War of the Gift
The War of the Gift was a conflict that took place between BKY24-2, and was instigated by the House of Goldfire, specifically Warlord Llyn Goldfire. The main factions were the Goldfires and their allies against the clans of the Coastwall gryphons and their allies.
The Conflict
Prelude
As Bloodblight-afflicted animals began to infiltrate the Coastwall Mountains, the gryphons took notice of these dangerous abominations. Squads of gryphons began to descend the mountains into the jungle below, violating the borders of the neighboring dragon clans in their search for the source of the blight. This resulted in skirmishes between several gryphon and dragon clans, including House Goldfire, which was currently ruled by Warlord Llyn Goldfire. In the preceding decades, Llyn Goldfire had been forging alliances among the border clans of the dragons. Using the pressure of the Bloodblight crisis and the gryphon incursions, Llyn convinced his allies that the time to attack was at hand and gathered together the battle-capable dragons in each allied clan. The war is agreed to have begun with the Battle of Gold Cliffs, where Llyn led his forces on an all-out aerial assault of the gryphons living in the section of the Coastwall Mountains immediately west of his territory. The battle was a resounding success for Llyn and his allies, as the gryphon clans had not been expecting an act of war.
The Engagement
The Coastwall Gryphons were forced to retreat from the initial onslaught of House Goldfire. Llyn Goldfire stationed the majority of his forces on the northern front and concentrated on enlisting additional allies to manage the southern front. In BKY22, two years after the start of the war, the strength of the Goldfire dragons had managed to push the gryphons to the point where the Sentinel Peaks forked off from the main Coastwall range.
The gryphons living in the Peaks had not become involved in the conflict until this point. One of the factors that led to frequent retreats on the part of the Coastwall Gryphons were the dragons' initial superiority of numbers. However, Llyn wanted to utilize the junction of the Coastwall and Sentinel ranges as a naturally defensible location to construct a fortress to utilize as his base of operations. To do this, he needed to capture the area and hold it, which would necessitate taking aggressive action against the Sentinel Peak gryphon clans.
Llyn led a force of seven hundred dragons to capture the location, an overwhelming number to the unprepared Sentinel gryphons. Like the Coastwall clans had, they retreated ahead of Llyn's forces. However, they then regrouped with the remaining Coastwall gryphons in the northern portion of the range, which began to even the numbers disparity between Llyn and his enemies.
After their defeat at the Battle of the Peaks, the Coastwall gryphons decided to reach out to the horsefolk residing in the Stormbreak Prairie. Presenting the dragons as an existential threat, they begged assistance from the horsefolk and enlisted them in the task of bringing word of the attacks to the gryphons living in the Flame Mountains across the continent, calling for their help. If the gryphon clans could be fully united, they could halt the dragons' advance and perhaps even regain the territory they had lost. Sandata Herjää, who had emerged as a major leader among the gryphon clans, additionally approached the fishergryphs of the coast and enlisted their assistance in contacting the finfolk. Gillyfins were particularly instrumental on the side of the Coastwall gryphons during the conflict, serving as spies and advanced scouts for the gryphon forces.
These new allies began to turn the tide in favor of the gryphons. They halted the northward advance of King Llyn and his forces near the site of what is now Northwatch Bastion. Between BKY18-15, the front was at a stalemate. Reinforcements from the Flame Mountains had swiftly begun to arrive, and several paint ponies had begun taking the risk of running supplies into the treacherous mountain passes for the gryphons, enabling them to withstand seige conditions for years on end.
Recognizing that the war was grinding to a halt, Llyn began to refocus his strategy. He tasked the Nightvenoms with disrupting the enemy supply and communication lines by targeting the herds of horsefolk on the exposed Stormbreak Prairie and forcibly relocating them south of the River Rushing, into the deep parts of the Tangled Jungle where even most dragons did not venture. They encountered military opposition from the gryphons of the Flame Mountains, who came to the defense of the horsefolk while their allies across the continent were beseiged. However, this shift in focus on the part of the Flame Mountain gryphons lessened their ability to support the Coastwall and Sentinel clans on the northern front, and Llyn again began to make gains in the mountain ranges.
The Coastwall gryphons at this time began shifting to decentralized tactics. Sandata Herjää suggested that reactivating the conflict on the southern front may spread Llyn's forces thin and force him to reconsolidate. A coordinated offensive was planned from the coast, with fishergryphs and merytons coordinating with the gillyfins to plan strategic sabotages of supplies within the dragon encampments. In the prairies, while the Nightvenoms had met with success in discovering and forcibly removing the unicorn herds, the paint ponies eluded them, continuing their supply runs to the Coastwall gryphons.
In BKY15, the seige on the northern front broke when Herjää led the clans out in force. Simultaneously, an attack commenced on the neglected southern front which successfully recaptured several miles of gryphon territory near the borders of Goldfire lands. The sabotage missions of the gillyfins were successful in delaying the Goldfires' ability to respond to the coordinated offensive. Llyn recalled the Nightvenoms from the prairie and tasked the Hammerscales with rooting the gillyfins out of the waters of the captured territory. Thus began the second forcible displacement of the campaign, and the Hammerscales were significantly more brutal in their offensive against the gillyfins. They often weaponized their fire magic to superheat the water as they traveled, forcing the gillyfins to flee or boil to death. By BKY11, gillyfin attacks on Goldfire forces had all but ceased, as the finfolk rapidly retreated from the rivers rather than face extinction.
However, despite the success of this removal, Llyn faced an ever-increasing force of gryphons on the northern front. The early deterioration of Llyn's mental state led to his decision to split his forces, consolidating the most loyal clans in his fortress within the desert and tasking his allies in the Tangled Jungle with reinforcing the southern front. However, years of Bloodblight ravaging the jungle had taken its toll on most of the southern clans, and their military strength had drastically dwindled. Llyn began to lose ground to the south, and blamed many of his southern allies, accusing them of being disloyal. Fractures began to show in the dragon alliance.
BKY6 saw the most successful gryphon offensive of the war. With the assistance of the fishergryphs and merytons along the coast, Herjää shifted his forces to the weaker southern front, intent on capturing the ancestral lands of the Goldfires in hopes that this strategic blow would force Llyn to abandon the northern front. The Sandata Offensive, as it later became known, was a heavy blow against Llyn's southern forces. The gryphons recaptured much of the mountains, including the territory originally captured by Llyn at the very beginning of the war. However, this did not quite have the effect Herjää hoped for, as Llyn fortified the northern front and recalled his southern forces to the fortress instead of abandoning the northern front.
The second detante lasted three years, until Llyn Goldfire conducted the Ritual of the Gift in BKY3. The newly-elevated Beast Shifters were often confused and reacted aggressively when approached, which resulted in attacks against the gryphon forces and their other divine beast allies. The beast shifters were quickly approached by the dragons, who utilized the early skirmishes with gryphons to frame the gryphons as the attackers, claiming that they had been hunting species nearly to extinction to support their war efforts.
The entry of the beast shifters into the war rapidly turned the tide. The remaining horsefolk were rounded up and ejected from the prairie with the assistance of the bison and pronghorn shifters, while species of seabird shifters patrolled the coast and secured the beaches against fishergryphs, gillyfins, and merytons. The addition of the beast shifters to the Goldfire alliance rapidly swelled their ranks to an insurmountable number for the gryphons, and both the northern and southern fronts saw the collapse of gryphon defenders and rapid loss of territory.
The final battle of the war is considered to be the Battle of Whispering Pass, where Sandata Herjää made one final stand with his remaining forces to retain control over the pass and therefore a foothold in the more livable portions of the Coastwall mountain range. Llyn brought the main body of his renewed forces to bear on the pass, enlisting the wolf shifters in particular. In a final act of desperation, Herjää challenged Llyn to single combat in an effort to preserve the lives of the remainder of his people. After his defeat and death in the duel, the Coastwall gryphons were forced to relinquish the pass and retreat to the arctic. In the south, the formidable combination of the jaguars, harpy eagles, and river otters re-conquered the jungle territories, and the gryphons were pushed to the seaward side of the Coastwall Mountains in the area.
Outcome
No formal treaty was ever signed acknowledging the end of the War of the Gift, and many of the Coastwall gryphon clans consider it to still be in effect. However, after border skirmishes continued for several decades after the kingdom's founding, the repeated unsuccessful attempts by the gryphons to disrupt the borders and recapture territory had led to a severe effect on the gryphon population, and gryphon raids on the kingdom slowly dwindled and ceased.
Aftermath
The Kingdom of Aētheli's establishment led to the effective territorial control over the majority of the continent of Amara by Llyn Goldfire and his descendants. Although the borders have not expanded since the kingdom's foundation, neither have they contracted. In addition, the forced displacement of other divine beast species from Aētheli and the propaganda of House Goldfire have led to an extremely insular culture and effectively closed borders. The beast shifters of the kingdom view the lands outside their borders with fear, hostility, and suspicion, while the divine beasts who have been expelled from their ancestral homelands harbor resentment and sometimes even disgust toward the dragons of the kingdom and the beast shifters they used as their soldiers.
Conflict Type
War
Battlefield Type
Land
Start Date
-24
Ending Date
-2
Conflict Result
Goldfire victory, Kingdom of Aētheli founded
Location
Comments