Anvil

History

Founding

In the last years of the Alessian Slave Rebellion during the early First Era, the Ayleid port kingdom of Garlas Malatar became defacto capitol of the Heartland High Elves' last bastion against the alliance. In those days, the Gold Coast region was known as Malatar, the High Wood, where the unforgiving jungles of Cyrodiil gave way to a gentle temperate forest of golden-leaved oak. Supplimented by arms and provisions from the elven homeland of Summerset, and protected at sea by their navy, this coastal alliance became an unbreakable barrier to the expansion of the fledgling Alessian Empire.

King Narilmor presided over the fledgling state, naming it the Emperyean Bastion of Malatar. Always known as a severe and devout ruler, Narilmor allied himself with the Daedric Prince Meridia, forcing his people to live under the strict moral precepts of Meridian Law. He refused to accept refugees of Ayleid states that fell under the Alessians who would not submit themselves to the blessings of the Prince of Light.
Surviving propaganda of this kingdom stated that the ephemeral races of men were unfit to rule an empire. That the Alessians would inevitably turn on eachother, and when the moment was right, the Beacon of Meridia would blaze across the jungles of Cyrod, and a new Empire of Light would take its place, restoring elven rule. This divine crusade would never manifest, however, as the Bastion would crumble in short order.
Little is known about the internal politics of this kingdom. It survived alongside the Empire for nearly a century as a closed and secretive state. In the final decades of its existence, it began losing ground when the human kingdoms of Kvatch and Sutch were founded by invading Alessian generals. Rumors spread throughout the Empire that King Narilmor had grown increasingly paranoid and despotic in the wake of those defeats. A surviving Kvatchi folk-song speaks of Ol' King Narls burning his subjects from the inside with Demon-Fire, his subjects fleeing to Kash Vikatch to beg to be their slaves instead. The good people of Kash laughed and named their grandfathers and grandmothers who were enslaved to those same long-lived elves. The elves prostrated themselves and vowed to repent, but the people of Kash sent them back to burn instead.
When Emperor Ami-El invaded the Bastion in force in 1E 351, he quickly discovered the state had already collapsed. The member-states had broken off from their capitol and were quick to surrender to Alessian rule. When they marched on the capitol, they found it ablaze in golden fire. Ami-El left a contingenet in charge of rebuilding the port, his attention needed up in Skyrim to pay off an old debt to the Nords. When the blaze finally subsided after several days, the men built Fort Mistwatch within the ruins, and began looting its catacombs. However, Mistwatch soon disappeared from record, its soldiers reported all missing. Subsequent expeditions all met the same fate. In time, the once-mighty city of Garlas Malatar was lost to history.
The Empire's newly-acquired western coast was left without a major port. The new Gold Coast territory was given over to the kingdom of Sutch by the Elder Council with the express mandate of developing a naval base and port. This mandate was fulfilled with the construction of Anvil Fortress, becoming the critical line of defence for the Empire from possible elven retalliation. Particularly after the Empire came to be ruled by the xenophobic cult of the Alessian Order.

The All Flags Navy

The rule of the Alessian Order was as infamously dogmatic and cruel as that of Ol' Narls himself. Their holy crusades, which once united the human kingdoms against elves and beasts, turned inward as the state sought to oust blasphemers and the unclean. After the cosmically tumultuous thousand-year age of the Middle Dawn, caused by the Order tampering with divine forces beyond mortal comprehension, the Empire began at last to sunder.
Sometime during the Middle Dawn, Anvil, and the greater Kingdom of Sutch was toppled by a mysterious army that swept in from the sea. Theorized to have been an invasion of the Maormer, or Sea Elves, the Gold Coast was sacked and looted in only a few years before the invadors retreated into the Abacean Sea. The territory was divided and traded hands over the following centuries, with Anvil itself becoming an infamous pirates' den.
Sometime in the 2200s of the First Era, a new disease swept across the continent, devastating its peoples like none had ever seen. This deadly pandemic was eventually attributed to the Sload, and is remembered by history as the Thrassian Plague. The Empire was crippled by its devastating losses so soon after the chaos of the Middle Dawn, and failed to mount any sort of defence against it. It was left up to individual cities to independently work out quarantine protocols, treament for the ill, and mass burials of the dead. The western counties of Colovia, who were reliant on overland trade to survive, formed a loose alliance to coordinate their efforts. They housed caravans in quarantined assylums outside city walls, where their goods were magically sanitized and purchased in bulk for distribution. Once the isolation period had elapsed, cavaners were allowed into the city to purchase goods for the next leg on their journey. This system spared much the alliance the worst of the plague, but also drained the coffers of its nobility into the hands of a few well-positioned trade barons who went on to usurp power in the very cities that had sheltered their men so effectively.

A towering statue of Bendu Olo stands upon a rock in Gonfalon Bay

As the Thrassian Plague began at last to ebb in the 2250s, the Colovian Barons entered into negotiation with its neighbors across the western reaches of Tamriel on how best to retaliate. Common wisdom held that the plague had been sent by the Sload to soften the continent for invasion. After all, the alien race had long asserted they had an ancestral claim to the lands. Skirmishes erupted throughout the decade in the sea and skies of the Eltheric Ocean. Thrassian Skyships were shot down and the sea floor around ports were armed with undersea mines bearing magical sygils to counter undersea assaults by the amphibious menace. In 1E 2260, Bendu Olo, the first Colovian ever admitted to the Admiralty of the Imperial Navy, assembled a massive fleet in secret at the pirate-stronghold of Anvil.
This fleet bore the colors of numerous kingdoms from the Redguards, Bretons, Colovians, Argonians, Altmer, Dunmer, Khajiit, Orcs, and Nords, as well as the black flags of half a dozen Pirate Lords. Some accounts even attest that factions of Maormer, Druegh, and even Dragons had thrown in with the alliance. The fleet was dubbed the All Flags Navy. With secret intelligencee of the location of the Sload homeland, a great coral archipelago called Thras, the All Flags Navy set sail to at last bring the war to the enemy's doorstep.
The naval campaign was swift and effective, devastating the Thrassian navy at sea. To slow their encroachment, the Sload resorted to unknown weather magic and other supernatural forces. An impossibly dense fog surrounding the reef stilled the air and sea, slowing the fleet's advancement to a crawl. Supplimented with magical propultion, the ships were able to press forward, but the journey lasted weeks longer than should have been physically possible. When at last they reached the central island, they were met not with force, but a blinding azure light from atop the mighty Coral Tower. The islands began to crack and sink beneath the waves, forming great whirlpools which swallowed dosens of vessels before the fleet could retreat. As the fog cleared, the survivors looked back to a flat horizon where the Sload homeland once stood. Even beneath the waves, there was no sign of the sload or their coral islands.
Though their losses were great, the Sload's retreat from this realm was heralded as a victory for the races of Tamriel. The surviving admirals of the navy met at Gonfalon Bay at the heart of the Systres Archipelago to sign the Concordat of Fraternity, a mutual defense pact and trade agreement between the powers involved in the war. Tamriel was united for the first time in history against a common enemy, and vowed never to allow the Sload to bring such harm to its people again. The opening of trade routes also brought a great deal of additional wealth into the hands of the Colovian barons at the further detriment to the Empire.

Colovia Rising

With most of the pirate fleet decimated at the front lines of the assault on Thras, Bendu Olo was free to return to Anvil in glory and conquest in 1E 2261. In one night, Avil Fortress was taken and the pirate crews who stayed behind were arrested and executed the next morning. The civilian population of the settlement was forced to swear loyalty to Colovia and named Bendu the first King of Anvil.
With support from the Colovian alliance, Anvil quickly built up to become a major port of trade, formally opening up the Colovian Trade Network to the greater Direnni Triangle, the naval trade-network between the elven powers of Valenwood, Summerset, and the vestigial Direnni island kingdom of Balfiera in the Illiac Bay, alongside Hammerfell and Elsweyr, which had been admitted into the trade network at the same time. With an influx of wealth and goods from the elven world, the Colovian Estates had amassed enough independent power to undermine the Empire from within, forming a confederation and asserting its authority as an independent province within the Empire. The Colovian Merchant-Kings secretly began funding rebellions across the human-controlled provinces.
In 1E 2321, the Colovian Estates formally seceded, igniting the War of Righteousness, the final decade-long battle to end the oppression of the Alessian Order once and for all. With allies across the human kingdoms, the Imperial Legion resorted to total war, razing cities and countrysides across High Rock, Hammerfell, and Skyrim, while the Colovians held a line of attrition in the heartland. Some estimates indicate over half the population of the Illiac Bay perished in the conclict. Eventually, the Western Alliance prevailed, and the Colovians overran the lands of Nibenay. The last stronghold of the Order fell in the Siege of Lake Canulus, and the Alessian Empire was no more.

Anvil the Melting Pot

For the next 2000 years into the modern age, Anvil has stood as one of the major powers of Cyrodiil. At times competing with neighboring Kvatch, and the occationally occupied former kingdom of Sutch, Anvil stands as the unbreakable backbone of Colovia. Culturally and architecturally, Avil is as much a Redguard city as a Colovian one. Wealth, goods, and immigrants from Tamriel's southern provinces bring additional prestige and distinction to the Gold Coast. Anvil wears its diversity with pride, and is sometimes called the New Cult City for its numerous shrines and temples, rivaling the Imperial City in its breadth of spirituality before the Alessian purges.
A rich Colovian Naval tradition also emerged in Anvil. Once, the Imperial Legion was culturally divided between a largely Nibenese navy and a Colovian army. Today, the Western Navy has developed distinct ships and tactics inspired by the achievements of King Bendu Olo. Where Nibenese vessals are light and numerous, specializing in hit-and-run tactics, Colovian ships are mighty floating fortresses which bombard enemies from a safe distance.

Founding Date

Approx. 1E 360 (original), 1E 2321 (rebuilt)

Alternative Name(s)

Western Forge, New Cult City

Type

Large city

Inhabitant Demonym

Anvili

Location under

Gold Coast - County Anvil

Owner/Ruler

Adric Umbranox

Ruling/Owning Rank

Count

Owning Organization

The Third Empire of Man

Characters in Location

• Adric Umbranox