The Week of the Swelling Sea

The Conflict

Prelude

The lighthouse town of Tiriene has always had a gift for attracting more attention than its diminutive exterior would demand. Many believe the town was cursed by its neighbors in Silk Mist after a ritual gone wrong, or that the taint of The Impetus runs through the sea and into the town's groundwater. Whatever the case may be, Tiriene has been surrounded by a supernatural aura since its days as a Colum satellite. In the year 658, a strange mist surrounded the town and led to a litany of disappearances that threatened to undo the entire region, but was stopped by the creation of the lighthouse. Ever since that day the water murmured and seethed, waiting for the day it could retake the shore and creep further onto land.

Battlefield

The town of Tiriene became the site of more than a hundred disappearances over 9 days. After those days had passed, on Mirtul 20th, 1095, the undead corpses of Tiriene's townsfolk shambled forth from the tide and began their siege.
They began in the residential districts of the town, killing and converting an estimated 2,100 people into their undead ranks. After destroying virtually every coastal residence, they surrounded the guild hall of The Tiriene Dutymen, the armed services that protected the town. They did not attack the hall, the army idled outside to keep the Dutymen stuck indoors while approximately half of their undead forces left to attack the lighthouse.
Luckily, the then Dutycaptain Ashley Moztel sent for a caravan of adventurers from every corner of Terisirae at the first sign of disappearances. Having grown up in the area, she was familiar with the old stories and feared the worst.
The group she hired was able to circle around the undead horde and make their way to the lighthouse, stopping the army from destroying the most important building in the region. Moztel reports that the adventurers found a triad of Kuo-toa attempting to deconstruct the magical focusing crystal powering the lighthouse and swiftly defeated them.

Conditions

Ashley Moztel, as well as the adventurers she hired, suspected that the attack was far too strategic for an army of corpses to accomplish alone and that their knowledge of Tiriene was too detailed for the Kuo-toa to have gathered without being sighted. One of the adventurers, a mystic mentalist, scoured the mind of one of the possessed bodies and discovered a name, "Ralmorasca".
After the lighthouse had been secured, the same party of adventurers discovered that much of Craftsworthy Farm, a large farm in the area that belonged to a family that had lived in the area for generations. It was more than a coincidence that the first disappearance was Briggs Craftsworthy, and that it was reported by his daughter Dana. When confronted with this information, she broke, speaking of a wise and ancient creature she encountered when she was a young girl swimming in the sea. Its presence stayed with her all her life. Its all-seeing eye followed her wherever she went and pointed her away from harm. She tried for years to find it again, but never succeeded, so instead, she turned to darker magic that could contact the creature. Sacrifices in its name for a moment to speak. Summoning runes that brought its mist back to the town.
The same mystic mentalist was able to find images of the creature embedded in Dana's mind, images of Ralmorasca. She was under its control and had been instructed how to best weaken the town, mentored in how to most easily make way for the invasion. With the answers they sought, Moztel executed Dana Craftsworthy, the final death in the Week of the Swelling Sea.

Outcome

Tiriene, once a town of several thousand, was reduced to so few people a census was impossible to take. The survivors all fled the area north, including Ashley Moztel and her band of adventurers who left seeking an audience with Queen Cassandra. Their goal was to get troops and funding at the moment where Ralmorasca's forces were also weakened, to rebuild the barrier at the ocean and prevent whatever invasion came next. It was during this journey that Ashley met Veren.

Aftermath

The region was never the same after the confrontation with Ralmorasca's forces. Those who now live by the coast do so with the understanding that there is a real and potentially imminent threat just under the tide, and they endlessly prepare for its arrival.
Geopolitically, the mass evacuation from Tiriene led to The Taking of Bearingpool and eventually The Three Crown War, an event that radically altered the region and disolved The Commonwealth into many disparate and independent city-states. Critics of this dissolution say the lack of unity only gives the creatures of the deep more opportunity to invade, however many citizens in these new independent places were more than happy to accept that risk if it meant removing The Assembly from power.

Conflict Type

Siege

Start Date

Mirtul 11th, 1095

Ending Date

Mirtul 21st, 1095

Conflict Result

Although the armies of the dead were defeated, Tiriene was entirely ruined and its population was reduced to some 300 people