Assassination of Ouric the Elder

Ouric the Elder

Ouric the Elder, of House Serifain, was a ruling monarch of the pre-empire Drunan Kingdom. His rule began on 375 TOE, nearly 600 years from present day, after he inherited the throne from his late father, Alrich the Merciful.
When Ouric came into power, the Kingdom of Druna had conducted a handful of campaigns over the previous two hundred years, expanding their territory slowly northward and eastward. Their neighbors to the north were a collection of independent states, and their neighbors to the west were the newly formed Kingdom of Alnir. Alrich the Merciful intended to strike peaceful trade agreements with Alnir, however his son Ouric had a much more aggressive plan in mind. He intended to take their lands by force, and he convinced his father to allow him to perform three "missions" during the former's reign.
Ouric's missions turned into three waves of outright brutality. Between 382 TOE and 378 TOE, Ouric personally oversaw the border expansion efforts of Druna's westside. Alrich the Merciful never quite knew what a monster his son was, for the letters home from Ouric were full of polite details and weather-related musings. They conveniently left out the razing of towns, torture, murder, and other heinous acts that he saw as a way to "pressure" Alnir into joining with Druna. As Alrich aged, he called his son home in 378 TOE. As the eldest son and next in line for the throne, Ouric put a pause on the campaign to tend to matters on the home front, leaving his military installations behind to "keep the peace" at several border towns. While the Drunan people were never fond of Ouric (much preferring his mild-mannered father), this was the first time that they got a hint of his true ambition -- and his evil.

King Ouric

Druna's people held their tongues for a while, the air of unhappiness slowly rising over the next two years. When Alrich the Merciful passed away in 375 TOE, Ouric assumed the throne. This was when the truth of his Alnirian campaign came to light, deepening the anger, resentment, and sense of betrayal among citizens. His first order of business was domination. Ouric resumed his push westward and began to pillage and burn once again. Alnir lost one-fifth of its land in the course of the next two years, despite active protests and a public outcry among the Drunan people. The military was depleting Drunan civilian resources, poverty was on a violent rise, and the home front had essentially been abandoned by Ouric's greed and cruelty.

Dissent and Loyalty

Not everyone detested Ouric, however. The wealthy noblemen of the kingdom were the ones filling his pockets, and they were making a fortune out of his bloodthirst. While he was out of the kingdom, they ran the towns and cities like they belonged to them, bringing down massive taxes and threatening death as a punishment to any who opposed them. People who allied themselves with them were also, effectively, allies of Ouric. The loyalists found themselves enemies in a small group of rebels founded by soldiers who had defected from the original Alnirian campaign, as well as fellow Drunan dissenters and Alnirian survivors. Their clashes began as arguments and small scraps in the street, but they soon increased in frequency, violence, and scale, to the point where Ouric was forced to return home and quell the unrest.

Assassination

Ouric's reign came to an abrupt end in 373 TOE. Two nights after he returned home to Druna, he was assassinated while he was on his way back to the royal castle from a nearby brothel. In the middle of the street, a gang descended upon him. His guards, who are thought to have been secretly a part of the rebel effort, fled the scene. A group of attackers (the number is unknown) took turns stabbing the king until he bled to death in the street. A group who referred to themselves as The Council of Many claimed credit for this brutal display. In a move that The Council of Many saw as the cleansing of a foul bloodline, they marched to the castle and assassinated Ouric's mother, Drini, and Ouric's younger sister Linessa.

Aftermath

The coup was led by the former Knight Commander Barnard Vexx, who led the military units alongside Ouric during the Alnirian campaigns. He took over the throne and claimed kingship soon after Ouric's death, a fact that was heavily disputed by both loyalists to Ouric and the Drunan people, both of whom saw his so-called kingship as illegitimate. The struggle for power ignited immediately, and while Vexx's reign would not last for long, neither would those who tried to forcibly take the throne thereafter.
Though the assassination of Ouric the Elder marked the end of one terror, it sparked the beginning of nearly a century of political upheaval, civil war, violence, poverty, famine, and, finally, plague. 373 TOE to 298 TOE would henceforth be known as The Dark Era.

Conflict Type

War