The Kjivendei Attack

We arrived the next evening, hoping for the best, anticipating the worst. We stepped foot on the road to Kjivendei, and a gleaming gold cup caught a scout's attention. He found another cup, and a blood-smeared candlestick leading down the slope beyond.
Blood? We came to rescue ghosts.
The scout stepped down the slope, then motioned us to a bush. A body--tribal warrior, we guessed, for a spear lay, broken, nearby--but no discernable feature of them remained. Just a lump of cold flesh and flies.

--Watch Captain Alsays of Embeckourteine

Research:

The Kjivendei Attack

by our shuddering hero,
Lorgan the Uneasy

In this Research Document:

all images by Shade Melodique
unless otherwise stated
featured image by joaquincorbalan, Envato Elements

The Disaster

In 19,876 years previous, a dam burst at Dryanthium, the giant lake created by the dryans in the Elfiniti Rainforest. Water rushed downstream, destroying everything in its path, including the port city of Selaserat.
A burgeoning community, Selaserat was famous for its barrier across the Dryanflow River. Kjiven, the elfine founder of Greenglimmer and its ruler, created the barrier to force ships and boats headed for Dryanthium to pay a toll to get by. Few liked him or his money-swindling operation, and when the population realized that he met the Final Death in the flood while inspecting his atrocity, most rejoiced. It was a bit of good news that still drowned under the bad.
The bad was, that Selaserat was no more. Many a living and deceased lost their existence that night, and the toll on those who survived was incredible. No one had shelter, the living had no food, the rotting carcasses of animals and fish caused a health nightmare. Those who lived near the river looked at the uprooted trees, the standing water, the places buildings once stood, and despaired.

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Floods are not unknown in the Elfiniti, but one of this magnitude is.

The Decision

Now, much of the rest of this document is guesswork based upon the reports written by the Watch Captain Alsays of Embeckourteine and his people, guards from the Shield, and remembrances of ghosts. No one knows exactly what happened before and after the raid on Kjivendei. All we can do is speculate.
A yilsemma after the disaster, word spread through the Elfiniti that Kjiven, the hated ancient elfine whizen who carved Greenglimmer from native rainforest tribal lands and placed ghosts in charge of governance, had met the Final Death in the flood. Tribes rejoiced that their enemy no longer existed, and none moreso than the Wiiv.
The Wiiv had been thorns in Kjiven's side for centuries. Their resentment came from anger that Kjiven conquered their homeland and made it into a region governed by ghosts, and fury that displaced tribes from Dryanthium decided to set down new roots in the Labyrinth of Trees. The passage of time did not lessen their animosity of ghosts, whom they rightly blamed for many of their ills.

Other tribes, tired of fighting, had turned their attention to other pursuits, but the shaman of the Wiiv refused to let their people forget the travesties ghosts, and especially Kjiven, visited on them and the rainforest dwellers.
Now that Kjiven was dead? Shaman and warleaders alike saw an opportunity to rid Greenglimmer of ghostly influence. Without the whizen around to protect his citadel, Kjivendei, they could destroy it and the deceased that resided there.
Alsays believed the warleaders had already contacted other tribes about invading Kjivendei, which some view as evidence that the Wiiv and their allies blew the dam at Dryanthium. That's speculation--the physical evidence washed away with the flood waters. It is curious, that the Wiiv gathered and led an armed force of hundreds to Kjivendei two days after the news supposedly first reached them. It may be they already knew--and spent the yilsemma gathering allies.

The Attack

The Wiiv knew an opportunity when they saw it. Kjivendei guards, soldiers, and whizen had rushed to help survivors of the flood (and find Kjiven), leaving the citadel with far less protections than normal. The Shield, a fort meant to protect Kjivendei, had also dispatched their guard force to Selaserat, leaving a sentry unit behind. Outside its founding, Kjivendei now had the least amount of protection in its existence.
In the dead of night, the Wiiv and their allies snuck up the side of Mount Evankjes to the citadel at its peak. As a man who studied under nymph mafiz, the start of this attack intrigues me. The invaders got in. How?
Yes, the ghosts who guarded the city were absent, but the magickal barriers around it remained in place. Some speculate that because Kjiven cast them, they went down when he succumbed to the Final Death. That's not how habitation shielding works. It's more likely they had inside help who took down the barriers, but if so, we have no idea who that might have been. Others speculate that a rainforest deity aided them. This is more likely, as deities would have the power to obliterate the magic shields cast by a powerful whizan.
However they managed it, they entered first through the front gate. And then they set upon the populace.

Zoe, from Unsplash

Ruins of Kjivendei.
The once-proud citadel is a tourist stop, and other than the elfine acolytes that keep Light's Flame burning in the Light temple, no one lives there anymore.

Kjivendei had other concerns and did not expect a nighttime attack. No one intercepted them when they entered the citadel, and the attackers tore through the city, ending anyone and anything in their path; ghosts, the living, animals.
No warning bell sang through the night, so inhabitants were caught resting or sleeping. By the time an alarm sounded, most of the population had already succumbed to the attackers. The few who mounted a defense once they realized what was going on, fell to the shaman who accompanied the warriors (the primary source for this is an elfine named Rullathan. She said the attackers hunted down whizen with a single-mindedness bordering on madness).
The attackers targeted important buildings and looted them of valuables, including the Light temple and Kjiven's governing mansion. They lit what they could on fire, and by dawn, marched out of the citadel, flame and smoke at their backs.

It's no surprise that the attackers killed the living they found in Kjivendei, as they considered them traitors. But how did the shaman send ghosts to the Final Death? In Ether form, the living, unless they have special magic training, can't touch a ghost.
After reading first-hand accounts of the scant few who escaped, I believe the shaman interfered with ghostly phasing, and the warriors ended them with their spears. Their weapons had a nasty enchantment on them, but what that might have been is another mystery lost to the ages.

The Aftermath

The Shield sentries witnessed the victorious march from the sacked citadel, as they arrived too late to help save the city. The Wiiv and their allies held their looted treasures aloft and sang songs of triumph. Concerned about any remaining residents, the sentries left the attackers to their spoils.
Embeckourteine had noticed the fire raging at Kjivendei, and Watch Captain Alsays gathered his people and raced to the citadel. Using ziptrails, the ghosts under his command reached the base of the mountain during the evening the day after. Since Kjiven had diverted all trails away from the citadel during his tenure, the guard would need to float up.
They did not get far before they discovered the first body. More followed, and a trail of corpses ran the entire way to Kjivendei. The attackers had died, still clutching their loot, their weapons broken and drained of enchantments. If any survived, they did not stick around to answer ghostly questions.
Near a thousand warriors and shamans died on the mountain that day. Despite the effort to ascertain why, Alsays discovered nothing. Rumors about vengeful spirits, deities, whatnot, arose, and legends surrounding the event sprouted. To this day, other than a handful of Light acolytes who man the remains of the Light temple, no one ventures to the Kjivendei ruins after dark, just in case the same fate befalls them.

The death of the attackers devastated the Wiiv and their allies. Their most powerful shaman and warriors had died, leaving many with inadequate defenses against enemies. The populations of those communities plummeted because so many males had been taken out. Some smaller tribes, desperate, enacted laws that promoted polygamy because they saw no other way to survive.
Inbreeding took its toll in later years, with health problems rising in subsequent generations. Once-powerful tribes could not reclaim their prowess and dwindled, some joining others and leaving the remnants of their previous villages behind, some dying out.
Younger dwellers left the rainforest, seeing nothing but despair and hardship beneath the branches. The decline in population took centuries to recover from.

The scant few survivors of Kjivendei moved to Embeckourteine. They hide their past residency and refuse to talk openly about their experiences that night.
The Shield, as a fort to defend Kjivendei, no longer had a mission. The guards moved to Embeckourteine, The Gate, or Selaserat. A few ghosts remain as tourist guides, but they keep the halls well-lit at night and never venture into the forest after evening.
I can vouch, from personal experience, that traversing most of Greenglimmer at night is a bad idea, especially in the Labyrinth. There are ruins the rainforest has swallowed, of an older civilization than the tribes or the ghosts, and darkness haunts their tattered remains.

Alsays is still around. He's no longer watch captain but dedicated his existence to finding out what happened to the Wiiv and their allies that day.
He has written that the feeling he and his guards had on the mountain will not leave him; the sense of dark, immense, untethered rage. He worries that an entity resides in the rainforest, biding their time before going on another rampage.
He isn't alone. The survivors of Kjivendei speak of this rage during their flight, and how its suffocating touch nearly ended them. Many refuse to step foot near their old home because of it.

Scholars are curious about the spear enchantment. It may be, it was designed by a shaman who lost their life on the mountainside, and so the spell was not passed on to future generations.
Still, its resemblance to the mephoric emblems the Beast created millennia later is troubling.

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