Battle of Flame

The Battle of Flame (1685) was a great battle between the unified forces of Menerem against an army of fiends that had traveled to the land from a permanent portal to the Abyss. This victory marked a change in the future of life on Menerem, moving toward a more cooperative and integrated continental culture than previously existed.

Vengeful Archmage

The creation of the portal was the work of an archmage of of Choris, a high elf named Vasanter. He rose to power on the fame gained from some novel and exceptional discoveries, including the earliest magical prosthetic limbs and the first ritual that combined arcane and divine magic, allowing non-traditional parents to have genetically related children.

It was nearly three decades before the methods he used were exposed, including using unwilling subjects, lying to test subjects about the nature of the experiments, performing amputations on healthy people, and euthanizing early newborns to perform autopsies.

Vasanter narrowly avoided receiving the death penalty for his crimes and was instead exiled from Jurim. He spent the next ten years looking for a new home but his reputation followed him everywhere. He began to reach out to the planes for support and that brought him into contact with Baphomet. Between them they devised a plan, if he couldn't find a home then he would take everyone else's.

Raising the Demonic Army

Vasanter used his magic to travel to Penrook Island, which was at that point unnamed since its namesake birds had not yet been brought here. He spent fifty years preparing the ritual that created the Abyssal Portal and then another five years amassing the ever-growing army. Fortunately for the world, the portal only allows a small number of fiends through each day.

Plot Revealed

Vasanter's plans became endangered when a group of Kin wandered too close. His demons killed them but he worried about having his plan revealed too early and reached out to the mummy lord Hebina to help keep the Kin away from the portal. Unknown to Vasanter, Hebina was a founding member of the Shadow Council formed oust Torr and was currently looking for an opportunity to gain some measure of acceptance from the living nations of Menerem. She fooled Vasanter into believing she would aid him but in reality informed the rest of the Shadow Council who took the matter to the various leaders of the living nations.

Despite their initial reluctance, the Shadow Council was persuasive and the living nations were able to use their own magic to confirm the army being raised in the desolate center of the Jikandi Desert. A coalition was quickly formed comprised of every nation of Menerem plus the undead and the Kin. This is to this day the largest military force ever recorded.

Battle of Flame

Vasanter, more skilled in magic than in diplomacy, failed to discover Hebina's betrayal until the coalition army was brought to his doorstep. The demon army was strong in individual strength but were outnumbered ten-to-one by the combined forces arrayed against them, which numbered close to one million troops. With the portal open, they received a small number of reinforcements each day.

The fighting raged for two days before the coalition was victorious. Vasanter was killed just before dusk on the first day, slain by suicide strike of Deathmakers fortified by Chorisian mages. One hundred thousand coalition troops died in the first hour of fighting. By the end of the battle over 375,00 coatilition troops lay dead, including the rulers of Jurim, Kharra, and Ullran. The name Battle of Flame was named after the fiery auras of the six balor generals that visibly caused so many casualties in the first hour of the war and lit the fallen corpses aflame.

Aftermath

Despite their hard-fought victory, the coalition could not find a method to close the portal. Most of the army returned to their homelands, leaving the most elite five hundred combatants to continually slay any demons that crossed the portal. These would become the first members Portal Guard.

The leaders of the nations, some of them newly appointed, met with the Shadow Council and Wordmakers from each clan of the Kin to create the Penrook Accords. This cooperation changed the course of international relations, with most nations growing closer together. The Kin soceity was largely unchanged after the battle but Ullran became more isolated in their refusal to sign the Accord. This also changed the reputation of undead for most of the living nations, since it was their information that prevented the eventual destruction that the army would have wrought.