The Ashenfeld Civil War
The doom of a nation
The Conflict
Prelude
The Crusade of Light had brought ruin to the world. What was supposed to be the moment that the world would be saved, where peace would befall the lands and oceans, was dashed. The world looked in horror, as though Aranel the Pureborn Hero had slain the terrifying vampire, he plummeted to the ground from the high tower, with a thousand thousand daggers in his back. After his broken body was borne away from the front lines, a mass retreat followed, as the warriors of the crusade lost the will to keep going. The dead outnumbered them by billions, and so many died in the retreat. So many simply vanished, that it is said an entire generation didn't die during the crusade, they simply vanished, never to be seen again. The entierty of Nilush was in mourning, and even places as far away as Tajir and Turlan mourned the death of the chosen one. It is said a mass wave of despair, madness, and even suicide followed in the years after. However King Colart the III would get together with Kaizer Franz of Neundorf and Grand Sultana Sameera of Tajir to build the Tomb of the Pure Born Hero. It would stand as a beacon in the Deadlands, on the northern coast, and it is said that with his body laid in there, and the three great symbols of the faiths of each nation, it has kept the monsters at bay. Oh how unfortunate that the new enemies would not come from without, but within for ancient Ashenfeld. It started as whispers, and though King Colart the III tried using the tomb construction to divert public opinion away from anger, it only delayed the inevitable. Entire regions were barren of men and women, and people began to fester rage in their hearts like a tumor. Nobles began to whisper of how King Colart the III could allow such a blunder to occur under his rule, how he was not a lion, but a mouse. People were angry at the church of being so wrong with their predictions and prophecies, which the church at first used the Cult of Itar, Goddess of Fate, as a convient scapegoat. However that only helped a little, but the priests would begin to give conflicting statements to their congregations, that the nobles were to blame; or rather some nobles were to blame. Specific ones at that. Family feuds began to rekindle, ancestral wars and conflicts flared, what were once simple skirmishes between nobles know being looked at for justifications for the dukes and duchessess to make claims and use as casus belli. It is said the war could have been prevented, if not for Calchester. It is said that the dukes and duchessess, plus the king himself were to arrive with a token force of soldiers at the city of Calchester, a large town in the middle of rural Coltherstone. They were to meet, in a simple house in the city and discuss the brewing civil unrest, a last attempt at some peaceful resolution. So the dukes and duchessess met, and though the nation did not know it, they were holding their breath all the time. In a better world, maybe at least the worst could have been avoided. Maybe, peace could have prevailed, all the better to strengthen the border with the Deadlands. Maybe the king would be honored as a saint, and the dukes and duchessess more loyal than ever. Alas, such theorizing is for the naive, those too new to a world that has broken everyone. No one to this day knows how it began, who started the first shouting match, or who set off the first explosion, but in the end, Calchester would suddenly erupt into fighting between the armies, and the leaders of the provinces barely made it out with their lives, as the city was burned to the ground in the fighting, the fire so great some say even the neighborhing provinces could see the smoke. So it was that the leaders all returned to their lands and drummed up their populaces into rigtheous or enraged frenzy. There was no formal declreations of conflict, everyone simply knew
