucan's entire court as well as his arrest. And so, one summer night, the king's forces attacked Enthril, Lucan's castle, in what would come to be known as the Night of the Martyred Family.

Lucan himself and his son, Abathon, managed to escape the slaughter, but only for a few days. A week following the murder of his immediate family, Lucan was captured, tried, and executed for Sedition Against the Royal Family. His son, however, had been placed with House Prainde, and so was saved from the fate of his father.

As word spread from Thalyra's capital to the rest of its holds about Lucan's fate, many minor noble houses were outraged that the head of one of their contemporaries was executed for mere criticism. In response to the growing anger, King Aerta issued a decree in an attempt to quell the growing flame in his kingdom. This decree, known as the Revaena Affirmation, declared that, while House Revaena was only a first among equals in relation to the other houses, any attempts at usurpation by other houses (usurpation is never clearly defined within the Affirmation) would result in the same response as had been levied against Lucan.

This decree was issue to every Duke, Thane, and Count in all of Thalyra. As it spread, sides were taken by every house that meant something. On one side, the Affirmites, the constituent houses believed that Aerta was well within his right as King to declare such a thing. On the other, the Enthrilians, the houses believed that such an abuse of power was a massive overstep on the part of the King, and that measures needed to be taken to ensure their own survival. With these two rival factions, Thalyra erupted into civil war.

### The Conflict

Raging for just over eleven years, the War of the Gems took place over hundreds of battles and over half of the continent. In the opening months, both sides were emboldened by anger and righteous fury, and so it was during this time that the deadliest battles took place. One such battle, the Battle of Taethor, saw over 20,000 soldiers on either side, and resulted in over 10,000 casualties for each side. Many other battles occurred in this manner, with thousands upon thousands of soldiers fighting across sprawling canvases of troop formations and single combat duels. As a result of this style of combat, most battles in the first few years of the war were fought to pyrrhic victories, and the war quickly ground to a stalemate.

So it was until the first major turning point, the Battle of the Giant's Shadow, a battle fought at the foot of Mt. Wickrose, an active volcano at the edge of Thalyra's Robraine Alps, in 386 BFH. The Ethrilians, led by the Lord of House Aidse, Lord Anthor Aidse, arrived with a mere 7,000 soldiers to the Affirmite's 12,000. Most expected the battle to be over quickly and lead to the first decisive victory since the start of the war. However, Lord Anthor, having been an avid tactician since the day he could read, made ingenious use of the environment, taking up positions concealed by smoke from Wickrose or made otherwise inaccessible by the heat from the angered mountain.

When the Affirmite soldiers attempted to force the Ethrilians from their positions, they were outdone by the environmental factors, and many Affirmite soldiers died without even making contact with their enemy. When the two sides did finally meet in battle, it was less a battle and more a slaughter. The Ethrilians effortlessly dispatched the Affirmite reinforcements, sending them packing in a matter of just 7 hours. This would be the first decisive victory since the start of the war, and would change the course of the conflict for the foreseeable future.

However, the Affirmites were not dismayed by the humiliation of that defeat. Shortly after that, they seized and sacked the home city of House Aidse, Aidathon, as revenge for the defeat, though the Aidses themselves had escaped the city just prior. They burned the city to the ground, taking valuables and resources as they went and sending its people fleeing across the war-torn kingdom.

Those loyal to the king would also be served a loss in 388 BFH, during the Battle of Astanta. The Ethrilian commander, a Prainde known as Baroness Haenya, had fortified the city for months prior to the Battle, and so when the Affirmites arrived to capture it, they were met with over 15,000 soldiers very well prepared for a siege. For over a year, intermittent skirmishes would characterize the fighting outside Astanta. However, 13 months after the siege began, Haenya ordered a decisive push out of the city in all directions, resulting in the complete rout of the Affirmites.

In response to this defeat, Aerta VII personally ordered an assault on the Praindes' stronghold, Elderstock. For just under three months, the vast majority of the Praindes' membership were holed up in Elderstock, hoping to wait out the king's forces. However, quickly, the hunger inside the castle came to be too much to bear. With a letter to the Affirmite commander, and a supposed acceptance of their surrender, the Praindes lowered Elderstock's drawbridge.

What followed was a massacre unseen since Ethril. The king's forces stormed into the castle, and killed every person they found inside, regardless of affiliation with the Praindes. Every man, woman, and child within was mercilessly killed, and the Praindes' precious stores of money, and many of their priceless historical artifacts were destroyed. The only Praindes to survive the Elderstock Massacre were those lucky few who were away from the castle, and Zerua Prainde, who had managed to escape along with Abathon Aertalan. The two would eventually find their way to Ethrilian territory, with the assistance of one warrior, Alessius Paxis. The two would then begin training as soldiers, becoming renowned commanders by the time of the siege of the Thorian Palace.

In 380, the aforementioned siege began. Nearly all of the Ethrilians' forces mustered at the capital city's gates, breaking through them in a matter of days. After that, it took a week to reach the palace's steps, and a mere three hours to bring the king down. In particular, Zerua Prainde would find him in personal combat, hewing him quickly and efficiently.

### The Aftermath

In the aftermath of the battle, all legitimate heirs of Aerta VII had either died or fled the country. As a result, though the few remaining Affirmite houses continued the fight in small amounts, the heads of the Ethrilian houses saw fit to decide the fate of the kingdom of Thalyra. They convened the Thorian Tribunal, a month-long debate over whom would earn the title, held within the very halls of the massive palace. Several times, the Tribunal almost descended into infighting, but the exhaustion of the war coupled with the efforts of a select few diplomats prevented such conflict. In the end, it was decided by the houses that, in the interest of fairness, no landed house should keep the title. That left only House Prainde and House Aertalan as potential successors.

In a move to prevent conflict between the remnants of the two houses, Zerua and Abathon were married, in an act that most considered to unite the two houses. As a result, Houses Prainde and Aertalan were no more, giving way to the new House Theanos.

With that new development, the Tribunal granted the kingdom to Abathon and Zerua together, granting them both equal power as King and Queen. The two were coronated in 380 BFH within the halls of the Thorian Palace, crowned by the Sum Canthus, the religious head for all the Nine Reaches.