The History of Ierendi and Minrothad part I

Thousands of years ago, the island nations of Ierendi and Minrothad didn’t even exist; they were not islands at all, but emerged lands, part of the southeasternmost coast of the continent of Brun. Before the Great Rain of Fire, however, the whole area sat inside the Arctic Polar Circle¹: it was a cold, barren and inhospitable land, devoid of any true settlement or civilization, and only occasionally crossed by the sparse Beastmen survivors of the Blackmoorian crusades, by Oltec or Azcan pioneers coming from the south, or by the very rare explorer from Blackmoor itself. Frost giants and dragons from further north made short forays into this area from time to time.

The Great Rain of Fire changed all this, pushing the Known World from the arctic latitude into the temperate one. Northern glaciers began to melt, giving birth to ponds and rivers, and the country where the later archipelagos of Ierendi and Minrothad would later be found was slowly carpeted with forests and vegetation.

The Taymoran Age

After the cataclysm, the coast of southeastern Brun continued to be rather sparsely settled. Its most numerous dwellers were the lizardmen – perhaps fled from the fall of one of their ancient realms further north² – and groups of copper-skinned humans called Oteino, whose origin is uncertain; they might have been the descendants of the late Azcans, migrated in the Sea of Dread area starting from BC 2800, after their homeland further west had been ravaged by the cataclysm and by the final war against their long-time rivals, the Oltecs, or they could even be the descendants of a much older Oltec migration predating the Great Rain of Fire. Whatever the Oteino’s origin, in this age they carried on (or had reverted to) a mostly simple and primitive lifestyle³.

Increasingly numerous was instead a second human race of Neathar stock, the Eokai. Centuries before the Great Rain of Fire, those humans lived in the Serpent Peninsula; from there, perhaps pushed away by other peoples or by overpopulation, starting after BC 3500 they had slowly migrated on board their boats to the northern coast of Davania and to the islands and archipelagos of what would be later called the Sea of Dread. By BC 2500, many tribes of those humans had also settled on the southeastern coast of Brun, in lands alongside those of the Oteino and the lizardmen. They were a peaceful people of gatherers and fishermen, friendly with outsiders.

A third human people started to migrate in the Sea of Dread area from the southeastern reagions of the Jungle Coast, the Pearl Islands, and Cestia from BC 3000 on. They were the Mawa, a branch of a much older people of Oltec or mixed Oltec-Tanagoro stock who had lived in the myriad islands of Sea of Steam centuries before the Great Rain of Fire. Their language had strong similarities with the tongue of some Rakasta breeds (such as the Harimau-Belang Sherkastas, and the Cloud Pardastas), which could hint to an ancestral relation between those peoples in Skothar⁴. At BC 2500 the Mawa had already settled many islands of the southern Sea of Dread, and continued their expansion northward, establishing settlements on the southern coasts of Brun already in BC 2000.

The Migrations of the Taymora and the Elves

In BC 2500, a fourth human people came in southeastern Brun from the north, crossing modern Darokin. They were the Taymora, a Neathar-descended people who had originated in central Brun, and who now settled in the coastal lands of southeastern Brun⁵. The Taymora warred against and traded with the indigenous Eokai, Oteino, and lizardmen, managing to carve a land for themselves where they built an agricultural civilization of bronze-age city-states. In a short while, the Taymora became the most powerful culture of this area, absorbing or influencing the native ones. Nevertheless, little is known today about the Taymora, and what knowledge has been gathered about them comes from the ruins of their settlements, buried in the Ierendi and Minrothad islands, or hidden under the waves of the Sea of Dread.

Elf travelers and colonists coming from the Serpent Peninsula began arriving in Taymoran lands around BC 2250⁶. They established friendly relations with the humans, who employed them as mercenary troops in exchange for territory. Centuries later (BC 2100), a larger group of elves who had split from Ilsundal’s migration toward the Sylvan Realm, came to the Taymoran lands; they were mostly divided among two clans: the Verdiers (wood and fair elves) and the Meditors (water elves)⁷. The Taymora allowed them to settle in the forests north and east of their city-states, in the areas now occupied by modern Karameikos and Minrothad: the water elves mostly settled in the southern area, near the sea coast, while the wood and fair elves moved to the forests in the north.

Another race of elves came in the area shortly after the migration of the Verdier and Meditor clans: they were the aquatic elves, or Aquarendi as they called themselves⁸. These sea elves had grieved for many centuries after the Great Rain of Fire, because they thought that their land brethren had wholly perished in the cataclysm. They were overjoyed when they discovered that some clans of land elves had survived, and migrated to the sea region surrounding the southeastern coast of Brun to live side by side with them, but mostly kept their presence secret from other land dwellers.

In the following decades, Taymora’s power expanded, and some of their cities grew rich and powerful. They pushed their influence far beyond their borders, successfully waging war against the giants still lurking north of their realms, and against the resurgence of lizardman power in modern Ylaruam⁹. They traded with most other cultures of the Known World, and also with the humans belonging to the Eokai, Oteino, and Mawa cultures who lived in the islands of the sea to the south, in the myriad small isles and atolls scattered around what would become the Sea of Dread.

The Taymoran Civil War

However, evil and corruption were soon to take their toll on the flourishing Taymoran culture¹⁰. Before BC 2000 some cities of the Taymora began worshipping the powers of Entropy, and parts of the country slowly became dark places whose rulers were devoted to gruesome bloody and necromantic practices. Undead creatures, such as nosferatu and vampires, made their appearance at this time in Taymora, as well as the first recorded lycanthropic bloodlines, likely created by Taymoran experiments. The Taymora were also responsible for the breeding of a servant race of albino humans, whose descendants still survive to this day¹¹.

At last (BC 2000), a great civil war between followers of rival entropic Immortals ravaged the country, while at the same time a long period of seismic instability hit the southern Known World, which was shocked by recurrent earthquakes over the course of the next three centuries¹². Many people perished, and many cities were destroyed by the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, or by the civil war itself. Gradually, many Taymora began to migrate northward hoping to find shelter in the forested country at the foothills of the mountains¹³.

The Time of Cataclysms

By BC 1750, a series of earthquakes had broken some parts of the Taymoran lands off the coast of the Known World and had plunged many regions beneath the sea. Indigenous lizardmen, Mawa, Eokai, and Oteino, most of whom had slowly retreated into the wilderness when the Taymoran civil war had begun, were quite untouched by the cataclysms. The Taymora, instead, were heavily hit by the war and the earthquakes: many vestiges of their civilization had already been destroyed by BC 1750, and the last remnants of the southern Taymoran cities and lands disappeared under the waves in the devastating volcanic explosion of BC 1720, when the dome of the Kikianu Caldera, a huge island the size of the modern Five Shires, collapsed over its subterrean magma chamber, and was thus plunged under the sea, leaving only three rugged islands to testify its existence (the modern Alcove, Aloysius, and Utter islands in the Ierendi archipelago), as well as a single volcanic cone at their center (Mount Kala on today’s Honor Island)¹⁴. This terrible event was recorded by all Known World cultures of that time, when huge waves battered the coasts and the sky was darkened with ashes for months. The seismic instability which climaxed with the Kikianu Caldera event finally gave the southern coast of the Known World the appearance it has today, with the creation of the modern archipelagos of Ierendi and Minrothad.

While the Eokai, Oteino, Mawa, and the lizardmen survived in some of the eastern islands (the modern Ierendi archipelago), elves were also spared by the catastrophe, but they were now separated by the newly-created sea. The Meditor water elf clan was stranded alone on one of the recently-formed islands south of the new coastline (the one later called Alfeisle, in Minrothad), while their wood and fair elf brethren had survived on the new coast of the continent to the north. Fearing further seismic activity in their land, and willing to reunite with the water elves, in BC 1720 the Verdier wood elf clan, also at the urging of the Aquarendi¹⁵ – who had been hit hardly by the catastrophe in their underwater homeland – obeyed the omens sent by their Immortals and crossed the dangerous seawaters, migrating to Alfeisle as well. The rest of the Verdier fair elves, instead, preferred to continue living in their mainland forests, in relative tranquillity; they were the ancestors of the Vyalia clan of Karameikos and Thyatis.

It was after this fearsome age of cataclysms had ravaged the southeastern corner of Brun that the elves of Alfeisle started to call the sea which extended around their newly-created island the “Sea of Dread” and the archipelago west and north-west of Alfeisle the “Isles of Dread”¹⁶. In fact, even if no seismic event of the proportions of the Kikianu Caldera’s explosion ever happened again, seismic activity in the form of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes of varying strength continue to fill the lives of the peoples who lived in the islands of this region with fear and anguish.

As if the aftereffects of the volcanic and seismic activity in the southern Known World were not enough, another catastrophic event happened in the north: in BC 1700 a local elven clan of the region later known as the Highlands tinkered with a buried Blackmoorian device, causing its explosion with devastating effects – a whole mountain range was destroyed, creating the Broken Lands, and debris and dust lifted by the explosion darkened the skies for years, plunging the Known World into another brief ice age.

It was also around this time, after the worst volcanic activity had ended, that another underwater race, that of the merrow, discovered the newly submerged lands of southeastern Brun¹⁷. Finding the region of their liking – bright, mostly shallow waters heated by the underwater volcanic activity and bountiful with sea plants and animals – they migrated here from the seas around the Thanegioth archipelago, and called this area the Sunlit Sea. The merrow didn’t kept their existence secret from land dwellers as the Aquarendi had done; also, unlike them, they chose not to pursue a settled lifestyle, but led a semi-nomadic existence based on the movements of the great shoals of fishes, and on the resources they gathered from the kelp forests.

The Birth of the Makai Culture

In BC 1700, at the worst peak of the seismic activity, the modern Ierendi and Minrothad archipelagos had seen most of their settlements wiped out by the catastrophes and their aftereffects. Only a scattering of Taymoran survivors inhabited the eastern islands, among which Alfeisle alone saw a relevant water and wood elven population; in the western islands, besides a very few surviving Taymora, there still dwelt the sparse remnants of the more ancient cultures of the Eokai, Oteino, Mawa, and the lizardmen, and a very small population of human albinos – the surviving descendants of the Taymoran servant race – lived on Utter island.

The more numerous Mawa, however, in the turn of a century, became the prevailing culture of the western islands, gradually absorbing the few surviving Taymora, the fair-skinned Eokai, and the copper-skinned Oteino. This was also due to the steady immigration of Mawa peoples from the overpopulated islands of the Sea of Dread in the newly formed and available islands of the modern Ierendi and Minrothad regions¹⁸. Intermarriage between the Mawa on one side and the Eokai and the Oteino on the other, and cultural predominance of the Mawa over the other two peoples, gave birth to the Makai people around BC 1600, a mixed-heritage people who preserved most traits of the Mawa culture but whose customs were heavily influenced by the Eokai and Oteino. The Makai endure to this day and represent the main culture of the Ierendi islands¹⁹. In the following centuries, the Makai built villages and lived a primitive lifestyle based on agriculture, hunting, fishing, and gathering. From time to time they clashed against the lizardmen tribes, while they preferred to leave the albino humans alone on their island.

The Makai continued to live peacefully and flourish on their islands for the next centuries, troubled only from time to time by clashes against the lizardmen and – starting from BC 1300 – by the raids of Traldar galleys which swiftly hit the islands’ coasts to plunder booty and capture slaves. With time, the Traldars even established a handful of colonies and pirate dens on the modern Ierendi and Minrothad archipelagos, fighting against the Makai who dwelt on the coasts, but also helping to bring them even more in contact with the outside world. As today, Traldar remains – even if overlapped by later cultures’ ruins – have been found on Trader’s and Open Isle in Minrothad, and on Safari and Fletcher islands in Ierendi²⁰.

Yet in BC 1300 the Sea of Dread was crossed by another migrating people, the halflings. This race had left the Brasol region in Davania some centuries before, moving through the Adakkian Sound region and crossing the Izondian Deep to reach Thanegia Island, and the southern end of the Serpent Peninsula. They had settled there in BC 1500, but unfavorable environment and climate, along with unrest among natives, persuaded them to move on to search for another land. Their flotilla passed through the western islands of the archipelago, stopping briefly in Elegy Island; then they landed on the mainland at Cape Faerdinel in BC 1300. A couple of halfling clans decided to settle on Elegy Island and northern Ierendi Island alongside the local Makai tribes, and those islands saw the growth of a relevant halfling population in the following centuries.²¹

In the meantime, the water and wood elves on Alfeisle kept to themselves on their island, practicing a variety of crafts based on the island’s local products, shielding themselves from outside eyes thanks to the water elves’ weather magic. Around the island, the Aquarendi continued to live under the waves, as friendly as ever toward their land cousins. In fact, the very existence of Alfeisle and of the Aquarendi was unknown to the islands’ and mainland’s humans of this age.

The Nithian Age

Soon, however, even the Traldar would have succumbed to a much more powerful outside force. Toward the end of the second millennium BC, the Nithian Empire turned its greedy eyes toward the southern Known World, the area where the Ptahr-al-Dar expedition had headed to some centuries before²².

Minroth’s Expedition

Nithians were attracted to the eastern islands by their natural resources; in BC 1100, under the leadership of the hero-adventurer Minroth, the Nithians quickly took possession of most of the islands of the modern Minrothad archipelago, easily overcoming what little resistance the indigenous (Taymora-descended) population and the Traldar colonies tried to put up. They founded the city of Horonak²³ (on the site of the modern Harbortown) on the largest of these islands, and named the whole archipelago Colony Islands in their tongue.

Minroth was a prophet as well as a warrior and wise leader; he taught his followers a philosophy of hope, self-reliance, and hard work needed to climb to happiness and greatness. Actually, “Minroth” was the last reincarnation of a Nithian hero who was on the way of completing his Path of the Polymath under the patronage of Immortal Maat; after having led the Nithians here and having seen them prosper, he left them suddenly in order to bring his quest for Immortality to a successful end²⁴. The people of the Colony Islands began to worship him as an Immortal prophet who one day will return to bring eternal happiness to his followers; the cult quickly spread and became known as Minrothism.

Following Minroth’s departure – about fifty years or so after the founding of Horonak – the Colony Islands saw a steady immigration of Nithians from the continental area of their empire: settlements were built, trade with the motherland increased, and the islanders’ trade network within the empire grew – as did the shares they derived from it. Their prosperity was further helped by the destruction of rival coastal Traldar cities after BC 1000, due to the Great Beastmen Invasion.

The Conquest of the Makai Isles

Around BC 1000, the Nithians began to look at the archipelago which lay west of the Colony Islands as the next target of their expansionism. The peaceful local population, the Makai, represented an attractive source of slaves, and some of the islands were also rich in deposits of precious metals. Nithian armies easily subdued the coastal communities of the Makai, and absorbed the handful of Traldar settlements which existed in the region, claiming dominion over this archipelago also²⁵. The halfling clans of Elegy and northern Ierendi islands shared the fate of the Makai natives, and were easily subdued and enslaved by the Nithian conquerors; their kin in Llora (modern Five Shires), under the dominion of the orcs, did not represent a safe haven for them, so they had no other choice but submitting to the Nithians.

Around the same time in which the Nithians were conquering the Makai isles and the local Traldar and halfling populations, the mainland Traldar kingdoms (in modern Karameikos) were being ravaged by a huge gnoll invasion.²⁶ A whole city of the southern Traldar kingdoms, under order of local King Milen, was evacuated and set sail to flee from the its doomed homeland; their fleet entered the waters around the southern archipelagos and split, landing half in Safari Island and half in Utter Island, hoping to find shelter among the local Makai who were in the process of being subdued by the Nithian Empire²⁷. But they had no will to become subjects of the Nithians, who had conquered their kinsmen in the Colony Islands and were ruling them harshly. The Nithians, on the other hand, were not willing to allow the Traldar refugees to hamper their conquest of the Makai islands, mostly out of fear of an alliance between the Traldar and the native Makai, which would have threatened their newly-won conquest. So the Nithians at first confronted the refugees, making clear they could live in the islands only if they accepted being split among the various islands and settling according to what the empire felt was better; then, after the Traldar’s opposition and some quarrels, the Nithians turned to force and attacked the Traldar that had landed on Safari Island, capturing many of them, and readying to launch another assault on those who landed on Utter Island. Understanding that they could not win this fight, and having to chose between enslavement and flight, the Traldar refugees chose the latter and sailed past the archipelagos south of their homeland, where the Nithians didn’t follow them; afterwards they would have reached the northern coasts of Davania, becoming the ancestors of the Milenians.

Exploitation of the islands’ population and resources was harsher here than in the Colony Islands; the Nithians pushed inland to get control of the metal deposits, thus coming into conflict against the primitive lizardmen tribes who inhabited the interior. At first these clashes were sporadic and limited to some areas; however, the Nithian penetration stirred up fiercer lizardman resistance, which threatened the very stability of Nithian rule on the islands and risked sucking more money from the empire than the conquest was worth. Thus, the Nithians contented themselves with the control of the coastal areas and surroundings, and with the exploitation of Makai labor²⁸.

The Islands During the Decline of the Empire

When the Nithian Empire slowly began to slide into decline around BC 800, with most resources devoted to military campaigns, luxuries, and construction programs than to trade and infrastructures, the flourishing Colony Islands settlements seized an even greater control over trade routes which linked the motherland to the southern archipelagos, soon becoming the main trading power of the northern Sea of Dread.

Things changed after BC 700, when the leadership of the Nithian Empire turned to the worship of Entropy. The whole eastern part of the empire – the one which included Thothia and other Isle of Dawn colonies – broke away from the empire, starting a civil war that would have gone on until the empire’s very end two centuries later; also, civil unrest began to plague the continental areas of the empire, and an increasing amount of money and resources was needed to enlist mercenary armies.

The pharaohs at the beginning of this age thus attempted once more to put their hands over the western islands’ mineral resources; in order to put the lizardmen resistance down, starting from BC 650 they brought to the islands cheap slave armies made up of scores of goblins captured elsewhere²⁹. A brutal and bloody war of skirmishes and ambushes began; at first the lizardmen held off against these renewed Nithian attempt to wrest control of their lands from them, but soon they had to face an enemy more terrible than the Nithians, and one they could not withstand. Unbeknownst to the Nithians, some domesticated animal species they had recently introduced to the islands (or perhaps even the goblins themselves) carried a tiny skin parasite; this nearly invisible vermin was harmless to humans, but transmitted a devastatingly lethal disease to lizardmen. The reptilian population of the islands was thus quickly weakened by the disease and decimated in the turn of a century and a half or so, allowing the Nithian goblins to dispose easily of the survivors.

In those same centuries, the Nithians began to take halfling slaves from Elegy and Ierendi islands to bring them into other provinces of their empire. The halflings represented an ideal labor force for working in the deep mines of the Hardanger Mountains, so many were transplanted there; that area, in fact, had suffered from a shortage of local Northman slaves, many of which had been transferred by the Nithians in a recently-established colony on the northern coast of Davania. This process completely erased the halfling population from these two islands, and nothing was left of the Hins there. If this was not enough, the Nithians also started to barter halfling slaves for weapon and tools with the orcs which ruled Shaerdon (modern Five Shires) in the 8th and 7th centuries BC.³⁰

At the other end of the chain, in the Colony Islands, the spread of Minrothism and the locals’ pivotal role in the empire’s trading network spared the islands from the introduction of the Entropy-worshipping cults which were imposed in most other regions of the Nithian Empire. In fact, as civil unrest and decline in the Nithian Empire increased, Nithian control over outlying areas like the southern archipelagos waned; this allowed the Colony Islands to assume greater freedom from the motherland, trading both with the pharaoh and his enemies at the same time, also seeing as an unexpected boon the northward migration of the Thyatians, Kerendans, and Hattians – who reached southeastern Brun from Davania in BC 600 – which further weakened Nithian control over the area and diminished even more the possibility of a resurgence of Nithian power.

The End of the Nithian Domain

In the western islands, the Nithian garrisons left without support from the mainland had an increasingly hard time in keeping the goblin and Makai slaves under control. Nevertheless, the lizardmen’s doom was by then sealed because of the disease the Nithians had brought to the islands. In BC 500, as a last act of vengeance against the ones who had exterminated their own people, the lizardmen shamans performed unearthly magical rituals, invoking the power of their ancestors and deities, and unleashed a final spell of horrible power over the Nithians: Makai legends tell that the settlements of their masters were completely wiped away in a single night by the power of the lizardmen’s spell. By BC 500, both the Nithians’ and the lizardmen’s presence were thus almost erased from the islands; the lizardmen only survived as small primitive clans on Roister Island and in some shallow water areas, far away from the humans.

BC 500 also saw the end of the Nithian Empire as a whole; the Nithian civilization was erased from the surface world by the Immortals it had angered. The lizardmen’s vengeance over them in the western islands was perhaps part of the Immortals’ plan to cancel the Nithian civilization from the Outer World. The Nithians of the Colony Islands, however, were spared by the Immortals because they had never succumbed to the worship of Entropy. The memory of their Nithian past erased from their minds by the Immortals, they began to call themselves “Minrothians” and forgot ever being a colony of the Nithian Empire; they only recalled that the Nithian Empire had been a trading partner of theirs in the north, which now was no more.

The Islands’ Middle Centuries

The disappearance of the Nithian Empire had quite different consequences on the two halves of the island chain which included the modern Ierendi and Minrothad archipelagos, which developed along widely diverging lines in the five centuries before the crowning of the first Thyatian Emperor.

The Goblin Wars in the Makai Isles

In the western islands, after the destruction of Nithian presence, the Makai were free and went back to their everyday life, mostly forgetting having been dominated by the Nithians. However, the Nithians had left in the islands a legacy that had not disappeared with them: the goblin slaves. Deprived of their Nithian masters and of their lizardmen enemies as well, scattered among various islands, the goblins ran amock and began a long series of intermittent tribal wars against the Makai, which were the cause of the demographic stagnation of the islands in the following centuries (BC 500-AC 0). At the end of this age, the goblins had been almost wholly exterminated – only a few tribes survived in some of the uninhabited islands (like Honor Island), and in secluded mountainous and barren areas of other islands³¹.

Long decades of war favored the unification of a number of Makai tribes under powerful or prestigious war chiefs, who began exerting a certain degree of control over some areas of the islands which fell under their authority. Short-lived Makai kingdoms were born in the latter half of this age; their rulers also started to fight among themselves for the dominance over the islands as the goblin threat gradually waned. Thus were born the first kingdoms encompassing a whole island or a number of them, the most famous and powerful of which was established in BC 178 by King Kapena Kekoa, who managed to achieve control over the whole eastern three-quarters of Ierendi Island; his successor were able to extend their control over Fletcher Island and parts of Safari Island, conquering lesser chiefdoms and settling the wilderness there. Another lesser Makai kingdom of this age was that of Kauhona, who controlled the western side of Ierendi Island and Elegy Island³².

During those centuries the western islands and their Makai inhabitants were largely ignored by other cultures of the Known World. The Hin were slowly rebuilding themselves after the centuries of orcish tyranny, while the Traladarans were in the middle of their Dark Age; moreover, the birth of local Makai kingdoms made possible attempts at conquest much more difficult and costly, and ended up descouraging them altogether. Occasionally, Hin sailors, Minrothian or Traladaran traders, or Thyatian pirates visited the islands, but their presence was temporary at best. There were indeed a few exhiles or refugees, fleeing their homeland for a variety of causes, who were allowed to settled among the Makai, but their number was negligible.

Toward the end of those centuries, the name “Ierendi” – which was the Makai word that indicated the largest island of the archipelago – became widespread as the name of the whole island chain, which became known as the “Ierendi Islands”.

The Colony Islands between Thyatis and Alphatia

In the eastern islands, things went along differently. The trade power of the Minrothians began to decline due to the disappearance of their major trading partner, the Nithian Empire. They continued indeed to trade rare woods and handcrafts with other peoples of the southern Known World, but their profits never reached again the peaks of the late times of the Nithian age.

The Thyatian Piracy and the Alphatian Conquest

More importantly, the rise of the Thyatians in the east turned to represent a serious halt to the Minrothians’ sea trade. At first devoted to expand and colonize the continental lands where they had landed around BC 600, the three Thyatian tribes became more aggressive after BC 500, when they were fully in control of their lands. Their rulers began to sponsor piracy, which after BC 400 became so widespread in this area of the Sea of Dread that all the peoples who lived off its coasts – from the Atruaghin to the inhabitants of the western Isle of Dawn – began to fear the ruthlessness of Thyatian corsairs. Many coastal peoples paid the Thyatians a tribute to avoid being targeted by their pirates, and the Minrothians were one of them. Thus, outward expansion of Minrothian trade and settlement was halted.

But neither could the Thyatian pirates go unmatched. When their raids began to put the Alphatian trade routes in the east in serious danger, and when the latter discovered that the Thyatian mountains were rich in unexploited gold and silver, the Alphatian Empire made its first moves to conquer the Thyatian peoples. The Thyatians opposed a fierce resistance against the Alphatian armies, but eventually were conquered between BC 192 and BC 190. Alphatian conquest of the Thyatians was seen as a boon by other peoples of the Sea of Dread – they feared the distant power of the mighty Alphatian Empire, but were more than happy that its expansion had brought an end to the ever present threat of Thyatian piracy.

The Rise of the Minrothians’ Trade Power

Thus the Minrothians managed to establish peaceful relations with the Alphatians and signed a series of agreements with them in order to keep the seas free from piracy through joint operations. The most important of them was the agreement of BC 180, through which the Alphatians entrusted the Minrothians with the duty to keep the sea routes from the Western Sea of Dawn to the Sea of Dread free from pirates, while giving them possession of the island of Terentias and allowing them to extend their trading network to the Alphatian-dominated Isle of Dawn³³.

Thanks to these developments, the Minrothians again expanded their trading network, which for the first time began to regularly touch the settlements of the western coast of the Isle of Dawn, with rarer forays into the Alatian islands and Ochalea. The old capital city of the Colony Islands, Horonak – now called Harbortown by the Minrothians – again became a wealthy center of trade in this corner of Brun.

This renewed prosperity was behind the Minrothians’ new drive for expansion; settlements were built on the lesser islands of the chain, that is Open and North islands, as well as on the newly-acquired Terentias. Blackrock, Fortress, and Fire islands were instead too impervious and barren to be of any interest for the Minrothians. The last two centuries before AC 0 were indeed a time of demographic growth for them.

Alfeisle’s Isolation and the Establishment of Undersea

Meanwhile, in Alfeisle the elves were keeping to themselves, shrouded by their magic, and distantly watching the development of the world around their island. Among the water elves the first opinions against continued isolationism were heard around the same time the Alphatians conquered the Thyatians; some water elves envied the success of Minrothian traders, and wished to freely explore the outside world. They were still a minority among the water elf population, however, so isolationism prevailed. Elven society was also upset by the rift which arose between the Meditor and the Verdier clans about the exploitation of Alfeisle’s forests for wood and timber; as a result of the harsh quarrel among the two elven clans, the Verdiers retreated to the woods and decided to lead a life of sylvan isolation, while the Meditors kept living on the coasts, near their beloved sea. It was after this event that the terms “water elves” and “wood elves” came into use by the elves themselves to indicate the two branches of their Alfeisle kin³⁴.

This age also saw the migration of the tritons into the Sunlit Sea, which took place around BC 200. The organized and conquest-minded tritons wished to carve a dominion for themselves in the bountiful waters surrounding the Ierendi and Minrothad archipelagos; they came into conflict against the nomadic merrow who inhabited these waters, and thus a centuries-long squabble began³⁵. At the end the tritons managed to gain the upper hand and established the Kingdom of Undersea in the sea region between Utter and Blackrock islands. Many merrow living in this area were subdued by the tritons, and became subjects of Undersea; many others istead continued to live their nomadic lives on the fringes of the triton kingdom.

The Minrothians during the Struggle for Freedom

However, the decline of the Alphatian Empire took its toll also on the Alphatia-Minrothians relations. As unrest began to undermine the very stability of the empire’s provinces in the west and imperial governors drained the territories they ruled of any riches to please the imperial throne, the Minrothians started to worry about imperial policy – the Alphatian throne was exploiting and taxing without regard and beyond any tolerability in its subject lands, with the consequence of making trade suffer and the Minrothians’ profits decline. The Minrothians were looking to the future with serious concern.

When Lucinius Trezantembium and Zendrolion Tatriokanitas led the Thyatians into revolt against the Alphatian dominion, the whole Alphatian control over the western part of the empire crumbled – other subject territories rose in revolt against the hated Alphatian masters, and joined the Thyatians in their Struggle for Freedom (BC 2). Totally unprepared to face such an opposition and taken by surprise by their adversaries’ cunning tactics, the Alphatians were put on the defensive and soon had to fight harshly to preserve their control over the Isle of Dawn. Seeing all this, the Minrothians decided to stay neutral in the war – their agreements would have put them on the Alphatians’ side, but the empire was too far away to send them any help, while the Thyatians were near and were achieving many successes; moreover, the Minrothians deemed that the fight to preserve the integrity of the Alphatian Empire was not theirs, so they preferred to keep out of it.

As the war dragged on and the possibility of an Alphatian victory waned, seeing which way the wind was blowing the Minrothians threw their lot on the side of King Lucinius and in the very last months of the war helped the Thyatians to transport their troops across the Western Sea of Dawn from one battlefield to another, and supplied their lines thanks to their control of the seas.

Under the Shadow of the Thyatian Empire

In AC 0, Thyatis was finally victorious, but when the federation planned by King Lucinius was transformed into the militaristic and expansion-minded Thyatian Empire of Zendrolion I Tatriokanitas, the Minrothians’ concerns deepened. In the aftermath of the war, they unwillingly had to keep their alliance with Thyatis for fear of reprisals, and saw their trade network shrink; in fact, Zendrolion’s empire recovered from the war much more rapidly than Alphatia, building a powerful military and naval machine a few miles away from the Minrothians’ isles.

Relationships between the Minrothians and Thyatis became more tense with the passing of the decades. In AC 120, the inhabitants of Terentias, mostly of Thyatian descent, revolted against Minrothian rule due to taxation and control imposed over the isles by the centralist political faction in Harbortown. The Terentians proclaimed independence from the Minrothians and fought off a couple of attempts by the latter to reestablish their dominion over the island; then, they appealed to the Thyatian Empire for support. After various events, the island formally accepted annexation by the Thyatian Empire in AC 127³⁶. Relations between Thyatis and the Minrothians after this event became strained as the empire tried to extend its direct influence over the archipelago.

The Beginnings of the Colony Islands’ Confederation

Despite the power and vicinity of the Thyatian Empire, a series of events – most of all the opening of Alfeisle’s elves to outside contact – helped the peoples of the Colony Islands to emancipate themselves from Thyatian influence. This spurred the formation of the first trading alliance, but these developments were not achieved without internal conflicts.

The foundation of New Alphatia

In AC 250, a large group of Alphatian exhiles led by a team of powerful wizards came asking the Thyatian Emperor for protection against persecution in their homeland and for a place to settle³⁷. The Thyatian Emperor, not trusting the exiles enough to allow them to settle in the empire’s territory, granted them lands indeed – but on Tralder’s Isle, that is in Minrothian territory: the isle would be theirs, if they could take it from the current occupants.

The Alphatians, helped by their magics, made a sudden inroad into the territory of Trader’s Isle, managing to build the outpost of New Alphatia on the island’s northeastern coast. Shrouded by their spells and separated from the Minrothians by the central mountains of the isle and by dense fogs, the Alphatians settled there and went almost unnoticed for nearly a year. Then, the Minrothians discovered the newcomers and started a war against them to cast them away from their homeland. The war (AC 250-251) went on with a series of inconclusive clashes which resulted in some losses for either side, without any one of them prevailing.

Saner heads of both parties then decided to meet, seeing better perspective in cooperation rather than in war. The Alphatians agreed to share their knowledge of magic with the Minrothians, while the latter agreed to allow the Alphatians to settle on their island and to include them in their trading network. Thus a Minrothian-Alphatian alliance was born, and joint trade operations were agreed upon. The Thyatian Empire was disappointed with this development, even if the introduction in the Colony Islands of the destabilizing element represented by the Alphatians was nevertheless a success in their effort to weaken the Minrothians.

The End of Elven Isolationism

Meanwhile, something unexpected happened on Alfeisle³⁸. In AC 273 a series of volcanic eruptions on the elves’ hidden isle caused panic to spread among the inhabitants, who preserved the memory of their parents’ accounts of the terrible destructions of two thousand years ago. Damages due to those eruptions were limited, but fear ran high. The progressive faction among the water elves took the opportunity to advocate for the opening of relations with the outside world and for the end of the elves’ isolationism in order to find other places to settle. After much debate, the progressive faction prevailed in AC 275. The end of isolationism came to be seen favorably by the wood elves also, who were suffering since some years from a famine caused by their isolation and by their inability to import enough food to support their populations.

In AC 276, the water elves revealed their existence to the outside world by sending an embassy first to Harbortown and then to New Alphatia; friendly contacts were established, and subsequently Minrothian and Alphatian diplomats were allowed to visit Alfeisle to contemplate the water elves’ civilization, while the elves were allowed to visit human towns on Trader’s Isle. The elves were much impressed by the Alphatians’ magic – which had in the past decades applied almost exclusively to tasks related to sea and weather – as well as by the alliance’s wealth and abundance in trade goods; on the other hand, the humans were astonished by the water elves’ ship design and intrigued by their sailing skills.

The Birth of the Human-Elven Trading Combine

Only a few months passed before the Minrothians offered the water elves an agreement to form a joint trading combine with themselves and the Alphatians, to share knowledge and open trade among them. The water elves, never oblivious of their wood elf kin, sent words to them in order to persuade their leaders to join the combine as well. Prostrated by years of famine, the wood elves accepted to share their woodworking products and skills in exchange for food.

Thus, the combine was created in the same year of AC 276. The four peoples traded goods, services, and vessels among them, sharing knowledge about magic, seafaring, and shipbuilding. They soon began to perform joint trading ventures in near and distant lands. The wars raging between the Thyatian and Alphatian empires in the east were a boon for the combine’s economy, because both empires relied heavily on merchant shipping to carry booty and supplies from and to occupied territories. The members of the combine were shrewd in negotiating and keeping their neutrality between the two large and powerful empires, allying with neither but trading with and selling services to both.

The Slave Trade Wars and the Water Elf Emigration

Tensions between the Minrothians of Harbortown and the Alphatians of New Alphatia sparkled again when, around AC 280, Minrothians and Alphatians were for the first time involved in slave trade toward the markets of the Thyatian Empire. They took slaves from the Makai islands, from the Atruaghin and Five Shires coastlands, from Traladara, and sold them in Thyatian markets, or offered their transportation services for inter-imperial slave trade. This trade was very profitable and brought a great amount of money into the coffers of the two peoples in a short time. Nevertheless, the problem of inter-imperial slave trade was that most of the slaves bought and sold were of Alphatian descent³⁹ – prisoners of war in Thyatis’ Isle of Dawn campaigns. The people of New Alphatia began to voice their opinion against this trade, advocating a limit on slave trade as to avoid buying and selling Alphatian slaves. Minrothians, on the other hand, were not willing at all to limit the wealth coming into their coffers from such a trade.

Things went on nervously between the two peoples, with tensions running higher up to the point when some Alphatians began to sabotage Minrothian slave trade. Harbortown authorities lost no time and retaliated, declaring war on New Alphatia in AC 281. The Slave Trade Wars were two conflicts interspersed by a truce, the first one lasting from AC 281 to AC 283, and the second fought in AC 284. They carried on through skirmishes, corsair raids, sea battles, and truces, with neither side managing to get the upper hand nor accepting to come to terms with their opponent. The trading power gained by the combine severely lessened during this war, much to the satisfaction of the Thyatians and the disappointment of Alfeisle’s elves.

In the end the elves – who nevertheless were opposed to the slave trade altogether – stepped in and forced the two exhausted human opponents to make peace at the end of AC 284, threatening to enter the war on the Alphatians’ side. They allowed Minrothian slave trade to continue, but under heavy limitations and with the forbiddance to trade ethnic Alphatians. While the Alphatians were content with this development, the Minrothians were not, because the limitations they had to accept cut a very large slice of their profits from the slave trade, and also deprived them of most of the money they obtained from Thyatian markets. Despite this, they had to grudgingly comply but were embittered by this defeat.

Also, in the years after AC 276 the water elves began to travel in surrounding lands, exploring them, establishing trade relations, and even founding small colonies of migrants in some of the most strategic or profitable sites. Most of these colonies were made up by trade agents, their aides, and their families, and were supposed to be temporary and with rotating personnel, with new agents from Alfeisle replacing the previous ones after some years. Nevertheless, slowly small water elf communities developed in places like Terentias, Actius, Port Lucinius, West Portage, and other cities and towns of the Western Sea of Dawn, even up to Seagirt in the Pearl Islands. Such emigration toward places in the east was also influenced by the instability which reigned in the Colony Islands for years as a consequence of the Slave Trade Wars – actually forcing elven emigration to head elsewhere.

With peace again restored, the elves and the humans of the Colony Islands put again their best efforts in trade, in order to rebuild the influence they had lost. Even if a trading combine between the three was formally re-established, rivalry between Harbortown and New Alphatia continued to run high, as did the elves’ distrust for the quarrelsome and unpredictable humans. The fourth century AC was an age of prosperity for the Colony Islands. Water elf trade increased and in AC 300 the elves built their first great port city, Seahome, to host foreign merchants and ships and their own great shipbuilding facilities.

A Century of Prosperity

Minrothians, bitter after the humiliation they had suffered from Alphatians and elves in AC 284, pursued aggressive trade policies aimed at increasing their power and influence. Wealthy Minrothian families were involved in the internal affairs of the Thyatian Empire, lending money to a couple of emperors or imperial candidates during the Thyatian Civil War (which had started in AC 313); in AC 318, as indemnity for a debt left unpaid by the Thyatian throne, the Minrothians assumed control of the island of Terentias – where a loud minority also including the local water elf community was advocating autonomy from the empire – which was confirmed by Thyatis some years later⁴⁰.

Relations between Harbortown and Thyatis improved as the Minrothians continued to practice moneylending activity in favor of several Thyatian emperors, thus linking the future of their finances with that of the empire. Moreover, the weakening of Thyatis after the civil war allowed them to successfully occupy the vacuum left by the waning of the Thyatian trade power in this century, penetrating the eastern markets of the Isle of Dawn and beyond; this was made easier by the fact that Thyatian emperors of this time were willing to grant the Minrothians special trade concessions in exchange for money. This meant, fatally and again, an increasing Minrothian involvement in slave trade.

Around AC 360, the Minrothians felt strong enough to challenge limitations imposed on slave trade by the peace of AC 284. Again they carried slaves all over the Thyatian Empire’s markets, making great profits, all the while expanding their trade network to the Eastern Sea of Dawn and to the Alphatian coasts. This time they also followed Thyatian customs and introduced slaves in Harbortown; their favored targets for this role were the halflings of the Five Shires, who they captured through swift raids and employed in their isles in a variery of tasks. In the next century, several thousand halflings were brought in the Colony Islands’ Minrothian possessions as slaves⁴¹.

Alphatians and elves were disappointed by the turn of the events, but were wary about taking direct action against the Minrothians because of the latter’s ties with Thyatis. They preferred for now to keep their alliance with the Minrothians and to exploit the influence of Harbortown to expand their own trading networks.

Despite these internal rivalries, this age was very prosperous for all members of the trading combine, whose network touched almost all coastal regions of the Known World, where old and new nations were emerging and willing to receive the trade goods from distant places that the combine’s merchants carried. However, this prosperity was about to come to an end in the 5^th century AC, when lycanthropic epidemics spread in the archipelago.

The Ierendi Islands in the First Four Centuries AC

While all these events were taking place in the Colony Islands – the Alphatians’ migration, the end of the elves’ isolationism, the formation of the trading combine, and so on – in the five centuries between the crowning of Emperor Zendrolion I (AC 0) and the coming of the first convicts in the Ierendi Islands from the Five Shires (6^th century AC), the Makai flourished and grew in prosperity, their local kingdoms exerting a wider control over the archipelago and mantaining increasing relations with other peoples and nations of the mainland.

The kingdoms’ population began to grow again after the Goblin Wars, and some tribes of Makai settled the islands which had been left depopulated since the ancient age of seismic disasters (like Alcove, Aloysius, and Roister). By mid 4^th century AC, all the eight major islands of the Ierendi archipelago (except White Island and Honor Island, which was inhabited by some of the last goblin tribes) had been settled to some extent by Makai tribes.

Pirates, exhiles, and outlaws fleeing from their country sometimes still found shelter among the Makai as in the previous age. Fletcher Island, in particular, became an emigration spot for a small number of coastal Traladarans who left their homeland during times of war or economic crisis (such as during the Traladaran Wars of the 5^th century AC⁴²). Angel Cove on Alcove Island, instead, became a haven of pirate activity in the region, which local Makai kings never managed to uproot.

The Ierendi Islands were still considered a backward and unimportant place by the rising powers of the Known World at the beginning of the first century AC, but the situation changed afterwards. The small Traladaran domains and the nearby Five Shires had consolidated a steady trade with the archipelago’s local Makai kingdoms; the islands’ natural resources – gemstones, precious metals, and wood – began to be looked upon and coveted with some interest by sea traders and expansion-minded rulers abroad, especially in Harbortown and Thyatis.

The political situation of the Ierendi Islands was not very stable, however. Local kingdoms occasionally waged war against one another in order to expand their domains. At the end of the 3^rd century AC, King Kapena Ikaika “the Great” of Ierendi (who ruled from AC 285 to AC 317), through a series of daring military campaigns, conquered the lesser neighboring Makai kingdoms and ruled over a realm encompassing the whole Ierendi Island, and Elegy, Fletcher, Roister, and Safari islands. Kapena Ikaika also signed agreements with the Hin of the Five Shires and with the newly-created Kingdom of Traladara under Bogdan Ivanovich in order to keep the seas around these lands devoid from Minrothian and Thyatian threats, mostly represented by pirates and slavers.

Kapena Ikaika’s successors were not as able as he was. Unrest burst in the kingdom’s peripheral areas, and the ability of the kings to put down such rebellion was depressed by the intrusion of foreign merchants and pirates, who lended their support to the rebels in order to destabilize the kingdom. The loss of authority of the king became evident when in AC 343 Kapena Ikaika’s grandson, Kapena Kapono, was abducted by the Minrothian sea captain and pirate Reho Chemnis and held for ransom⁴³. The Makai kings ultimately proved unable both to hold together the varius tribes which had been forcibly subdued, and to keep the archipelago free from pirates’ and slavers’ raids from Harbortown and Thyatis. The Five Shires, plagued by internal trobules in the 4^th century AC, could not help, neither could Bogdan Ivanovich’s Kingdom of Traladara, which crumbled at his death in AC 356⁴⁴.

Thus, at the turn of the second half of the 4^th century AC, political disintegration and unrest in Ierendi, Traladara, and the Five Shires proved instrumental for the beginning of a renewed season of raids from slave-trading powers like the Minrothians of Harbortown and the Empire of Thyatis. Thyatian and Minrothian slavers made frequent inroads into the archipelago, swiftly attacking isolated Makai villages and capturing as many slaves as they could. These peoples were then brought to slave markets all over the Thyatian Empire. Slave trade in this area was mostly left to Minrothians’ control by the empire, which relied on Harbortown to feed the request of slaves by its markets. Thus, the Minrothians’ raids into the archipelago increased, reaching a peak in the 4^th century AC, at the same time in which the Minrothian slave traders were hitting the Five Shires’ coasts. But the spread of the lycanthropic plague in the 5^th century AC would have imposed a different turn to events.

References

Deborah Christian and Kim Eastland, GAZ9 The Minrothad Guilds, TSR, 1988

Aaron Allston, Dawn of the Emperors - Thyatis and Alphatia, TSR, 1989

Ann Dupuis, Poor Wizard’s Almanac II & Book of Facts - Edition for AC 1011, TSR, 1993

Ann Dupuis, Poor Wizard’s Almanac III & Book of Facys - Edition for AC 1012, TSR, 1994

Ann Dupuis and Elizabeth Tornabene, Joshuan’s Almanac & Book of Facts, TSR, 1995

Simone Neri, Demografia Mystarana, Volume I - Compendio storico sociale del Mondo Conosciuto, 2007

Marco Dalmonte, Codex Immortalis (3 ^rd ed .), English translation by Gary Davies, Vaults of Pandius, 2010-2011

Sidebar 1 A Sea of Migrations

Despite its name and alleged dangerousness, the ages of violent seismic activity, the presence of pirates and hostile peoples, and the rumors of a colossal underwater monster capable of swallowing whole fleets, the Sea of Dread always was and continues to be a crossroads of migrating peoples and trade which has linked since the ancient times the coasts of Brun to Davania, and those of the Isle of Dawn to the Serpent Peninsula.

In order to make the reader familiar with the continuous passage of peoples from one shore to another of the Sea of Dread, this sidebar will summarize the main events and migrations which have crossed it during the course of its history, from the Great Rain of Fire until AC 0.

BC 3000: What will become the Sea of Dread shifts from the arctic latitude to a temperate-subtropical one.

BC 2800: Southeastern Brun (nowadays archipelagos of Minrothad and Ierendi) and some of the northern islands and archipelagos of what will become the Sea of Dread are inhabited by the Oteino (an Oltec- or Azcan-descended human population) and the lizardmen.

BC 2500: By this time the Eokai have migrated from the Davanian coast northward, settling many islands and archipelagos of the Sea of Dread, and establishing settlements also on Brun’s southeastern coasts. The Taymora arrive from the north in southeastern Brun.

BC 2450: The koprus establish a realm called Adhuza in the Eastern Thanegioth Archipelago (which at that time is a single, huge island), inhabited predominantly by the Mawa humans and the aranea, with small scattered groups of Eokai and Oteino in surrounding islands. The Mawa people start migrating slowly from the Eastern Thanegioth Archipelago to the other isles and island chains of the northern Sea of Dread (the process will take about another five hundred years).

BC 2250: First elven immigrants reach the Taymoran lands from the Serpent Peninsula.

BC 2200: Tanagoro settlers coming from the Izondian Deep migrate to the Serpent Peninsula and settle there.

BC 2100: After squabbles with newcomer Tanagoro, clans of elves (Meditor water elves, and Verdier wood and fair elves) migrate from the Serpent Peninsula to the lands east of the Taymora civilization.

BC 2000: Civil war and seismic activity start the destruction of Taymoran civilization. The Aquarendi arrive in the northern Sea of Dread and settle in the waters around the areas inhabited by land elves.

BC 1750: Huge earthquakes break the southeastern corner of Brun, forming large islands. The last remnants of the Taymoran civilization disappear under the waves. The Serpent Peninsula is partially flooded: Dhiki Namazzi and Thanegia Island are created.

BC 1720: Kikianu Caldera event; the southern coast and isles of the Known World assume their modern geographical appearance. The Verdier wood elves, separated from their water elf kin by the newly-created sea, migrate from the forested coasts of nowadays Karameikos (leaving their fair elf brethren there) to Alfeisle. Fall of the kopru realm of Adhuza as their island becomes an archipelago. Merrows living around Adhuza split: a half, made up by nomadic tribes, migrate north and settle in the Sunlit Sea; the other assume the dominance over the seas around the newly-created archipelago after the demise of the koprus.

BC 1600: By this date, the Makai culture has formed in the western islands of the northern Sea of Dread, that will become the Ierendi archipelago; the Makai are the result of the absorption of the Oteino and Eokai human people by the more recently-migrated Mawa.

BC 1500: Halflings migrating from the Adakkian Sound settle in Thanegia Island, south of the Serpent Peninsula. The Nithian clan of Ptahr-al-Dar sails up to modern Traladara and conquers the region. A fearsome colossal monster of ocean abysses, the Behemoth, awakens and brings destruction in the Sea of Dread; the merrows of Thanegioth manage to put it to sleep again using a dangerous and costly ritual.

BC 1300: Halflings migrate from Thanegia Island and land in the modern Five Shires. Rise of Traldar naval power; colonies established by the coastal kingdoms in some of the southern islands and in nearby coasts.

BC 1200: Tanagoro peoples coming from the Serpent Peninsula gradually settle the Western Thanegioth Archipelago and move further east, in the Eastern Thanegioth Archipelago and other tiny islands of the Sea of Dread, where they meet the local Eokai, Mawa, and Oteino.

BC 1100: A Nithian expedition led by Minroth colonizes Trader’s Isle and the surrounding islands, which are called Colony Islands. The Nithian Empire begins to challenge Traldar supremacy in the northern Sea of Dread.

BC 1000: From the Colony Islands, the Nithians carry on the conquest of the neighboring islands of the Makai, which are enslaved alongside local halflings; first clashes with local lizardmen tribes. The inhabitants of the Traldar city of Mirlenos, led by King Milen, flee from the Traldar lands which are being invaded by bloodthirsty gnolls; they sail past the Nithian-controlled southern islands, and – after being chased by the reawakened Behemoth – reach the Davanian Jungle Coast, landing at the mouth of a river in front of the modern island of Dwair (in the Pearl Islands). Meanwhile, the Traldar civilization is ravaged by the gnolls; end of Traldar naval power. Afterwards, the Nithians transplant many human tribes from the Northern Reaches to modern Hinterlands region in northern Davania, and establish a colony there.

BC 900: The Nithian colony in modern Hinterlands is ravaged by a slave uprising; the freed slaves are the ancestors of the Thyatians.

BC 800: The Nithians start taking halfling slaves from the Ierendi archipelago; halfling presence there is erased in the turn of a few centuries, as many halflings are brought to the Northern Reaches and in other provinces of the empire.

BC 700: The Nithian Empire turns to the worship of Entropy; civil strife plagues the empire. The Colony Islands keep their faith in Minroth and keep neutral, pursuing trade.

BC 650: The Nithians bring goblin slaves into the Makai islands to fight local lizardmen.

BC 600: Thyatian, Kerendan, and Hattian tribes set sail from modern Hinterlands’ shores in order to flee from Milenian expansionism. They settle in modern mainland Thyatis and Hattias.

BC 500: Fall of the Nithian Empire, which is destroyed by the Immortals. Lizardman culture becomes extinct in the Makai islands. Rise of Thyatian piracy across the northern Sea of Dread; many coastal settlements are plundered or pay tribute to avoid becoming targets of raids.

BC 400: A new awakening of the Behemoth starts a century and a half of destruction and ravages for coastal settlement in the northern coast of Davania and for underwater cultures up to the Eastern Thanegioth Archipelago.

BC 250: Last recorded sighting of the Behemoth.

BC 200: Tritons reach the Sunlit Sea area and begin warring against local merrow; at the end of a long age of struggle, the tritons manage to establish the Kingdom of Undersea.

BC 190: Thyatian piracy comes to a sudden end when the Alphatian Empire completes the conquest of Thyatis.

BC 180: Rise of Minrothian trade power thanks to agreements with the Alphatian Empire.

BC 178: The Makai realm of King Kapena Kekoa extends its control over most of Ierendi, Fletcher, and Safari islands.

BC 100: The Alphatian conquest of the Pearl Islands triggers a wave of Nuari migrations toward the southern islands and archipelagos of the Sea of Dread.

AC 0: Empire of Thyatis established after the Struggle for Freedom. Resurgence of Thyatian military and naval power.

2 This is a reference to the lizardman Empire of Mogreth, a fan creation of G. Gander; the empire was found in present day Ylaruam, and would be the so-called “Second Empire” of Mogreth (the first would have been the reptilian civilization mentioned in GAZ2 The Emirates of Ylaruam as the source of the ancient lizardman tombs found beneath Alasiyan sands).

3 The Makai are considered a Neathar-descended people (actually, one of the original tribes of the Neathars) in Hollow World Campaign Setting, whereas the Poor Wizard’s Almanac books say they have an Oltec ancestry. Thus, the best solution seemed to make them a mix of Neathar- and Oltec-descended peoples (also because they should represent Mystara’s Pacific islands’ peoples). So, the migration of some Oltec-blooded refugees in this area serves to the purpose. The proper Makai would be born out of the cultural union between (a) these Oltec peoples, (b) a Neathar-descended people (the Eokai listed below) who dwelled in northern Davania before BC 3000, and who moved north through the Sea of Dread and toward the Known World after that event, and (c) an additional Oltec-blooded people (the Mawa also listed later) who migrated in the Sea of Dread area much later (after BC 2500). The Mawa have been introduced to establish a link between the Austronesian/Pacific-like cultures of Cestia and the Pearl Islands, and the Hawaiian-like culture of the Ierendi Islands. The whole development of the Makai origins has been extensively discussed with F. Defferrari and is indebted to many of his ideas. Basically, the Mawa’s ancestors already inhabited the area around Cestia and Davania’s Jungle Coast before the Great Rain of Fire; then, from BC 3000 to BC 2500, they expanded in the islands of the southern Sea of Dread (including the Eastern Thanegioth Archipelago), and after that date northwards up to the coast of Brun. The peoples’ names of the Oteino, Eokai, and Mawa are creations of F. Defferrari.

9 For the wars between the Taymora and the giants, see Threshold no. 1, The History of Karameikos, page 39 and note 7, and also [http ://pandius .com /CruthLowlands -joined .pdf, Lords of the Cruth Lowlands (by G. Agosta)]; about the struggle between the Taymora and the lizardmen of Mogreth, see the [http ://pandius .com /mogreth .html, page on Mogreth at the Vaults of Pandius (by G. Gander and J. Calvin)].

11 The albino humans of Utter Island were introduced first in GAZ4; fan material explaining their origin as a Taymoran servitor race include [http ://pandius .com /landdead .html, Taymora, Land of the Dead (by G. Agosta)], [http ://pandius .com /taymtime .html, Timeline of the Taymoran Age 2800-1700 BC (by G. Agosta)], [http ://pandius .com /taymtim 2.html, Taymoran Timeline v2.2 (by G. Caroletti)], and [http ://pandius .com /ierendi 2.html, Alternate Setting for Ierendi v2.0 (by S. Dornhoff)].

14 In a couple of passages (pages 6 and 60), GAZ4 says that the Kikianu Caldera’s surviving vestiges are the islands of Elegy, Fletcher, Roister (which would have been part of the Caldera’s borders), and Honor Island (whose Mount Kala would be the Caldera’s surviving volcanic cone). This is an obvious mistake, becouse joining the three islands surrounding Mount Kala we do not come out with the shape of a crater at all (also, Ierendi Island is found between the three islands which would make up the Caldera). Looking at GAZ4’s poster map, it is quite clear that the surviving islands which actually formed the Kikianu Caldera were Utter, Alcove, and Aloysius – and maybe even White Island, but this is not needed, as GAZ4 mentions three islands besides Honor Island. Moreover, GAZ4 (page 60) says that the Kikianu Caldera event happened in the second century BC, but this is clearly another mistake if confronted from informations from the rest of the supplement.

16 See Historical Synopsis of the Minrothad Isles, Dungeon Master’s Booklet, GAZ9 The Minrothad Guilds. It seems that the name “Isle of Dread” in particular referred to Trader’s Isle, perhaps due to the fact that at that time it might have housed the worst volcanic activity, maybe including some dramatic elf-killing event (like destruction of an important city, or tragic widespread mass destruction); obviously this “Isle of Dread” has nothing to do with the isle of the Eastern Thanegioth Archipelago which has the same name. Nevertheless, other theories abound about the origins of the names “Sea of Dread” and “Isle(s) of Dread”; one of those is linked with the tale of the Thyatians’ migration from Davania to Brun, while another more sinister theory is exposed in Darkness Beneath, by F. Defferrari, in this number of Threshold.

20 According to Hollow World Campaign Setting, the Traldar were quite adept seafarers and sea raiders: «Their war-galleys […] once dominated the region of the Sea of Dread»; their expansion in the southern archipelagos, while not strictly canonic, is meant to underline this trait of them. For a picture of the Traldar age in the mainland, see also Threshold no. 1, The History of Karameikos, pages 40-44.

21 The tale of the halflings’ migration was never told, and their movement from Davania to the Known World are only arguable from the Hollow World Campaign Setting (in Dungeon Master’s Sourcebook, Timeline of History, and in the poster map “Local Migration History”) and Champions of Mystara. The halflings’ date of arrival in the modern Five Shires comes from GAZ8. The halfling settlement in Elegy Island has been inserted by the author, and is linked with the origins of Leeha, in Norwold.

25 According to Hollow World Campaign Setting, Dungeon Master’s Sourcebook, “Timeline of History”, the eve of the Nithian conquest is the time when the Immortals decided to transplant some Makai tribes in the Hollow World to prevent the assimilation of their unique culture by the Nithians. This means that throughout the Campaign Setting the inclusion of the Makai among the thousands “Tribes of Neathar” is erroneous – the Neathar tribes have been transplanted in the Hollow World by the Immortals around BC 3500, when the Neathar people had still not differentiated into many separated cultures. The Makai civilization developed much later, and moreover not from exclusively Neathar ancestors.

27 The following story of the struggle between Traldar refugees and the Nithians is not featured in any of the canonic sources, but was inserted under suggestion of F. Defferrari to make the history of the Traldar migration toward Davania a little more credible; in fact, as they were fleeing from their homeland, they would have likely stopped as soon as possible – that is in the Nithian-ruled southern islands – trying to win a place to settle there.

28 Given the five centuries of Nithian rule over the Ierendi Islands, the contemporary destruction of the Nithian and lizardman cultures on them (in BC 500), and the quite sudden (that is, not centuries-long) demographic loss suffered by the lizardmen due to the plague imported by the Nithians in their islands, were the reasons behind the choice to have the Nithian-lizardmen contacts limited to a few squabbles; only later did the two peoples clash more regularly, and the plague spread among the lizardmen.

29 Despite a passage on GAZ4, page 60 («In the seventh century AC the island [Honor Island] was settled by a colony of humans and goblins»), another passage – which I favored over the first one – on page 7 says that «Some of the lava tunnel complexes are inhabited by descendants of goblin slaves brought to the islands by Nithian colonists in the fifth century BC». I chose to put back in time by a century and a half the introduction of goblin slaves by the Nithians to the isles, because by the fifth century BC the Nithians were no more; the only “Nithians” who could then be used were those of Harbortown on Trader’s Isle – but I could not devise a reasonable explanation to have them bringing goblin slaves into Ierendi, so I changed GAZ4’s date.

30 Presence of halflings in the Northern Reaches region was established by the Poor Wizard’s Almanac books, Geographic Overview, under “Leeha” and “Norwold” entries: «Halflings first settled this area 1,500 years ago when kobold invasions drove them out of the Northern Reaches». How and why the halflings were found in the Northern Reaches has never been explained. The story told there follows Usamigaras’ background found in [http ://pandius .com /Codex 1 e .pdf, Codex Immortalis, Book One: Guide to the Immortals (by M. Dalmonte)]. Basically, the halflings continued to live in the Hardanger Mountains’ foothills as allies of the local gnome clans after the destruction of the Nithian Empire freed them from slavery. But life in that region became harder and harder after BC 450, as they were cornered between the giants’ and gnolls’ lands, and their gnome allies started to succumb in front of the kobolds’ onslaught. After another century or so, the surviving halflings followed the leadership of a prophet of the High Heroes (actually Usamigaras in disguise during his path to Immortality) and left the area, migrating north. They would found Leeha, in Norwold, some years later.

31 Their presence in such terrain and lands is described in GAZ4; the Goblin Wars were devised by the author in order to explain the gobins’ spread among various islands, and to add some color the otherwise uneventful centuries between the end of the Nithian Empire and the colonization of the archipelago by the Five Shires and Thyatis (6^th century AC).

37 GAZ9 is quite reticent about who those Alphatians were, and why they were migrating from their homeland; nevertheless, their ties with the Alphatian Empire are never mentioned, so it’s likely that they were part of some minority group which was subject of persecution or discrimination at home (maybe they came from a territory other than the Alphatia proper) – otherwise they would have a difficult time to settle lands on Thyatis’ back. Perhaps, given their aptitude for water- and sea-magic, they were members of an ancient sect of Followers of Water. In the article, I have tried to put together some of these element to clarify the history of their migration in Trader’s Isle. For additional ideas about a possible background of those people, see also [http ://pandius .com /oldalph .html, Old Alphatia History (by F. Defferrari)] and [http ://pandius .com /hydromnc .html, The Lost Art of Hydromancy (by G. Gander)].

38 GAZ9, Dungeon Master’s Booklet, History of the Minrothad Guilds, only says: «In the third century AC, human and elvish cultures finally stumbled upon one another when volcanic activity forced elves to seek out other appropriate settlements in the island chain». Exact year of the elves’ meeting with humans is indicated in the Historical Synopsis of the Minrothad Isles as AC 276. I further elaborated the story of the end of elven isolationism and the encounter with humans.

39 GAZ9, Dungeon Master’s Booklet, History of the Minrothad Guilds, only says that «In the next decade [after AC 276], Minrothians and New Alphatians fought over the slave trading of Alphatian sailors»; this passage can be variously interpreted, the one featured in the article is just one of many possibilities. The exact year of the war is indicated in the Historical Synopsis of the Minrothad Isles as AC 284; I chose to have a previous phase of the conflict in AC 281-283 to increase the importance of this war.

41 The history of the Five Shires is quite empty between 5^th century BC and 5^th century AC, as GAZ8 doesn’t give much insight on this age. If the Hin coasts were so easily hit by Minrothian slave traders, it may be guessed that the 4^th and 5^th centuries AC were a time of internal trouble or crisis in the Shires, whose naval rise should still come by. See also the following paragraph about “The Ierendi Islands in the First Four Centuries AC” for additional causes which favored the expansion of Minrothian slave trade to the Five Shires.

44 See also note 41, above, about troubles in the Five Shires. The reign of Bogdan Ivanovich in Traladara is mentioned also in Threshold no. 1, The History of Karameikos, page 54, and more extensively in [[http ://pandius .com /A _Karameikan _Companion .pdf, A Karameikan Companion (by G. Agosta)].