Siege of Lijvar

Execution of Prince Amharon

The Siege of Lijvar was one of the first sieges in northwestern Tairghol. It was instigated by several middling Vadyan tribes during the mid-3rd Century in retaliation for the aggressive and merciless expansion of the Toumanii tribal lands under Prince Amharon.

## Background

Prince Amharon, upon succeeding to the throne of the Toumanii, immediately embarked upon wars of conquest. These were unusual in Vadyan culture; mostly wars were fought for money or livestock, and the losing tribe was almost never subjected to any more than this.

By contrast, the wars Amharon fought between 221 and 231 ended in the annexation of four separate tribes and the enslavement of their people. By the year 238 this land was all pacified as well, with the Toumanii ruling unopposed over an area dwarfing that of any other Kafetro-Vadyan tribe.

Naturally, these wars made the Toumanii's neighbours very nervous at first, and outraged later. Prince Amharon relied on his military genius to deter any attacks from these neighbours, but while the Toumanii pacified their conquests the neighbouring tribes joined their forces in a great coalition to oppose any further conquests.

There is no clear consensus on the spark that ignited the powderkeg, but in 239 the coalition attacked on all fronts. Their ideology was that Amharon could only be in one place at once, and while the battles he took part in would end up as losses for the coalition, those for which he was absent would have the opposite result because Prince Amharon only kept lieutenants who were incompetent on the battlefield to prevent a coup d'etat.

The plan worked, and by mid-241 the Toumanii had been forced back to their ancestral fortress of Lijvar.

## Siege

The siege began in July 241, with around twelve thousand coalition warriors, mostly from the Jurnetii and Poredii tribes, encircling the Toumanii fortress. Lijvar had several high wooden walls, properly engineered with battlements and towers as opposed to traditional Vadyan palisade walls. This made the traditional Vadyan tactics of an immediate escalade obsolete, and the coalition commanders Prince Levrelis and Prince Demis decided to wait them out.

It took the coalition several weeks to perfect their tactics - Prince Amharon kept the range of his missile troops carefully guarded from the attackers in the early stages. This led to coalition tents and fortifications burning down several times before they moved far enough away from the walls.

Later, in September and October, the defenders sallied out to attack the encirclement several times in the dead of night. These sallies had mixed results - at first they were extremely effective, but the coalition sentries became more vigilant very quickly and the last of the sallies ended in disaster for the defenders, with over a hundred warriors being killed. The sallies continued sporadically until the end of the siege, but with a focus on sabotaging equipment instead of killing coalition warriors. One of Amharon's lieutenants also suggested lifting planks out of the walls to attack any point in the encirclement, an idea which was taken up with great glee in the defenders' camp.

Over time Prince Amharon's resources waned, and by April of the next year his forces were running low on food. He gave up on doing anything rash, instead attempting to prolong the siege by finding alternate food sources or cooking up insane schemes to defeat the coalition. It is believed he went mad around a year after the beginning of the siege, confining himself to his chambers and talking to himself.

Factions began to form within the Toumanii to oppose Prince Amharon, and they grew in power in the following months. They began to parlay with Prince Levrelis and agreed in November of 242 that, if they handed Amharon over to the coalition, the Toumanii tribe would be allowed to go free.

The coup d'etat was staged in early December, with Prince Jupos being placed in command of the defenders in his place as a puppet of the anti-Amharon factions. Prince Amharon was handed over to the coalition and the gates of the fortress were opened to symbolise the end of the siege.

## Legacy

But it was the end of not just the siege, but also the Toumanii as a tribe. Once the gates were opened Prince Demis ordered his forces inside to massacre the Toumanii where they stood. Prince Jupos was executed alongside Amharon two days after the end of the siege.

The fortress of Lijvar, now soaked in the blood of the defenders, was burned to the ground. to quote the bard Frentias of Silkra, who visited the site in the years that followed, 'not a post was left in the ground, not a plant nor a grass blade'. Lijvar was destroyed completely and utterly, and has become a cursed place in recent times. The massacre of the Toumanii is said to play out in the sky on clear nights.