The Second Riftspawn War

The Second Riftspawn War, remembered as the War of Splintered Thrones, erupted in the waning days of Isendir supremacy. Imperial authority was fraying from within, foreign powers were testing its borders, and old scars from the First War had never fully healed.   This time, Breachpoints did not roar open in a single apocalyptic surge. Instead, multiple instability zones bloomed across the continent. Old battlefields from the Great Riftspawn War reawakened; trade roads and border marches became killing grounds; refugees carried Shadow Plague between realms. On the surface, fighting centered again on Greymoor, eastern Auralea, and northern Netherion.   The Riftspawn host followed a new commander: Baelrakh, a Rift-twisted Pit Fiend whose tactics emphasized surgical cruelty over grand design. Baelrakh targeted supply lines, deliberately seeded plague among refugees, and struck at cities whose fall would create maximum political chaos.   The war’s name comes from the way it intensified existing fractures:

• Petty lords and ambitious governors hoarded Rift relics and weaponized Rift Stone, hoping to twist catastrophe into advantage.
• Some powers hesitated or openly resisted the Right of Calling, reluctant to sacrifice their elite troops or criminal stock.
• Others tried to use Warden Hunts as quasi-mercenary guards, pressing them into local conflicts under the pretense of Rift defense.

For the continent, the War of Splintered Thrones was as much a crisis of trust as of arms. The Rift Wardens, now an established but begrudged force, spent as much time enforcing their neutrality and mandate as they did killing Riftspawn: destroying illegal stockpiles, seizing unstable weapons, and occasionally facing down the very armies they were trying to save.   Baelrakh was eventually cornered and destroyed in a series of brutal campaigns across northern Netherion, but the political damage endured. Central imperial authority never fully recovered. Regional crowns and councils emerged stronger, more suspicious, and more dependent than ever on the Wardens as a hated but indispensable buffer between their rivalries and annihilation.