Scattered War

The Scattered War was a series of violent conflicts between the primarily human Kingdom of Drassig and the primarily elven Syngorn. The war began in approximately 504 PD following growing tensions between the elves and humans of west-central Tal'Dorei (called Gwessar at the time), and lasted for 32 years, ultimately ending in approximately 536 PD with the Drassigs' defeat and the founding of the Tal'Dorei Empire.

Background
Within the century following The Calamity, elves who had sheltered in the Feywild settled in southern Gwessar upon their return to the Material Plane. Led by a sorceress named Yenlara, they founded the city-state of Syngorn in the Verdant Expanse.

A few hundred years later, humans who survived the Calamity in Issylra sailed east, landing on Gwessar's Bladeshimmer Shoreline, and founded the port city of O'Noa as well as the city of Emon. The humans' disregard for the forests of the Verdant Expanse, in their drive to build their cities, led to brewing tensions with the elves.

At the same time those claiming to be of noble birth began to rise to power in Emon, and corruption ran rampant in the city. Eventually, Warren Drassig, one of these corrupt self-proclaimed nobles, was able to take over the city and establish the totalitarian Kingdom of Drassig. As part of his power grab, he ended all ties with the elves of Syngorn, instead choosing to ally with wealthy dwarven stronghold of Kraghammer to the north in the Cliffkeep Mountains. Yenlara's grandson traveled to Emon in the hopes of a diplomatic resolution, but the agents of Drassig immediately arrested him, then tortured and killed him, setting off the war.

Warren's conquest and early resistance
Warren Drassig began by taking advantage of the isolation of the scattered human and wood elf settlements in the Verdant Expanse, Cliffkeep Mountains, and Dividing Plains which permitted his forces to infiltrate, attack, and conquer without warning. This served to both expand the boundaries of his kingdom, and quash potential uprisings before they began. This phase of conquest lasted nine years. The elves of Syngorn built the hidden Emerald Outpost in the Daggerbay Mountains to keep an eye on the growing empire.

A resistance of elves, humans, and other races (notably, Stoutheart clan halflings and some half-orcs) had, however, managed to grow during this time. In around 513 PD, Drassig and his forces arrived in the abandoned village of Torthil following rumors of refugees being sheltered there. In truth, Yenlara and her forces were waiting there for an ambush. As the king made his victory speech in the town square to his army, he was killed by the arrows of the wood elves and allied human rebels.

The reign of Neminar and rise of Zan
The Kingdom of Drassig's rule passed to his eldest son, Neminar Drassig, "The Blackfingered". Neminar was a necromancer who used his abilities to mutate and enhance those in his armies with powers granted by Bane, the Strife Emperor. He was also a vengeful man, and returned with his magically-enhanced army to Torthil to execute the rebels who had killed his father and burn the village to the ground.

Zan Tal'Dorei, a human member of the rebel alliance living in Syngorn, gained a reputation as a strong leader and warrior during Neminar's reign. She was able to regroup the resistance, flagging in the wake of the second attack in Torthil, and was able to lure Neminar and his forces into the forests of the Verdant Expanse. The people of Syngorn, with their ties to the Feywild and their familiarity with the terrain, were able to use this to their advantage. The Drassig forces wasted their resources attacking an illusory duplicate of the Shifting Keep, leaving them open to ambush by Zan's forces. The rebels killed Neminar and his mutated army. While the war did not end here, this represented a significant turning point.

Fall of the Drassigs
In the final years of the war following Neminar's death, Warren's second son Trist Drassig took the throne. He had neither his father's military prowess and ability to inspire his troops, nor his brother's magical abilities, and the tides had turned against him. Zan's army, after winning several battles, was able to corner the remains of the Drassig forces against the Cliffkeep Mountains north of Westruun. From there, the rebels chased Trist's troops into a valley in the Emerald Highlands, in what would be the final battle of a long and brutal war, known as the Battle of the Umbra Hills.

The Drassig forces included fiends through pacts Trist had made with the demon lord Graz'zt in the hopes of regaining advantage. The greatest mages of the realm all fought in this battle, and many lives were lost on both sides, but Zan was finally able to kill Trist, and with him, the Drassig bloodline and the realm they had claimed.

Conclusion
The scars of the war, both physical and political, still remained in Tal'Dorei for centuries afterward. Plants in the Emerald Highlands still grow in black and singed as though by the blood of the fiends who died in the final battle of the Scattered War, so that the area came to be called the Umbra Hills, the nearby valley is still known as the Grey Valley for the way the energies released in that battle killed and petrified the forest there, and the city of O'Noa, the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the war, was left in ruins, the land and bay around it cursed by the arcane energies released there. It took many years for Kraghammer to make amends with the Tal'Dorei Empire, given their alliance with the Drassig family. Indeed, the Wardens of Syngorn and the Houses of Kraghammer remain on strained terms.

Society, however, slowly recovered. A council of leaders was convened by those still in the Verdant Expanse, but the surviving people of the region wished for a single ruler, as they were used to. Zan Tal'Dorei was nominated as the first Sovereign - a title she chose, rather than crowning herself Queen or King. Despite this, the realm that was named for her came known as the Tal'Dorei Empire. She and her council turned their efforts towards ending the corruption in Emon.

The terrifying incursion of the spawn of the Betrayer Gods at the Battle of the Umbra Hills made an impression on the mages who fought there; the Divine Gate clearly did not keep them at bay. To prevent runaway incursions of the kind that marked the great mistakes of the Age of Arcanum, the high enchanter of Syngorn, Yurek Windkeeper, convened the most capable and trusted mages to form a private society called the Arcana Pansophical. The group unilaterally enforces a prohibition on necromancy, the use of magic for wanton murder and destruction, and other arcane dangers, and has endured through at least 836 PD.

But the weakened and divided state of the realm following the Scattered War was noticed by the white dragon Skysunder, a scout from the Frostfell. Less than two years into Sovereign Zan's reign, Errevon the Rimelord took advantage of this vulnerability and launched a terrible invasion of the continent. The several years of tyranny and struggle that followed are known as the Icelost Years.