First Elvish War

The First Elvish War, known to the elves of the Inrethel Kingdom as The Shattering, was the conflict in 562 of the First Era that ended high elvish sovereignty over the lands now comprising the Imperial province of Eldvor. It remains one of the most consequential wars in the Empire's history, not for its length, but for what it erased.

Background#

The Inrethel Kingdom was a high elvish civilization that had held the fertile river territories around the Masielle for centuries before the Pheagon dynasty rose to power. Their cities were old, their magic deep-rooted, and their borders had been informally respected by every prior human kingdom in the region. The Inrethel did not consider themselves in danger.

By the mid-500s of the First Era, the Empire had absorbed or broken every human kingdom on its western frontier. The Inrethel were simply next. Imperial historians record the cause as a border dispute over logging rights in the Masielle lowlands. Elvish records, where they survive, attribute it to the Pheagon Sovereign's desire to control the river trade routes.

What neither account mentions is a third thread. The Mossar family, minor human nobility who had lived under Inrethel rule for generations, had recently entered into a contract with the archdevil Eurynomos to escape Pheagon retribution for unrelated debts. When the Mossars broke the contract, Eurynomos, Lord of Rot, collected his payment through indirect means. He seeded the diplomatic collapse that turned a cold border tension into open war, ensuring the Mossars would have nowhere left to run.

Whether the war would have come regardless is a question scholars argue. That it came when it did, and as suddenly as it did, bears his fingerprints.

Belligerents#

The Pheagon Empire under Emperor Orid I Pheagon Inrethel Kingdom under King Tharindel

Course of the War#

The March into the Lowlands#

The Empire struck in early spring, sending two legions through the Masielle lowlands before the Inrethel court had finished debating whether to treat the advance as provocation or invasion. The elvish military relied on prepared defenses along forest lines and river crossings built over generations of strategic planning. The speed of the Imperial advance bypassed most of them.

Tharindel called his lords to muster at the fortress-city of Aelindrath, the heart of the kingdom, while ordering guerrilla actions against Imperial supply lines in the lowlands. For several months these disruptions were effective. Elvish archers and illusionists made the lowland forests costly to hold. The Empire lost two supply columns entirely to ambushes they never saw coming.

The Defection of House Vaethari#

The war's turning point was not a battle, but a letter.

Sorvindel Vaethari, patriarch of one of the Inrethel Kingdom's most powerful trading houses, sent a private envoy to the Emperor with an offer: the Vaethari family would open the river road to Aelindrath in exchange for recognition of their titles and trading rights under Imperial law. They had read the war more coldly than their king. The Empire accepted the offer. The Vaethari merchants had warehouses at every river crossing along the Masielle. Within a fortnight the Imperial legions had resupply lines that the Inrethel defenders had assumed impassable.

House Vaethari has never been fully forgiven by other elvish families for this. They would say, if pressed, that they chose survival over a war they knew was already lost.

The Siege of Aelindrath#

With supply secured, the Empire besieged Aelindrath in late autumn. The city held for four months through winter, sustained by elvish magic and decades of stored provisions. King Tharindel refused every offer of terms, reportedly burning the Empire's surrender documents in the great hall of the Silver Court.

The city fell in early spring when a section of the outer wall collapsed under sustained Imperial siege engineering. Fighting inside the city was described in Imperial accounts as brutal and in elvish accounts, on the rare occasions survivors recorded them, as something closer to a funeral.

Tharindel died in the final hours, in the Silver Court itself, reportedly refusing to leave.

The Slaughter at Mossar Wood#

The Mossars, for their part, survived the sack of Aelindrath. Eurynomos had arranged the war but not yet closed his debt. The Mossar family fled to a new estate in what would become Eldvor and warded it against infernal intrusion with the help of two clerics, Evander of Ris and Cassandra of Imril.

The archdevil could not enter. He waited.

What exactly happened to the Mossars afterward is not recorded in any known document. The estate at Mossar Manor was found abandoned. The locals speak of a curse, of devils in the Deadwood, of blood debts and broken wards. The family is simply gone, sometime in the decades after the war.

Aftermath#

The Inrethel Kingdom ceased to exist as a political entity. Its lands became the Imperial province of Eldvor. Most of the high elvish population that survived the siege were absorbed into the new Imperial administration or dispersed across other provinces.

In the city of Tiroth, built over the ruins of an Inrethel settlement on the Masielle, this split is still visible. The old elvish quarter, Eldhold, retains the arched stonework and rootwork towers of Inrethel craftsmanship. The newer Imperial district, Villanova, was built across the river and looks like any other Imperial city. The two halves are connected by a bridge that neither side particularly likes crossing into the other.

House Vaethari swore fealty to the Sovereign and were granted lands in the Masielle lowlands they had helped the Empire cross. They built a modest mercantile presence there, never quite prospering and never quite disappearing. Their motto, "Still Here," was either a statement of endurance or a confession, depending on who you ask.

Legacy#

The elves who kept their name for the war won the naming. The Shattering is what it is called wherever elvish memory still reaches. The Pheagon dynasty won the land and lost the word.