Bergegthim War

The Bergegthim War began in the summer of 1511, with simultaneous declarations, and invasions by the Drakhian Empire and Cervo. The initial declaration came when both sides decided they wanted to take the advanced magics of Bergegthim. This was called Perfect Rune Magic, and was how Bergegthim had grown strong over the years. The two Empires planned an invasion that would allow them both to strike quickly at 2 of the Towers of High Sorcery, the Necromancy Tower for Bergegthim, and the Illusion Tower for Cervo. They would both then be able to march on the Tower of Abjuration, and the Tower of Transmutation. Their plan from there was to join forces, to push into the heart of the Bergegthim lands using the new magics they would gain from conquering these four towers. However, like all war plans, these would not survive the outcomes of the first battles.
The Necromancy tower near the boarder with the Drakhian Empire. The Drakhians made fast progress over the land that was hear, being that the city was located where the plains began to grow into the foothills of the Mountainous region that was the heart of Bergegthim. The wizards of this tower knew that they would have to vacate the city fast, but the armies of the Drakhians were even faster than initially anticipated. They were unable to activate the fail safes of the tower that would destroy it, and the city fell shortly after the wizards got out. However, one stayed behind, and jumped from the top of the tower unleashing a powerful spell using his own life force to cause a mass fear spell to lay heavily on the tower at the center of the city. To this day, no one has been able to overcome the spell to re-enter the tower. Legends say that only a true master of Necromancy, one who had mastered control over life and death, could enter the tower, and lift the spell. It is said that the body of the wizard who cast the spell, still hangs from the spikes over the gate into the central courtyard.
The tower of Illusion was at the same time perched on top of a cliff, in the south east, overlooking the sea known as Dragon's Domain, and was quickly sieged by Cervo. It's shimmering walls made it hard to see exactly what it was, but if you knew it was there you could see it glimmering form miles away. Since the war was declared so suddenly, the dwarves were not able to mount a proper defense. Those in the tower of illusion, used their powers to make it appear that the tower was elsewhere, which did lead to the deaths of a couple of battalions who charged off a cliff that appeared to extend much farther out. In the end though, the tower was tracked to it's actual location, and sieged. As food ran out, the wizards, knowing the harm that could come from their magics falling into the wrong hands, shattered the walls of the cliff below the tower. This caused a section of the cliff, and the tower on top of it, to slide down, into the sea.
The Tower of Abjuration had more time to prepare, given that the armies of Cervo were delayed so long dealing with the Tower of Illusion. Given their powers of protection, they created powerful barriers to prevent the armies from entering. Like many of the other towers, this one was at the center of a town. They were able to create a large enough of a barrier to protect the town, and some of the surrounding land as well. This had the intended affect of keeping the invaders out, but had an unintended side affect of locking everyone else inside. The thing that they did not anticipate however, was that Elizia held the Vorpal Sword of Sylvar. After the siege had begun, Cervo was initially caught off guard, not expecting such a defense. After a few years of trying to batter down the barrier in various ways, Elizia arrived on the scene to find out why there had not been a change in the situation. She soon discovered that the sword appeared to be the one thing that could weaken, and likely break through the barrier. The Wizards who were in the tower, noticed instantly that the barrier was about to break. Knowing that their unbreakable defense was about to fail, they initiated their emergency escape, pulling the tower, and everything inside the barrier with it into another dimension. The tower has not been seen, nor heard of since, leaving a massive crater in it's wake.
Meanwhile, the Drakhian horde was having issues of their own. After the disappointment of the Necromancy Tower, the Fourth Division Army marched Southeast, entering the mountains. Here, the dwarves began to have the advantage. Their tunnel network allowed them to move their troops fast now that the element of surprise was over. Using this advantage, the defending army were able to harass and slow down the invading horde. this combined with the harsh weather that the army was not accustomed to, forced their advance to come close to a grinding halt. Because of this, they did not end up arriving at the location of the Tower of Transmutation until about the same time as the disappearance of the Tower of Abjuration.
The battle over the Tower of Transmutation was a long one, lasting far longer than anyone would have thought. Part of this was due to the disorganization in the leadership of the Drakhian horde. After the long intense journey from the plains to where the Transmutation tower was located, there were many changes in leadership, as there was quite a bit of anger at the original leadership, the lower officers made challenges and rose to positions of power, without any real experience leading at that high level. This cause some communication issues, as different divisions fought as separate units, rather than a fully cohesive army. Because of this, along with the magical powers of the dwarves, there was a fairly large war of attrition that developed here. The back and forth battle lasted for 14 years, at which point one of the Cervo Armies arrived, along with the Drakhian First Division army, with Drogon at it's head. Drogon rooted out the issues in his Fourth Division Army, reinstalling a new general that he could trust. With this new leadership, along with the reinforcements from Cervo, the tides of the battle turned. The defenders quickly found themselves on the backfoot, and without any other option, they activated the contingency plan, unleashing a blast of transmutation magic, turning the city, tower, remaining defenders, wizards, half the Cervo army, and two thirds of the Fourth Division of the Drakhian army to black obsidian stone.
This was a crushing blow to both the Cervo and Drakhian leadership. Not only had the battles taken far longer than they had anticipated, but they also had nothing to show for it. The Drakhians had lost a full Division, about a quarter of there entire army, and Cervo had in total lost a full fifth of their army. The War at this point had now gone on for the better part of 20 years. The other parts of the Armies, the Drakhian's First and Third Divisions had ground to a halt on advancements, but the Second Division was still making progress along the northern coast, where the Mountains were not as heavy, and they could progress somewhat more easily with the help of supplies coming via ships. The same was happening for Cervo. Their army was split into 5 battalions. The 3rd Battalion was depleted by the battle at the Tower of Illusion, and the 2nd Battalion was decimated by the Tower of Transmutation. The remains were merged into a new full 2nd Battalion.
The leaders of the two nations decided they needed to make sure that the land they had already taken was secured, and make sure their primary supply lines were secured. They started splitting the territory, and clearing out any remaining resistance. It was hard fighting, especially since they were never able to claim the tunnel systems. Any area that was breached, quickly collapsed on the invaders. But the war of attrition was going well for the invaders, and after another decade they had secured their new lands. It was around this same time, that the Heung Dynasty joined the fray. Not liking that their two powerful neighbors were gaining more power and land, they signed an agreement with the two, joining on their side of the war, in exchange, there was an agreement of non aggression between the three empires for 500 years. This allowed Cervo to bring in their 6th Battalion, and the Drakhians to bring their 5th Division to the war. These two groups had been guarding their boarders with Heung.
With their supply lines now secure, and the added power of the Heung Dynasty, the three nations began marching once more. However, give the amount of time that had passed, the Dwarves of Bergegthim now were much more organized, and their army was much more ready. By the time the invading armies began marching once more, the war had gone on for 35 years. It was around this time, that the Tower of Evocation really started entering the fray. Evocation magic is of course one of the most powerful magics in warfare, and the wizards of this tower began putting their enormous talents to work. However, in the end, it would only delay their enemies.
It would take another 38 years before the next objective of the invaders would come under fire, the Tower of Enchantment. The battles fought here raged for another decade. The years of the war had allowed the wizards to turn many of the cities into veritable fortresses, and the Towers were the center of these defenses. The defenders of this tower were masters of their craft, and used their abilities to wreck havoc on the trust of the three armies that besieged the city. They would lure small groups away from the encampments, and cause them to attack their allies in a different camp. This made it hard to siege the city properly, until all the tunnels in and out of the city were discovered and collapsed. In the end, the city was finally breached. The tower's contingency plan was activated, causing a previously unknown spell to be activated. The tower, city and surrounding lands, including the three armies, were placed under an advanced mass sleep spell. Everyone, and everything were preserved in the same state that they were at the time of activation. Nothing dies, and yet nothing lives. All the bodies have fallen to the ground and appear to be in a magical sleep. Even races who are unaffected by normal sleep spells. Years later it would be discovered that if you stay in the area for to long you would fall under the same affect, the closer to the center, the faster it would happen, to the point where anyone getting to within a few hundred feet from the base of the tower, would instantly collapse. It was also discovered that any who were taken from the bubble around the city would instantly have their ageing restart, accelerated up to the current point in time. This area became known as the Sleep Entrapment.
The loss of the armies here was not fully discovered or understood for another few years, due to communications being hampered throughout the mountain lands. By this time, the other armies were already embroiled in new sieges, and fights, but it was another devastating blow to the morale of the invaders. It was also around this time that the toll was beginning to take on the Dwarves of Bergegthim. They had now lost 5 of their power centers of culture and magic, along with half their land, and thousands of people. 70% of the lands they used for their internal farming were also gone by this time, and their imports from Gulok were unreliable at best. They began making plans for evacuation, and contingencies for the remaining towers. They also began making attempts to bring the conflict to a close, but the demands of the three invaders were to high a price to pay, even for peace.
Now, a full century into the war, the Tower of Conjuration would be sieged. According to legend, this is the location where the rumored Warforged were created, and secret cause of the war in general. Here, the defenders had quite the advantage. Over the course of the years, they had been working on conjuring armies. The army that had been raised here consisted of elementals, demons, fey and beasts. The battles here were gruesome and bloody. After a year of fighting here, a stalemate developed. The next two decades, only small skirmishes would breakout under the siege of this tower. It remains like this, until the three armies bring their full amount of forces to this one battle location. What follows is one of the most bloody and destructive series of since the time of the coming of the Second Moon. In the end, the invaders would win, but their armies would be decimated. The defenders would fight to the last man, and prior to the tower itself being breached, all documents, books and artifacts that remained were destroyed by the most powerful Fire Elemental that the defenders could summon. The tower would survive, but the knowledge that it once held would be lost.
Now, it had been 120 years since the beginning of the war, and all four nations had lost so much in the battles that it was starting to become hard to justify continued hostilities. Whole generations grew up, trained for fighting, marched, and died, on all sides of the war. The whole point of the war was to gain the magics that Bergegthim had created, but so far, the invaders had nothing to show for it. Two towers remained active, one in the capital the Tower of Evocation, and the other on the northern Costal edge of the land, the Tower of Divination. The dwarves of Bergegthim were close to their breaking point, and began looking for alternatives to the war, without outright surrendering, and losing all their land. The Wizards of the Divination tower spent the next 10 years searching all possible timelines to find a way for peace. In the end, they decided that the only way was to destroy their exercise knowledge of Perfect Runes, and erase the knowledge from all wizards in the land. It took them another 10 years to gather all remaining books and manuscripts from across the land, destroy them, and develop a spell to wipe the memory of these Runes. In 1651 AF, a magical blast wave emanates outwards from the Tower of Evocation, spreading to encompass all of the land of Luma. The blast is noticed and felt as far away as Koth Keep, the Shadow Isles and beyond, though the actual reach of the magic remains contained on the continent of Luma. The power of the spell consumed the life of many of all who helped to cast the spell.
After this event, the war ground somewhat to a halt. The leaders of Cervo, Heung, and Drakhian all grew worried about what other magics the Dwarves of Bergegthim might be able to unleash, even with the loss of the Rune Magic. A stalemate of sorts was established for the next few years during which the leaders of each group tried to come up with some way to win the fight. In then end, the first meeting between representatives of all four nations occurred. It took several more years before the terms of peace were negotiated properly. In the end, Bergegthim would keep it's independence, but would lose about a quarter of their previous territorial holdings. These lands would be split equally between Cervo, Heung and Drakhian powers. It took another few years for the invading forces to organize, and withdraw from Bergegthim's lands, but when all was done, it left Bergegthim in a weakened state, but one which it could still recover from.

Conflict Type

War