The History of Alshar

**The History of Alshar By Seabrother Dexus of Fairhaven Abbey**
Presented to His Grace, Lenguin II, on the occasion of his victory and conquest of Farise

**The Early History Of Alshar: The Coming Of The Sea Lords**

When Argarus the Cormeeran’s corsair ship, the Fair Maiden, blew past the treacherous Shoals of Sinbar in a springtime tempest for the first time, he thought he and his men were destined to dine with the Storm Lord in his hall that night.  No mariner in living history had braved the rocky, reefed maze in the western bays, and if they had, none bore tale of the lands beyond.

Argarus’ crew included a young monk, Careddas, rescued from Farisian pirates shortly before.  The monk repaid his rescuers by using ancient maps in his possession to plot a course through the Shoals, to escape the rising tides.  When the Fair Maiden emerged on the other side, the ship was battered and beaten, the mast broken and the hull damaged . . . but most of the crew were alive. Argarus put to shore in an inlet along the rocky coastline, preparing to encamp ashore, shipwrecked on a desolate coast.  But beyond the rocky headlands and behind the forbidding gray cliffs the crew discovered a broad and fertile land, peopled by simple farmers who enjoyed the bounty of their fields and vineyards, untroubled by war.  They called themselves the Alshari, and their fertile land, Alshar, meaning “Uttermost West” in their ancient tongue.

Argarus set to conquering them at once, his sixty corsairs quickly seizing the unarmed chieftains of the tribes and murdering them before the eyes of their astonished families.  He called the island he took for his base Vinnahaven, after the goddess of ports.  There he built a small fortress in fear of an uprising, and made Vinnahaven as defensible as he could.  For a year Argarus ruled the coastal people near his ship, terrorizing the populace and demanding tribute of food, wine, women, and timber to repair the Fair Maiden.
Though the folk of the land beyond the shoals he named Enultramar were prosperous, they knew no gods but the primitive divinities who ruled the lands.  When Argarus declared himself Lord of the Sea, and forced a dozen rebels to be slain in sacrifice to the Storm Lord and his five daughters, instead of a bull as tradition demanded, he loaded a hundred Alshari slaves aboard his repaired ship, took ample provision and treasure, and vowed to return to the generous land.

Though he left a few men behind to watch his new secret haven, the pirates were lazy and grew complacent, allowing the careful watches Argarus declared to fail.  It proved their undoing.  Before Argarus was two months gone, the Alshari coastal folk rose in rebellion and slew their captors.  They did their best to destroy Vinnashaven and all memory of the first of the Sea Lords, and return to their quiet lives.

It was not to be.  While the depredations of the corsairs faded in memory, and the coastal folk felt free once more, a few years after Argarus’ departure, the Fair Maiden returned through Carredas’ Channel to Enultramar once more.  Argarus had gone to the Storm Lord’s halls before the ship returned to Cormeer, but his sons Ramonus and Salbino, returned with eleven ships, a corsair fleet.

The first Sea Lords were independent captains Ramonus (the elder brother, and more ambitious) recruited in the wake of the Imperial Magocracy’s expansion from central Merwyn to their ancient havens in Cormeer’s Shattered Coast.  Many of the corsairs there refused to bend knee and take the sail of the Magocracy, nor was there a need to.  Their colonies in Remere, Castal, and Farise, among other far-flung ports, offered plenty of room to escape the Magocracy’s growing influence.

With the cult of the Storm Lord and his daughters as the cultural center of the mariners, the sons of Arbarus were able to convince eleven adventurers to join them in a secret, bountiful haven only they knew about.  Promising wine, women, land and dominion, the twelve ships set out from Cormeer prepared to colonize, not merely raid.  Amongst their crews were smiths, carpenters, shipwrights, wainwrights, miners and other craftsmen from Cormeer eager for adventure and opportunity.   When the fleet rounded the Horn of Farise and faced the forbidding barrier of the Shoals of Sinbar, a priest of the Storm Lord, Stormfather Vulintarius, led the Fair Maiden through Carredas’ Channel and into the Bay of Enultramar, beyond.  Before the fleet made landfall, they conspired behind the peninsula and divided up the lands of Enultramar before they set foot there.

The Pact of the Sea Lords was a simple one: each ship and crew would lay claim to a twelfth of the lands of Enultramar, to rule as lords in the name of the Storm Lord.  The Stormfather chose a high precipice overlooking the bay to claim as his future temple, and agreed to be independent arbiter between all twelve of the Sea Lord houses.

When the fleet emerged from behind the peninsula at high tide the next morning, each sail bore the Storm King’s sigil: the fearsome Sea Axe, upraised in aggression.  Each ship landed on a different site around the great bay, laying claim to an island or peninsula which they felt would be good to harbor in.  Then their men departed their ships, axes and swords in hand, and went forth to conquer the coastal peoples.  Within a week all within a day’s ride of the bay were subject to the Sea Lord’s might. For two years the twelve crews, under the leadership of their captains-turned-lords, forced their new subjects to toil to build strong but simple stone towers on the rocky islands they’d claimed as their own.  Storehouses and shipyards were built, to be filled with the tribute and labor of the smaller natives.  Women, too, were demanded and delivered to the Sea Lords’ dire keeps.  As each lord took a totem in honor of the sea and the Storm Lord, they prepared their men for the conquest ahead by sharpening their skills on the conquered natives.

When the Magocracy’s nascent merchant fleet departed Farise, bound for Unstara, the Far Isles, and points beyond, their escort of Cormeeran warships sailed first far to the west to screen them from the coastal pirates along the Scorched Coast.  Unbeknownst to the Magi, the Sea Lords of Enultramar were well-prepared to pillage their grand fleet.  The proud ships of the Sea Lords descended from the Shoals of Sinbar like the grandsons of the Storm Lord himself.

Quickly and savagely each ship took a prize and escaped with it through the Channel.  When they brought their prizes back to their havens.  Great fleets were forged out of their piracy, and the havens of Enultramar prospered.  Many of the most ancient harbors and settlements saw their rise from this time: Pearslhaven, Drakeshaven, Solashaven, Deitus’ Landing, Shellhaven, and other small ports along the rocky Bay of Enultramar rose to economic power during their first grand attempt at organized piracy.

The ships taken in that raid were quickly converted to military use and added to the fleet while the Corsairs of Enultramar returned to the rich waters off of Farise.  Thrice they made such forays before retiring behind their protective shoals.  By the time the news of their victories over thirty eastern ships came to Merwyn, the seat of the Magocracy, the Sea Lords had retired from raiding and devoted their time to enjoying their fortunes . . . and building their holdings.

So great was the store of treasure from their raids that it overfilled their storehouses and was laid on the rocks, exposed to the elements for lack of a better place for it.  Some were abandoned entirely, a votive offering to the Storm King, while others were given to the Stormfather of the Bay.  Even modest captains enjoyed spectacular hauls, as they sold the slaves they’d taken as prisoners to the inland villages to toil on their estates and vineyards.

Though the corsairs were not raiding, they were not indolent.  They turned their energies - and their great treasuries - on transforming the merchant freighters and caravels they’d captured into ships of war, and fitting them with new crews.  New sails, new forecastles, new catapults and scorpions were built, and hundreds of new mariners were trained as crews.  They fortified great stone towers in their havens, encircling the great bay with mighty fortresses and magnificent shrines.  Similarly, they began construction of their greatest achievement, the Tower of Waves, along the largest expanse of rock amongst the Shoals, and overlooking the secret channel.  By controlling access through the Shoals, the Sea Lords kept competitor and foe alike at bay.

Sealord Ramonus, counted Lord of the Waves, first among equals, called all the Sea Lords and their captains to counsel at his seat at Vinnashaven that winter to discuss their strategy for the coming year.  Wary of a response from the Magocracy’s warships out of Farise, the corsairs agreed to take the fleet to the center of the Shallow Sea, far to the south of Farise, and await the changing of the startides that spring.

When the Magocracy’s fleet sped north into the Sinbar Sound to screen their charges, the thirty-strong fleet descended upon the merchant ships from the south.  Again the Sea Lords conquered, and fled north through the Channel back to Enultramar.  The Cormeeran fleet under the Magocracy’s sails chased the corsairs as far as the Tower of Waves, but did not arrive in force.  The stout ballistae and scorpions on the sea fort sent one warship after another to the bottom, and drove away the fleet.

That began a thirty-year reign of terror and raiding as the Sea Lords of Enultramar controlled shipping in the western Shallow Sea.  The scourge of the Sea Axe soon fell across the coast from Farise to Cormeer.  For when the various merchant houses sought to control their raids at sea, the Sea Lords took to raiding the coastal towns and temples.  The third Lord of the Wave, Ramonus’ son Chetas, though only twenty years old, led five captured merchant ships filled with Sea Lords disguised as a slave fleet into Farise by night at captured the port and pillaged the town for two days before they were driven off by inland troops.

Eventually the Sea Lords re-took cherished ancestral havens in Castal and Remere, outside of the reach of the sparse Magocracy.  The Sea Axe standard of the Storm Lord was unfurled across the coasts of the continent from Enultramar to within sight of Cormeer, itself.    But the far-flung empire of Corsairs, devoted to their bloody god, were not content to merely raid.  As merchant traffic lessened, they turned their own hands to trade and learned the immense profits that could accrue thereby.

By the time the Siscos, Fourth Lord of the Waves took the bronze Sea Axe at Vannashaven from the Stormfather and pledged to rule by his ruthless laws, the Magocracy had had enough.  Using the powers of their magi they bescryed the entire Bay from afar, and learned much about the scope and plans of the Corsairs.  Though it took a decade to plan, when the Magi of the empire brought their powers to bear, it was only a matter of time before the far-flung havens of the Sea Lords began to fall.

Using the Sea Lords’ distant kin, the faithful Cormeeran navy whose lords swore allegiance to the Magi, the Imperial navy’s squadron took one Sea Lord haven after another.  In each place they slew the resident Sea Lord and demanded their heirs change their sails for the Magocracy, or lose their heads as well.  Though many heads fell, many more Sea Lords bowed to their conquerors as their creed demanded.  Where they would not submit, the Archmage sent one of his trusted Magelords to rule over them. Finally, after losing their strategically vital island base of Pagnatta near Farise, the Sea Lords struck back.  Mustering a mighty fleet of seventy ships, the Sea Lords struck the Merwyni port of Ricivu, a prosperous town deep in the heart of the Magocracy, pillaged, sacked, and razed it.  Outraged, the Magelords vowed to retaliate.

The following autumn, before the fiercest of the storms rolled through the Shallow Sea, and the Sea Lords were far to the east, finishing their raids against the coastlands, a squadron of heavy Imperial navy ships assaulted the Tower of the Waves that guarded the channel through the shoals.  To the east a fleet of smaller vessels braved the Shoals at high-tide, using their arcane arts to overcome the challenges of the mighty sea wall.  When the tides began to recede, nearly fifty small ships filled with marines attacked the Tower of Waves from behind, then sailed into the harbor at dawn, taking Enultramar by surprise.

Trapped in their ports, the few Sea Lords who remained fought mightily against the Magocracy, but the weapons of the magi were far superior to theirs.  Caught by surprise and faced with destruction, the Lord of the Waves surrendered the Sea Axe of Enultramar to the Vorean magelord Komentava.  When the fleets returned, he demanded their submission to his decision, and they obeyed.

The terms of the surrender were not absolute.  The Sea Lords maintained their titles and their lands, but were restricted to four warships per holding.  They were forbidden from raiding and piracy, though were permitted to serve the Empire as privateers . . . and they had to agree to allow the Empire to settle the interior of the fertile valley, as well as keep a naval port in the Great Bay.  The religion of the Storm King would be allowed to be practiced in a place of prominence, but the other gods of the lands were also to be henceforth respected Once the Sea Lords were brought under submission, the Magocracy encouraged education and exploration amongst the brave mariners, instead of seeking to punish them for their depredations.  Magelord Komentava, named Imperial Consul of Alshar by the Archmage, chose the relatively small and undeveloped inland port of Falas, at the base of the mighty falls of the Mandros River as his seat.

Magelord Komentava realized as he surveyed the fertile coastlands behind the forbidding seawall that the Sealords ignored and realized the greatest bounty of Alshar was not its coasts, but its interior - particularly the sprawling western side of the vale, where the grapes grew as abundantly and deliciously as any in Cormeer, famous for its wines.  The Alshari vintages were poorly made, though strong, when the Magelords first arrived - the Sea Lords preferred to mix theirs with seawater, rather than drink it plain.

Komentava quietly imported vines and Cormeerans knowledgeable in the art, and began improving the vintages produced in the Bikavar region.  He introduced distilling and taught the production of brandy.  In addition, he found and exploited mines, began plantations of fruit trees which grew abundantly on the plains, and brought farmers from Merwyn and Vore to improve the yields of the Alshari peasants around him.  And he encouraged the villages to encircle themselves with walls for defense against marauding Sea Lords and bandits.

For five years Komentava brought craftsmen, monks, and ambitious lordlings from the east to Alshar, past the very noses of the haughty Sea Lords, and established small lordships throughout the coastlands and at Falas most of all.  These industrious folk mixed freely with the Alshari, elevating them in status and culture and treating them as equals in most things, a much different attitude than the haughty Sea Lords.  Many of the Magelords took them into service or even vassalage, improving their affairs as they improved their stations.  Some went on to become Coastlords and knights themselves, ruling over their relatives like proper lords.  The estates of the coastlands prospered, and five years after Komentava began proper production of Bikavar wine, the first barrels were sent downriver to port.

At first the Sea Lords welcomed the new trade, and they became fond of the vintage; but they soon grew jealous of the silver the coastal estates were making from their purses.  At a council under the auspices of the Stormfather, the fifth Lord of the Waves, Chetas II, commanded that all goods leaving Enultramar would pay a tenth of their value to the Sea Lords to subsidize the defenses of the Great Bay.  The fee was high, and added to the price of the new wine on the market; the tax was resented by many Coastlords, but with the unity of the Viscounts there was little they could do but pay.

Within two years the Alshari coastal lords were at the point of rebellion, and Komentava, now aged, was forced to negotiate a peace before civil war erupted.  The Sea Lords refused to acknowledge the lordships of the Alshari, only grudgingly dealing with the Imperial Consul.  When the Sea Lords remained intractable and promised even more taxes for use of their ports and ships, markets and warehouses, Komentava lost control of the interior.  The Alshari rebelled.

Though not a martial people, the Alshari natives and the lords of the agricultural estates met at Falas and declared themselves Coastlords, in defiance of the Sea Lords.  Taking the anchor - a Sea Lord icon of the Fairtrader, remade to represent their resilience and resistance - as their symbol, the Coastlords armed themselves with swords and spears, making armor of leather and iron.  They fortified strongholds deep inland, on defensible areas, with the assistance of the magi.  Though they did not attack the Sea Lords, they spoke openly of their defiance . . . and refused to send their produce to their markets.  Neither food nor the wine they had grown to love for its abundance and price were kept from the Great Bay.

Though the interdiction was irritating to the Sea Lords, it was an inconvenience at most.  The busy ports of Enultramar were laden with supplies from Farise and beyond, and they did not suffer.  But they were angered at the arrogance of the Coastlords.  They considered themselves apart and superior over the Alshari and resented the interdiction.  When a drunken fight resulted in bloodshed at Arlen’s Landing, the Sea Lords of House Aslus vowed to destroy the coastal Lord of Oxbows.  The first Alshari War began. A series of brutal raids upriver by the Sea Lords’ fleets recalled their days of being corsairs, generations before, and at first they were very successful.  All those halls within reach of their river bases were raided and razed.  For a year the Sea Lords terrorized the Alshari of the Lower Mandros mercilessly.

But the magelords of Alshar, with the help of the clergy of the Imperial gods and the secular lords, began to counter the attacks of the Sea Lords with equal ferocity.  For two more years the Alshari struggled with the Sea Lords until they won the right to establish their own ports, and the lordships of their aristocracy respected.  Though Komentava died before the final agreement was reached at Falas, his deputy and eventual replacement, the seamage Salapara, oversaw the Concord of Alshar.  Ever after the Lord of the Waves was accounted the master of Enultramar, and the Count of Falas was known as the Lord of the Fields, presumably co-equal authorities within their regions.

The uneasy truce became the basis for a cooperative effort between the Sea Lords and the Coastlords through the auspices of the Count of Falas, Lord Salapara.  During this period, he quietly encouraged the Coastlords to continue to improve their fortifications, as he was worried about news from the east.  Many small castles and strongholds were built across the coastlands, smaller than the Sea Lords’ towers but better defended and more sophisticated in design.  Many monasteries and abbeys were also established, as the Count of Falas oversaw the development of the interior.

When next the Sea Lords rose against the Coastlords, stinging from a fresh defeat at sea, the Coastlords were far better equipped, trained, and prepared to respond.  After the first few raids against their villages and plantations the lords of the coast met the thrust of the Sea Lord’s expedition at the remote but extremely defensible castle at Rhemes.  Away from their ships and on dry land the Sea Lords were at a disadvantage against the landsmen.  Though they attacked they were unprepared for a lengthy siege so far from water.  When the self-styled Count of Rhemes led a counter attack from a postern in the night, the Sea Lord expedition was defeated, their leaders captured and held for ransom.

The Lords of Wave and Field met at Falas to arrange a truce and ransom at midsummer, and so belligerent were the threats of the Lord of the Field that the Lord of the Waves agreed to terms to end hostilities less they face attack in a weakened state.  The Sea Lords affirmed the rights of the Coastlords to run their own havens, permitted their wares at market without demands for tribute, and otherwise agreed to respect the Coastlords as equal in nobility, their gods equal in respect to the Storm King and his five daughters.

The Sea Lords faced a dilemma: their traditional warlike ways were severely restricted by the Magi, and while they profited greatly from trade (they still held four ships out of five in the Great Bay) they yearned to return to their piratical ways.

No more were they the dominant force in Enultramar - the Alshari natives, led by the Magi and the secular lords, had learned the arts of war, and in their arrogance the Sea Lords failed to recognize their numerical superiority.  There were now more than twenty Coastlord fiefdoms surrounding them to the north, each with large and prosperous families, and many smaller estates were prepared for abundant growth after the war.

The native Coastlords even had the temerity to build ships and contend against the Sea Lords in trade from their upriver havens, particularly the rich and prosperous Oxbow Viscounties.  As they had been originally settled by the Sea Lords and then abandoned when they proved unfit for farming, this trade was particularly insulting to them.

More, under the guidance of the magi certain monks and adventurers were exploring even deeper along the Upper Mandros in the Great Vale, traveling up the rivers after climbing the escarpment across the midst of Alshar responsible for the great falls.  The land beyond the escarpment proved as abundant as the coastal plain, though in different manner.  For beyond the falls and the fertile coastlands was a fertile country of rolling hills and green valleys, ideal for grain and fruit . . . and horses. The land was half again as large as the Coastlands of the Lower Mandros, and seemed ideally suited for grain crops in the magi’s estimation.  The Great Vale had been known but ignored by the Sea Lords for over a century, for it was a land of meadows and plains, with the trees they coveted only abundant along the rivers or in forests along the ridges.  The magi at Falas understood the secret bounty available to them, as the tribes up-country were few, and did no more than hunt and fish their lands.  But they were not ready to undertake the development of Alshar’s interior, yet, so they made quiet preparation against that day instead.

Over the next fifty years, as the height of the Late Magocracy approached, Coastlord and Sea Lord came to an uneasy alliance fueled by mutual greed.  The Cormeeran harvests for several years were compromised by rebellion and war, as the Archmage consolidated his power, and demand for wine was strong in the Empire.  The vintages of Bikavar found a profitable market in the ports of Merwyn, and the Coastlords had great store of wine put up.  Between the industry of the Coastlords and the daring of the mariners amongst the Sea Lords, a great Wine Fleet was assembled.  The Bay Tax was suspended for the season before the Wine Fleet took sail.  When it returned from its journey the following year the ships were laden with silver and gold from the profits.

Thus began a mutually-lucrative enterprise between the two cultures which enriched them both.  While the Magelord was technically Consul over Alshar and Enultramar, he did little other than facilitate trade and settle disputes for years.  By the time the Fifth Lord of the Fields and the ninth Lord of the Waves met at Falas for their regular council under the joint auspices of the Count of Falas (the Imperial Consul) and the Stormfather, neither side wished to disturb the fabulously prosperous relationship.

Alas, all things must come to an end, and the golden age of Alshar and Enultramar was no exception.  When the Archmage at last summoned support from all corners of the empire to drive back the Narasi barbarians north of Vore and protect the coasts from the pirates proliferating in the ruins of lost Perwyn, half of the Sea Lord fleet departed for the east, laden with Coastlord warriors and warmagi trained at the Tower of Sorcery, the home of the Alshari counsel.

Tragically, much of the fifty-ship fleet Enultramar sent was lost in a storm off of Cormeer, and the remainder was defeated at sea by the resurgent Cormeeran corsairs who preyed on pirate and Magelord alike.  Though nine ships eventually did make it to Merwyn’s ports, and the Coastlords of Alshar were present at the final battles of the Empire, few, if any, ever returned to their homeland.  The Conquest of the Narasi barbarian king, Kamaklavan, swept them away, and a new chapter began in the history of Alshar.

When King Kamaklavan stood in the ruins of the Archmage’s palace and determined the course of his nascent kingdom, he realized that his five sons were too belligerent to rule a united kingdom.  He thought therefore to divide his legacy, giving each of them equal portion over his conquest.  Yet not all fiefs were equal, nor all sons, and the eldest brothers, to whom he awarded rich Vore and fabulous Merwyn, were his favorites.  To his second sons (of his second wife, Kamlan and Bemin) he awarded Remere and Castal, and to the beloved bastard and master horseman Terine he acknowledged his name and granted him distant Alshar, the furthest (but legendarily prosperous) territory within the Empire, as his fief.

It was nearly a decade before the new Duke Terine led his sons and a portion of the great Narasi horde aboard a fleet to depart for his legacy.  When he arrived in Enultramar with two dozen ships to claim his fief, the folk of Alshar were incredulous with the feat.  They had not been defeated, and despite the fall of the Archmage they saw little reason to bow to a barbarian lord.  Coastlord and Sealord alike viewed the Narasi as invaders, not conquerors.   Yet the Narasi Duke would not be ignored.  Landing at Argarus with his fleet he swiftly took control of the town and used it as a beachhead against his potential foes.  For the Narasi had one great advantage over the native Alshari, their masterful use of cavalry.  Though the Coastlords possessed horses, they did not use them with the same effect or in the same numbers, and the Narasi cavalry quickly swept over what resistance was raised.

Though the first Duke of Alshar seized the Consulate at Falas, and forcibly married the daughter of the Lord of the Fields after his beloved wife died, the Narasi held little more than the County of Falas for a full generation while the Coastlords and Sea Lords continued their trade and largely ignored the new barbarians. Taking the title Count of Falas, in addition to Duke of Alshar, the ducal house was little more than a player amongst others in Alshar for three generations.  Yet they made productive use of the time. Though some of the Narasi were granted the estates of rebellious Coastlords, and others married their conquered subjects, most of the Narasi were more eager to build their own lands than take those of others.

When the former magelord suggested the wide, empty country north of Falas as being ideal for the horses so beloved by the Narasi to his son-in-law, the Duke approved its settlement in force.  Most of the Narasi conquerors therefore established keeps and estates in the up-country Great Vale along the Upper Mandros, styling themselves Vale Lords as the Coastlords and the Sea Lords did.

By the time the third Duke of Alshar, Obrus I, attempted to expand his power over his neighbors as was his right, the Coastlords rose in rebellion against him.  Summoning his vassals from the north, the heavy cavalry of the Vale Lords decimated the infantry of the Coastlords in Rhemes and Bikavar, until the entire coast agreed to swear fealty to the Duke of Alshar, Lord of Field and Vale.  Though the Sea Lords did not take part in the landsmen’s struggles, they realized the power of the Narasi and chose to volunteer their support in favor of conquest.  Though this was an unexpected betrayal of the old Coastlord/Sealord alliance it proved as profitable for the Great Bay as it was detrimental to the Coast.

As a result, the Narasi made a pact with the Sea Lords, in which they swore fealty in the Narasi style, and Duke Obrus in turn acknowledged the Master of Wave as the chief of his navy.  By the time his son Kandrus was elevated to the throne he ruled over every inch of the vale of Alshar, from the Shoals to the Narrows in the rocky and impassable north.

**The Middle History of Alshar**

Once the first explorers came to the far end of the impassable Narrows, where the Mindens and the mountains of the Farisi Peninsula meet, they began searching for some means of going beyond the imposing cliffs.  A pair of monks of Herus, Dansus and Ladras, eventually discovered a cavern in the upper slopes that opened on the ridge above.  From that vantage point they saw out over the edge of the Dry Lands, into the edge of the Land of Scars, and into the distant, fertile plains of Gilmora, beyond.  Though it took a month for them to find a place of descent, the two monks eventually took the first steps of Alshar’s expansion into the rest of the continent.

When Duke Obrus first heard the news of the monks’ discovery, he immediately ordered the northern lords to lend assistance to the effort of creating a permanent pass through the Narrows.

Though the Narasi were unskilled in stonework, he sent to them six monks of various construction orders to oversee the project.  The effort took twenty years to complete, and the far-sighted monks did not merely carve a pass, they built a castle out of the living rock to protect the passage they constructed.  The great mountain keep was a wonder, protecting the southern realm from the north and defendable from the south.  With its dedication, and the subsequent flood of younger sons and commoners searching for fresh opportunities, a string of small fortresses across the Dry Lands and the southern portion of the Land of Scars was quickly constructed and the settlement of the abundant and fertile Gilmoran plains, proper, began.

Within two generations the new fiefs torn from the western Riverlands began to send magnificent loads of cotton back through the Narrows to the ports of the south.  Within four generations, the Gilmoran cotton trade outpaced the wine trade in Enultramar.

The Cotton Lords of Gilmora became an important military force when the fifth Duke of Alshar called his banners against the Storm King’s Uprising.  Though the expedition from Gilmora was small, the fierce loyalty and magnificent finery of the Cotton Lords impressed the folk on both sides of the conflict.  When they returned home, many brought brides, brothers-in-law, and interested adventurers who sought their fortunes.  Almost all brought large coffles of slaves purchased from the Sea Lords, who had turned from piracy to slavery under the dukes. The duchy north of the Narrows was a far different culture than the stratified south.  The Cotton Lords were extravagant and generous, absorbing the chivalric ideals popular amongst the Castali and Remeran Riverlords.  Their vast estates employed hundreds of serfs and villeins to fuel the broad fields of cotton, corn, beans and oats they grew.  Towns grew as the demand for smiths and artisans from the south brought new crafts to the comparatively primitive region.  Eventually they grew into great cities, patronized by the large, expansive families of the Cotton Lords.

The revenue brought into the duchy by the new trade was staggering.  Gilmoran cotton was deemed superior by the great weavers’ guilds of Cormeer and Merwyn, and even low-quality cotton bearing the Gilmoran seal fetched a premium price.  Every hundred bales that crossed the Narrows saw a bale go into the Duke’s treasury, and every hundred which departed the docks of Enultramar saw two.  While this seemed a small tax to pay, the ducal household found itself with a fortune in cotton in quick order.

While the fertile plains of Gilmora brought forth crop after crop of cotton, the younger sons and restless souls continuously explored the frontiers to the north.  The explorers found a rough and wild country filled with forest after endless forest of deciduous wood.  To the Narasi-descended Cotton Lords the land represented opportunities to hunt, hawk and fish.  To a seafaring people like the Sea Lords, the first glimpse of the Alshari Wilderlands represented fleets of ships.  When the first of the rich Alshari iron deposits were discovered in the midst of the country, the fleet-minded nobles of Alshar saw their future.

The ducal household itself funded the expeditions into the Wilderlands to open an iron mine and begin logging.  Expanding the Cotton Tax at the Narrows to two bales in a hundred to fund the effort, soon miners, smiths, mercenaries and adventurers poured into the deep interior. Unlike the relatively deserted Gilmoran plains, where only a few peaceful farmers and tribes of River Folk lived, the highlands of the Wilderlands, like the feared Land of Scars, was filled with wild tribes of Mountain Folk, Kasari, the clans of the Pearwoods, wild tribes and ferocious wild animals.  The settlement was not nearly as peaceful as Gilmora’s, and the constant raids by the belligerent tribes bred a culture of powerful cavalrymen and rangers, harking back to their Narasi barbarian forebears, just to maintain the logging camps and mines.

Led by the Gilmoran hero, Lord Tudry, these raids became collectively known as the Goblin Wars, due to the powerful presence of the Mountain Folk (casadalain) tribes in the region.  Over the course of two decades the Wilderlords, as the culture came to call themselves, dominated the forests wherever their heavy cavalry went.

As they drove the gurvani and other tribes into the foothills of the Mindens, the highly organized, highly-secretive Kasari became the greatest challenge to the Wilderlords.  Though they tried repeatedly to overwhelm their mountain strongholds, the Kasari proved indomitable.  Eventually they settled with the duke’s representatives by sending a small number of the giant trees the Master of Waves coveted.  Nor were the Pearwood clans easily pacified.  Though the Wilderlords repeatedly sent military expeditions and diplomatic overtures with expensive gifts, the clans continued to raid the nearby Wilderlord settlements.

The tenth Duke of Alshar was particularly intrigued by the Wilderlands portion of his domain.  When the Castali Riverlords began to test the new frontiers between the duchies, though the Cotton Lords of Gilmora were successful on the field against their Riverlord counterparts, it was the heavy cavalry of the Wilderlords that devastated the foe the most.  Their broad oakwood and rawhide shields, thick iron lance tips and heavy hauberks of Alshari steel cut through the more lightly-armored Riverlords like wheat at the First Battle of Barrowbell.

Just as noteworthy, though less celebrated, were the three companies of Wilderlands yeoman armed with their powerful bows.  A laminate of yew and hickory, these longbows, designed to slay wolves, bears, goblins and lions at a distance and tipped with well-forged iron points, shredded the Castali infantry in droves.  Though they were not awarded lands or titles the way the Wilderlords were, the strength of the archery of the Wilderlands folk was instrumental to keeping the Castali at bay.

Unfortunately, the very success of the conquest of the Wilderlands lead to the greatest loss of the great Duchy.  The duchy’s increase of the Cotton Tax at both the Narrows and at port in order to fund the construction of the new summer palace at a small river valley in the south of the Wilderlands.  It was the extravagance the dukes showed on their new palace at Vorone that irritated the Cotton lords as much as the increase in the tax.  They felt that the capital should be in their cosmopolitan midst, not among the near-savage folk of the Wilderlands.

At the same time, the dukes of Castal were luring their lucrative cotton trade from the expensive transport through the Narrows toward the eastern-flowing rivers beyond Barrowbell.  When the Alshari dukes raised the tax on cotton yet again, and the viscounts of Enultramar conspired to raise the cost of transport, a number of Cotton Lords secretly began to send a portion of their crop east, not south.

The dukes could not help but notice the quiet rebellion, and sent agents to enforce their rule.  Yet that merely provoked anti-Alshari sentiment among the Gilmoran lords.  Though the counts appointed by the duke were loyal, many of the wealthy baronies of Gilmora were plotting to change their allegiance to the duke of Castal, who promised far more lenient terms.  Castali agents also infiltrated the society of Gilmora, spreading dissention and whispers of rebellion in every inn and tavern, castle and estate they came to.  Between Gilmoran dissent and Castali encouragement, it was only a matter of time before it came to war.

The first Revolt of the Barons began when an unpopular loyalist was appointed one of the four Gilmoran counts.  He and his party were soon seized and put to death in a clear act of rebellion. Raising the standard of the cotton boll, the Gilmoran rebellion lasted two years.  Only when the duke called the banners of the Wilderlords to pacify them, and hung the leaders, was the rebellion crushed.

Though the duke lessened the cotton tax after the rebellion, he increased his enforcement efforts.  The damage to relations between the duchy and many of the old Gilmoran houses was already rent, however, and ever did the murmurs of rebellion flare when loyalists were not about.

The second rebellion, Sir Lomarand’s Rebellion, stemmed from a fight between a local lord and the ducal inspectors.  Once blood was spilt, the fire of rebellion flared quickly, and soon half of Gilmora was in arms against the loyalists.

Castal waited propitiously to intervene.  When the easternmost baron declared his fealty to Castal, and not Alshar, Castal was quick to enforce the claim.  After almost a year of sputtering, eventually the rebellion turned into the three-year long Second Alshari-Castali War.  Though the duke called the banners of the Wilderlords to assist, the harsh winter north of Vorone that year delayed their deployment.  The rebels seized on this delay and continued the war nearly two years after Castal agreed to stop sending men over the frontier to aid them.

Having lost a barony, and nearly a third of his duchy, the Duke of Alshar met with the Duke of Castal for talks.  The cotton tax was again reduced at both Narrows and port . . . but no sooner was the agreement concluded, the Duke of Alshar declared a ducal monopoly on wine and cotton sold from Alshar.  There would be one fixed price for both, the duke decreed, stabilizing -- and limiting -- the profits available to the Cotton Lords’ estates.  Though angered, after the brutal hanging of rebels and traitors after the previous war the Cotton Lords were subdued in their reaction.

Though Castal did not continue to provide material aid, the far-sighted dukes planned ahead for their next opportunity.  The great works at Darkfaller were begun the same year the First Peace of Barrowbell was concluded.

Darkfaller was the greatest fortress ever attempted by the Narasi, who rarely built on the same magnitude of works as the Magocracy.  But in Darkfaller the Narasi genius for fortification finally came to the fore.  When it was complete, a great ring of five keeps, encircled by a massive, two-tiered wall behind a massive moat overlooked the Gilmoran from southern Castal.

Darkfaller was greeted by the secret rebels as a sign of salvation, while the loyalist correctly saw it as a threat.  Yet their petitions to Duke to match the Castali aggression was frustrated by the complicated court politics of Roen – the temporary capital selected in favor of a less-protected site in troubled Gilmora.  Then the Duke’s flagship was unexpectedly sunk in a tempest, taking his entire family to the Shipwrecker’s Halls.  The duchy was thrown into chaos as six different contenders tried to take the throne.

Castal wasted no time in fishing in these troubled waters.  They finished their works at Darkfaller and garrisoned it with three thousand Riverland knights.  The loyal counts of Gilmora did their best to hold on to their lands in the face of whispered rebellion, but it was a challenge.  Only the threat of the Wilderlands great houses kept the region intact at all.

When the great houses of Alshar were forced to take sides among the various contenders, many of the Cotton Lords rallied behind their own Count Marbane, a loyalist nephew of the late duke.  Though he had a strong claim and much local support in Gilmora, the adept military and political manipulations of the extended interregnum nearly plunged the country into full-scale civil war and kept him from rallying support outside of his land.

As it was, Count Marbane was hard-pressed to repel the clandestine raids from Castal and the subversion of native rebels.  His gallant gentlemen did their best to defend the realm, but when he, too, was forced to either give up his claim or face the assassins of the so-called Black Duke, Enguin, Count Marbane himself rebelled.  The Duke’s reliance on the powerful Sea Lords and Vale Lords to control the south gave him a distinct advantage, and the loyalty the distant Wilderlords paid to the ducal house (though it wasn’t always clear which ducal house) put Marbane in an inferior position for the coronet of Alshar.

When Marbane himself raised the cotton boll standard over his keep and swore allegiance to the dukes of Castal, he encouraged the other counts - and especially the barons of Gilmora -- to also change their cloaks.  Though the loyalists, particularly those close to either the Wilderlands or southern Alshar in the west of the country, kept their oaths to the Black Duke, they were reluctant to take up arms against the majority of Gilmora.

The Black Duke retaliated by sending wave after wave of Sea Lords and Vale Lords against the rebels.  To his dismay, Castal honored their oaths of fealty and the great armies at Relan Cor, Castabriel, and Darkfaller advanced to support their new Gilmoran peers.

The bloody Third Alshari-Castali War lasted five years, and raged throughout the Riverlands.  Though the Black Duke’s forces pushed back heavily against the Castali and their Gilmoran auxiliaries, the barons refused to yield up their keeps.  Though the might of the Vale Lords and eventually the Wilderlords were brought to bear against them, they had long prepared their castles against the day.  Unfortunately, the Gilmoran’s fortified manors and light castles, designed more for residence than defense, fell quickly to the Black Duke’s forces, prolonging the war as he was forced to lay siege to them.  But they stubbornly resisted Enguin’s men, though the Black Duke hung every rebel he captured.

For the first two years of the war the loyalist forces pressed hard against the cotton boll banner.  Every keep taken was treated as a domain in rebellion, hanging the lords and despoiling the manors before turning them over to their confederates.  The rebels, with the support of the Castali expeditions from Darkfaller, harassed the baggage trains of the Alshari and attacked their strategic depots.  When the two forces did meet on the open field of battle, they were often evenly matched.

To harass Alshar even further, an army from the Riverlands pushed past the forward defenses of the Black Duke and dared to lay siege to the great keeps of the Narrows.  Though the gateway to the south was successfully defended, it also succeeded in blocking supplies from the abundant south.  The Black Duke’s forces, under Count Barduin, were forced to feed and pay their armies from the stores of the loyalists and their storehouses at Vorone.

Duke Enguin was angered at the Castali’s temerity, but he knew that the Narrows could never be taken by force, nor starved of supply.  He considered attacking the force from the rear and forcing them to surrender, but he felt that was inadequate to the cheek of the Castali.  Instead, he marshalled his forces and laid siege to Darkfaller in return.  Once again the Castali proved their mastery of siegecraft as they resisted the grand Alshari army in their massive fortress.  Though the Alshari force was limited in what it could accomplish, it successfully managed to keep the Castali from sending reinforcements to their allies in Gilmora for two years.

With the two greatest fortresses of the duchies under siege, the rest of the lands were nearly at peace.  This provided an opportunity for the loyalists to add to their purses under the color of war.

The expertise of the Wilderlord was not in siegecraft, as the Sea Lords and Coastlords practiced it.  They were cavalry, and had little to do during the siege of Darkfaller.  While their enemies were confined, several groups of Wilderlords took advantage of the state of war between Castal and Alshar to raid deep into the Castali Riverlands under the Anchor and Antlers.

The Wilderlord raiders were fierce, striking suddenly and by surprise.  With many of the Riverlands’ defenders engaged in Gilmora, the villages and towns of the Riverlands were easy prey for the ambitious Wilderlords.

When the forces of Sir Anbrei of Vorone struck at a town less than fifty leagues from Wilderhall, the great summer capital of the smaller Castali Wilderlands, the raids became too brash to ignore as the fortunes of war.  The clergy from both countries tried to intervene, but the Wilderlords invoked the war and Duin’s Law to justify their raids.  As their store of loot from the prosperous wool country was growing, they saw little need to cease.

Duke Enguin had little reason to call a halt to his fearsome Wilderlords, as they harassed his foe and added to his own fortune.  Yet the rumors of rebellion in the south were rampant, and even the Wilderlords began to pine for their rustic homes after so long in the field.  The cost of the siege of Darkfaller was draining the treasury as it was, and with the Narrows besieged there was no way to get the growing stores of cotton to market.

Finally, after a series of battles - the naval battle against the Castali which Alshar won, and the Battle of the Field of Relveny, which Alshar lost (due to the treachery of Baron Restralan) Duke Enguin and Duke Jondard of Castal agreed to meet at Barrowbell for terms.

The Gilmoran war had drained Enguin, both financially and spiritually.  His wife was begging him to return from war and take charge in Enultramar.  Darkfaller was no closer to falling, and while the Narrows was still defended the Castali were effectively severing the south from the north.

Had Enguin the Black been raised as a landsman, perhaps the result of the Second Peace of Barrowbell would have been different.  But when Enguin saw the opportunity to swap the contentious Gilmoran baronies for the title to six lucrative Castali Sea Lord ports along the eastern coast, historically the havens of the Sea Lords, he took it.  Though the territory was still technically Castali, as the Sea Lord barons there were sworn to the Castali dukes, they were entitled to the Alshari Master of Waves as their overlord, in perpetuity, with the restriction that the ships of their havens could not make war against Alshar.  In addition, certain trading rights and a host of feudal obligations were negotiated in the final Peace, including some factors with the coast of Remere.

The result of the treaty was the releasing of nearly all of Gilmoran counts free to swear fealty to the Castali, leaving just enough of the west intact to connect the wooded Wilderlands to southern Alshar.

Though the Black Duke and his Sea Lord supporters were pleased with the concessions gained at the conference table, many of the other Alshari nobility were humiliated by the bargain.  Though no one dared raise the banner of rebellion against the cruel Enguin, the idea that a prosperous third of the duchy was now under the banner of Castal burned at them.  Within four years of the Second Peace of Barrowbell, after remarrying a woman of dubious repute, he was slain by a courtier.  His young nephew, Parguin, was installed in his place.

It took Parguin many years to cement his rule.  His southern nobles had grown arrogant in the interregnum, and the Black Duke’s Sea Lord allies were not in favor of the conciliatory duke, who was raised a Coastlord at Falas.  But as he slowly won over the folk of Enultramar, and even re-visited the Wilderlands capital at Vorone, he managed to keep the volatile Alshari factions from undermining his rule.  While he was bereft from the great income from the Gilmoran cotton trade, there were still resources in the far Wilderlands he favored.  The wine trade, too, enjoyed a modest resurgence.

By the time the old duke arranged a conciliatory marriage with his daughter, Grendine, with Rard, the Castali heir, Gilmora was under Castali rule for a generation.  The marriage was more than mere politics, as Grendine was apparently quite smitten with Rard, who was by all accounts a handsome and vital man in his youth.  The marriage was made smoother to the Alshari by the re-entitling of many of the Gilmoran domains lost in the peace, though under the banner of Castal.

Once his daughter, who was not well-liked at court, was married, Parguin turned his attention to his son and heir, Lenguin.  Many of his high nobles already whispered that Parguin was far too close to Castal, and so Parguin secured the hand of the niece of the Duke of Remere, ending the long-standing commercial feud between the two naval powers.

Though Parguin’s efforts in the latter part of his life maintained the peace and the integrity of the realm, he was still not well-respected by his nobles.  Much hope was placed in the heir, Lenguin, who was raised like his sire at Falas.  The boy was well-groomed for leadership, and Parguin ensured he was known by his Wilderlord nobles as well as the Coastlords, Sea Lords and Vale Lords.  Soon after Lenguin’s carefully-negotiated marriage, Parguin passed to his reward and Lenguin took a diminished - but still vital - realm.

The capstone to the post-war relations between the two realms was their cooperative effort to defeat and conquer the territory of Farise.  Held independently, under the fiction that the Magocracy was still extant, the Mad Mage of Farise and his ally the Doge waged war against the merchant fleets of all of the western Duchies.

Using the ties between the various ducal houses, with the new Castali duke Rard in the lead, the three duchies put aside their differences and agreed to attack and conquer the last shred of their ancient foe once and for all.

Depending upon Remere and Alshar to supply the ships for the seaward assault, the Castali attempted a daring march down the fierce Farisi peninsula, attacking the port city from behind as the harbor was besieged.  Between the masterful use of naval tactics, the powerful ground assault, and the use of warmagi to defeat the Mad Mage, the Doge was overthrown and the Mad Mage slain in his palace.  Once the city-state was pacified, the three dukes of the west toasted their brotherhood and pledged to run the territory in concert, with none claiming sovereignty over it.

Thus was the peace of the Five Duchies assured, through the bravery and fortunes of the brave Alshari.

## References

Mancour, Terry. Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series . Kindle Edition.