Joshua Dyal’s Dungeons & Dragons Campaign

The following brief timeline gives a small indication of the history of Gilraevan and the surrounding areas. It is not meant to be really very complete or thorough, but it does serve to get some of the history straight.

The Age of the Clans

1042-1108: Morraent himself is born amongst primitive, bronze-age hunters and tribes of the north. He successfully leads a broad revolution in culture and technology amongst them, so much so that the people take his name. He was never concerned with conquering or establishing a lasting empire or consolidated state of all of these people, although he does successfully raid and take plunder and tribute from all of them. He also successfully leads them into the Iron Age. During his lifetime, magic first starts to come to the humans, influenced no doubt by their Fae neighbors. As for the Fae, this is the first time they really notice the humans as more than a highly developed form of animal or ape. Morraent even successfully raids some Fae groups, and the Unseelie king is killed in such a raid. This prompts brutal retaliation, and Morraent is killed heroically in the Battle of the Blackwald. However, he did manage to inflict enough casualties on the Unseelie warriors that they did not succeed in penetrating the Morraent lands themselves. The death of the king prompted the succession of both Seelie and Unseelie rulers, and the Sidhe dynasty that currently rules is established by the Great-grandfather of the current King and Queen.
1156: Gwaedryn, the Seelie King, first establishes peaceful contact with the Morraent. The humans especially benefit from trade and learning from the Fae. However, when Gwaedryn's dark Unseelie counterpart, Mwniver, comes into power in October, the relations sour and turn to mutual raiding and squabbles.
1157: Many of the Morraent nearly engage in all-out war with the Fae, until the Seelie court comes back into power. Through much difficulty, the relationships between Fae and human are reestablished. Humans begin to understand the Seelie/Unseelie system, and learn to work with both types of Fae more.
1189: Continued relationships between the Morraent humans and the Fae lead to the birth of the first of the Changeling children: heirs of both human and Fae blood.
1200: The first of the Lehontites begin trading and raiding with the most southerly of the Morraent. The Lehontites are primitive and barbaric at this stage, relative to the Morraent, as well as some of the more established southerly kingdoms.
1287: Gilraevan is founded by a Changeling chief of a Morraent tribe. Many Fae, especially those who are more balanced in their natures, rather than strongly Seelie or Unseelie, migrate to the city as well as many humans and changelings.
1313: Birth of Gadiandi deep in the Lehonti Deserts to a common goat-herd.
1351: Gadiandi comes back to his village after missing for two days. He claims to have spoken with a new god of the Lehontites. He begins preaching the strange doctrines of his new god. In the Fae-lands, Alaeniver-Readda and her brother Addreonyc inherit the Seelie and Unseelie thrones respectively.
1352: A surprising number of the youth of Gadiandi's village start to take his teachings seriously and become disciples of Gadiandi. Gadiandi himself is driven out of town by the angry villagers. Many of this disciples follow him into the wilderness. He continues to preach in the wilderness, and his followers start to grow as disciples flock to him from many surrounding villages. His movement continues to primarily find success amongst the youth.
1353: Gilraevan puts up its first wall. The city has grown to encompass many hundreds of thousands of individuals, and is the largest city in the North. This is the Golden Age of Gilraevan, for the next fifty years.
1354-6: The Lehontites pour into the desert in an attempt to find and kill Gadiandi before he corrupts more of their youth. For two years he is on the run, living day-to-day. Finally, after a series of near miraculous events, he and his followers manage to not only elude their pursuers, but turn them back out of the desert. Gadiandi's Disciples take it as a sign of divine favor.
1357: Gadiandi's disciples decide to bring their beliefs back to their people by force if need be. Against all odds, the zealous youths actually capture and hold several small oasis towns, converting the entire populace in a bloody yet swift religious coup.
1358-1365: One after another, the tribal kings and chiefs of the Lehontites bring their warbands against Gadiandi, and all of them fail to capture or defeat his troops. Each victoy gives Gadiandi more strength. Finally, in a touch-and-go campaign, they beat all the odds and defeat Overking Remaliah. With his fall, the entire Lehontite populace is converted to the worship of Gadiandi's One-god.
1369: Gadiandi dies of old age.
1370-1409: The Lehontites, under the leadership of Gadiandi's son Giddonah, conquer all of the kingdoms of the Southern human lands: Kumen, Mahonri, Ripliancum and Zerin. All of the southern humans are united in their worship of the One-god. 1409 is considered to be the last year of his age.

The Golden Age of Man

15: Lehontite conquests start to move into the Northlands where the Morraent live. The by-now more sophisticated Lehontite military machine find the scattered tribes of the Morraent easy to divide and conquer.
17: Gilraevan itself falls in a bloody and bitter siege. The populace is much reduced by famine and plague, and the Lehontites further despoil the city.
21: The first of the Fae pogroms is instituted by the Lehontites in the Northlands. Changelings are reluctantly accepted as fringe members of the new "Lehontized" Northlands, but the full-blooded Fae are driven from the land, or rounded up and killed. The Lehontites were generally fairly tolerant of others amongst the humans, but didn't know what to make of the Fae. Many of the rural Morraent hide or aid Fae, who turn into more of a woodland type of people if they remain in the human lands at all. The worship of the One-god is actually remarkably tolerant in these early years, and many of the older gods are simply rolled up into the doctrine of the church as lesser gods under the One-god.
25-103: The Eighty-years War is instituted, in which Lehontite and "Lehontized" Morraent are led in campaigns of conquest against the Fae. The use of Fae-magic, as well as brilliant selection of battlefields and wearying guerilla warfare tactics grind the campaigns to a halt. The ever shifting border becomes more of a cold war zone than an area of actual conflict most of these years. The upheaval in the Fae Courts leads to the first defections away from traditional Fae-lands. A band of rogue orcs led by Warlord Mudda moves into the more easterly and southerly empty steppes beyond the goblin lands.
104-106: Mudda's growing warband, supplemented by goblins becomes a major thorn in the northern borders of the Lehontites. The northern armies are pulled back for a number of failed punitive campaigns in the steppes, but Mudda's mounted warriors are too mobile for the great infantry forces of the Priest-king, and he loses many of his men.
105: For the first time, there is fighting amongst the Fae relative to the passing of the Courts in April.
109: Mudda's warband successfully sacks a number of northern cities amongst the Lehontites. The campaign in the North is withdrawn completely.
111: In a great campaign, Mudda manages to sack and terrorize most of Lehonti proper, burning many of their cities to the ground and killing many of their inhabitants. The Priest-king and his entire family is killed.
112: After a victory celebration, Mudda dies under mysterious circumstances. Without his charismatic leadership, his warband soon disintegrates and fades away.
115: After many years of rebuilding, the Church of the One-god tries to reorganize. With the Priest-king dead, and no clear descendant, numerous claimants to the leadership of the Church and the land of the humans are presented.
116-130: The Patriarch is installed as the head of the Church and State, which leads to nearly fifteen years of bitter civil war amongst the humans. The Patriarch is firmly fundamentalist, and believes the defeats suffered at the hands of Mudda are signs from the One-god that the Church has been lax at discipline. The Lehontite culture undergoes rapid revision into a much more bigoted and strident uniformism. Worship of the "other" gods is practically excised from Lehonti proper.
120: King Taeran I breaks away from the secular control of the Patriarch, claiming that he has, at best, a tenous religious claim on the inhabitants of Gilraevan, who are firmly in the polytheistic camp. The Lehontites are too busy with wars in their own lands to try to bring the rebelious Morraent back in line. Over the next two or three years, most of the rest of the Northlands joins with Gilraevan to form a new nation.
121: King Taeran I comes to the military aid of the Patriarch in return for a guarantee of future autonomy. Gilraevan is officially recognized as a separate state from Lehonti. With King Taeran's aid, the Patriarch is able to supress the last of the resistance to his claims, and the civil wars grind to a halt.
122-200: The Northlands gradually become more and more culturally and religiously independent, as their own Friars, Templars, Deacons, Bishops and Arch-bishops cease to report to Lehonti after the political separation of the two entities. The Northlands is once again more open to Fae and Changeling inhabitants, and many Fae flee from the strained Fae Courts to live in Gilraevan. This time is often called the Strained Peace, as the Fae Courts grew more and more bitter towards both each other and the humans, and the two human nations become more and more estranged from each other. Missionaries from the south start to appear in the north, preaching that their beliefs have gone astray. Tensions arrise between the human nations when three missionaries are killed in a riot sparked by their inflammatory rhetoric.
201: The Present. Strange rumors are starting to appear in the South of Lehonti of desert-dwelling killers that devour caravans and oasis villages like blasting sandstorms. The Seelie Fae Court is embroiled in an espionage scandal, while other rumors speak of the coming of the Long Winter in the North and the encroaching of the Ice Sheets, with their deadly winter spirits. The Strained Peace seems to be strained to the breaking point in the north.