Valerid Ord

The history of the Valerid Ord begins with a centaur known as Valeron the Disinherited. The eldest son of Yalren Ordolon, Valeron was passed up for his inheritance of the throne as he was not a Teltar, and upon his father's death his half-brother Holenun took the throne. However, Valeron would claim the throne as his birthright. The families of the Yalren's centaur wives supported this effort to claim the throne, as they felt disrespected by him putting aside their daughters in favor of Telrai wives, and ignoring his older children. On the other hand, many smaller clans sided with Yalren, hoping to use this opportunity to advance their stature. In the end, these smaller tribes were proven correct, but not before much violence. The civil war between Holenun and Valeron lasted for 14 years, and the very fabric of the Ord fell apart during it, as the land each claimant actually controlled continued to shrink as various tribes renunced allegiance.

By roughly 1740, Valeron's coalition had largely dissolved into a collection of independent tribes, none of whom proved particularly interested in aiding him. Combined with Valeron's disdain for Telrai, this left him dangerously outmanned by Holenun, and when he was eventually cornered in the north of the nation, his troops were decisively defeated by the forces of Holenun, and he was slain in 1742. Leaderless, his troops crossed the Zakhoda river and fled the country. The rest of the civil war was quite swift, and despite his wife's family attempting to claim the throne for his young son, they were quickly defeated. As Holenun began to reinforce tribal loyalty and purge prominent Valerid loyalists from the clans he brought under heel, many of these men and women fled into the steppe. Some of these would join the remaining troops of Valeron's army, encamped on the north shore of the Zakhoda for some years, and this combination of influential clan leaders and a disciplined military force formed a powerful combination which proved very threatening to the local Noyodii tribes. In 1748, they declared a symbolic restoration of the Tögsgölgüi Ord, and enthroned Valeron's father-in-law Andarin Anidar. Although a few of Valeron's brothers would eventually flee north and join the Valerid Ord, the ruling dynasty remained the Anidar for many years.

This new state would quickly begin invading and subjugating the nearby Noyodii, and soon became embroiled in largescale wars in the region. Fiercely anti-Telrai despite Chlazar Ordolon, founder of the Tögsgölgüi Ord, being a Teltar himself, the Valerid state often saw their foes supported by local Telrai. Many already saw the Telrai as having corrupted the great state their forefathers has built, a national myth built up that the Telrai had made a great consipracy to derive the centaurs of the culture and corrupt them. These major wars continued until roughly 1772, when a Tögsgölgüi warband crossed the Zakhoda, sacked the Valerid capital of Murghataar, and pushed the border 300 miles to the north. The Valerid were left as a rump state near the northern pass, and the sack of Murghataar and the death of many of the nation's elites would set the Valerid back by a generation. In fact, the ruler Dekhumongar's consorts and children were all slain in the attack except his for his young, illegitimate daughter Nokhari and her mother, who was a Noyodii slave. Dekhumongar would never bear another child, and so Nokhari stood to inherit.

Nokhari was wed to a member of the Khakhari clan, Sekhur Khan, and due to her low status, he became ruler in her stead. Despite part of the conditions of the marriage being that only children of this pairing could inherit the throne, after Dekhumongar's death in 1784, Sekhur Khan immediately staged a palace coup, took on many wives, and defeated the Anidar. For the rest of her life, Nokhari lived under what amounted to house arrest. When Nokhari became pregnant by a man other than Sekhur, she feared for her life and made an escape with a few loyal retainers as well as her elderly mother. She would go on to birth a daughter, Kherlani, who would eventually give rise to the khanate of Khertsug many years later.

In the meantime, the Khakhari clan would begin to reassert the power of the Valerid state. In order to solidify their claim (which really was very weak) they engaged in a policy that largely mirrored the actions undertaken by Holenun to the south, except that it was the polar opposite in terms of the policy towards Telrai. Instead of conquering and eslaving Telrai, they would be slaughtered, and soon their whole western coastline was free of settlement. Most clans, except the most privileged, loyal, and ancient Aghurik, which has resulted in the coastline being majority-Aghurik today, even as the rest of the nation is as much as 90% Noyodii-populated. This occured even as the Valerids would not reassert control over any sort of coastline until 1799. However, once the Valerid had begun their pattern of conquest again, they were easily able to sweep through the nearby clans, aside from the knot which would later become the domain of the Khertsug. The Valerird-Khertsug war of 1811-1819 was a stalemate and provided the impetus for Lady Kherlani to lend her name to the clan which formed around her. However, it is likely this war was fought using the full strength of the Khertsug and just 30-40% of the forces of the Valerid, as after 1799 they were largely engaged in reconquering the lands to the north of the Zakhoda river, lost to the Tögsgölgüi Ord in 1772. The frontier would settle roughly 40 miles north of that of the present day, where was constantly tested by skirmishes on both sides.

The only reason any of this was possible was the collapse of the Tögsgölgüi Ord after their war with the Divinity of Ashēryku and the death of a third of their population to the Great Death of Ærellion. The Valerid briefly held an advantage because their isolated nation did not see a single death to this illness, the only time this policy ever did any good. Once the Ord had recovered from this disaster, their forces largely proved more powerful and were able to keep the Valerid at bay. However, this would not last, as the arrogant leadership of the Tögsgölgüi Ord launched an eastern invasion in 1848 which saw the nation dismantled. Indeed, some clans would recognize the Valerid as the rightful Tögsgölgüi Ord after the dissolution of the state. However, despite recieving tribute from several neabry clans, the Valerid never crossed the Zakhoda, which became the Tögsgölgüi-Valerid frontier once more in 1857, after the defeat of the Tögsgölgüi forces that remained in the region. Still, the height of Valerid power came in 1878, when a raiding party sacked the city of Harmaash, capital of the Tögsgölgüi Ord. This led to the Tögsgölgüi fleeing the city and establishing a new capital in the hills. However, Valerid attempts to project power further south led to the death of the Valerid army at the hands of the Moros, a clan who controlled the lands south of Harmaash during the late 1800s. And so the border remained settled along the Zakhoda river, even though the Valerid had forced the border to be along the south fork, rather than the northern one.

This would all become a rather moot point anyways, as the mighty Bataar Ordolon would soon ascend to the Tögsgölgüi throne. By 1904, Bataar had reclaimed all Ordian lands except those held by the Valerid, and his military prowess awed all, leading to all clans abandoning their acknowledgement of the Valerid as the rightful heris to the Tögsgölgüi Ord. Bataar would force the issue, and in 1904 he launched an invasion of the Valerid domain. Although they fought well, by 1913 the Valarid were forced to capitulate and pay tribute to Bataar, who also moved the border back north, near its 1848 line. This shattered Valerid prestige, and the nation was forced to fight several rebellions as well as the forces of the Khertsug, who captured several northern provinces which they still hold today. However, the Valerid endured, and waited for their chance to regain honor and strength. In 1960, they took advantage of Tögsgölgüi distraction to move their forces east and crush several tribes near the northern pass, expanding their domain to control both sides of this important trade route. However, the domino effect of the Valerid expansion would lead to the consolidation of the Noyodii tribes in the region into two confederations: Golyemar and Süüdörlög.

As the Tögsgölgüi war dragged on, the Valerid decided to renounce their tributary status and began challenging the Tögsgölgüi, contunually pressing the border and Tögsgölgüi-aligned tribes in the region. Their efforts accelerated in 1976, after the Saqavīt tribe of orcs revolted against the Tögsgölgüi and slaughtered one of the Tögsgölgüi armies through a pact with demons. This forced the Tögsgölgüi to be more conservative with their troops and prevented them from actually challenging the Valerid, and the border settled on its current form by 1979. For the past 20 years, the Valerid and Tögsgölgüi have been locked in an uneasy standstill, with both nations limited by their many other foes and unable to bring their full strength to bear on the other. Until one makes a move, the Valerid stand paralyzed.