Dawarth of Windell's Letter to the Council of Sanctuary Concerning Prealith's Human History
I see why you commissioned this work and ask me to travel to Prealith. The experience has both intrigued and vexed me as it hints of revolutionary discoveries about the world's past while denying me the records to firmly support them. This account will introduce some of these discoveries and place them into the Kingdoms' timeline with an emphasis on Prealith. While I appreciate your offer to consider my obligation as met with this account; the importance of this work demands more time and effort and I know of no other scholar as suited for this task as me.
Records are sadly lacking. Prealith's own records have been obliterated by repeated invasions and civil strife - especially the contents of the Great Library in Bannerlith and the Colleges of Borelith. Other human kingdoms and the Dwarven princedoms have little to nothing - unless it directly impacts on their own affairs. The gnomes have refused to share or even acknowledge the existence of any pertinent information. As for the elves, it was only with your warning that I noticed how neatly they turn any conversation away from Prealith's past. It was this attitude that made me first wonder about what is accepted wisdom.
This attitude is especially strong with Prealith's earliest origins. Accepted - i.e. Elvish - history is elves were the first to occupy the Kingdoms, then dwarves, gnomes, and finally humans. There is also mention of a small, peaceful folk - not to be confused with the hostile and uncivilized faerie - known only to the elves. The first recorded Elvish-Human contact was the singing of the first Kuakgan to the First Tree. This event caused the initial sundering of the elves into elves and iynisin - a divide that deepened over thousands of years and culminated with the War of the Kindred and the imprisonment of the iynisin. During this time period, the Elves recount a repeated pattern of humans invading an area, spoiling the environment, and the elves retreating to unspoiled areas where the whole process began again - from Old Aare to the northern Kingdoms. Only with the establishment of the Ladyforest was the process ended.
Old Human legends dispute this story. They not only claim to be the first inhabitants of the North, including Prealith, but also believe it was the arrival of the elves and the establishment of their enclaves - like the Ladyforest - that caused the fall of Old Human civilization in the north. I was not prepared to accept myths and legends over the memories of elves whose grandparents witnessed these events. However, the local guides you provided were most helpful. The elvish ruins are older than the Ladyforest but clearly younger than the oldest of the Old Human ruins in Prealith. While there are possible explanations, it at least raises some interesting and unsettling questions about accepted History.
These questions also extend to the earliest known migrants to Prealith's shores -the Dawntreaders. The Dawntreaders brought trade, mastery of the sea, and, most significantly, wizardry to Prealith. Surviving art depicts them as red haired, pale skinned and freckled people - the same physical traits associated with wizards of any significant power to this very day. Physical evidence, including the ancient use of very powerful feats of wizardry, indicates Bannerlith and Shironlith (Slavers' Bay) were their central settlements with Borelith (Marshton) as a less important settlement and Danalith as an outpost. These traces indicate they predated Old Aare and may have been instrumental in its rise and many aspects of its civilization. Legends describe this 'Age of Legends' as period of unequaled prosperity and magic. The darker side of these legends describe terrible and fell creatures and, of course, the horrors of the 'War of the Kindred'.
The split between elves and iynisin had deepened over the thousands of years. The iynisin established their elven homes in the north - including Prealith. Elves continue to be extremely reluctant to admit the existence of the iynisin - let alone discuss them. Elves only say the iynisin turned from the Singer and were imprisoned by their kindred to save the world from their evil. A different course of events is suggested by fragments of other accounts. In this story, it was a coalition of elves, dwarves, gnomes, and humans who fought a bitter war against the iynisin and their creatures. It was the combined magic of these races that was able to imprison the iynisin underground. The few surviving Dwarfish accounts suggest the other allies preferred the extermination of the iynisin; but the elves insisted on imprisonment. Human accounts are fragments at best. What is clear is the iynisin were imprisoned and shortly after that feat, the Dawntreaders vanish as a power and human civilization in Prealith was nearly wiped out.
No one is sure why this 'Age of Darkness' happened. The Dawntreaders overseas homeland has never been found. The trade stopped, the navy virtually vanished, and the few battered Dawntreader settlements in Prealith came under the control of new migrants. The 'Age of Darkness' harmed all of the peoples. In all surviving histories, it is noted as a period of terrible suffering. Mundane hardships such as famine, war, and invasions were commonplace as were signs of supernatural displeasure - red rain, unnatural skies, plus hostile and extreme weather and other natural disasters. Elvish accounts blame the Dawntreaders and other human magic users for upsetting the balance of nature, angering the Gods and thus causing these disasters. Human sources suggest the Dawntreaders sacrificed themselves to destroy a great evil. Either way, wizardry nearly died out and Old Aare's magelords were the remaining bastions of human magic (and even they were in decline).
So began the 'Age of the Sea People'. First to arrive were the Sea Father's Chosen arrived on Prealith's shores. Traders, raiders, fearless and talented sailors and fearsome marines; the Chosen left their hardscrabble southern land to wander the seas. They found the few scattered survivors of the Dawntreaders' trading empire and brought them to Prealith. The Wanderers also arrived with these first Chosen ships. However, the Chosen's most lasting legacies were their economic and political influences. The Chosen ensured Prealith would be a kingdom tied to the sea and trade. The Dawntreaders had no challengers to their trade supremacy; the Chosen insured there would be no challengers. Since the first Sea Prince and the Council of Firsts - also Chosen innovations - the navy has remained a central hub of Prealith's policies. Likewise, the emphasis on promotion by merit and a society open to people of all cultures are other Chosen beliefs. The Chosen also embraced the new age of iron and steel tools - a Dwarven innovation. The change from bronze to iron began the shift of Prealith's center of power from Shironlith and its copper mines (Slavers' Bay) to Bannerlith and its close trading links to the Dwarfmounts. Under the Chosen, Borelith (Marshton) expanded its territory and became an important trading center. Danalith became more than an emergency outpost and acquired some importance in trade as well. Thus, the foundations of present day Prealith were first established under the Chosen.
As the Chosen forged a new Prealith, Old Aare was in decline. As the king and the magelords tightened their grip on power in Aare, many of its common people emigrated to what became Aarenis. By this point, the last of the elves were leaving Aarenis for the lands north of the Dwarfmounts. The Ladyforest had been established, but it had not yet shifted eastwards into lands claimed (and still claimed) by Prealith. A few migrants - both elf and Aare - settled in coastal Prealith. When Old Aare finally fell, the magelords and other refugees fled to Aarenis. Their attempts to own the people of Aarenis - the status of commoners in Old Aare - failed. Knowing they would find scant welcome and able resistance in Prealith, the magelords crossed the Dwarfmounts and conquered the Old Humans of Fintha and Tsaia. There they treated the Old Humans as expendable property until they were overthrown 1,000 years later in the Revolt of Gird. Magelord attempts to expand to the southeast were blocked by the Ladyforest, Prealith blocked them to the east, the wildlands were in the northeast, and any attempts to expand north of the Honnergat river were blocked by the arrival of a new people - the Sea Wolves.
The Sea Wolves first came to plunder but then turned to conquest. They conquered and held the lands north of the Honnergat - in what became Kostandan and Pargun. The Sea Wolves temporarily occupied Dzordanya but the native fae made that grip shaky at best. Later, the Sea Wolves lost Dzordanya to the Ice People who still occupy this coastal kingdom. Sea Wolf expansion was blocked to the west by the magelords, to the south by the elves, and the Prealith navy was too strong of a force to allow conquest of Prealith. However, the Sea Wolves were somewhat successful with raiding the Prealith coast north of Bannerlith. While Danalith never fell, its surrounding territory was repeatedly pillaged. Borelith - present day Marshton - suffered the most. In one massive raid the town was totally overrun and the surrounding area sacked. But, this marked the end of any substantial raids on Prealith territory. Only a few of the raiders survived to reach their home ports. More devastating to Sea Wolf morale was the state of these few survivors and their mysterious and unexplained deaths in the four nights after their return. It remains part of Pargunese folklore to this day. Not all contact was hostile. Sea Wolf people who came from their southern lands tended to be more trade inclined and less prone to raiding their neighbours. Over time, many of these traders settled and became part of Prealith's population - especially in coastal regions.
The subsequent era (roughly 1500 to 500 years ago) in Prealith history is known as the 'Age of Fools'. The name refers to both the fickle weakness of this era's Sea Princes and the short sighted and divisive power struggles of the nobility. From a formidable power, Prealith became essentially a loose collection of settlements tied together by dependence on the sea trade and paying lip service to the Sea Princes' rule. Fortunately for Prealith, almost all of the other kingdoms were as weak as Prealith. The sole exception, the Ladyforest, shifted the entire realm eastwards into Prealith's western territory. As the borders of the Ladyforest moved, all non-elves were compelled to flee. The reason for this shift is both a touchy and secretive topic for elves - the justification was it was Elvish territory originally. Settlements, strongholds, and isolated holdings sprang up in a haphazard fashion - many now forgotten and never mapped. In the settled lands, nobles rose in power and eroded both the rights of the commoners and the power of the Sea Princes. The Mannerlith line was the senior branch of the Royal family which supplied all the Sea Princes of this era. Over time, while they did not rewrite the laws in how Prealith was governed, how the Mannerlith did and did not govern was a radical departure from Prealith custom and tradition. Mannerlith Sea Princes generally paid scant attention to governing, preferring a pursuit of ever greater extravagances and luxuries. The actual business of government was carried out by the nobility. The least principled and ambitious of this class took over the Council of Firsts. Their endless squabbles and struggles for ever more power and wealth meant little was done to benefit the kingdom as whole.
This Council of Nobles was forced to keep the Mannerliths as their puppets. Mutual suspicion and an addiction to power kept the Nobles from elevating one of their own number to replace a Mannerlith Sea Prince. Eliminating the Mannerlith line would result in the succession of the House of Gareth, a junior line of the Royal family, to the Sea Prince throne.
The Gareths were very different from their Royal cousins. First, they followed the ancient custom of the Deuchainn (preparing the heirs for a trial to judge their fitness to lead), rather than the recent practice of the Mannerliths of having the eldest son inherit both title and power. Second, the Gareths devoted themselves to the service of Prealith and were especially active in Prealith's military and assisting the different regions to defend themselves (those not controlled by nobles). Starved of funds by the Council, the Gareths were limited in how much assistance they could provide; however, given the amount of Gareth blood and lives spilled in this service, there was no question the Gareths were providing all the assistance they could muster. Fortunately, the Gareth line is especially prolific and their service attracted likeminded allies and the loyalty of the commoners. Unfortunately, this also meant it attracted the animosity of the nobles who encouraged a sense of threat and jealousy of the Gareths in their Royal puppets.
Sanctuary benefitted from not only Gareth assistance with defense and economy; but the Gareths were the region's sole defense against a move by the nobles to persecute the wizards and priesthood of Sanctuary. The nobles saw them as a threat. As we now know, bloodmages within the ranks of the nobles saw the wizards and priests of Sanctuary as their most dangerous enemies.
Neither side was powerful enough to risk an open confrontation until the Gird Revolt set off the "Time of Troubles". Gird's revolt unleashed two forces upon Prealith. Bloodmages, fleeing execution in Fintha and Tsaia, found their noble status made them welcomed allies to the noble party in Prealith. Not only was their status recognized, but they were granted noble rights and grants in Prealith. However, these fugitives were followed by vengeful Girdsmen. Small clashes, assassinations, and denouncements from both sides were the order of the day.
As more and more Prealith citizens took sides in the conflict, the nobles realized time and ultimately numbers were not on their side. Their attempt to decapitate the opposition by murdering prominent leaders and the entire Gareth family failed and became public knowledge. At the same time, it was publicly proven that many of the nobles were bloodmages. These revelations forced the nobles to choose between open and hasty rebellion or trials for treason and heresy. Woolchich's "The Last Stand of the Bloodmages" and Gillard's "The Prealith Civil War" detail these events, the close fought struggle of the war, and its immediate aftermath including the tally of losses in both lives and property.
Fortunately, the Mannerliths were replaced by the Gareths. It is still debated if the entire Mannerlith line was killed off or if there were surviving descendants (a few claimants were proven to be pretenders). The Gareths have maintained their vigorous leadership of Prealith. Government posts are strictly by merit, the Deuchainn has consistently trained and selected the most able Sea Princes, and Prealith has rebuilt its economy, its military, and reclaimed most of what was lost during the Time of Troubles.
Wizardry and the worship of the Goddess of Magic have steadily grown over the last few centuries. It is believed the Goddess either took new interest in the world or reclaimed her former power in the days since the fall of the bloodmages. However, your people in Sanctuary take a different view - claiming the Goddess rose in response to the re-emergence of an ancient threat - the iynisin. They believe the locks on the iynisin's prison were broken shortly after Gird's revolt and the iynisin immediately attacked. The battle, fought in Sanctuary, was brief and vicious. I have viewed the documentation from the few human survivors. I find it difficult to support this claim - there is nothing to prove the iynisin were the actual opponents (iynisin bodies? weapons? etc.) and there has been no sign of iynisin activity since then. I must agree with the majority of scholars that the iynisin have not been seen since their imprisonment. I also agree that the likely story is they are all dead - perhaps killed those thousands of years ago. Logic dictates the ancient coalition of dwarves, gnomes, humans, and elves would not have allowed such an evil to continue to exist - even if it was imprisoned.
Turning back to Prealith in general, it is clear your kingdom is on the path of greatness - which is both an opportunity and a danger. Consider the example of the suppression of the Fellowship of Gird and the rise of the monks of St. Neot. On one hand, it prevented the establishment of a large, armed and trained group in Prealith whose first loyalty is to the Marshal-General of Gird (who also happens to be the ruler of Fintha). On the other hand, this ban remains a source of tension with Fintha and Girdsmen. Also, while the monks of St. Neot are Prealith loyalists, their first loyalty is to their saint and his mission of equality for all people - a laudable but impossible goal that causes constant disruption in different parts of the kingdom (your neighbour to the north being a prime example). Another example is Prealith's alliance with Dzordanya. It provides Prealith with unequalled rangers, but will it lead to more chance of conflict with Pargun? Likewise, will Prealith's increasing military strength lead to a temptation to reclaim territory and a new round of warfare? Also consider if Prealith's navy clears the seas of pirates - will other kingdoms increase the use of their own merchant ships and challenge Prealith's command of the overseas trade? Will other kingdoms regard Prealith's increasing power and the rise of wizardry as a threat? Finally, there are the elves.
So, I plan on continuing to investigate your kingdom's past. At the first of this missive I stated my own reasons for continuing this quest. I believe the past holds the keys to answering the best course to pursue with the above questions - the answers to which are vital to the future of both Prealith and Sanctuary.
I remain your servant,
Records are sadly lacking. Prealith's own records have been obliterated by repeated invasions and civil strife - especially the contents of the Great Library in Bannerlith and the Colleges of Borelith. Other human kingdoms and the Dwarven princedoms have little to nothing - unless it directly impacts on their own affairs. The gnomes have refused to share or even acknowledge the existence of any pertinent information. As for the elves, it was only with your warning that I noticed how neatly they turn any conversation away from Prealith's past. It was this attitude that made me first wonder about what is accepted wisdom.
This attitude is especially strong with Prealith's earliest origins. Accepted - i.e. Elvish - history is elves were the first to occupy the Kingdoms, then dwarves, gnomes, and finally humans. There is also mention of a small, peaceful folk - not to be confused with the hostile and uncivilized faerie - known only to the elves. The first recorded Elvish-Human contact was the singing of the first Kuakgan to the First Tree. This event caused the initial sundering of the elves into elves and iynisin - a divide that deepened over thousands of years and culminated with the War of the Kindred and the imprisonment of the iynisin. During this time period, the Elves recount a repeated pattern of humans invading an area, spoiling the environment, and the elves retreating to unspoiled areas where the whole process began again - from Old Aare to the northern Kingdoms. Only with the establishment of the Ladyforest was the process ended.
Old Human legends dispute this story. They not only claim to be the first inhabitants of the North, including Prealith, but also believe it was the arrival of the elves and the establishment of their enclaves - like the Ladyforest - that caused the fall of Old Human civilization in the north. I was not prepared to accept myths and legends over the memories of elves whose grandparents witnessed these events. However, the local guides you provided were most helpful. The elvish ruins are older than the Ladyforest but clearly younger than the oldest of the Old Human ruins in Prealith. While there are possible explanations, it at least raises some interesting and unsettling questions about accepted History.
These questions also extend to the earliest known migrants to Prealith's shores -the Dawntreaders. The Dawntreaders brought trade, mastery of the sea, and, most significantly, wizardry to Prealith. Surviving art depicts them as red haired, pale skinned and freckled people - the same physical traits associated with wizards of any significant power to this very day. Physical evidence, including the ancient use of very powerful feats of wizardry, indicates Bannerlith and Shironlith (Slavers' Bay) were their central settlements with Borelith (Marshton) as a less important settlement and Danalith as an outpost. These traces indicate they predated Old Aare and may have been instrumental in its rise and many aspects of its civilization. Legends describe this 'Age of Legends' as period of unequaled prosperity and magic. The darker side of these legends describe terrible and fell creatures and, of course, the horrors of the 'War of the Kindred'.
The split between elves and iynisin had deepened over the thousands of years. The iynisin established their elven homes in the north - including Prealith. Elves continue to be extremely reluctant to admit the existence of the iynisin - let alone discuss them. Elves only say the iynisin turned from the Singer and were imprisoned by their kindred to save the world from their evil. A different course of events is suggested by fragments of other accounts. In this story, it was a coalition of elves, dwarves, gnomes, and humans who fought a bitter war against the iynisin and their creatures. It was the combined magic of these races that was able to imprison the iynisin underground. The few surviving Dwarfish accounts suggest the other allies preferred the extermination of the iynisin; but the elves insisted on imprisonment. Human accounts are fragments at best. What is clear is the iynisin were imprisoned and shortly after that feat, the Dawntreaders vanish as a power and human civilization in Prealith was nearly wiped out.
No one is sure why this 'Age of Darkness' happened. The Dawntreaders overseas homeland has never been found. The trade stopped, the navy virtually vanished, and the few battered Dawntreader settlements in Prealith came under the control of new migrants. The 'Age of Darkness' harmed all of the peoples. In all surviving histories, it is noted as a period of terrible suffering. Mundane hardships such as famine, war, and invasions were commonplace as were signs of supernatural displeasure - red rain, unnatural skies, plus hostile and extreme weather and other natural disasters. Elvish accounts blame the Dawntreaders and other human magic users for upsetting the balance of nature, angering the Gods and thus causing these disasters. Human sources suggest the Dawntreaders sacrificed themselves to destroy a great evil. Either way, wizardry nearly died out and Old Aare's magelords were the remaining bastions of human magic (and even they were in decline).
So began the 'Age of the Sea People'. First to arrive were the Sea Father's Chosen arrived on Prealith's shores. Traders, raiders, fearless and talented sailors and fearsome marines; the Chosen left their hardscrabble southern land to wander the seas. They found the few scattered survivors of the Dawntreaders' trading empire and brought them to Prealith. The Wanderers also arrived with these first Chosen ships. However, the Chosen's most lasting legacies were their economic and political influences. The Chosen ensured Prealith would be a kingdom tied to the sea and trade. The Dawntreaders had no challengers to their trade supremacy; the Chosen insured there would be no challengers. Since the first Sea Prince and the Council of Firsts - also Chosen innovations - the navy has remained a central hub of Prealith's policies. Likewise, the emphasis on promotion by merit and a society open to people of all cultures are other Chosen beliefs. The Chosen also embraced the new age of iron and steel tools - a Dwarven innovation. The change from bronze to iron began the shift of Prealith's center of power from Shironlith and its copper mines (Slavers' Bay) to Bannerlith and its close trading links to the Dwarfmounts. Under the Chosen, Borelith (Marshton) expanded its territory and became an important trading center. Danalith became more than an emergency outpost and acquired some importance in trade as well. Thus, the foundations of present day Prealith were first established under the Chosen.
As the Chosen forged a new Prealith, Old Aare was in decline. As the king and the magelords tightened their grip on power in Aare, many of its common people emigrated to what became Aarenis. By this point, the last of the elves were leaving Aarenis for the lands north of the Dwarfmounts. The Ladyforest had been established, but it had not yet shifted eastwards into lands claimed (and still claimed) by Prealith. A few migrants - both elf and Aare - settled in coastal Prealith. When Old Aare finally fell, the magelords and other refugees fled to Aarenis. Their attempts to own the people of Aarenis - the status of commoners in Old Aare - failed. Knowing they would find scant welcome and able resistance in Prealith, the magelords crossed the Dwarfmounts and conquered the Old Humans of Fintha and Tsaia. There they treated the Old Humans as expendable property until they were overthrown 1,000 years later in the Revolt of Gird. Magelord attempts to expand to the southeast were blocked by the Ladyforest, Prealith blocked them to the east, the wildlands were in the northeast, and any attempts to expand north of the Honnergat river were blocked by the arrival of a new people - the Sea Wolves.
The Sea Wolves first came to plunder but then turned to conquest. They conquered and held the lands north of the Honnergat - in what became Kostandan and Pargun. The Sea Wolves temporarily occupied Dzordanya but the native fae made that grip shaky at best. Later, the Sea Wolves lost Dzordanya to the Ice People who still occupy this coastal kingdom. Sea Wolf expansion was blocked to the west by the magelords, to the south by the elves, and the Prealith navy was too strong of a force to allow conquest of Prealith. However, the Sea Wolves were somewhat successful with raiding the Prealith coast north of Bannerlith. While Danalith never fell, its surrounding territory was repeatedly pillaged. Borelith - present day Marshton - suffered the most. In one massive raid the town was totally overrun and the surrounding area sacked. But, this marked the end of any substantial raids on Prealith territory. Only a few of the raiders survived to reach their home ports. More devastating to Sea Wolf morale was the state of these few survivors and their mysterious and unexplained deaths in the four nights after their return. It remains part of Pargunese folklore to this day. Not all contact was hostile. Sea Wolf people who came from their southern lands tended to be more trade inclined and less prone to raiding their neighbours. Over time, many of these traders settled and became part of Prealith's population - especially in coastal regions.
The subsequent era (roughly 1500 to 500 years ago) in Prealith history is known as the 'Age of Fools'. The name refers to both the fickle weakness of this era's Sea Princes and the short sighted and divisive power struggles of the nobility. From a formidable power, Prealith became essentially a loose collection of settlements tied together by dependence on the sea trade and paying lip service to the Sea Princes' rule. Fortunately for Prealith, almost all of the other kingdoms were as weak as Prealith. The sole exception, the Ladyforest, shifted the entire realm eastwards into Prealith's western territory. As the borders of the Ladyforest moved, all non-elves were compelled to flee. The reason for this shift is both a touchy and secretive topic for elves - the justification was it was Elvish territory originally. Settlements, strongholds, and isolated holdings sprang up in a haphazard fashion - many now forgotten and never mapped. In the settled lands, nobles rose in power and eroded both the rights of the commoners and the power of the Sea Princes. The Mannerlith line was the senior branch of the Royal family which supplied all the Sea Princes of this era. Over time, while they did not rewrite the laws in how Prealith was governed, how the Mannerlith did and did not govern was a radical departure from Prealith custom and tradition. Mannerlith Sea Princes generally paid scant attention to governing, preferring a pursuit of ever greater extravagances and luxuries. The actual business of government was carried out by the nobility. The least principled and ambitious of this class took over the Council of Firsts. Their endless squabbles and struggles for ever more power and wealth meant little was done to benefit the kingdom as whole.
This Council of Nobles was forced to keep the Mannerliths as their puppets. Mutual suspicion and an addiction to power kept the Nobles from elevating one of their own number to replace a Mannerlith Sea Prince. Eliminating the Mannerlith line would result in the succession of the House of Gareth, a junior line of the Royal family, to the Sea Prince throne.
The Gareths were very different from their Royal cousins. First, they followed the ancient custom of the Deuchainn (preparing the heirs for a trial to judge their fitness to lead), rather than the recent practice of the Mannerliths of having the eldest son inherit both title and power. Second, the Gareths devoted themselves to the service of Prealith and were especially active in Prealith's military and assisting the different regions to defend themselves (those not controlled by nobles). Starved of funds by the Council, the Gareths were limited in how much assistance they could provide; however, given the amount of Gareth blood and lives spilled in this service, there was no question the Gareths were providing all the assistance they could muster. Fortunately, the Gareth line is especially prolific and their service attracted likeminded allies and the loyalty of the commoners. Unfortunately, this also meant it attracted the animosity of the nobles who encouraged a sense of threat and jealousy of the Gareths in their Royal puppets.
Sanctuary benefitted from not only Gareth assistance with defense and economy; but the Gareths were the region's sole defense against a move by the nobles to persecute the wizards and priesthood of Sanctuary. The nobles saw them as a threat. As we now know, bloodmages within the ranks of the nobles saw the wizards and priests of Sanctuary as their most dangerous enemies.
Neither side was powerful enough to risk an open confrontation until the Gird Revolt set off the "Time of Troubles". Gird's revolt unleashed two forces upon Prealith. Bloodmages, fleeing execution in Fintha and Tsaia, found their noble status made them welcomed allies to the noble party in Prealith. Not only was their status recognized, but they were granted noble rights and grants in Prealith. However, these fugitives were followed by vengeful Girdsmen. Small clashes, assassinations, and denouncements from both sides were the order of the day.
As more and more Prealith citizens took sides in the conflict, the nobles realized time and ultimately numbers were not on their side. Their attempt to decapitate the opposition by murdering prominent leaders and the entire Gareth family failed and became public knowledge. At the same time, it was publicly proven that many of the nobles were bloodmages. These revelations forced the nobles to choose between open and hasty rebellion or trials for treason and heresy. Woolchich's "The Last Stand of the Bloodmages" and Gillard's "The Prealith Civil War" detail these events, the close fought struggle of the war, and its immediate aftermath including the tally of losses in both lives and property.
Fortunately, the Mannerliths were replaced by the Gareths. It is still debated if the entire Mannerlith line was killed off or if there were surviving descendants (a few claimants were proven to be pretenders). The Gareths have maintained their vigorous leadership of Prealith. Government posts are strictly by merit, the Deuchainn has consistently trained and selected the most able Sea Princes, and Prealith has rebuilt its economy, its military, and reclaimed most of what was lost during the Time of Troubles.
Wizardry and the worship of the Goddess of Magic have steadily grown over the last few centuries. It is believed the Goddess either took new interest in the world or reclaimed her former power in the days since the fall of the bloodmages. However, your people in Sanctuary take a different view - claiming the Goddess rose in response to the re-emergence of an ancient threat - the iynisin. They believe the locks on the iynisin's prison were broken shortly after Gird's revolt and the iynisin immediately attacked. The battle, fought in Sanctuary, was brief and vicious. I have viewed the documentation from the few human survivors. I find it difficult to support this claim - there is nothing to prove the iynisin were the actual opponents (iynisin bodies? weapons? etc.) and there has been no sign of iynisin activity since then. I must agree with the majority of scholars that the iynisin have not been seen since their imprisonment. I also agree that the likely story is they are all dead - perhaps killed those thousands of years ago. Logic dictates the ancient coalition of dwarves, gnomes, humans, and elves would not have allowed such an evil to continue to exist - even if it was imprisoned.
Turning back to Prealith in general, it is clear your kingdom is on the path of greatness - which is both an opportunity and a danger. Consider the example of the suppression of the Fellowship of Gird and the rise of the monks of St. Neot. On one hand, it prevented the establishment of a large, armed and trained group in Prealith whose first loyalty is to the Marshal-General of Gird (who also happens to be the ruler of Fintha). On the other hand, this ban remains a source of tension with Fintha and Girdsmen. Also, while the monks of St. Neot are Prealith loyalists, their first loyalty is to their saint and his mission of equality for all people - a laudable but impossible goal that causes constant disruption in different parts of the kingdom (your neighbour to the north being a prime example). Another example is Prealith's alliance with Dzordanya. It provides Prealith with unequalled rangers, but will it lead to more chance of conflict with Pargun? Likewise, will Prealith's increasing military strength lead to a temptation to reclaim territory and a new round of warfare? Also consider if Prealith's navy clears the seas of pirates - will other kingdoms increase the use of their own merchant ships and challenge Prealith's command of the overseas trade? Will other kingdoms regard Prealith's increasing power and the rise of wizardry as a threat? Finally, there are the elves.
So, I plan on continuing to investigate your kingdom's past. At the first of this missive I stated my own reasons for continuing this quest. I believe the past holds the keys to answering the best course to pursue with the above questions - the answers to which are vital to the future of both Prealith and Sanctuary.
I remain your servant,