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The Wars From Which The Lich Wars Sprung Part 1

A History of the Undead Plague Upon Eld.

Written By Mage Kendall of the Emerald Tower

The Undead, once a myth told to children to keep them in line, with us little knowing how real it was. To our misfortune we can not accurately track the undead to the beginning. Or perhaps not I, for those I could speak to are far above my station and I am left to guesswork within the now very broken patchwork that is Eld. However I would not let this deter me and chose to follow from more recent times. As it is, I have only traced back to the last two or three centuries and have been granted audiences with several great veterans of those great wars. And with it I follow the trails, going to both sides and meeting with them.

I wish I could say I am not bias, but I am. Though the histories I grew up with did no justice to the horrors of undead and what those many faced in those trying times. And of the times before, which are often written of as literally more shiny and of a time of more powerful magics. As to my bias and sympathy, I am a child of the Fea Alliance and have often seen the elves and dwarves as kin of mine. Though the truth of it has rather shook my foundations as a whole to those who rule over me and mine. It is much the same with the Kindred Horde of the East. It has granted me some sympathy for them too. For it was not, as I once I thought, a battle of Good versus Evil in those long ago days. It was far more complicated. And now to the beginning, or, a beginning. And as is tradition, we start.

Once Upon A Time...Elves and Green warred over the Sylvan Forest and the Red Plains, vying for control or to keep great lands with much resources to feed and keep their people. This particular war is as far back as I dare trace without falling to rumor and heresy. For that far back is before the Age of Three Queens. It is the Age of High Magic, where great powers fought for control. And this war was The Third War for the Red of Plains. And it is here where we see the stirrings of what is to begin.

Third War of the Red Plains: This would be the start of the Kindred Horde, where the many Greenkin formed tighter alliances to protect themselves from the campaigns of the Silver Queen and the Golden Host. Tiamia Sunleaf was the primary architect of this war, according to the records and her daughters. Sweeping through the Sylvan Forest and bringing her massive armies into the south while the Golden Host marched upon the north, crushing the newly formed centaur host and a part of it marched upon the dwarf fortresses of the Wrathsword clans and fighting the Baba Yaga's Winter Hosts.

But it was Tiamia's campaign that would be the start of darkness for the Kindred Horde. Or some of it. For she faced the Wolf and Boar clans of the plains, the Hill Clans and Grey Mountain clans or orcs. The Pine Clans of trolls and all the goblin clans that were with them. She would do her best in the long year of the war to wipe them out from branch to root. This would further unite them under the first Wolf Lord, scion of the one who would become a thorn in the side of what would become the Triple Alliance to even these days. The first Wolf Lord would meet his end by the Silver Queen in the Battle of the Broken Hills, once verdant farmland in the plains. And his son, for such he stayed, would take up the mantle. And with it, the cycle of revenge that would help burn the world.

But for now we stick to what we do know of this war of almost three centuries ago. The Silver Queen and her knights and vassal armies cut a swathe through the Sylvan Forest and ignited the Red Plains to war once more. The orcs and their kin took to war, led by the young warlord Guttural who held the Forge Hammer. Though The Old Wolf commanded the raids and sorties against the Silver Queen, he would form the primary host to hit back. Gathering the Thousand Year Knights with him. Though by the time he would strike back The Old Wolf would have already fallen and his son was found at the ashes of one of their villages, bloody and putting the ashes of the dead as tattoos upon his body and wearing the wolf cloak and vowing vengeance for the deaths within it and the death of his father. The first of what would become the Kindred Horde would finally be blooded at the Iron Gates before the Thousand Year Knight's mountain fortress. It would be enough to stalemate the war in the South as winter came and the armies had to withdraw to their kingdoms while trying to keep fortresses within their new and expanded lands. In the North Baba Yaga would win for the time being and the centaurs took heavy losses.

And from it all, no one could foresee what was to come of it.

Important Persons: The Mab, Tiamia Sunleaf the Silver Queen, The Young Wolf and The Old Wolf. Jlnor Wrathsword. Baba Yaga.

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Orc Knight
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