The Barrier War

"The war is like this: I send my men forward against the dwarves to die for an inch or maybe, if I am lucky on that given day, a foot of ground. They come back and ask me if we have had victory and I always tell them that we have, even if we have not. They cannot tell, for the camp never moves. They believe me because I tell them that if we had lost then we must need to retreat, but we never need to retreat. The issue here is not that we are losing, but that we are simply not winning."   Long ago, before the Krik'tha, before the Pact, and before even the kingdom of Nörn stretched south to the Un'ta Deadlands, the Nurnen and dwarves of the Krakis mountains came into contact and conflict with one another. Dwarves, for their part, never seem to want to leave their mountain strongholds. There is no dwarven nation or dwarven empire, only cities, great though they may be. However, the expansionism of other races has always been a perceived threat to the dwarves. They fear being surrounded by possible enemies and even today relations with dwarves inside the borders of a kingdom often grant the dwarves some form of "buffer" territory to ease their concerns about being surrounded and taken over.   The genesis of the conflict, then, was the aforementioned expansionism of the Nurnen kingdom. The Nurnen kings and queens had long sought to colonize the fertile south, and in 512, King Falmir sent the first human caravan of settlers south under a royal guard to survey the territory. Upon passing through the White Wastes and reaching Krakis Gorge, they were stopped by dwarven mountain-guards and told to turn back. At that time, the dwarves of Dach Kraki viewed the Gorge, from end to end, as their "buffer" territory. A clash ensued. There are no records as to who or what began it, but one can imagine the stubbornness of both sides -- the dwarves determined to defend their land and the humans determined to pass through the Gorge, having travelled for many miles though wastelands of snow, not to be turned back at the critical moment. The battle should have been one sided in favor of the natives, but it seems some extraordinary magical event saved the humans and caused many of those dwarven defenders to be slain at once, allowing the settlers to escape back into the wastes.   Whatever the truth of the matter, the caravan was turned around (no amount of guards would have been enough to overcome the entire dwarven force in the Gorge anyhow). They returned to Kürka (the ancient capital at the time) and reported the resistance to the king who was incensed at the gall of these mountain savages who would dare block his expansion south. He sent the caravan to another mountain passage (by Dach Borad) and prepared his army to march upon Dach Kraki to "teach the dwarves humility" in his own words. Falmir and his army marched from Kürka three months later, just as the caravan was reaching the second crossing point. This crossing went much the same as the first, though the group of dwarves was certainly different. The second rejection would serve only to turn the war from a war of sovereignty to a war of race. When Falmir learned of the secondary rejection, he became of the opinion that the problem lay not within the dwarves of Dach Kraki or Dach Borad, but in the dwarves themselves. His war against Dach Kraki thus became a war against dwarves in general -- a war on the dwarven culture.   The wars lasted for five long years, with the tides of war churning back and forth between both sides. The dwarves were generally a more effective fighting force and had the more elite soldiers, but only just so. The humans were by no means incompetent buffoons on the battlefield, and their number advantage was leveraged at every possible turn to overpower the fewer dwarven defenders. The humans also enjoyed an advantage in the form of gifted mages. Dwarves do not often dabble in the magical arts, preferring instead the physical arts of stoneworking, carving, smithing, or martial prowess to the power of the River. Of course, there are dwarven mages, and thus battle-mages, but they were in vastly fewer numbers than their Nurnen counterparts, and that was one of the many reasons the war was so inconclusive.   As I have shown in the quote I included above, dear readers, the war seemed to go nowhere. The dwarves never pushed out of the Gorge (largely because they would have found themselves in the White Wastes) and the humans never pushed into the actual city, only managing to occupy the outlying dwarven townships and forts at the foot of the mountain, pushing up to the city gates but once. After five years of stalemate, both sides had finally had enough and peace was agreed upon (though negotiations had been taking place for over a year). The agreement was as such: The humans could pass through Krakis Gorge to the south (all of the dwarven cities agreed to similar terms) in exchange for creating no permanent settlements within or at the mouth of the Gorge (or whatever pass the city occupied). The Gorge would remain sovereign dwarven territory and would be subject to dwarven rule of law and under the jurisdiction of the local dwarven king.   This treaty still remains in effect to this day, although efforts are being made to renegotiate it for a less segregating treaty, especially now that the Krik'tha threaten both the Nurnen and the dwarves alike. Though these factions were once bitter foes as we have just seen, the treaty and resulting trade in goods and culture resulted in a bringing together of the dwarves and the humans in a way that is seldom seen elsewhere in our world. Today the dwarven cities within the former Nurnen kingdom have excellent relations with the humans and each thinks of the other as an integral part of the life of their respective kingdoms. One can only hope that through the shared experience of the Krik'tha tragedy, the dwarves and humans will come even closer and fully integrate into a single kingdom.