Karrn’s War of Conquest

Military action

Karrn the Conquerer uses his military might and connections to carve out his own land.

Karrn the Conquerer, a human warlord with enormous military skill and strong connections to the burgeoning mercenary business of House Deneith, seized control of the territory surrounding the city of Korth in northeastern Khorvaire along the shores of the great five-spoked sound that divided the central portion of the continent some two millennia ago. The new ruler modestly renamed this first human kingdom Karrnath and took the title of warlord rather than king. Karrn had not been born into the nobility of Korth and had learned his skills with a blade and his strategic sense on the battlefield while serving as a mercenary for the early Blademark Guild. The Blademarks were employed by most of the human states against each other and against the goblin tribes. Karrn eventually formed his own mercenary company and went on to use this force of arms to seize control of Korth and its allied lands while wielding his keen-edged great axe. After assuming the throne, Karrn defeated the remaining Dhakaani goblin settlements south of Kaarnath and then turned his attention to his human neighbors.   Karrn the Conqueror was a cruel and covetous man who believed that he was destined to rule over all of Khorvaire. He had built the most powerful human army up to this time, and after defeating the goblins he began a campaign to conquer the other four major human settlements. Karrn swept south, ostensibly to drive the remaining goblins into the wild regions, but actually invaded the region that would one day become the nation of Cyre. Caught by surprise, the humans of the area fell to the warlord of Karrnath. With two of the human nations now claimed as part of his growing empire, Karrn’s forces massed on the border of what would one day be called Thrane and demanded that nation’s immediate surrender. Before Karrn could claim another victory, the remaining three human nations joined forces to stop the Conqueror’s spread. What emerged from the carnage were five distinct but still nascent human nation-states mostly named after their capital cities (except for Karrn’s new kingdom)—Karrnath, Thaliost, Wroat, Metrol, and Daskara—that spent the next thousand years alternately working together, competing for space and resources, and ultimately setting the stage for the great human civilization of Galifar to come.   Despite his strategic brilliance, Karrn had lacked the financial and material resources at this early point in the Five Nations’ history to build an army large enough to complete the conquest of the continent and his empire proved unsustainable after his death, with Daskara winning back its independence from Karrnath within months of the warlord’s end. Karrn was assassinated by a trusted friend who was covetous of his rule over Karrnath before he could launch yet another attempt at conquest. But his exploits—immortalized forever in his famous book, the Analects of War—would be remembered by a later generation of nobles in the Five Nations (particularly in Karrnath), who also dreamed of uniting all of human-settled Khorvaire beneath one crown.   Of course, while humans were the most numerous race on the continent and in many of the key positions of power, the other common intelligent races also participated in the rise of the Five Nations, especially as they became organized into the various dragonmarked houses. Thanks to the growing economic strength of these houses, all the common races eventually found a place in the developing human nations. Dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, half-elves, and half-orcs started out as representatives and employees of their respective dragonmarked houses, but eventually, members of each race settled down and made homes in the Five Nations. These neighborhoods began as house enclaves, becoming less attached to the dragonmarked houses as the common races’ populations in the human nations grew. If Karrn the Conqueror taught the people of the Five Nations anything, he taught them to establish national identities that transcended race. For a thousand years, the Five Nations expanded and developed unique political personalities and distinctive cultures and economies. Karrnath possessed a militaristic culture that honored preparation for battle over all other activities, Thaliost specialized in the research of arcane magic and magical items, Daskara’s people were as equally committed to the divine and the search for spiritual truth, Wroat was dedicated to trade and commerce and Metrol held itself up as the height of the human arts and culture on Khorvaire.