The Sack of Thaloris

The siege begun on the 25th of High Sun. Encircled by rebel banners, the bronze city gleamed defiant in the summer sun. Prager set his host to work with ruthless efficiency. The Novayan riders harried the valleys, severing every road that might bear supplies. Holzen infantry dug trenches and palisades, closing the jaws of the siege ring day by day. At night the Dwarven engineers drove tunnels beneath the wall. The aqueducts beyond the walls that carried water from the mountain springs were poisoned, and hunger soon began to gnaw at the defenders.   On their part, the Thalori defenders mounted a fierce resistance. From the walls they rained down arrows with unerring aim, and many a besieger straying beyond the sanctuary of earthworks met death from a well-placed shaft. Sapping works were harassed by sudden sallies, defenders striking swiftly before vanishing behind the bronze gates once more. Every advance of the rebels was paid for in blood, and for a time it seemed the discipline of the Bronze Cohorts might yet stave off their ruin.   On the forty-third day of the siege the waiting ended. A thunderclap split the morning sky as the Dwarves fired their mines beneath the northern walls. Stone and bronze fell in a shattering roar, and through the breach surged Prager’s host. Holzen pike blocks advanced, Novayan horsemen rode through the narrow streets running down all in their path, and the heavy shock infantry of Khel Doran marched forward in tight disciplined formations in a relentless tide.   The Thalori fought with the same precision that had humbled the Holzen at Dravopol, but now they stood alone and outnumbered. Street by street the rebels pressed them back, the fury of Prager’s men sharpened by memory of old disgrace.  

The Sack

See also: The Elven Genocide

“The Temple of the Lunar Forge collapsed in on itself, and the flames leapt higher than the Crescent ever stood. The chants of the cohorts dwindled,"

Eliraine of Lorintha, Astronomer

For six days the fighting raged without pause. The bronze-domed observatories were torn down, the Temple of the Lunar Forge was set aflame, and the great squares of Thaloris were heaped with bodies. No mercy was shown to those of Elven blood. The slaughter was merciless. Cellars where families hid were dragged open, their occupants cut down as rebels drove through the wards with torch and spear. Stragglers who surrendered found no quarter. Mercy was rare, and often overturned by captains who claimed prisoners as spoils. Arrow-slain besiegers were repaid tenfold as streets filled with the screams of the hunted.   The Bronze Cohorts did not collapse but fought to the last, turning every crossing into a barricade, every threshold into a redoubt. Alleyways became killing grounds where Holzen pikes snapped against bronze shields and Novayan riders fell beneath Elven spears. The rebels sustained bitter losses in that street fighting, and the more losses they sustained, the deeper their rage burned.   In the archives of the seers, centuries of work perished. Scrolls of genealogy, treatises of star-lore, and maps of the heavens were cast into pyres, their ash rising with the smoke of burning homes. Entire libraries, once tended as the pride of the Thalori, were reduced to embers in the span of a night. Treasures wrought by centuries of craftsmanship were seized in the sack. Many were melted for the material, yet others survived, carried home by soldiers as trophies. To this day, Thalorin relics linger in Holzen households as heirlooms, their original meaning long forgotten.   The wards fell one by one. The northern district burned first, the flames visible across the valley like a night sun. By the third day, the defenders had been pressed into the heart of the city, their last stand fought among the temples. By the sixth, there was nothing left but corpses and captives. Those few captive elves who survived the butchery were subjected to indignities at the hands of their conquerors, were bound in chains and driven westward, condemned to the long march into Holzen bondage. The rebels herded them through the smouldering gates, past the charred husks of homes and the unburied heaps of their kin, forcing them to look once more upon the ruin of their city.

When the fires at last subsided, Thaloris was no more. Its famed bronze forges lay silent, its seers were cut down to the last, and its once-proud cohorts lay broken in the very streets they had sworn to defend. The city that had once humbled Holzen forces at Dravopol was erased in vengeance, its towers blackened and its people scattered in death or captivity. The destruction of the Bronze City cleared the Halenthan heartland of one of its final bastions. With Thaloris extinguished, the northern approaches to Skyreach stood open, and Alerio’s march could drive unopposed towards the Halenthan capital. However, what might have stood as the northern anchor of Alerio’s dominion was instead reduced to rubble, its walls breached, its wards blackened, and its archives consumed by flame.   The loss stung Alerio bitterly when the news reached him on the march to Skyreach. A man of manuscripts and lore as much as of arms, he had marked Thaloris as not merely as a fortress but as a treasury of knowledge. Its bronze domes, its libraries of star-lore, and its commanding position in the northern passes might have served as a keystone in his new League. A bastion to secure the north of the Imperial heartland and command the overland trade routes with Novaya. Instead, centuries of learning had been consigned to ash, and the city itself offered him nothing but a desolate ruin.   Prager’s work had cleared the road south, but it had stripped the Rebellion of a prize that could never be replaced. Though the Holz still fought at his side at Skyreach, Alerio never again regarded their commander as a true partner. The Bronze City was gone, and with it millenia of elven knowledge that could have served the empire he intended to build.

“Thaloris was to be our keystone in the north, its domes to house our councils, its forges to strike arms for our defence, its walls to guard the passes. What Prager left us was only a ruin, its knowledge turned to ash. Thus, in the very hour of triumph, a wound was cut into the foundations of the League.”

"The March of the Liberator,” 9 IE

The ruin of Thaloris cast a shadow far longer than the smoke that rose from its burning domes. Its seers perished with their charts, and the star-lore of the Thalori, refined across centuries of patient study, was lost forever. Those few who outlived the sack were driven west in chains. Many fell upon the march, the rest were parted out as spoils among Holzen lords, their bronze skin and dark hair paraded as living trophies of conquest. In time they dwindled, some ground down in labour, others slowly integrating into Holzen society over the centuries.   In the years that followed, League chroniclers would look back upon the sack as a loss not only of life but of a powerful asset that might have steadied the foundations of Alerio's dominion. When Skyreach was destroyed and the League faltered, many would say that the fall of Thaloris had already weakened its frame. It is often claimed that the Sack of Thaloris that permanently soured Alerio and Prager's allyship and that this rift was the primary motive as to why Holz did not join The Imperial League.   For Holzreich, the sack was never exalted but justified with cold certainty. In their chronicles it was written that Thaloris had resisted too fiercely, that the Cohorts had demanded annihilation by refusing to yield.   In Novaya the memory was more divided. The Plainsfolk spoke of Thaloris as vengeance at last achieved, yet many verses placed the worst of the cruelty upon Holzen shoulders. At the same time, the Novayans were not blameless. Amidst the slaughter their riders carried off captives and treasures as spoils.   In the centuries that followed, fragments of Thaloris lingered across the north. Torcs of crescent bronze, blades etched with stars, and helmets of the Cohorts were passed down through human families as curiosities and heirlooms.

“Remember Thaloris. Do not speak of glory, for there was none. Do not speak of mercy, for there was none. Remember instead that victory without finality is no victory at all."

General Albrecht Hauer of the Reichguard,150 IE

In the centuries that followed, the sack of Thaloris came to stand as more than the fall of a city. For the Elves in exile it was the clearest proof of human barbarity, a slaughter without restraint that extinguished both people and knowledge in fire. The Halenthans pointed to it as vindication of their ancient dominion, declaring that mankind, left to its own devices, revealed itself as little more than beast, and that only the chains of Elven mastery had ever held such impulses at bay.