Chondathan History

Dungeons & Dragons Campaign Accessory: Forgotten Realms: Races of Faerun

Chondathans trace their ancestry back to the Twelve Cities of Swords in ancient Jhaamdath, founded around -5800 DR by the great warrior-king Jhaam. Jhaamdath lay north of the Chondalwood along the south shore of the Vilhon Reach, with outposts stretching from the Dragon Coast to the Akanal. Only the great Chondalwood defied Jhaamdath’s dominion, the human armies and axes held at bay for many years by the wood elves of Nikerymath.
In -5032 DR, Jhaamdath clashed with the Kingdoms of Mir and Coramshan over control of the Lake of Steam, precipitating the unification of Calimshan. After several decades of fighting, Calimshan and Jhaamdath agreed to a truce in -5005 DR. In the millennia that followed, Jhaamdath sank into stagnation, its inhabitants becoming increasingly xenophobic and withdrawn. Jhaamdath even fell under the sway of Unther from roughly -1500 DR to -1069 DR. Not until -276 DR did Jhaamdath’s inhabitants turn outward once again, after Jhaamdath’s last warlord seized power and called for a building of a strong navy to sail out upon the Inner Sea and conquer new lands. Such ship-building required the felling of many trees, a move that reignited war between Jhaamdath and elven-ruled Nikerymath and led to the elven realm’s destruction.
Seeking vengeance, four High Mages of Nikerymath unleashed a gargantuan tidal wave that roared up Jhaamdath’s bay, smashing the Twelve Cities of Swords and reshaping the topography into what is known today as the Vilhon Reach. The actions of the High Mages were not without consequence, however, for their Art precipitated the fall of the sea elven empire of Aryselmalyr and unleashed an inexorable tide of humanity that eventually displaced most of the elven realms of northcentral Faerun.
Many of those who survived the Year of the Furious Waves (-255 DR) set out to colonize lands that would later become known as Impiltur, Thesk, and the Vast, in a vast tide of pragmatic prospectors, elf-hating soldiers, merchants, and a sprinkling of peaceful scholars and farmers. After occupying much of the northcentral Inner Sea region, the descendants of Jhaamdath began migrating westward from Impiltur in the year 1 DR, settling the Dalelands and the northern shore of the Dragonmere. The latter group founded the Forest Kingdom of Cormyr in 26 DR under the rule of House Obarskyr.
Back in the Vilhon Reach, those who remained established new cities around the year 50 DR, including Iljak, Mussam, Samra, and Arrabar. After suffering yet another plague and again incurring the wrath of the elves of Chondalwood, the cities united to form Chondath in 139 DR. Chondath has existed ever since, although it was reduced to little more than a collection of city-states during the Elfblade Stand of 877 DR and the Rotting War of 900-902 DR.
A third wave of Chondathan migration occurred in the 380s DR, when settlers from Chondath established the colonies of Chancelgaunt (later Selgaunt) and Chondathan (later Saerloon) along the coast of what would later become the Merchant Kingdom of Sembia. Hostilities with the elves of Cormanthyr led to defeat at the Battle of Singing Arrows (884 DR) and led Chondath to renounce the governance of its far-flung colonies in the aftermath of the Rotting War. This in turn led to the founding of Sembia, the Land of the Silver Raven, in 913 DR.
Traders from Sembia and, to a lesser extent, Cormyr and the Dalelands continued west and northwest in smaller numbers in the centuries that followed, spreading Chondathan culture and language from Tethyr to the Savage Frontier. The rise of Silverymoon as a center of magical study in 659 DR precipitated the migration of a small, but influential, number of Chondathans to Silverymoon and established Chondathan culture and language in a land that had only been reached by a handful of Chondathan merchants until that time.
Today, Chondathan culture and language dominates much of central and western Faerun. Thorass, the alphabet that arose from interactions between Jhaamdath and the Old Kingdoms of Calimshan, is commonly employed as the alphabet of most human tongues. Moreover, Common, the trade language of Faerun, is simply a modern version of Thorass (“Old Common”), which in turn was largely based on Jhaamdathan (“Old Chondathan”) and Alzhedo, the language of Calimshan. While the Calishites, and the Imaskari, the Mulan, and the Netherese may have each forged the greatest human empires of Faerun in their day, it is the Chondathans whose culture now predominates, an empire spread by commerce and coin, not by sword or staff.