Year of Axe & Peavey, 178 YR

Civil action

The demand for lumber has been declining for the past 50 years or so. Even the downturn in lumber business probably wouldn't have been so bad for Wood Cross if it hadn't been for the guild wars, known as the "Year of Axe and Peavey".

There were seven major guilds in Wood Cross at its peak. This included two woodsmen guilds and two log driver guilds. These four guilds allied against each other (One woodsman and one log driver guild per side) and tried to eliminate the other so that they could claim a bigger piece of the shrinking pie that Wood Cross was generating. After a short, but horrifically bloody war, one guild on each side was completely gone due to attrition (murders), two other guilds folded because they relied on the closed guilds, and the remaining three guilds were mere shadows of themselves (due murders and less work because of the other guilds closing). The main weapons' used in this battle were heavy wood cutting axes, and peaveys (log poles with hooks to assist in driving the logs in the water). Most of the combatants weren't trained in combat, so the wounds were gruesome. This greed and discord eventually killed any chance Wood Cross had to surviving the economic changes. It also changed the way the townspeople thought. Many people simply left Wood Cross for one of the lumber towns along the Palasar River . Others turned away from the lumber business altogether to escape the greed and infighting and because farmers or hunters. The common person viewed this war as a rich man's fight that the poor man died in. Although the initial slaughter occurred over a little over a months span, for the next year or so there were assassinations, murders, vengeance killings, etc.