Age of the Thief-Queens, Part 2 - ~Rei Shaverazei~ - The Wars of the Thief-Queens
Queen Koroaeth died at Son in 12,991 ZS in largely the same manner as her mother Queen Berelezh, surrounded by household, underlings, and trophies of her conquests, and feared by the rest of the world. Also like her mother’s death, no clear succession existed within Retaean custom. Thus began the next part of the Age of the Thief-Queens when pretendent queens made war to exterminate each other in earnest.
In retrospect, this interregnum is the logical evolution of the similar uncertainty that existed after Queen Berelezh’s death. Yet whereas that power vaccuum had caught the Retaea clan-queens and sellsword captains unready and still morally beholden to outmoded loyalties, Koroaeth’s death had given them time to prepare. Upon her death, every governess in control of a city declared herself queen, and every captain became a potential rival. Even as wars were declared among the rulers of Son, Mahyat, Hanazhyana, and Reiefya, assassinations ran rampant, and as soon as one city conquered another, its rulers would fall to infighting, splitting the gains back apart in desparate bids to replace each other. Thus the chronicles record that, over the next two hundred years, no less than ninety queens ruled over the four cities, which stood almost as depopulated ruins among landscapes made barren by constant warfare. Additionally, adventurers from Reiefya attacked and conquered Lasahaua and other islands in the Northern Shattersea, who then raided and demanded tribute from Nivaea further south, thus adding piracy to the Thief-Queens’ list of sins.
All this infighting and outlaw adventure, however, took attention away from Hala sitting high in the Southern Stormshields, where Princess Aniri of Hesenya had fled with her surviving household and retainers, was seeking alliances with the local highland clans, and was organizing itself into a successor Yaro rump state, much as Queen Saeoel of Hanazhyana had tried to do among the jungle marshes east of the Yaro, but from a more secure position.
By 13,200 ZS, the Thief-Queen Wars had solidified into three factions. Queen Lirozh held the Northern Yaro, ruling Mahyat and Son, while Queen Anmeth ruled Hanazhyana and the Midvalley. In the south, a new queen had routed all other rivals to establish secure control over Reiefya, along with tribute from Qabarat, named Vemereth. She gained support and reinforcement among the Shattersea’s petty pirate-queens, and then struck an alliance with Lirozh in the north. Together they conquered Anmeth and partitioned Hanazhyana’s territories, even generously ceding that city to Lirozh. Neither surviving queen held any illusion about trusting the other. Yet Vemereth had already laid plans to suborn Reivunzh, whom Lirozh appointed Hanazhyana’s governor. When Reivunzh rebelled, Vemereth intervened from the south, peeled off Hanazhyana, and then pressed the campaign northward. When she met a captain she could not beat, she bribed them to join her side and assassinated them if they proved unfaithful. Thus by 13,260 her army reached the Yaro’s banks across from Son, where Lirozh chose to flee through the jungle marshes to the Retaea savannah-moors and was slain by the local clanwives. Thus Veremeth achieved Koroaeth’s vision of a united Yaro Empire.
Yet Veremeth’s dream did not end there. Her emissaries rewarded the Retaea clans who had opposed Lirozh. Then she came personally to the Retaea, leading an army, but also bearing gifts. She secured fealty from those clans willing to yield it and alliances from the others wishing to stay free. Yet these arrangements were simply means of securing her flanks and rear, toward her true goal: Lea, who had once been Son’s colony on the shores of Lake Arasene, had stood free since the Age of the Warrior-Queens. With promises to the clans of more booty, Veremeth led her warhost to Lea’s walls. After a siege and lakeborn fights against relief, the invaders breached the walls, and Lea’s queen sued for peace. Veremeth accepted their surrender with Queen Zhyanne as hostage, and then quietly had her murdered.
Thus in 13,266 Vemereth returned to Son and finally took the crown of ~Shazhaeue~ - tyrant-empress, having achieved what only Queen Lanare had done before. The Shattersea pirate-queens sent tokens of fealty, eager for her blessing to their own depredations, while the Qabarat Elves nominally grovelled to maintain their privileges. Yet still Vemereth thirsted, and so turned greedily back north, beyond the Retaea’s moors to the Shemez’s dry expanse, where no army had ever ventured, setting her sight on Ofu-Laubu.
Ofu-Laubu was then another Elven colony with a mixed Elf-Lashunta population, better known from legend than fact as the home of the Thakasa skyriders, and also center of the North’s vast tin-mining trade that had existed since before the Warrior-Queens. Vemereth had learned of it from Qabarat, and thus was doubtlessly aware of the unspoken Elven threat to use Ofu-Laubu’s elfgate to open a new front to any conflict. Conquest of the city upon the message would not only yield untold wealth but would remove Qabarat’s leverage upon her empire’s northern flank. Accordingly, in 13,267, following her successful method, she sent emissaries among the Shemez tribes, and then readied an army at Lea to invade northward in 13,268.
Vemereth succeeded in reaching Ofu-Laubu’s mesa and starting a siege, which lasted two years. Unable to reach the height on which the city stood, she unsuccessfully tried to starve them out. Unwilling to admit defeat, the chronicles record that in 13,270 she was murdered, apparently under order of officers’ despairing of an end to the war. The army then melted away under the Shemez’s drought and heat, fleeing southward or dying in the wasteland.
Although Queen Vemereth had carefully prepared her succession, having designated her daughter Princess Zifiri as her heir, nothing could prepare the empire for her unexpected death and her army’s shameful defeat. While Zifiri held Son, Mahyat, and Hanazhyana, the surviving army captains in Lea rebelled and established an independent queendom, while Vemereth’s younger daughter Rodazh did similarly in Reiefya. Thus the greatest expanse of the empire of the Thief-Queens came to an abrupt end, never to be reached again, setting the stage for a new round of feuds among the successor queendoms.
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