A war which lasted but an hour. Many of the residents of the Realm of Pi see this as only legend but the result has scared the central planet of Pi and is held in the memories of the oldest dragons. It is also known as the Hour War.
The Conflict
Prelude
The build up to the war saw a nation desperate for resources, pressed by a famine, and out of options. The Empire was once said to be a magnificent place. Filled with many wild creatures, now only remembered in the oldest of legends, and the height of civilization as Pi has ever known. Rival to them was the small Kindom of Dur. Surrounded by mountains, Dur had little in the way of farmland or even population, though its population exceeded what could be sustained by normal means in the lands. Forced to trade with the Empire for many centuries, the King Razul grew tired of his Kingdom's reliance on the Empire. The Empire had not seen the need to take control of Dur, as it was small and peacable with the Empire. So it was that Razul contacted the shadow god Rizzleforth, a god of pestilence. Rizzleforth promised Razul a way to bring the Empire to its knees, a blight across all their crops. He even offered a way to keep the crops of Dur safe and improve their yield. A gift at that for Rizzleforth asked for nothing in return. Razul was not a fool though and sought a way to keep his prize once the Empire learned of his lands immunity to the blight. He called upon an ally of Rizzleforth, his sister, Dizzlefroth. Dizzlefroth offered Razul another gift. A scroll that once read would obliterate an army.
As predicted the Empire struck at Dur looking to find some measure to stave off the death of millions by starvation. Their armies were numbered in the hundred of thousands, more than there were people in Dur. It would be a quick fight, the Empire sure to win. Still the Empire did not fight unfairly. They offered Dur the chance to join them to not loose any life on the field of battle. Such things were denied. So the armies of the Empire strode across the land to the borders of Dur. There they were met by the army of Dur, dwarfed to the point of being nearly invisible.
The army of Dur had but one job, to hold the forces of the Empire for as long as needed. The only pass capable of seeing so many travel through it had been fortified by the Durians and the waves of the Empire crashed against it. Still the land was uneven and rocky, filled with many tress, and other obstacles.
The day is said to have been rainy. Still in the summer no amount of rain would have created much more than an annoyance to either army.
As the forces of the Empire hit the fortifications of Dur, hope seemed lost to the Durians. Still they fought, died and held the wall for far longer than the Empire would have guessed, even longer than the Durians had hoped for. For an hour the walls were attacked, the Empire throwing their soldiers at the walls till the bodies made a ramp across the walls. Still they were not quick enough. Razul had counted on such an occurrence. He stood on a tall tower made hastily out of wood with only the barest of protections, both from the fight and the weather. There he had been reading out loud the scroll that Dizzlefroth had gave him. Being many many meters long it took the whole hour for Razul to read it outloud. Still he managed before the wall fell. With the last word spoken, an energy built in Razul. He magically knew how to aim the spell and shot it at the forces of the Empire. A bolt of seemingly lightning sparked out of his hand and into the first of the invaders. From there it spread like a chain through all of the army of the Empire. After a moment the lightning faded and all stood sick for a moment, singed at worse by the spell. Then they fell to the ground dead. No screams, no noise at all, not even a gasp of breath from a dying man. Yet the spell did not just kill the army, no it had connected to all of the family of each soldier, killing them too, and moved on from there passing through family to family. None of the empire was spared. On that day, in that hour, millions died. But the spell had a cost, and the king of Dur died from the spell as well, and then his wife and son. So the spell spread through Dur killing over half the population. In but a minute a war had been won and species had been wiped from the Realm of Pi. Only the dragons, and those left in Dur survived.
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