Valamo-Rozsan Wars

A soldier of the Volgirre, one of the elitemost reigments
of the New Rozsan military complex.

The Valamo-Rozsan Wars were a series of conflicts between the New Rozsan Empire and proto-Valamon during Waking Materia's Middle and Late First Age of Man, between the approximate dates of I.M. 1550 to 1920, punctuated with periods of peace. They can be generalized as a series of attempted expansions by the Empire into the then-free city-states of Valamon City and its neighbours, prior to their unification. The conflicts lead to an increase in territory for the hegemoniacal New Rozsans, though several attacks were rebuffed with astounding alacrity by the Valamonians despite inferior numbers, fewer magical adepts and a lack of their own landed pantheon.

It is during these wars that the Valamonians would acquire their reputation as fierce warriors, as would furthermore raise up some ascendant heroes of their own, among them Thunderlord Ronom and the First Ruskandireij.

Pre-History

The conflicts began some 900 years after the initial colonization of Waking Materia by the New Rozsans and their Colonial Gods, arriving from their home plane of Rozsa. The origins of Valamon remain obscure: they were likely either Rozsan expatriots who escaped the necrocracy for a life of freedom or were simply a league of traders, pirates and settlers from disparate planes, drawn to Waking Materia by the lucrative Dye Wars of previous centuries. They likely existed for some centuries prior to the first invasions, ignored by the Empire due to a focus on superior real estate and warring with the rival Kelpeater Empire of Lorgain.

Thunderlord Ronom of the Stormlords, ascendant hero
of the Valamo-Rozsan wars.

The Front

Initially dismissed as country bumpkins with no history of strategy, no magical acuity and no ascendant pantheon of their own, the Valamonians were considered easy targets by the Empire, and initially only small numbers of personnel were diverted from the Kelpeater fronts to affect its capture.

This would prove a dire error. Valamonian forces were said to disappear into snow flurries at will. They were seen as near-impossible to root out of their mountain strongholds, and indeed could not even be found at all if they didn't want to be. The locals would engage invaders on ice and snow using skis and skates, speeding into their opponents so rapidly that they eliminated the Empire's magical and technological superiority almost completely, most of which required range.

It was eventually decided the Valamonians had indeed discovered some sort of magic of their own:

"They were the scariest mages we'd ever faced. No, mages is the wrong word... witches maybe. Bog-wading, snow-breathing witches, with crooked teeth and bits of bark in their hair. Get 'em in a forest or mountain pass and you won't see them 'till they're on you. And tough as the rocks they leap out from. All in all a miserable experience."

— Dreamstone anecdotes of an unnamed New Rozsan soldier
The Dai'an Savvarchives, Nurin

The returns would continue to diminish for the Empire as Valamon united as one nation, lead by an ascendant God-Queen, aspected to the Lady of the Mountain, whom they named the "Ruskandireij" or "Landschosen". Valamonian defenses grew even more organized, and now with a certain flavour of earth-aspected divine power. Pushes by the New Rozsans would continue until nearly the second millennium I.M., but were increasingly surgical and short-lived, until the two nations eventually settled into a tense truce.