Houses of Vestlegion

The six houses of the Wood are the last vestiges of the family groups that migrated to the area during the Great Dispersal. Initially organized under the famous elven lord Stigund Stortommer, the expedition had a falling out with its companion dwarves. The expedition received news of the Day of Treachery and the dwarves insisted on going their own way.  Landing in the northern reaches of the Goric Sea, the dwarves established the kingdom of Melheim, while the elves headed inland to find suitable habitat beyond the deserts they initially encountered.  Following the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range northward, the elves eventually found the vast woodlands across the Sydgraense River.  There they established a kingdom under Stigund, who proclaimed himself king, and made his house the predominant power in the newly created Vestlegion or "Western Kingdom".   Lacking the comforts they had grown accustomed to in Dathrorion, the elves took to the enormous trees they found in central Vestlegion and built intricate tree dwellings, expanding over the years until whole villages of hundreds of elves existed entirely off the ground.  Finding more than enough room in this virgin wilderness, families spread throughout the wood and became more and more relaint upon their own capabiities and less relaint upon the King.   With the death of Stigund, the Stortommer House turned to his eldest son and proclaimed him King of the Wood.  In an attempt to reconsolidate power that had slipped to the outlying communities in his father's waning years, the new king, Vargarian Stortommer levied taxes of men and material on the other houses.  This eventually caused a revolt by the outlying communities, led primarily by the Mellemflod House who had grown extremely indiependent and disconnected from the rest of the Kingdom in the "Land between the rivers".   Vargarian had ammassed a considerable army and quickly stamped out any notion of rebellion in the central woodlands.  The Houses of Kaddebrad and Copenlay were essentially absorbed into the Stortommer fold while the houses of Graymas and Tullisheron were uttlerly destroyed.  On the fringes of the great woodlands, where the woods thickened and the trees dropped in height from 400 ft to a paultry 100 ft, the remaining houses fought a guerilla campaign against the Stortommer army.  Finding he could not bring the outlying houses to heel, or even find them on a regualr basis, Vargarian grew frustrated and began a scorched earth campaign across the face of Vestlegion, burning woodland and hillock, in attempt to flush out his remaining enemies.   It was in this time that an elf from the Jodbeboer House of the Green Hills, Hiymar Vabenlaer, turned the tide on the ambitious young king.  Hiymar was a warrior from Darthorian who had fought the dragons of the bygone age, and was a master of the sword.  In the Green Hills, he studied the arcane magic he found could be amplified by the clouded crystal his family discovered in the forested hills.  With this knowledge, he assembled a force of warriors proficient in both the martial and arcane arts.  And while the bulk of the King's army was precoccupied pinning down a sizable force in the land between the rivers, Hiymar took the Stortommer stronghold with his warriors and forced Vargarian to withdraw his army and grant independence to the outlying houses.  The Stormtommer House retained the kingship, but it became a position mostly in name only.  The Beskytte House remained an unflinching and devoted ally of the Stortommer line, while the other houses only begrudgingly admit to Stortommer's claim to any sort of Vestlegion throne.   Following an invasion by Celtic peoples from the south the and the build up of Norse communities to the north, the scattered houses thought it best to be able to defent their woodland home from outiside threats.  As the Stortommer King, Stigund the Third, attempted to rebuild a large army, comprised primarily of Stortommer and Beskytte elves, the other houses remembers the last army unde the command of a Stortommer and insisted on control over an consolidated forces.  This led to second Woodland War, in which the remaining houses again ffought for supremacy.  The Stortommers were supported by the Beskytte House, while the Jodbeboer House was supported by the Kodispere.  Only the Memmelflod stood alone.  It soon became clear that no House could gain the upper hand, and while threats of incursion grew on their borders, again the Jodbeboer House came to forefront, offering up the creation of a standing force controlled by no one House, but instead dedicated to the preservation of all Elf lands in Vestlegion.  This force would be overseen by a council of ranking Houses and would be comprised of an equal number of elves from each House.  This would become the Skyggsvaard.  Since the formation of the Skyggsvard, each house remains weary of the others, and border skirmishes have taken place, but nothing on the scale of the first two Woodland Wars.