The Pyrrhic Road (Peer-Ick)
A Road of Gold and Crimson
The Pyrrhic Road is an ancient trade path that cuts through the forests of the Unclaimed Lands and runs from the Shugod Bridge to the gates of the White City of Elmina. Historians and archeaologists believe the road extended all the way to Archport, on the eastern coast of Utican. If the road did extend further eastward it was consumed by the jungles of the Eresus Lowlands long ago.
The Pyrrhic Road got its name from a bloody and disastrous conflict over control of the road. The Pyrrhus Trade Clan was a collection of powerful merchant families from the continents of Utican, Totecum, and Hartha. These families pooled their money and diverse wares to create a lucrative trading empire that transported goods between Utican, Hartha, and Totecum. To facilitate this trade the families from Utican built the original Pyrrhic Road.
The most powerful Utican trading family were the Ankhu. The leader of the Totecum families were the Lopes Lemos. And the head of the Harthan traders were the Pyrrhus family, the original founders of the Pyrrhus Trade Clan.
The Utican families, led by the Ankhu, believed that because they had spent the small fortune to build and patrol the road, they were entitled to charge tolls to the other members of the Pyrrhus Trade Clan. Of course their fellow merchants received a special toll rate, while independent traders labored under burdensome tolls. But for the traders from Utican and Hartha, any toll was an insult and a direct act against the values of the Pyrrhus Trade Clan.
In response to the toll demands the Totecum families, led by the Lopes Lemos, hired a number of bandits, mercenaries, and highwaymen to harass anyone associated with the Ankhu along the Pyrrhic Road. When the Ankhu uncovered this treachery, they immediately retaliated. After months of bloody conflict and disrupted trade the Pyrrhus family stepped in to mediate the conflict. Unfortunately tempers flared at the negotiation table and in an ensuing brawl the representative and patriarch of the Pyrrhus family was killed.
The patriarch's children swore revenge and said they would destroy both the Lopes Lemos and the Ankhu. Over the next three years the civil war within the Pyrrhus Trade Clan raged. Ultimately the Pyrrhus family prevailed but they had exhausted much of their wealth in the process and lost their strongest allies. As a result they lost control over the Pyrrhic Road and the wealth it brought. Since the conclusion of the internal conflict people across Thinia have used the term "Pyrrhic Victory" to mean a victory that is so costly that it ultimately ruins the victor.
Despite the downfall of the Pyrrhus Trade Clan and all those involved the Pyrrhic Road exists to this day. Unfortuantely there is no single organization that controls the road and no one willing to expend the resources to make it safe. As such the road can be a dangerous path as it often attracts bandits, highway men, and monsters looking to ambush unprepared merchants.
