War of the Storm

"We have never seen warfare like this. Not in Talazic, and certainly not in Vundkrag. This is not how a dwarf should fight. We ground ourselves beneath the mountains to weather a storm—we do not become the very thing that batters the rooftops of innocents."

King Kilvar Steelforge

The War of the Storm was a war fought largely between Vundkrag, comprising the royal authorities and various factions within the kingdom, and the cult known as the Creed Under the Coming and Eternal Storm.
The conflict began with the Battle of Pawns, which took place in 988. The battle was fought following many months of rising tensions among the warriors and nobles of the city of Vazendred, where it was shortly discovered that a secret cabal had been manipulating things behind the scenes. The cabal was hunted viciously, and caught and executed within the month. However, the cabal was discovered to have been a subset of the Creed Under the Coming and Eternal Storm, which came to be known simply as the Creed, and after several groups and adventuring parties tried to find them, they declared open war on southern Vundkrag.
The war was comprised of a string of relatively small-scale but intense battles between the Creed and many cities, factions, and parties, some of whom were specifically targeted by the cult, with others rising against them of their own initiative. The most prominent of these groups included the Laurels, the Sustainers of Structure, the Red Dawn, and Morivarg's Quintet. The Creed, meanwhile, was observed to make use of the services of a few different mercenary groups, though none were ever conclusively identified.
The war was mainly fought by deception and manipulation, with many powerful figures' personal weaknesses and vulnerabilities being discovered and exploited until they reached a breaking point. The conflict saw the deaths or abdications of many prominent political figures and most adventuring parties who tried to address any aspect of it found themselves pitted against one another, their trust strained and often broken. For the most part, open conflict spearheaded by legitimate authority was not possible, as the enemy was hidden and inscrutable for the vast majority of the conflict. This alone led many leaders to the brink of insanity.
However, in the end the Creed's numbers were their downfall. As the war continued to rage, the Creed dwindled in size and strength, until its headquarters were found and destroyed in 996, ending the war.

Aftermath

There was a significant amount of political and social fallout in the decades following the end of the war. Several settlements were left standing in ruin, and strange and powerful magical auras lingering in areas where the Creed had been at work. Monsters they had set loose had to be corralled, many power vacuums had been opened up, and trust in authority was frail. During the war, laws regarding magic had changed significantly, with several spells being outright outlawed, and especially enchantments and divinations being strictly regulated, and in most cases these laws remained even following the Creed's destruction.
Even after it was known that the Creed had been responsible for the machinations characteristic of the war, many factions remained at each other's throats for what they had been guided into doing to one another, and for a few years following the war's end some speculated that Vundkrag as a kingdom may yet not survive. The Red Dawn in particular remained closely involved in any and all cleanup efforts for nearly a decade afterwards. But in the midst of this fell the Eventide, four years after the Creed's destruction. Vundkrag was not as targeted as most other kingdoms by the nightbringers' schemes to collapse towns, due to the typical dwarf settlement's thorough familiarity with the ground beneath it. The most significant effect of the conflict was the assassination of King Kilvar Ruby-Eye by duergar nightbringers on the night of the final battle. However, his son Ulfgar Ruby-Eye came into his kingship with decisiveness, initiative, and determination to set Vundkrag upright again after years of turmoil. The consequences of the war remain clear but in the quarter century since his coronation, he has saved Vundkrag from imploding under the weight of its own instability.

Conflict Type

War

Start Date

10 October 988

Ending Date

31 August 996