The Oterran Rebellion

Revolution

The Rebellion. It is only three years past but we still feel the pain from that time. Oterrans were divided and sought help from allies that were once hated. It shouldn't be a shock how different Oterra is because of that. Wintervale's war with the North, Abavale's political machinations with Lakecrest, and even Tabershire's tensions with Kadem. All of it stems from this one event. From one choice that would shape Oterra to this day and beyond.

— History of the Oterran Rebellion published by Matia Braven 1207 DY

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The Fires of Rebellion

Everyone attributes the beginning of the rebellion to Tabershire. When the The Hunters of Tabershire were disbanded, its former members or native people alike were enraged. Dissent grew amongst the ranks and it was most evident in the minor lords who served under the Lord of Tabershire. They saw the Hunters as a chance to get more land and by extension, riches as well. The Crown's meddling and Lord Tabeshire's loyalty to it ruined all of that. However, with failure comes new opportunity. They saw how angry the populace were and decided to use it to their advantage.

Rumors spread that Lord Tabershire was raising the levies so more guards could be conscripted to protect the farmland they currently had. Anyone who doesn't pay the levies will be conscripted into the guards with no pay until their debts are paid off. The rumors weren't true but it served as a spark for their hatred. Villagers near Tabershire flocked to the city in anger, wanting an audience with Lord Tabershire to confront him about this. The ambitious nobles kept these requests hidden, stoking the fires of dissent within the lower class. The ones who could either stayed in inns or camped outside the city, waiting for their audience. When Lord Tabershire eventually found out, he sent guards out to find out why the villagers were here. Unfortunately, the guards were paid off by the troublesome nobility and reported that they were planning to dethrone him. The Lord of Tabershire was enraged by this disloyalty and orders the guards to get rid of them. All that time, he was playing right into the hands of the traitorous nobility as the guards sent word to get rid of them. However, a small few were told to kill the people who came for an audience with Lord Tabershire.

On the 32^nd of Autumn's Rise, the plan was sent into motion. The misled guards attacked innocent people, killing several before the guards who set them up killed them. They quickly spread word that the Lord of Tabershire had ordered their massacre and the people were enraged. Word spread outside the city and a mob formed, charging toward the keep. Lord Tabershire was warned about the encroaching force and how the guards were with them. As a result, he chose to flee with his most loyal court members through a secret passage. The traitorous nobles weren't part of this circle so they didn't know he escaped until it was too late. However, they were quick to use the situation to their advantage. Opening the gates, they confronted the mob and told a lie so great that it sent ripples that shook Oterra to its core. They said Lord Tabershire tried to kill them out of greed and when he saw the mob coming, he fled to the Crown, who backed him and his actions. That simple lie spread across the Western region and soon, it rose in revolt. Thankfully, Lord Tabershire made it to Kingsmunth before his dominion turned against him. He warned the newly crowned King Edward V just as messengers came to tell him about the events in the West. He wasn't the only one who received word, however. Disgruntled men in the Wintervale region heard about the revolt in the West and were impassioned to do the same. Now with enemies to the North and the West, peace had finally shattered. The unification of humans was in danger of failing. The Oterra Rebellion had begun.

The Western Campaign

Oterra was now split between two factions: The Loyalists, also known as the Royal Army, and the Rebels, also known as the Liberators. When the Rebellion began, a call to arms went out across both sides. The Loyalists had the superior numbers but the Rebels had the motivation and the will to keep going. The Rebels wanted to end the rebellion as soon as possible so they built up a large force to capture the capital. King Edward knew this and sent for help from Abavale, the only region with no rebels to deal with. Lord Abavale was quick to answer the summons of His Majesty and fielded an army under the command of Reginald White, a Knight of Abavale. The Abavale army quickly marched to defend Kingsmunth. The Tabershire rebels received word and were forced to move early, trying to circle the King's Lake as fast as possible and capture the city. They had to leave their siege weaponry behind if they hoped to reach the city in a short enough time period. Unfortunately, even with their increased speed, they were caught by Reginald's army.

The Battle of King's Lake ended with the Rebel army being routed and fleeing back to Tabershire. Reginald's army could've moved to crush them but he didn't want to leave the capital undefended. As a result, the army encamped in and around Kingsmunth, prepared to defend it from any threats that came from the Rebels. With the King's Road to the east secure, mountains to the north, and the King's Lake to the east, the Loyalists had secured the only feasible path of attack. With Kingsmunth safe, Lord Abavale could turn his attention toward the rebels. Four more armies were fielded, led by William Mavis, Edward Dras, Darian Jadan, and Gerald Ardon. William and Edward were sent to deal with Tabershire while Darian and Gerald went to assist Wintervale. Since the first major battle was a victory for the Loyalists and they had superior arms and numbers, it was thought that the Rebellion would be over before winter. They could not have been more wrong.

William believed that it would be smart to go through Kingsmunth and strike at Tabershire. It would end the Western front quickly as their main political and military center would be under their control. Edward was completely against that plan, however. He wanted to approach from the south and capture all of the rebel lands, saving Tabershire for last. It would remove a lot of resistance that they would have to clean up after the Rebellion was over. Since Edward outranked William and was given authority over both armies, they advanced from the South. That decision was bad enough but it was made even worse when Edward advanced ahead to gain glory for Lord Abavale. This led to the horrific Massacre of the Amber Wilds. Edward's army was camped at night when local rebel forces launched a surprise attack. In the ensuing chaos, Edward was killed and two-thirds of his army was lost before the rebels vanished into the wilderness. William incorporated the survivors into his army and encamped on the trade route that led into the West. He wasn't going to advance without reinforcements and he certainly wouldn't march his men to their deaths. Thus, the goal of ending the rebellion before winter was crushed. It only got worse for the Loyalists though.

The Northern Campaign

Wintervale had been split unlike Tabershire between Loyalists and Rebels. Lord Wintervale was a staunch Loyalist and wouldn't allow Rebels to fester in his domain. It was no surprise when the rebels tried to go for the head and capture the city. The 1^st Siege of Wintervale marked the beginning of the winter campaign as Wintervale was forced on the defensive. The defenses of the city made the siege an easy victory for Wintervale. It was believed to get better when Darian and Gerald's armies arrived to assist. Lord Wintervale took quick command and ordered the armies to crush the rebels with no mercy. He wished for them to start in the Northeast since that was the only passage between the North and Oterra besides the passage that Wintervale was situated on.

The rebels knew the advantage they had and decided to use it, contacting several northern kingdoms for aid. They used the Nedane's hatred for Wintervale and gained the support of several kingdoms close by. When 1203 finally dawned on Faterra, five Nedane armies crossed the White river and entered Oterra. This led to the Battle of Frost where Darian and Gerald tried to hold back the five armies at Jaren's Keep where they were held back centuries before. The Nedane armies were filled with Snow Devils and Minotaurs who led the charge against the keep. It lasted for three weeks but the keep fell, frozen and shattered by the endless bombardment of the five armies. Only a tenth of the armies combined made it back to Wintervale and that was only before the five armies made their way there.

Thus began the 2^nd Siege of Wintervale. Rebel forces reinforced the Nedane and it seemed as though Wintervale would be captured which would be a morale and military shock across Oterra. The siege lasted through the Winter when it was believed that more Nedane reinforcements would arrive from the North, assaulting Wintervale from two directions. Reinforcements did come but not the ones that the Nedane thought. Several mercenary armies had marched north, aiding refugees along the way and attacked the Nedane from behind. The Nedane were forced to give up the siege and fled west into rebel lands. At first, people of Wintervale didn't care about the rebellion. They were too far from the capital to care and had far more pressing issues in their minds. When the Nedane came, all that apathy was thrown out the window and replaced with rage. Men of the Oterran north lined up to join armies and by the end of winter, two new armies had been formed. The Wintervale armies and the mercenaries joined forces to hunt down the Nedane who fell back to a stronghold that guarded the White River. The Battle of Wrath came and the Nedane were slaughtered as the fury of the "north" descended upon them. There were no terms of surrender and no messages of amnesty. Only death for the Northerners. The Nedane armies were shattered and any left fled back to the North. The Wintervale armies were poised to charge north but Lord Wintervale cooled their anger for now. Retribution would come soon enough.

Without the Nedane, the Northern rebels didn't have much time left. The Wintervale armies fought against them, taking settlement after settlement with no rest. The north was flooded with the blood of rebels as Wintervale tore them to pieces. The Winter Campaign finally came to an end with the Fall of Marbos where the last of the Wintervale rebels were slain by the armies, led personally by Lord Wintervale. The Loyalists had won in the north but not without intense bloodshed. The winter of 1202 and 1203 would be known as the Winter of Loss because of this fact.

The End of the Rebellion

The mercenaries who served in the north were sent south to assist the Western Campaign. At the same time, Abavale had fielded two more armies to assist William's army. The rebels fiercely defended their land, using the jungles and swamps that they once hated as assets in their war. However, it soon turned against them when The Great Plague came in the summer of 1203. No one knows where it came from but it flourished in the very environments the rebels used. It spread across both sides and eventually across Oterra, killing thousands. However, the Loyalists could refield their armies. The Rebels couldn't due to it only being their native population. William was not deterred by the plague and kept going, prepared to get revenge on the rebels for the countless deaths the Loyalists had suffered. His men felt the same way as they slaughtered any rebels they came across. Any hope of winning was fleeting for the Rebels and they realized that at the Battle of Morrier's Grove where an entire grove was burned down, forcing to rebels in it to either be burned alive or slaughtered by the army that surrounded it. With the destruction of the Grove, the last major rebel group outside Tabershire had fallen. The end was near.

King Edward was tired of dealing with these rebels and wished to see this rebellion ended. He took command of Reginald's army and along with his 12 Dragon Knights, marched out of Kingsmunth. The armies led by William Mavis and Edward V met as the Winter set in. The Siege of Tabershire lasted from 1203 to 1204 and showed the rebels how grave of a mistake they made. Siege weapons pummeled the city day and night and even the Lord of Tabershire wasn't fazed by the destruction. "The city can be rebuilt. This is a message to any fool who dares to challenge His Majesty or his successors. None who betrayed the Crown will survive!" When the secret passage was revealed, William Mavis, King Edward, 12 Dragon Knights, and a company of soldiers entered the castle and captured the serving nobles who had barricaded themselves in the castle. Every soldier who was still in the city was slaughtered and any civilians who didn't submit faced the same fate. That slaughter was how King Edward earned the title of "The Crimson Phoenix." With the capture of Tabershire, the Oterran Rebellion had finally come to an end.

Resolution

Any doubt in King Edward's reign was shattered with his victory over the rebels. He made that doubly clear as he had executions of the rebellious nobles throughout the winter and into spring. He left several garrisons in the region to stamp out any remaining rebels. He returned to Kingsmunth with a victory parade, a ceremony for the fallen, and a honoring ceremony for the veterans. The Lords of Abavale and Wintervale, the Dragon Knights, and the Knights of Abavale were the main ones honored.

Abavale gained political favor for their fervor in defending the Crown. This didn't give them much in the years to come but it did allow a rising power, Lakecrest, to move up in the ranks. It began the shift of the three major lords to a possible fourth. All 3 lords looked to Lakecrest as a possible rival and Abavale started taking steps to prevent this from happening. On Wintervale's side, they wanted blood for the Winter of Loss. They kept their armies together and sent them north, striking the kingdoms who allied with the rebels. They would have their vengeance with the North beneath their heel.

At the end of it all, Oterra was left with hundreds of thousands dead and Western Oterra was in shambles. It would take decades to rebuild but King Edward had sent the message. Any thoughts of rebellion were suppressed as none wanted to share the fate of the Rebellion. Oterra believed that they showed how united they were but the rest of Faterra believed that the Rebellion showed how divided Humanity really was.