History of Aërlarow

In the year 12 AFV, half a dozen minor nobles from the lands where Ostum now sits, on the banks of the Roacnael, congregated to discuss the crumbling remains of Vondraria. The northwestern shores of the Vondroac were wrought with war. The cousin of Emperor Telikos, proclaiming himself Emperor Rodakos, was battling with Magnate Mestinas Tiranit (Magnate is the highest position of non-royal leadership), the lord of the Vondroac, over the throne. The war had not yet spread to their corner of the Roacnael and the lands beyond, but it was quickly creeping closer and closer.

The six leaders were deliberating how to proceed when a young student named Thesson Danebar (Figure in Aërlarotian history) came forward with an idea to travel westward, to a land that no Vondrarian had ever stepped foot on. Very little was known about this land, as the only information they had come from the scant stories of the Kauvoran people. Thesson said they could sail a great fleet down around the Claw, south of Kihari Desert, and then turn northward and settle this distant land.

After a long debate and eventual consensus, the nobles began to formulate a plan, with the help of Thesson Danebar to travel to these lands. They recruited the best of all their peoples—farmers, artisans, scientists, teachers, warriors, herders, etc.—and organized thirty ships. Five ships were devoted nearly entirely to livestock and horses, with only the herders to tend to them and the sailors to sail the ships. The rest of the ships were filled with people, over one hundred and fifty on board each vessel. Two of the ships had huge numbers of slaves, so they could have a population of laborers when they reached their destination (Thesson Danebar will advocate their freedom, and leaves ol-Vehntra because of the obtuseness). In late winter of 13 AFV, as Emperor Rodakos’ forces were razing through the lands around the southern Roacnael, thirty ships set sail.

They made it out of the Vondroac with little issue, but drew much attention, as massive fleets tend to do. They were halted along the Vondrael but Yaerish rebels far south of Ilthiliür, and had difficulties coordinating all ships into the ocean in a quick manner, but midsummer of 13 AFV, they were out in the seas, sailing south around the Claw.

The journey took two years. When they began there were 30 ships and nearly 4,000 people. When they reached the location of ol-Vehntra, there were 16 ships and 2,500 people, with two livestock vessels remaining. Three ships were taken by pirates as they passed through the fragments of land at the Claw’s tips. One was decimated by disease shortly after. Two were torched for being Vondrarian as they attempted to make port in Sah-hra. Four sunk in a deadly storm south of the Kihari Desert. One simply vanished, unaccounted for, and another shipwrecked as they stopped at port in Kalakar, which was entirely unfamiliar to the Vondrarians. The last two boats that did not survive were bashed against cliffsides as they attempted to broach a harbor on the southern peninsula of Eriar. Deterred by the seemingly inhospitable harbors, the remaining 16 ships sailed for two more months before making port in a safe, calm bay near the northern edges of Eriar. In early spring of 15 AFV, the refugees stepped on land, the first of their people to reach these distant Western lands, haggard, hopeless, and exhausted.

Yet Thesson Danebar, who had managed to survive despite being on one of the ships taken by pirates, the plagued vessel, and one that was torched by the Sah-hrans, was very optimistic about their chances at a new life, and he was the first to proclaim the land in which they disembarked ol-Vehntra, or the Rise. The harbor had steep cliffs surrounding it, but there was a pathway they managed to find to reach the lightly forested top. Construction of a city began, overlooking the harbor and the new lands.

After a month of settlement, when they were all living on the ships or in the few buildings they had constructed, they were approached a contingent of natives, whom they called Bola Heron (Anagram of Honorable, called Bolas for short). The people were wary at first, as this dry, foreign land was something they had never experienced, but Thesson managed to convince both parties that they were peaceful. The Bola Heron brought them food and gifts, while Thesson and a few others worked to learn their language. The Vondrarians stayed in their growing village while the Bola Heron repeatedly visited them. In just a few short months, Thesson had learned enough of their language to coordinate peace between the newcomers and the native tribes in the region. The Vondrarian customs of honoring ones hosts and the Bola Heron tradition of accepting newcomers peacefully fit perfectly together.

By late autumn, ol-Vehntra was a village of several dozen buildings, most housing two families. The attitude was positive—the sheep thrived in the land, the farmers managed to have a small but successful harvest, the Bola Heron were friendly, few had died since the landing, and two children had been born. The town was growing and the people felt safe, and they got through winter safely. For several years, the Vonds thrived, expanded gradually over the surrounding land. The Bola Herons peacefully cooperated, negotiated by Thesson Danebar and his supporters. Eventually, however, five years after the settlement, an argument drove Thesson to lead a group of men and women northward, away from Ol-Vehntra, never to return.

Thesson led his group of Vond northward, crossing over a broad river and forging into Norduī. About two hundred in total ventured with him, and after finding a fertile valley in south-central Norduī, they started a settlement and made trading agreements with the Bola Heron. These Bolas were slightly more aggressive than the ones from Ol-Vehntra. Tensions relaxed somewhat over the time it took to create a settlement, but in the years that followed, seeds of instability and uncooperation were planted.

As Thesson and his companions settled in Norduī, the people in Ol-Vehntra faced difficulties. They wanted to expand, but the Bolas were not willing to allow Vonds to settle in the lands to the south and east. The only places left to go were north, and that was already decently populated by both Vonds and Bolas. Yearning for more space, several small groups departed to follow the same path as Thesson. A town was established at a navigable part along the river, and a peaceful relationship with the Bolas there led to establishing a trade route between the riverfolk and the valley folk to the north. South western Norduī began to become a place heavily populated by Vonds, with three towns of notable size (valley, river, coastal town) and several small villages scattered about. Ol-Vehntra, however, continued to grow in size, while only small amounts of Vonds were settling deeper into Eriar, leaving the population to be mostly Bola.

In 27 AFV, nearly two dozen Vond settlements spanned the western portion of what is now Nordui, most being small farming communities. The Bola were incredibly friendly, eager to help the Vonds and teach them how to thrive, while learning more about the world beyond. The Bola in this area lived in small villages of round wooden huts, which most Vonds found rather primitive. They were grateful and kind to the Bola, but looked down upon them as inferior. Thesson acted as a liaison between his people and the Bola. In late 27 AFV, while staying in a large Bola community along the bay separating Aerlarow from Nordui, the town was raided by a large boat, filled with strange Bola men. In the aftermath of the raid, Thesson found about seafaring civilizations to the north, and in spring of 28 AFV, he led a band of Bola and Vond northward, through Algabar (not called Algabar then—it was a unified country of well-organized farmers, led by a council in a valley called Teralun—called the Teral people). These people told of how the seafaring people were separated by them across a great plain, but that they had taken their boats inward and raided the northern edges (the seafarers moved eastward and rowed across Lake Morlarow to attack these people), and they wanted revenge on the seafarers.

Thesson wanted to try to forge peace, but promised if he could not do that, that he would help the Teralun council attack their enemies. With his band of 100 Vond and a roughly equal number of Bola, he set across the plains, heading for Dagger (Ousk) Bay. They came across a city along the River Mal, a city with curving stone buildings and very smooth architecture. Shocked at finding such permanent constructions, as Bola tended to live in wooden villages, Thesson tried to learn all he could about their history, but he was forced by the Teral people to keep forging onward to find the leader of the land.

These seafarers, known as the Bulanas, stretched all along the bay and along the River Mal, as well as in the northern mountains. They used the River Mal to raid villages along the coast of Nordui, and used the bay to trade with lands across the sea. There were more than half dozen large settlements, two along the River Mal, and then six at different points along the bay. Each city was controlled by the most skilled sailor, and the cities often competed with one another, sometimes violently. The kingdom was young, just a few generations old, and it was only going to grow stronger. Had Thesson not come, it was likely their empire would have stretched all along the western coast, becoming a powerful nation.

Thesson was interested in meeting with these leaders, and after traveling to a few of the cities, arranged a meeting with all eight of them at a place called Mal’Ousk, where the River Mal and Ousk Bay came so close to meeting. The leaders came, bringing with them the majority of their fleets (less than fifty ships per leader). There was great feasting, and in between the feasting, Thesson met with these leaders. He learned they would vie for peace if the people of Teralun would help them raid the lands to the south. The Teralun people seemed content, but Thesson was terrified—his very own people lived to the south, and they would not be able to withstand such an invasion.

In perhaps the darkest moment of the history of Thesson and the Five Free Kingdoms, he devised a plan to appease the people of Teralun and protect his own. As Thesson met with the leaders, some of his Vond men moved throughout the fleets, dousing them in a flammable material (both the fleets along the bay and in the river). The fleets were set aflame, and as the seafarers panicked and tried to stop the flames, Thesson and his men slaughtered the eight leaders during their peaceful meeting, and then moved out across Mal’ousk, butchering the men who stayed to fight.

After the Massacre of Mal’Ousk, the Teral people spread across the former kingdom and subdue its people, often through violence. The Bulanas fled northward, retreating into Morua Wood and beyond. Satisfied that they had driven the seafarers away, the Teralun people returned to their homeland and went back to their peaceful farming. Thesson, too, returned to his post as liaison of the Vond communities.

The Vonds were flourishing all across this new land, and their ranks had been swelled when several thousand more arrived on shore in 24 AFV, following the path from Vondraria that the original had taken. Although they arrived over the course of a year, they are considered a single fleet, and were the only other fleet to ever arrive at Ol-Vehntra, but they brought news that the empire was entirely collapsed and that the world had resulted to anarchy. These Vond people were exhausted and ready to forge new lives. Voraciously, they tripled the population of Ol-Vehntra and then spread northward, with several hundred journeying until they met Thesson in 29 AFV. Thesson, realizing that there was a sprawling land to the north nearly entirely abandoned, led these several hundred and others from Nordui northward into this new land. They formed a community at Mal’Ousk, renaming it Ma’lousk, and began to map out the lands along Ousk Bay (renamed dagger once it was completely mapped out). North Thorn and South Thorn, both already established communities, became budding towns, although North Thorn grew much quicker. Most of the other towns of the Bulanas were in unfavorable locations or too destroyed to inhabit.

While Thesson was destroying the rising Bulanas empire, turmoil struck in Ol-Vehntra. In middle 26 AFV, the Magnate of Ol-Vehntra, the former Captain Nalimus Benethon, executed three young Bola men for the rape of a Vond woman. While rape is a capital crime among all the Bola, the punishment was not carried out in the Bola way, and Magnate Nalimus never alerted Bola leaders as to why they were executed, rather letting them hear through gossip. This caused uproar among the Bola, claiming it was a cultural infraction (and they had always respected Vond culture, therefore expecting the Vonds to do the same). In retaliation, a group of Bola men burned a grainhouse not far from Ol-Vehntra.

A series of small scale clashes followed for the next few months, but in spring of 27 AFV, a small Bola village was razed, and three children, along with nine others, were slaughtered. The leaders of the twenty or so clans in the area, stretching from the river border to the north to the further southern plains, gathered and approached Magnate Nalimus with an ultimatum (The Bola culture in this region was a clan culture, meaning that there was a town and outlying settlements consisting over a few hundred each, and these were lead by a clanhead, who represented the voice of the clan’s elders). The clanheads warned Nalimus that if he did not turn over those who killed the children, they would have to respond with violence. The Magnate laughed in their face and told them they were too humble and weak to attack them. Disgruntled and anxious, the Bola left the city.

A week later, the twenty clanheads returned to Ol-Vehntra, with a force of many hundreds of warriors. Their code states that if a child is murdered by a man of another clan, that clan must hand over the murderer, else the offended clan would attack. The clanheads saw Ol-Vehntra as another clan, and responded as they would in any other situation. They attacked the city, but did not make it far. Vond horsemen blocked over the streets with their steeds, spearing the natives as they pushed forward. When the remaining forces retreat, the calvary pursued and decimated them. Several clanheads died, but the others managed to escape with small bands of warriors.

As the spring of 27 AFV wound to a close, Magnate Nalimus personally led troops around the land, publicly executing defenseless clanheads in their clan towns. The remaining Bola were forced southward, into the more arid parts of Eriar, to join the coca growers to the south, or eastward, to mingle with the powerful civilization along the Malna River. Very few were permitted to stay, and the clan way of life for these Eriaran Bola was obliterated. Many in Ol-Vehntra despised Magnate Nalimus for this (and because he called himself Magnate), and in 32 AFV, he was overthrown by both Vonds and Bolas, his loyal men were thrown off cliffs into the sea, and he himself was strapped to the top of a pine tree, left to die—a Bola punishment for the most vile of criminals.

In 31 AFV, Thesson recalls in his journal a day of very nice weather after a month containing several powerful storms. He was standing on the balcony of his house when he saw a two ships straggling through Ousk Bay. The ships were none they had ever seen before, but he and the citizens of Ma'lousk guided them to safety in the small harbor. The people spoke a language that none of the others knew, but came from a kingdom along the Roru River. A few of them knew the language of the Vonds (the language they spoke along the Roacnael) and told the story of how they fled from persecution in their kingdoms, as they worshipped the Duror, and went for the island to the west of Ol-Vehntra (which Thesson did not know existed). On their journey, they were blown off course, and so these Roruans sought shelter in Ousk Bay, traveling deeper and deeper into it until they found Thesson. Thesson welcomed them and told them they could stay, so long as they all forsook their own language and learned his. This agreement came easily, and the population of Ma'lousk grew by almost three hundred.

In 35 AFV, tragedy struck the Teral people. A failed late summer harvest led to a famine, and the winter of 35-36 AFV was brutal. By the time spring came around, the people had lost nearly half of their population to starvation and disease, and a third of the survivors had fled, heading north and westward. A large group of Vond men moved into Algabar, curious of the lack of farmers they once traded with. They encountered a large band of survivors in Teralun Valley, and the Vonds settled there alongside the Bolas, establishing a community under a hill called Mount Lanor.

Recap of Events:
 * Thesson and other Vonds land in Eriar, build a town. Intially, the Bola are kind and welcoming
 * Thesson and others spread northward, sparesely settling Nordui, before arriving in Aerlarow and making an alliance with the Teral people
 * Thousands more Vonds arrive, but are the last to arrive due to the decimation in the East and the lack of motivation/supplies to journey away.
 * Thesson massacres the Bulanas civilization and frees Aerlarow for the Vonds.
 * Nalimus destroys the clans of northern Eriar, and then is executed.
 * Thesson greets Roruan refugees and add new people to Aerlarow.
 * The Teral people are decimated by famine and weather, and the beginnings of the Algabar civilization begin when Vonds and Teral survivors unite

Time jump to 300 AFV

In 322 AFV, a young man, son of Bola Heron hunter and Vond woman from the Swaywood, named Palvagar, embarked on a quest to find a passage to the lands he had read of in ancient manuscripts from the very original Vonds who settled the land (No more immigrants had followed them, and none had ever ventured eastward since the landing). He gathered a band of men, consisting of Bola and Vond fishers, travelers, warriors, hunters, and other such occupations and embarked on a quest eastward, and swung south along the Erian shores, documenting the peoples he came across as they ventured away from the Bola-Vond joint cultures, from the fishing people of the broken islands offshore Eriar to the marshland people at the southwestern edge of the Broadstone Mountains.

One notable location Palvagar came across was a growing port town at the east of the southern tip of the Broadstone Mountains, located on the inner curve of a cape. This town was called Kaih-art (Khart) and they spoke a strange language that none comprehended. The people of Kaih-art were very curious and interested in the westerners, but were somewhat unwelcoming and suspicious (as had been the similar peoples in smaller settlements). Staying for only a short while, Palvagar led his band northeastern, where he had heard tales of a great land of fertile soil and marvelous diamond lakes. They traveled over arid plains, with little springs or water until they got much further north.

In 324, Palvagar arrived in the Five Lakes region, where he was shocked by the similarities in his tongue and their tongue. After exploring the Five Lakes for a year and venturing to all of the major city-states, meeting with leaders and kings and such, he led his company (those who decided not to stay in the Five Lakes, which was incredibly fertile and more highly organized than the West) back to the West, charting a path through the plains that joined together as many water sources as he could in a semi-linear fashion. They passed through Kaih-art again, gifting them with some of the items and plants they had brought over from the Five Lakes. The people were less suspicious, yet still wary, but gratefully accepted the gifts.

In just a few years, a trade route between the city-states and the multitude of kingdoms, cities, and regions in the West had opened up. Towards the end of the fourth century, as more organized governments formed in the West, the standardization of their similar tongues began.

However, numerous struggles preceded this lingual union between the two areas. The monarch-general of what was now growing into Norduī sought control over the trade route to the Five Lakes, so his people could get the most out of it, and so in 346 he led a massive force along the route, stopping at Kaih-art to invade and conquer the pivotal central city along the route, planning to capture this city and then spread out from there, taking the other large settlements after. What this general did not expect was the fierceness of resistance from the people of Kaih-art and the surrounding lands. He initially captured the city, but was quickly ousted by rebels, and proceeded to spend the next six years acting from a glorified camp they established in the foothills of the mountains. Kaih-art was sacked three times, yet each time they managed to quickly oust the invaders and then recover. The general kept ordering drafts from his kingdom for reinforcements, as his men were either dying or deserting, and razed the lands around Kaih-art. In 352, a more reasonable leader seized power in Norduī, ceased following commands from the general attempting to conquer Khart, and left him and his army to die.

The former monarch abandoned the conquest and his men began a wild ride through the foothills and into the mountains, doing as they pleased—raping, pillaging, burning, and establishing a tyranny of fear, with this now vindictive general. They created an unorganized, lawless, chaotic culture which in current times (700s) is a region in the southern Kauvorae Mountains were slavers run rampant, organizing massive slave rings from cities nestled within the stony peaks.