SourceMaterial-First Fairy War
This is Avlis Source Material
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The First Fairy WarThe Fairy War took place in early Avlissian history between the fairies created by O'Ma and those created by Titania. The war began slowly and escalated into a serious conflict between the gods themselves. Below is a timeline depicting the events of the first half of the war, which lasted a century. Since the time of The Second Fairy War, this war is sometimes referred to as The First Fairy War. In earlier versions of history, it was simply The Fairy War or The Great Fairy War.
199 P.O.D. – A band of O’Ma supporters wipes out a forest community of Titanian fairies in the southern part of the Jinnlands region of Dobrekan. The band was made up mostly of half-fey, but not supported officially by the church of O’Ma. However, one of the supporters was a half-sylph ex-Templar of O’Ma named Lerin Fenth. Though he had no mandate from the Church of O’Ma to attack a Titanian village, he never denied accusations to that effect, and word spread of the attack. 199 P.O.D. – The Titanian Council is outraged by the attack by Lerin Fenth. They put a bounty on him and begin assembling paid adventuring parties, i.e. mercenaries, to go out to collect the bounty. 199 P.O.D. -- Lerin Fenth succeeds at three more attacks on Titanian fairy villages, and also allegedly begins harassing and attacking some of the more solitary Titanian races, i.e. nymphs, dryads. Mercenaries seeking Lerin Fenth create several incidents in O’Ma villages when following reports of his whereabouts. Mercenaries searching for Lerin Fenth decimate at least one O’Ma fairy village in this process. The Church of O’Ma continues to disavow Fenth’s actions, but the continued hate crimes and acts of vandalism against O’Ma’s interests by unseelie fairies starts to turn public support among O’Ma’s faithful in favor of Lerin Fenth. At least one major cleric of O’Ma expresses public support for Fenth by the end of the year and calls on the Church of O’Ma to embrace him.
197 P.O.D. – Over the next two years, numerous vocal copycats of Fenth sprung up around the continent and began attacking Titanian villages. Usually these attacks were in response to unseelie acts of hate against O’Ma fairies, but sometimes they were unprovoked. Also, by this time, seelie support for their unseelie kin’s action was growing, and violence began to spread. The Titanian Council met to discuss better ways to combat these crimes in an organized fashion. Suggestions were made about creating armies of fey to attack O’Ma’s children, but these ideas were quickly disregarded because they were unrealistic: the Titanian fey were far outnumbered by O’Ma’s fey, and both species of fairy were scattered around the continent too thinly for any sort of concerted attack by a military force to have any lasting effect. The decision was made to recruit groups of adventurers and mercenaries led by fey who had direct council liveries. The groups would act as rapid response units to combat any areas where O’Ma supporters attacked Titanians. 190 P.O.D. – Titanian mercenary groups spend the next several years responding to attacks by O’Ma supporters. However, this mandate quickly becomes corrupted, primarily through unseelie council members directing their livery groups to make unprovoked attacks on O’Ma fairies, particularly focusing on half-fey. The general public of O’Ma fey are outraged by the violence and loss of life and demand that the Church of O’Ma be responsible for mounting some kind of response. The leaders of the Church meet and decide that they have no choice but to create rapid response groups of their own to combat the violence. 180 P.O.D. – After ten years of back and forth skirmishes between mercenary groups led by fey, the strategy in the war shifts. Both sides identify the clergy of the other side as the main organizers of the violence and begin direct attacks on one another. These attacks begin to employ actual clergy members in the fighting, as well as fey warriors in addition to the now traditional mercenary groups. Temples of Titania and O’Ma are now considered ground zero targets for the other sides’ attacks. 178 P.O.D. – Although she is not against the principle of the war, Titania is troubled by the manner in which the unseelie members of the Council forced her hand. She knows she is unable to take full control of the Council and the war as long as those members have the ability to withdraw their worship, causing her influence on Avlis to wane. Moreover, if O’Ma got angry enough, he could in theory revoke her power and access to Avlis completely. Secretly, Titania holds a meeting with some trusted seelie Council members and devises a plan to cement her influence on Avlis and free herself of the unseelie blackmail and threat of O’Ma’s revocation. The plan calls for obtaining O’Ma’s Mantle and taking his place as one of The Nine. This victory would enable her to chastise her unseelie kin, and also it would have the added bonus of giving her the power to end the war by eliminating O’Ma’s fairies from Avlis. 175 P.O.D. – For the next three years, Titania assembles a vast array of seelie fairy warriors and assorted allies on the Plane of Faerie where they cannot be seen by prying eyes. On queue, this army is then transported en masse to the Plane of Elysium, where O’Ma resides. They quickly set up a beachhead there and cover the arrival of Titania’s full godly essence on the plane. Quickly after that, the army lead personally by Titania in her true form attacks O’Ma’s realm. The two gods begin a bitter battle. 174. P.O.D. – After being attacked, O’Ma quickly revokes Titania’s influence on Avlis, which cuts off her clerics’ ability to cast spells. The war efforts on the ground turn in favor of O’Ma’s side. Interestingly, the clerics of Titania find a new method to cast spells soon after. As the two gods fight on the Plane of Elysium, the blood from their wounds rains down onto Avlis, and some ingenious clerics of Titania figure out how to use her blood as a conduit for casting spells. This ignites a race to collect this scarce resource. As O’Ma’s forces find the blood, they make it unavailable for Titanians to use it against them, and as the Titanians find it, they stockpile it for strategic use in battles. Nevertheless, the blood of Titania is still scarce and not widely found. Some of her clerical followers become dismayed at their loss of spells and begin to turn away from Titania. 170 P.O.D. – As the fighting between O’Ma and Titania’s forces rages on Avlis and on the plains of Elysium, mysterious rumors begin to circulate about a new group of fey that are able to cast spells. Among their numbers are members of both fairy species, and the rumors were quickly clarified that none of these new clerics are drawing energy from either of O’Ma’s underage godling children, Dra’Nar or Dre’Ana. 168 P.O.D. – The fighting continues to rage, and the rumors of these new clerics grow. Eyewitness accounts tell of a being that rose out of Titania and O’Ma’s blood mixing on the ground. He calls himself “Skern”, and believes strongly in ending the war between his “parents”. Former clerics of Titania who are unable to cast spells begin to turn to Skern and his promises of peace and power, since many of these clerics felt abandoned by their Queen. Several groups of O’Ma’s clerics also turn to Skern in the hopes of ending the bloodshed, feeling that their god was foolishly drawn into a long war that could not be won with the current guerilla strategy. Later that year, Skern was found by Mikon and ascended to godhood. His newly minted clerics begin actively preaching an end to the war. 165 P.O.D. – The efforts of Skern are not tremendously successful. Though the new deity is steadily winning converts, he is not having any wide-ranging effects on the Churches of O’Ma and Titania. Moreover, attacks on O’Ma’s temples sometimes occur within heavily populated cities, like Fejraka, Kairuet, Centerpoint, and even Le’Or T’Nanshi, and the governments of Dobrekan, T’Nanshi, and The Kurathene Republic are becoming increasingly annoyed at the collateral damage to their civilians and livestock in this war. Thus, they convene a summit and make a unanimous decision to oust all fairy-kin from major populated cities, requiring them to leave the walls and dwell out in the wilderness beyond the city limits. The newly founded Justicars of Toran, who had already adopted this policy two decades prior in Toran Shaarda, place themselves at the service of any other major city that requires their help in repelling the fairies, in order to enforce this edict. 164 P.O.D. – At this point, O’Ma’s forces on the ground are winning the war and have a tremendous upper hand on Titania’s mostly impotent clergy. Mercenary groups from Titania are still making devastating attacks against O’Ma fairy holdings, but attacks are on the decline on Avlis, even though the battle in the heavens still shows no signs of a winner. Distraught at being expelled from the cities, the Church of O’Ma decides to consolidate its operations in the orcish nation of Dobrekan, particularly in the Jinnlands and Jecheran Morass regions. They reasoned that those areas held the greatest concentration of Titanian resistance and a final push into those areas could bring the conflict to a close. The Titanian Council votes to petition Titania to find allies in the battle. 163 P.O.D. – Sages in the employ of Titania begin work on a plan to turn the war around by enabling Titania to bring powerful allies into the fights on Elysium and Avlis. The group of sages quietly hides in an unnamed glade in the forests of T’Nanshi, away from the major fighting now raging in Dobrekan. 161 P.O.D. – Remaining parts of Titania’s forces on Avlis fight O’Ma to a standstill, trying to hold out from oblivion. Meanwhile, the sages in T’Nanshi finish their ingenious plan to turn the tide of the war: By manipulating the demiplane of Faerie, a chunk of land from The Prime can be swallowed up and taken up into the demiplane. It is one way that demiplanes increase their landmass when their populations grow. If the process could be stopped midway, the chunk of land could theoretically exist in both planes, allowing creatures and deific influence between the two planes to be shared. In effect, the shared land would act as a bridge between the two realms. Over the past two years, the Sages and their counterparts in Faerie worked out such a spell, and casted it on their little-known patch of land in western T’Nanshi. 160 P.O.D. – Waiting on the other side on the Plane of Faerie was a host of Titanian reinforcements. Not only that, but Titania was now able to bring her influence back to her clerics on Avlis through the bridge, and she did. She also brought over the influence of her husband, Oberon, and daughter, Verenestra, who began sending minions to take an active role in the war. Suddenly, O’Ma’s forces found themselves outnumbered. 155 P.O.D. – After several years of devastating losses for O’Ma’s forces, his children Dre’Ana and Dra’Nar finally come of age and begin calling to clerics of their own. They also join their father in the battle in Elysium. This increases O’Ma’s numbers and allows the tide to become more even. Meanwhile, the elves of T’Nanshi mobilize to contain the fighting around their populated areas so it does not affect their civilians near the newly dubbed Faerie Bridge (see Fairy Gardens), referring to the glade in western T’Nanshi that Titania’s sages created.
Timeline → Age of the Gods | Time of Dawning | Fairy War | Great War | Age of Immortals | Age of Darkness | Age of Strife | Age of Rebirth (Ongoing) |
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