HOT SPOTS & CRISIS ZONES OF LANDEN



THE TRANSFEYL: ORIGINS & RECENT HISTORY

All conflict in the Transfeyl traces its origins to its earliest days. When the Vree
first arrived in Landen and founded Feyl Donok, the rich farmland known as the Transfeyl
seemed a far-flung frontier. Its first settlers were clerics and monks founding temples
and monasteries of competing deities and disciplines; as aggressive merchants and
dispossessed peasants and wizards moved in, the Transfeyl began to seem like the gateway
to the rest of Landen, and its own country in effect. Its people remained officially
loyal to the faraway authority of Ving Raute, but they grew increasingly independent in
spirit--without, however, forming a firm consensus identity.

The founding of Feyl Claudia in 348 excited the Transfeylers, and when Exley declared its
independence from Ving Raute in 357, they seized on the moment to crown their own
first king, King Sallan. Unfortunately, they did not command military assets like Exley's,
and Feyl Donok quickly occupied half their territory. In response, the Transfeylers
sought the aid of Claudia--and she in turn occupied the remaining half.

After a short war fought entirely in the Transfeyl, the two great powers agreed to a truce.
By its conditions, neither state could recognize the independence of Transfeyl nor lay
permanent claim to the half they occupied, and the capital city (at the time, Bralcion)
was partitioned with a fence. One half fell under Donokian jurisdiction, the other under
Claudian, and a large mansion in the middle was designated the jurisdiction of King Sallan,
who was charged with the reponsibility of acting as liaison between the competing powers.
This specific arrangement lasted 24 years, until the rule of Sallan III (the Great),
when finally both occupiers withdrew and Transfeyl could rule itself for a time. But
the pattern of future events had been set.

More recently...

The years 855 to 897 were an era of frequently changing government for Transfeyl.
Conspiracies, invasions and assassinations provided 21 kings in that time. By 897,
this chaos had so weakened the Transfeyl that a short messy war enabled its neighbors
Feyl Claudia, Feyl Donok and Garonlok all to seize enormous chunks of its territory
as their own. Transfeyl was again carved up by its neighbors.

Only a small autonomous section remained, led by the boyish King Batik, a "New Royalty"
ruler of dubious lineage (an obsession of many Transfeylers). Hated by the Old
Royalists among his own people (who wanted a man named Slarman for king), and pressured
by Merkiant, King Batik had become obliged to request the protection of a Garonlokian
garrison--after which he ruled essentially under house arrest in the Royal Keep in
Provise. In 910, Old Royalist agents assassinated Batik, hoping to install Slarman
from the proven bloodline, but the agents had been misled by their shady backers in
Merkiant, who then seized the murder as pretext for a lightning-quick invasion.

With the pretense of Transfeyler autonomy officially erased by Garonlok, Feyl Donok
counter-invaded and war was on. From 910 to 912, horrible conflict ravaged the Transfeyl.
Claudia lost its holdings quickly but continued by cavalry action to hinder the security
of the other warring parties, hoping to re-establish control over the westernmost section,
where the ancient Temple Claudia stood. Kilbatten entered the fray but did not function
as more than a nuisance. No single force appeared to be clearly superior in the conflict
until 912, when three events turned the tide:

1) The March of Vreconok. While the main Donokian army was busy all across the
Transfeyl, Claudia made a surprise attack straight for under-defended Ving Raute. The attack
was repelled, but only at the walls of Ving Raute itself. Needing to preserve the balance
of power in the region for her own sake, Vreconok then assembled an army on her border--
which did not cross it, but which did convince Garonlok's generals that they could not
afford to stab at Ving Raute--not unless they wanted to lose half the Transfeyl behind them.
Garonlok took this as a sign, too, that success ultimately would require taking on Vreconok
as well as Donok, Claudia and Kilbatten--a bigger war than they'd hoped for. So, altering
their strategy to a scorched-earth one of demoralizing the Transfeylers, they began…

2) The Razing of the Royal Keep. The Garonlokian general Grott ordered his army to
reduce it to rubble--an inept order that sparked hateful violence from the ordinary people
of Provise. Grott was then forced to put down a riot, cease destruction of the Keep, and
withdraw from the city--exposing his army to Claudian cavalry and Donokian archers. And the
reinforcements he requested siphoned off troops who had been protecting the Transfeyl town
of Yergo, which led to…

3) The Massacre at Yergo. A particularly ruthless Donokian general named Halber
rounded up and slaughtered in cold blood all grown men in Yergo. Yergo, a notorious
hotbed of Old Royalist sympathies, was home to the assassins of King Batik, and to Slarman
himself (who was taken prisoner). Declan VI of Feyl Donok immediately removed Halber
from power and imprisoned him for this crime--but Declan was no fool; he also recognized
the massacre freed him to install a new king in Transfeyl without immediate threat from
the Old Royalists. (Slarman himself later died "accidentally" while being transferred
to the peace conference…)

At the first battlefield victory to follow Yergo, a minor skirmish, Declan VI proposed
a peace treaty. Garonlok, seeing it had lost all hope of gaining quick advantage,
resentfully accepted its terms. Signed by Feyl Claudia, Feyl Donok, Garonlok, Kilbatten,
Vreconok, and representatives from Provise, in the capital of nonparticipant Carlow,
it became known as the Tullan Peace of 912.

The Tullan Peace:

A) Established the borders of a large, independent Transfeyl. All sections of
Transfeyl previously under Donokian, Garonlokian and Claudian control were ceded to
the new, independent Transfeyler government;

B) Required all four warring invaders to contribute financially to the reconstruction
of the partly destroyed Royal Keep;

C) Exiled General Halber for life to the island kingdom of Valorcy;

D) Declared that any appearance of foreign military in Transfeyl would constitute
an act of war, to be opposed in force by all other signatories to the treaty;

E) Dubbed the new country "The Inviolate Sovereignty of The Transfeyl"; and

F) Named the new king of Transfeyl, a minor nobleman named Bayvetayna. From far-off
Volczak, he was judged to be untainted by the history of conflict, and Declan VI produced
"evidence" that Bayvetayna's ancestry tied him to the Old Royals of Transfeyl.
The kingship would pass to the sons of Bayvetayna as long as such sons were born,
guaranteering the state's lasting integrity.


Age 45, the widowered baron of a small, poor city in Volczak, Bayvetayna relinquished
his Volczakan holdings and sailed north. He was installed as King of Transfeyl in 913,
and ruled with surprising ability (and close diplomatic ties to Feyl Donok). In 915 he
married a Transfeyler woman; they had a son in 917, a daughter in 920. He died of
natural causes in 931 and his son, Bayvetayna II, was crowned at age 14. The son has
been a weaker king--partly due to increasing interference from neighboring powers, partly
due to his age (now 20), and partly because he and his wife, though married when he
was 15 and she 17, have given the people no son, leaving their future in grave doubt.


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