Ilerodas

Disaster / Destruction

The High Kingdom consolidates its power and tightens its hold over the kingdoms of Tovden, Inan, and Erlagon

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Ilerodas, "the Hardening"

  Discontent with the level of independence which many of the kingdoms had begun to practice, the High King decided to give a show of force and cow the kingdoms into obeisance to him and his crown. On the suggestion of his advisors, he wrote an oath which he required the kings and lords of all twelve kingdoms to recite and to swear publicly. Such was the nature of the brazenly written oath that any who took it vowed everlasting and complete subservience to the High Kingdom and its rulers. In fact the oath was nearly a proclamation of deification for the High King and his descendants, so impious was it.   Those kingdoms which refused to take the oath were promptly and openly punished, and, indeed, no one kingdom could come near to the power of the High Kingdom. Thus retribution was swift, brutal, and total: the devout dominion of Inan was first to suffer for its resistance, and the High Kingdom, sending in a locust-like army to occupy the whole region, made the people of that country a warning to the others. They were cast out of their homes and bound in shackles as prisoners, and settlers and soldiers from the kingdoms loyal to the High King flooded in and treated the inhabitants as their slaves. Slavery and abasement, then, were the rewards for those that defied the High Kingdom.   The kingdom of Tovden, too, fell under the oppression of the High Kingdom, and Erlagon also was sacked and its people taken captive, for the king of Tovden boldly refused to swear the oath, and even renounced all loyalty to the High Kingdom. He bravely called up his troops and went to war against Mandilár, but, in spite of his show of courage, he and his army was utterly destroyed. The king of Erlagon, on the other hand, a frivolous and vicious youth, caved under the pressure of the High Kingdom, and took the oath. This forestalled his doom, and for a few years he was able to take his leisure and enjoy extravagant festivals and luxuries, as he wished, until the High King broke faith and sent an army to pillage Erlagon and enslave its people.   Around this time, and in the years following, a number of people of all ages and of every occupation fled from the power of Mandilár. They wandered away from their homeland, and some of them came, perhaps miraculously, across the waters to the wildlands of Datarnós. That is how the kingdoms of Doravia came to be.