Kingdom of Wuffa
Wuffa was the largest kingdom on the island of Ynys, holding most of the southeastern portion of the island, before it was destroyed in the rebellion led by Eafa. It formed shortly after the end of the Age of Warlocks, when the Clarati who called himself Fulmen was murdered and overthrown by his chief servant, Wuffa. She had secretly allied with the rebels and mercenaries who sought to oust the Clarati wizard, and when he returned defeated and severly weakened by his duel with Solis, the Clarati who held the northwestern lands today known as Cait, Wuffa seized the opportunity to end his reign. Not one for half-measures, Wuffa first poisoned Fulmen, then slit his throat and drained all the blood from his body, before finally pushing his corpse out of the tower at a bone-shattering height. Afterwards, she had the body trampled by the mercenary army of Eots she had allied with, before casting the broken remains into the River Severin to be carried away.
In the aftermath of Fulmen's death, Wuffa consolidated her power. She seemed an unlikely ruler to many - she stood barely five feet tall and was nearly seventy years of age when she destroyed her former master. But Wuffa systematically dismantled all challengers to her power. She alone knew how to access the caches of magical artifacts left behind by Fulmen, and she used them to arm her allies, destroy her enemies, and empower herself. Persistent rumors also insisted that Wuffa herself had made some kind of pact with dark gods, granting her unnatural strength and vitality, although most of her contemporaries dismissed this as mere jealousy and spite. It is only in later years, after the rebellion, that these rumors were re-examined in light of what was discovered. One disquieting fact is that no record of Wuffa's death was ever found - she retired from public life after a decade of rule, passing the throne on to her son Tytila, and then simply faded from public view. The last recorded sighting of Wuffa was at the coronation of her grandson Eni, some thirty years after the death of Fulmen.
In the centuries that followed, the Kingdom of Wuffa grew and prospered. It was almost constantly at war and found great success on the battlefield, absorbing its neighbors one at a time. Each new victory flooded the kingdom with wealth, in the form of material goods, and enslaved prisoners of war. A disturbing number of those slaves vanished into the royal palace, never to be seen again. This continued until Eafa's rebellion, about eighty years ago.
Eafa was a guard in the Royal Palace. He had served for nearly ten years, when he was promoted to a sergeant's position and introduced to the torture chambers carved out under the palace. It was here that he finally witnessed the truth behind the rumors - that the many prisoners and slaves that went into the palace were being used as the playthings of the royal family. While Eafa himself refused to describe the specifics of what he saw, others have since come forward with details of grotesque tortures and mutilations perpetrated by giggling princes and princesses. Even the small children of the family were involved, being introduced to the practice by their elders while they were still toddlers. When the palace was finally breached in the final days of the rebellion, the remaining victims were in such a poor state that their rescuers were haunted by the experience for the rest of their lives. Many had been starved, and most had body parts carved away while they were still alive, their wounds roughly cauterized by flaming pitch. The guards and servants who had watched the tortures were all executed within days of the discovery, as were those members of the royal family who had been captured.
The sack of Lorbeer marked the end of the Kingdom of Wuffa. A branch of the royal family took control of the southernmost portion of the kingdom, forming the Kingdom of Pengwern, but the country was plagued with uprisings, and was ultimately conquered by the neighboring kingdom of Creoda. Meanwhile, only days after the success of Eafa's rebellion, the rebels divided into two camps over the coronation of a new king. Those who supported Eafa held the northernmost regions of Wuffa, and named their new kingdom Gewisse, while Inisir supporters of Delfinez, another major leader, consolidate their power in the central region of Wuffa and established the Kingdom of Linesege. Gewisse and Linesege warred for another decade, before Gewisse finally conquered their rival, establishing the current borders of the kingdom.
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