Elven Unification

Political event

Alma begins Elven Unification by allying with three neighboring clans (one of them a Wood Elf clan), and starts her campaign to either eliminate or subsume rival clans in the Ghazain Steppe and Kearlet Wilds.

In 809 C.Y.  , at the age of 14, Alma takes primary political control of her clan after a number of disastrous raids by her (unknown) predecessor. Her first official act is to pressure three of the neighboring clans, one of which is a Wood Elf clan, into an alliance with her own. From there, Alma was able to run a mixture of military and political campaigns that any self-respecting world leader would envy. Running on a tremendous cult of personality, Alma enticed a large number of clans with promises of spoils from their neighbors.   Geographically, she began by seizing enough territories in the Ghazain Steppe to provide a buffer, and then began to raid through the Kearlet Wilds. The resources of the slightly-more-sedentary Wood Elves in the forests proved a tempting bounty for what highland clans still evaded her control.   In addition to military intimidation, Alma also knew the power of family to influence clan and tribe politics; she convinced/coerced a number of children of allied and conquered clans into marriages with relevant political partners as a way of bringing more territory under her control. She was fond of saying, "A wedding banquet is just as important in war as the battlefield."   On the First of Splitwood Moon, 814 C.Y., Alma captured the last holdout of the major fishing towns in the Kearlet Wilds bordering the Magarene Ocean. In a move that was baffling to her besieging forces, she forbade the customary pillage, and instead issued a decree to all her territories:   "All Elves are now united under my rule, and I, Alma, deem you my people, we Almina'val. We do not fight each other, for that would weaken us; instead, we will take from the weaker races, who shame us with their imperial pillage, who take more from the seas than their puny acts of war should merit. We will meld the supple woods of the Kearlet Wilds and the strong sinews of the Ghazain Steppe, and we will show those of weak arm and weak will what we elves may accomplish upon the waters."   With that, Almina'val became functionally unified, and the wars of Elven Unification came to an end.