We're back! A busy holiday schedule, but we've returned to working on Unto the Breach. Here's the first article of 2010, a continuation of the Chronicles of Terranis!

AF 393: A century of tenuous peace follows the formation of the Terranis Alliance. Other than a handful of border skirmishes between most of the nations, no major conflicts erupt during the fourth century. It is not until the turn of the century is nearly upon Terranis that war threatens man again.

After the purging of Daeldren, activity by the Great Enemy significantly decreased, partly due to a series of grand “Monster Hunts” sponsored by the Terranis Alliance. The governments of Terranis pooled their resources, and offered massive bounties for tokens signifying the slaying of various powerful monsters known to inhabit Terranis. These Hunts reaped a terrible toll among the mercenaries of Terranis, but were largely successful, and hundreds of monstrous beasts were brought to an end.

With the larger monsters being slain in droves, the lesser minions of the Great Enemy seemed to acknowledge the threat to them, and most vanished into the hidden corners of the world, deep into forests or underground, or even into depths of the oceans.

After several decades of campaigning, the great Hunts were brought to a close, and Terranis entered a new age of prosperity. Dozens of new cities were founded, trade routes were greatly expanded, and several pre-Fall ruins were discovered, granting mankind access to a bundle of new technologies and relics.

Among these new discovering are several massive repositories of supplies for the Solar Alliance. Tens of thousands of crates containing consumable supplies, such as bio-medical gel, energy drinks, and various other pharmaceuticals are found. Of course, at first, the prices of these items are astronomical, but the sheer volume discovered quickly drives the price down to reasonable levels, and they become staples of the adventuring career. Efforts were undertaken to recreate these items with compounds available, but are met with little success.

By AF 392, Great Enemy activity had become virtually unheard of across Terranis. The first generation of humans to be relatively free of the threat of attack since the Fall began to grow up, and many wondered if Terranis was finally free of the shadow of evil.

These dreams were quickly shattered in 393, however, when a sudden assault by the Great Enemy began to wreak havoc on the eastern continent. The attack was spearheaded by hundreds of massive winged creatures which became simply known as dragons. These creatures had never before been seen on Terranis, and their origin was unknown. Wherever they came from, their size far exceeded that of anything else on record, and their fiery breath allowed them to easily destroy whole villages.

Following in the wake of the dragon assault, armies of lesser monsters, thought destroyed years ago, emerged from their hidden lairs in numbers unseen since the assault of Astanathos, and laid waste to further swathes of the countryside. Southern Saernis, western Korneth, and eastern Doramor all fell to the monster armies, and the Protectorate of Polikta was completely destroyed.

Reeling from the attack, the remaining countries immediately requested the aid of Saniel and Weijin, who quickly dispatched their armies to assist. The Order of Light deployed virtually its entire fighting force to assist in the battle, as well. While their deployed might was able to stem the advance of the ground-based monsters, they had little recourse to counter the airborne assaults of the dragons. Only a few were slain through lucky hits from various siege weapons.

The greatest blow from the dragons came when they assault Saernis City itself, razing most of the city to the ground, and destroying countless stores of pre-Fall knowledge. The exact extent of the damage dealt is never figured out, but it is estimated centuries of knowledge is annihilated. This battle, however, proved to be the turning point of the war.

A detachment of the Order of Light was successful in tracking the movements of the dragons after their assault on Saernis, and was able to discover where the dragons’ nesting places were. The rookeries of the dragons were discovered to lie within a scorched valley almost entirely surrounded by impassible mountains. There is, however, a small entrance along the north side, choked by dense forests.

The Order of Light promptly deployed most of its fighting strength, along with select units from the national armies, to the Valley of Dragons, and, in a daring night-time raid, simultaneously assaulted the hundreds of caverns of the dragons. The attacking humans made their way deep underground, in some cases through miles of treacherous caverns, before attacking the dragons in their very lairs.

The fighting was desperate, but the unshakable courage of the paladins won through in the end, and the dragons were slain in their hundreds, though most of the attacking humans failed to survive the battle as well. A few dragons escaped into the night, or deep underground, and the paladins oversaw the destruction of the caverns, sealing in those that were still underground. The ones that escaped the Valley were never seen again, though degenerate creatures bearing vague resemblances to the old dragons were seen again centuries later. Fortunately, these creatures pale in comparison to the dragons of legend.

With the dragon threat defeated, the armies of man proved more than capable of routing the further assaults of the Great Enemy, thanks in part to the new technological advantage given by the pre-Fall healing items discovered, which drastically reduced the number of casualties taken. The monsters were soundly defeated and driven back, until they were driven to within the massive forest of Dunkelwald, in the south of Korneth. Expeditions launched into the forest largely vanished, however, and inroads into the lairs within the shadowy depths of the forest were slow. Several months of vicious fighting ensued, until something remarkable happened.

During a fight with the Great Enemy, an army of soldiers from Saniel was surprised when roots from the ground begin to snake outwards, ensnaring, trapping, or even consuming some of the monsters. The trees themselves began to shake, and branches moved as if possessed to smash, strangle, or entangle the monsters. Finally, after a wave of animals emerged to assault the monsters, humans garbed in strange clothes appeared, wielding unknown magical powers against the monsters which devastated the beasts and saw them swiftly defeated.

Following the battle, the humans identified themselves as Druids. The Druids were not entirely unheard of, but they were rarely seen in the broader society of man, due to their preference for the habitats of nature. The Druids explained their views of the Great Enemy, and how it enraged the Spirit of Terranis, and thus the Druids would be willing to aid their fellow humans. It was revealed there was a large conclave of Druids within the Dunkelwald, which had been forced from their homes and into hiding by the Great Enemy armies that had moved in, and thus the Druids were forced to retaliate.

With their newfound allies able to cause nature itself to turn against the Great Enemy, the human armies were able to swiftly sweep through the entirety of Dunkelwald, and clear it of all the monsters within. Once the last refuges were destroyed, the Dragon War, as it came to be known, was declared over.

Following the conflict, the Terranis Alliance publicly thanked the Druids for their assistance, and even granted them a seat on the council. There was some opposition from some elements of noble society, but enough debate eventually satisfied those opponents to the move. Elements of the Druidic belief system even began to filter into mainstream society, though it would remain a minority religion. Perhaps the greatest benefit granted from the Druids would be their methods of channeling elemental energy as magic, which had proven extremely effective against the Great Enemy. Countless mages began to study the ways of elemental magic, and their offensive abilities became invaluable to various organizations.

With peace restored to Terranis, restoration efforts began on Saernis City. Though it took several years to restore much of the town to livable conditions, citizens of every nation on Terranis arrived to help with the effort. During the interim, the national government of Saernis based itself in the Royal Academy of Magic, one of the only major buildings to survive the incident. In light of the total devastation, as well as donations of knowledge and books from collections all over Terranis, the rebuilt city is renamed Kunskaborg. Saernis expands its borders to include the now-destroyed Protectorate of Politka, and spearheads efforts to rebuild all the lands that were devastated by the war.

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