Pyrrhonian War

The Pyrrhonian War was a military conflict between Skorbunds from Héljasfjal and West Vellia allied with fey under Asalla the Autumn Dragon which took place between 834 and 836. Most of what is known about the war comes from memoirs written by Kallinikos, a West Vellian general during the war and active participant; as such, his accounts are generally considered accurate. Skorbund accounts come mostly from victory and memorial steles erected during the reign of Ægir Dragonslayer.

Causes of the War

Skorbund raids along the Gold Coast had begun well over a century prior, and they were well-feared among Tira Vellans and Arxians for their savagery and brutality. While the Arxians were more centralised and able to repell the invaders, the decentralised Tira Vellan states could do little more than bribe the Skorbunds to leave them alone. This skorbunphoros was both undesireable and unsustainable, and so when Pyrrhonus the sorceror king ascended to the throne of West Vellia, inheriting a kingdom already ravaged by civil war, the Skorbund raids threatened to destroy his kingdom, he ventured to stop the raids, at least on his territory.
The exact details of the pact are unknown, as is how he was able to arrange an audience, but Pyrrhonus struck a deal with Asalla, the Autumn Dragon of the Fey to lure away the Skorbunds' warriors to West Vellia into a trap while the Fey of Héljasfjal would massacre the remaining Skorbunds in their homeland.

Pyrrhonian War

Date: 834–836
Location: West Vellia and Héljasfjal
Result: Skorbund Pyrrhic victory

Belligerents

Héljasfjal
Hawokonian mercenaries
West Vellia (836)

---

West Vellia (before 836)
Fey (under Asalla)
Hawokonian mercenaries

Battle of the Landing

The West Vellians were aware of the whereabouts of the Skorbunds and had established themselves along the shore where they expected them to land. However, a storm had blown the Skorbunds slightly off course, and the West Vellians had to march through the night and re-muster themselves at the new landing location. The delay caused by the storm would prove to be decisive in the Skorbunds’ favour. The Skorbunds arrived in the morning, and the West Vellian army had to muster after a night of marching and very little rest. Even worse for them, a fog covered the approach of the Skorbunds’ ships, effectively crippling the West Vellians’ archers and allowing the Skorbunds a safe landing. Before he could retreat with the rest of the army, the commander Kallinikos was captured and taken prisoner by the Skorbunds. He was freed and escaped with Vostok Andropov, a Dvekmenu slave of the Skorbunds, a few days later and returned with Andropov to Nixos.

Battle of Kyros

The Skorbunds attempted a diversion, sending most of their own warriors on a march along the river in order to give West Vellian scouts the idea they were marching on foot to meet their army, while the next day the rest of the army, including the sizeable contingent of Hawokonian mercenaries, boarded ships and began sailing down the river. The ships eventually met up with their main contingent and boarded them onto the ships in order to arrive near the West Vellian camp a full day ahead of when they might be expected to arrive on foot. The Skorbunds disembarked their ships the morning of the 12^th of Sunmarch, along a bend in the Phraxes about 8 miles from the West Vellian camp. There was a copse along the Skorbund right they intended to march through to keep the element of surprise against the West Vellians, however, at least one West Vellian who had been out foraging that morning saw the approaching army and managed to escape back to the camp unnoticed to warn the West Vellians, who quickly mustered into a battle line, and sent their contingent of cataphracts out to a small glen to their right. The Skorbunds’ forward scouts relayed that the West Vellians were forming a line and the Skorbunds spread out their line out of the forest to meet the West Vellians in a pitched battle.
The Skorbunds had aligned their troops into a wedge, initially two ranks deep with their mercenaries in the front of the line and their warriors in the rear, that fanned out to a one rank straight line, with their own warriors mostly on their right and their mercenary Ankheg heavy infantry on their left. This left their centre made up mostly of light Hawokonian infantry with heavy flanks, and it’s likely that they intended to leverage their flanks to beat back the West Vellian flanks and encircle them before their own centre broke. They kept their cavalry to their right, slightly behind the infantry line.
The West Vellians formed a two-rank line with light Hawokonian mercenaries making the centre of the front rank, with heavily armoured West Vellians along the edges and entire rear rank. As they saw the Skorbunds stretch their line, they stretched theirs to match, the rear line pushing between the Hawokonians. The West Vellians had a small attachment of elite Hekatoncheire archers on their left, protected by a modest force of largely untrained local conscripts. They had sent their cataphracts into a small glen, unnoticed by the Skorbunds.
The lines approached each other on a small hill. The lines exchanged missile fire, but due to the terrain, these were largely ineffective. The Hekatoncheire archers were rather more effective, having taken up position on a small hill to the left of the West Vellian line and firing on the Skorbund cavalry, which was now charging towards them. The West Vellian cavalry then made their way out of the glen towards the Skorbund left. The lines clashed at the top of the hill and quickly developed into a stalemate, neither side being able to push the other. Along the Skorbund right, their cavalry crashed into the Hekatoncheires, but between the levies guarding them and the sheer size and discipline of the archers, the cavalry charge did not immediately fragment them. On the Skorbund left, they began to brace for a cavalry charge from the heavy West Vellian cataphracts, which split as they noticed the situation of their archers. One unit of cavalry continued on course to the Skorbund left, while the other raced along the rear of the line to meet the Skorbund cavalry. The Skorbund left managed to weather the cavalry charge and the line remained in stalemate as the Skorbund cavalry struggled against the Hekatoncheires, but kept them largely out of the fight. The cataphracts met the less armoured Skorbund cavalry on the flank and began to tear through them, and the Skorbunds dispatched units from their heavy right to reinforce their cavalry and pin down the archers. On the other flank, the disciplined heavy Ankheg mercenaries began to encircle the cataphracts and keep them penned in. This action on the flanks, though, stretched the Skorbund line dangerously thin as both sides began to tire and casualties began to mount for both sides. Eventually the Skorbund warriors cut down the archers as their nearly exhausted cavalry retreated behind the line, and the Ankhegs managed to neutralise the cataphracts on the Skorbund left. The remaining cataphracts circled around the Skorbund rear to give chase to their cavalry, cutting them down, before being surrounded by the Skorbunds that had dealt with the archers and some of the Ankhegs now pivoting from the previous cataphracts. The Skorbunds were gaining momentum in the bloody stalemate, their morale buoyed by the victories on the flanks, and they began to push the West Vellians down the hill. The Skorbunds managed to push through some of the Hawokonians in the West Vellian centre and began pushing through the gap. The West Vellian line fractured and began a retreat.
During the retreat, as the Skorbund army gave chase and began to loot the West Vellian camp, Vostok Andropov, now commander of the West Vellian left, due to his experience in command in the West Dvekmenu army, did not retreat with the rest. Andropov saw king Harald the Shieldless and attacked him. Immediately a chase ensued between Andropov and the king and the other Skorbund leadership. Not much is known of the details, but in the end both Harald and Andropov were dead.
The death of their king served to halt the Skorbund campaign until a new king was crowned. As Skorbund kings were elected by a kynigsmót; this necessitated the Skorbund leadership return to Héljasfjal to convene and choose a new king on the winter solstice, as, according to Skorbund tradition, a new king could only be chosen with the changing of the seasons. This served to turn what had been a defeat in battle for the West Vellians into a strategic victory, as it prevented the Skorbunds from pressing their advantage, and entirely froze their war effort. The Skorbunds returned to their camp, paid the mercenaries and disbanded them, and left their army as their leaders and a few others returned to Héljasfjal for the autumn and winter.
In Héljasfjal, the Skorbunds found their homeland had been decimated by the Fey in their absence. They spent the next several months trying to hold out their position in Westryn and formulate a plan against the Fey and West Vellians. In the kynigsmót, Ægir Dragonslayer, aged 19 or 20, was elected king.

Battle of Nixus

Under their new king, the Skorbunds returned to West Vellia and landed at the city of Nixos, capital of West Vellia. Before the battle took place, the Skorbunds parleyed with the West Vellians, informed that the Fey intended to betray them during the battle that they might conquer both now weakened peoples, they sought a truce or alliance. Pyrrhonus was apparently unconvinced, though his top general, Kallinikos, was. The Skorbunds returned to their ships and some time that night Pyrrhonus was slain by the Fey and one began to impersonate him. That night, Kallinikos informed the Skorbunds and made an informal alliance.
The battle began the next day as the Skorbund ships approached the docks of Nixos. The West Vellians were arrayed in lines under the impersonator of Pyrrhonus, while Kallinikos was with the Skorbunds. Before the two forces clashed, either Kallinikos or one of the Skorbunds' mages revealed Pyrrhonus as an imposter and the Wild Hunt began to appear from the sky. The Skorbunds and West Vellians each independently fought the Wild Hunt on the docks, reaching some informal understanding that the West Vellians had been betrayed. The Wild Hunt were apparently unprepared to face both forces simultaneously and were quickly flanked and pinned in, being forced to retreat.

Defeat of Asalla the Autumn Dragon

West Vellian sources are very sparse on what happened after the Battle for Nixus, so little is known about what exactly occured. What is known is that the Skorbunds led by Ægir Dragonslayer and the West Vellian forces led by Kallinikos entered the Feywild to face Asalla. As Ægir earned the epithet "Dragonslayer", it's assumed he played at least some part in the fight against the dragon. The details are unknown, but Asalla was killed in the battle and the Skorbunds returned back to Héljasfjal.

Aftermath of the Pyrrhonian War

Locally, both West Vellia and Héljasfjal were left decimated by the war. West Vellia would be conquered by Heprous and exist under its rule or suzerainty for the next half century. Héljasfjal would fare worse, having been more thoroughly depopulated. While they would attempt to rebuild and resist their neighbours, Ægir Dragonslayer would be the last king to rule an independent Héljasfjal before they were conquered by the Seves (pronounced seevz), another Skorbund people to their north.
Pyrrhonus’ tactic of making a war pact with the Fey spread, resulting in many other petty lords and chiefs, either poorly informed of the results, or arrogant in their sensibilities, attempting similar accords with the Fey, invariably to similarly disastrous ends, though on far smaller scales. The famines caused by the Century without an Autumn likely contributed to people being willing to make these desperate measures, in attempts to extract food from their neighbours. These sorts of actions would exacerbate the famines in the early years and further foment human animosity towards the Fey, and various small-scale punitive actions would be taken against them. A low-level, decentralised war between humans and Fey took hold for several hundred years which would ultimately lead to the Fey Wars.

The Century without an Autumn

Following the death of the Autumn Dragon, the season of autumn disappeared from the world, in what was often called the Calamity or the Great Famine at the time, or the Century without an Autumn retroactively, resulting in mass panic from those unaware of the causes of such a calamity, as well as massive famine that swept across the entire globe due to the rapid and unexpected shift in climate. Different areas took different amounts of time to adapt to the changes, averaging between 10 to 25 years, as people became accustomed to the new weather pattern and autumn slowly returned. It should also be noted that while half of what had been autumn became winter, the other half became summer, extending the summer growing period. Regardless, the shock and famine led to significant population decline. Sossis, which had just recovered from the effects of the Kasilinian Plague of the last century, was left reeling once again.
Different areas, though, would react in different ways. The arid Dischitar, for example, was reliant on autumn and winter rains in the Utrisch Plateau to feed the rivers, and was less able to cope with the climatic changes, while the peoples settled in the wetter climates were more able to adapt their agricultural practices. This resulted in a power imbalance between the wetter and drier areas. During this period the Tarshan Alginate disintegrated and the Dischitar returned once again to a decentralised patchwork of tribes and clans, who would often raid each other and their better off neighbours over the Utrisch. While Tarshan raids had been common, they were often turned back with tribute; the new raids by smaller warbands could not be as easily bought off with. Driven by the violence and famine, many of the Horils still remaining in the Dischitar would migrate westward to the state of Uzholch in the Second Migration. These various migrations led to further instability in the region that had spent the past two centuries in the aftermath of the fall of Dvekmenia. The picture in Eussis, though the records are sparser and more geographically limited, appear similar to Sossis, with widespread famine driving waves of migration and instability. In Then famine was widespread and the already warring petty states were easily conquered by the Niungdes who created the Can Dynasty.
After autumn had fully returned in the 10^th century, it would arguably still take several centuries for societies to fully recover, but, by the 11^th century, complex states had reemerged in Sossis, Tira Vellans had colonised Trati and Old Tira Vella had coalesced, Varaso ascendency in Eussis was beginning, and the Can Dynasty was still strong.