The Great Butte Fort

The Traazorites were not the first to build an empire on the Southern Continent. They took a ready-made empire by force.
Before the Traazorites, the Krai Jan had conquered the varied peoples of the southern continent and were ruling over them. They extended their empire to the Northern continent Isarshael, inhabiting the northern shores of the Shining Sea and pushing the Faeler Urdaggar beyond the Moonshadow Mountains.
Ruling over an empire of so many different peoples and cultures changed them for the better and ill. Their own culture began to crumble as the leadership became more decadent. An upstart group of religious fanatics eventually toppled the Krai Jan.
The battle for the Krai Jan Empire didn’t happen in a day, nor was the destruction of the Krai Jan accomplished in a short period. A terrible war was waged throughout the empire, destroying the Ruby Emperor. Remnants of the Krai Jan military fought on, forcing the Traazorites to contest almost every inch of ground that the Krai Jan had once ruled.
Helping the Krai Jan was their organization of military posts. Ruling such a geographically and culturally diverse empire forced them to build fortified cities within one day of each other for safe traveling and political administration.
Kisndeen or fort city governed local forts. These were situated somewhere in the province that provided geographical protection if rebellion broke out amongst the locals. They were large enough to be cities themselves though their primary purpose was defense and refuge. The Krai Jan supplied them to be places of safety in case the smaller cities fell or if invaders drove across the land.
Tehradim and Kandor City served as these regional hubs of political and military life on the northern continent. Many places on the southern continent served these purposes also: Arajan, Traazordim, and Metazar.
However, the further south one goes on Isarshael, the wilder the land becomes. Cities interspersed with small villages or nomadic tribal land dot the countryside. The more populated areas that the Krai Jan relied upon for their establishment of fortified cities were absent.
The building of large military installations without a local population became more and more ubiquitous in these areas. The forts took advantage of natural geographical formations for protection and became local trading centers and military outposts.
One of the most famous of these forts was the Kaleer Hadyba Kisn, the Great Butte Fort. The Kaleer Hadyba Kisn stood in badlands punctuated by the Western Trade Road. This road extended from the great port city of Arajan to the desert wilderness of Azarim, connecting the entire continent on its western side.
The Kaleer Hadyba Kisn sits over five shots above the rocky eroded landscape below it on a massive butte. The Western Trade Road is in view for miles from its walls.
The entirety of its flat heights was fortified and walled with covered turrets that protected any approach from the land or sky. Only one road wound up the butte’s side, allowing those that needed to approach from the landscape below. Even this road had fortified gates built into the steep sides of the mountain along its way.
Its reddish-brown adobe walls and turrets were visible for miles. It acted as a beacon of protection and strength that the Krai Jan relied upon for millennia. No army breached the fortress walls until the Traazorite insurrection.
Many disparate indigenous communities used the fort as a trading post. They lived in the grasslands to the east and south and the foothills of the mountains to the west. Small tent cities sprang up at the butte’s feet constantly as tradespeople and the nomadic herders of the Karaymeth grasslands brought their goods to the artificially created market.
The humble beginnings of the Kaleer Hadyba Kisn trace to the people of the grasslands whose summer migration routes culminated at the bottom of the Kaleer Hadyba. Long before the days of the Krai Jan, this was a holy place of those people and acted as a boundary to their westward feeding migration. They would worship and celebrate the abundant months there. The Summer Equinox pulled them back towards the more temperate eastern seaboard and the abundant grasses to be found there for their overwinter stays.
In its heyday, the Kaleer Hadyba Kisn became a major population center of central Ryshael. It rivaled some of the smaller cities in the continent’s far more inhabited north and eastern coast. Like so many cities during the Traazorite rebellion, its fall would destroy the fortress and the sprawling city within.
War came slower to the Kaleer Hadyba Kisn than it did to many of Krai Jan’s cities. It took some time for Traazorite forces to invade far enough south before the Kaleer Hadyba Kisn was in danger. For those Krai Jan within the fortress, life went on similarly to what it had before the war broke out. Their geographical proximity to Traazor and the rebellion that brewed within kept them out of harm’s way for some time. But not forever.
Traazorite scouts reached Kaleer Hadyba Kisn in 570. The Traazorites had swept over the eastern coast of Ryshael before attempting to take its interior. By isolating cities, the rebellious Traazorites had ensured that no help would be coming to the beleaguered garrisons inland. This Traazorite tactic worked well as they slowly but surely gained numerical superiority over the Krai Jan.
Over the next five years, the Traazorites aggressively raided the areas around Kaleer Hadyba Kisn. Hoping to avoid direct military action, the Traazorites took an indirect approach to fight the remaining Krai Jan Kisn and their garrisons.
The walled cities around the citadel fell one by one. By 565, the Kaleer Hadyba was the only remaining Kisn in the region.
The indigenous peoples that used to trade in the fortress sided with the Traazorites. They joined in their rebellion to win their freedom and sovereignty.
The population of the fort swelled with soldiers and civilian refugees. For decades it had been collecting water in reservoirs built under the fortress and storing food for the kind of siege that Traazorite strategy had precipitated.
A prolonged siege was not a worry to the Krai Jan defenders. However, with no help on the way, the outcome of the siege was inevitable. The Krai Jan were simply a doomed people.
The Kisn’s Daklos scout unit had been reporting several approaching forces for nearly a week by the end of Daron 565. Knowing they were doomed, the Krai Jan commander and Raznam held a council on Daron 30 to discuss the situation. They decided that they would surrender the fort to approaching Traazorite troops.
Unfortunately, the city was never allowed to capitulate.
At sunrise of Japaron 1, Daklos darkened the skies above the fort. The daklos and their riders terrorized the city and exhausted the defenders along the walls.
The Krai Jan loosed volleys of arrows from the walls at the attacking Traazorites. No matter how many fell, more took their place. The defenders took what cover they could, but there was little respite from the aerial assault.
After an hour of sustained attack, the daklos suddenly cleared the sky. Right behind them, the second wave of larger flying zarn appeared.
They were Kizil Alruzarn, Shadow Terrors. These huge predatory zarn glide high above the badlands on warm air currents using their keen eyesight to spot food. When prey is spotted, the Kizil Alruzarn positions itself between the sun and its food, folds its wings, and dives onto its target. Only at the last moment of its dive does it stretch its wings back out to slow itself before it hits the ground. The sudden approaching shadow is often the last thing seen by its hapless victim.
The Traazorites trained this zarn to carry boulders high into the sky and then drop them onto the city. They had little or no effect on the daunting walls of Kaleer Hadyba Kisn, but they crushed the flimsier buildings behind them.
The first wave of falling rocks was devastating. Many buildings were damaged; others collapsed under the weight of the dropped boulders.
The city fell into panic. The entire population was driven into cover by the swooping daklos and then pounded by crushing stone. It was not long before the city’s leaders ordered a retreat down the one road where they would throw themselves upon the mercy of approaching Traazorite troops.
Alternating attacks by the daklos and Kizil Alruzarn kept the people scurrying for cover for the rest of the day. By sundown, soldiers and civilians had wound their way down the road to the ground beneath to surrender to an amassing army composed of Traazorite and local troops.
The commander of the Traazorite troops denied their surrender. Instead, he sent Velozar mounted troops charging into their midst, slaughtering the soldiers and chasing the would-be refugees back up the road and into the doomed fortress. For two days, the fort was pounded by boulders until resistance ceased to exist.
Near the end of the fight, a local ally of the Traazorite army approached the commander and begged him to stop so the fortress could be rebuilt and re-occupied. The commander, Kaldir Letrip, answered him without even tearing his gaze from the destruction: “The Krai Jan have stained this land with their decadence and false worship. They have sullied it so that even the rocks cry out for vengeance against their abomination. Let this be a lesson to any who would defy Runah and His Chosen Ones. There will be no surrender, no mercy, and no tomorrow for those that stand against the only god that people need.”
Even after resistance in the fortress ceased, the bombardment continued until the Kisn was a rock-strewn rubble pile atop the butte. Eventually, even the walls began to crumble under the constant onslaught of stone. Letrip left just enough of it standing to act as a visual reminder of his warning. He moved on to the next Krai Jan holdout without even performing rites for the dead.
To this day, the ruin of Kaleer Hadyba Kisn remains high on the butte. The Traazorites have never shown any interest in rebuilding it, and no local dares go near it. They believe it to be cursed and haunted by the spirits of those killed during the battle.
These days the only people brave enough to get near Kaleer Hadyba Kisn are treasure hunters, those intellectually interested in the Krai Jan culture, and organizations such as the Archivists.
The Western Road is still very much in use by the Traazorite military. It is patrolled daily and sees traffic from supply convoys heading both south and north. A small outpost sits near the Kaleer Hadyba that acts as an overnight stop for patrols and convoys.

Type

Fortress