The Halaanic Wars

223 A.C. to 297 A.C.

Thinking themselves safe from the Halaanese as they expanded west, the invasion caught the southern nations unprepared. In their previous wars, the Halaanese had been brutal as they conquered ancient ausrani territories. Now, though, faced with an invasion of the ‘filthy, degenerate’ races of the southern caisheni, the Halaanese turned genocidal.
The tabaxi tribes of K'Shanah and Ch’rth and the orcs of the eastern Carentan Forest were the warriors most feared by the Halaanese, They sent raiders, snipers, and assassins into Halaan itself, as the southern kingdoms mobilized their armies. Their strategy of guerilla warfare in the Halaanese homelands worked to keep them off balance.
The remains of Goddossea (since renamed "Fealand") largely kept the Empire at bay, bottlenecking them in the valleys between Tanatra and Cernoa and undercutting the Halaanese numerical advantage. While the Feanese cavalry of eldritch knights and the newly created warforged infantry are their most famous soldiers, much of their success can be credited to the artillery: war mages, elementals, golems, summoned demons, and giant spell cannons worked by teams of sorcerers.
Very quickly, the leaders of the other southern nations went to war -- Goddossea/Fealand, Tanatra, Nymera, K'Shanah-Ch'rth, and even the denizens of the Carentan Forest and the far off Mazdaram mobilized to stop the Halaanese genocide. These nations formed the Southern Covenant under the tabaxi Nymerian King Borein VII.
The wars ground on for more than 75 years, with the Empire of Halaan repeatedly breaking through the Covenant lines, reaching far enough south in the 260’s A.C. to lay siege to the Nymeran capital of Indrasen.