THE UNIVERSAL WAR AND ENDTIME ALLIANCE

DR 9742-9767
ER 18089-18114
BC 7546 - BC 7521 (Before the Common Calendar)

CONCISE VERSION

What Pretty Much Everyone Knows From Childhood...

Though it lasted only 25 years and ended 8458 years ago (in human perspective,
to the Elves that's the equivalent of c. 800 years ago; for the Dwarves, c. 1400),
there is no doubt that the Universal War was the most significant event in Landen
history. It is today both history and legend, shared bad dream and epic poem; it
changed forever the way the civilized races conceived of themselves, and altered
entirely the way they interacted with each other. Begun by an Orc tyrant named
Gurfang, it raged across the entire continent and included a coalition of Orcs,
Goblins, Kobolds and Evil Giants against the Endtime Alliance of Elves, Dwarves,
Halflings and Gnomes.

By the war's end, every civilization had participated in some capacity, and many great
cities were destroyed, many chiefs and generals slain, many honorable tribes and
clans decimated, but in the end--by means of a strange and risky spell devised by
powerful wizards and clerics, which struck dead at a word half the Orc Army--the
dominion of Evil was narrowly overcome. And afterward, no civilized race ever again
viewed itself as alone in the world, or imagined that the fate of one could not
affect the fortunes of the rest. In the thousand years that followed the war,
Landen saw an unprecedented flowering of diplomacy, trade, and other interaction
between the races, which echoes to this day.

HOLY CRAP: A PLAY-BY-PLAY VERSION OF THE WHOLE $%#* WAR

Note: Boldface indicates a name well-known for its role in the War; all humanoids
are likely familiar with the simplest facts regarding the BF names (DC 10-20).

Prior to the war, Dwarves stuck closely to the mountains, and rarely explored past
the foothills, the Elves stuck to the Forest, the Halflings prospered in Halfling
cities, and the Gnomes were content to entertain themselves. Thus most great
civilizations regarded each other as entirely alien--as most likely to be only
sources of peripheral trouble and negligible trade. Until the year 9739, when a
large Halfling city called Yipillia in the foothills of the Angenroks (in
present-day Kilbatten) was simply destroyed one night. Dwarven traders arriving
on an annual trek found it burnt to the ground, 7000 of its citizens slaughtered,
victims of an Orc army.

Still, while Dwarves agreed this was an atrocity, they did not immediately see how
it was their business--especially as the Orc army had long moved on. Over the next
three years, however, they found more Halfling foothill towns destroyed, more
slaughter--and occasionally pursued and killed the Orcs, but were unaware of the
extent of the problem.

The problem, as historians of the various Good races have since pieced together,
began in 9729, when an Orc chieftan named Gurfang Ob-Grash became leader of the
enormous and brutal Sawtooth Tribe. Brilliant and ambitious, by 9736 he unified
the five major tribes of the Midlands and directly commanded an army of perhaps
30,000; by 9739, rumors abounded that Gurfang was son of Gruumsh himself, and other
tribes both within and beyond the Midlands were so impressed that their chiefs
swore fealty to him. Thus Gurfang brought the Orcs together as no leader had in
210 centuries (since the great Elf-Orc War), and he ordered his armies to seek and
massacre Halflings, Gnomes, and Unicorns. Practice, he called it, for the ultimate
war on Elves.

In 9742, Gurfang--having executed 40,000 Gnomes and twice as many Halflings--
wearing a crown of nine defiled Unicorn horns--ordered his first attack on the Elves.
He selected an isolated, nomadic tribe--the Jalacimi--and killed every last member.
This caused the High Elves to call up their army, and war was on.

Gurfang, understanding his Orcs would be outclassed by Elven archers, mastered
mobility, bushwhacking, and massive deceit to ensure close quarters where Orc
strength could be best used. At times an Elven army would reach the battlefield
only to meet an Orc army that immediately dispersed--then the Elves would march
home to find it devastated, women and children gutted in the grass.

In 9742, the Dwarvish clan Growlgutter of The Crags also declared war--answering
the plea of the Halfling city Hespertine as Orcs marched on it. Growlgutter met
the Orcs outside Hespertine in late 9742 and in a vicious fight the Dwarvish force
was--to the shock of the Dwarvish world--wiped out.

Because Dwarvish Clans kept to themselves before the War--and certainly the Hills
and Grays and Deeps were not on good terms--the Dwarves entered the war more
piecemeal than the High Elves. Not until 9745 had every Hill and Gray clan vowed
to fight, and even then they did not coordinate their efforts. They certainly did
not coordinate with Elves, Gnomes or Halflings.

Thus the early years of the war raged to the favor of the Orcs. The Great Forest
shrank mile by mile as battle by battle Orcs burned it back; Gnomes resorted to
guerilla resistance as Orcs overran their prairies; the great Halfling cities were
leveled, their people murdered unarmed, and the survivors forced to flee as refugees
into the Great Forest of the Elves. Meanwhile, tribe after tribe of Goblins, Kobolds,
and evil kingdoms of Giants aligned with the Orcs. By 9750, Gurfang controlled
without opposition four-fifths of the Midlands and most of the lands beyond. He
erected a massive castle from which to direct the slaughter, and sat on a Throne
of Blood within a Tower of Skulls.

The mountains, however, remained in Dwarf control, and the Elves retained the Great
Forest, where many Halflings lived as refugees. In 9752, the Baldboulder Clan of
the Syaxats proposed an alliance of all Hill Clans and willing Gray Clans; Guinness
Baldboulder hoped to create an army capable of sweeping the Orcs back 50 miles,
and such an alliance was created under the Mightyrock Pact (named after the mountain
under which it was concluded). However, two immediate obstacles: First, the
leadership of the army could not be agreed upon; Second, the evil Duergar Dwarves
chose this moment to attack the Hills and Grays--and the Deeps, fearful the alliance
of Hills and Grays would eventually turn against them, provided some aid to the
Duergar, in right-of-passage and asylum arrangements. Through all of 9753, the
Dwarves of the Syaxats were entirely consumed in civil war, and as a result, Orcs
found a foothold in their mountains. It was the end of that year and many slain
before the Hills and Grays of the Angenroks decided the Mightyrock Pact applied
to civil war, and arrived in the Syaxats in full force to drive back the Duergar.

Above, however, the Orcs had dug in, and brought in Giants. Thus it was late 9755
and 5000 noble deaths before the Dwarves again controlled the Syaxats. At that
point, the Elves were in trouble, despite the entrance of the reclusive Gray Elves
to the effort. The heart of the forest may have been secure--but their people
starved within it, as they began to buckle under the demand of feeding thousands
of Halfling refugees and supplying a vast army in its 13th year of nonstop marching.

Thus it proved fateful when in 9756, a Halfling girl of only 15 named Dreamsnare
Johalla Cometgallow claimed she had a vision, and led thousands of her people out
of the Great Forest. She declared Yondalla had shown her that the world would be
lost if her people did not abandon the forest; though they felt they were leaving
to their certain death, they followed her, weak and poor, into a particularly harsh
winter. Many died. But those that survived became, under Johalla's mysteriously
strong leadership, a dedicated fighting force--men, women, and children. She
remains to this day perhaps the most important legendary hero to the race--the one
who restored their dignity and ensured their survival--and it is Halfling lore that
their race's willingness to sacrifice everything won the War and saved the world.
(In the end, Johalla's story indeed ends on a note of martyrdom; though myth has
swallowed history, the story runs that her last vision was that the Halfling people
should dedicate themselves to never again relying on one home, instead become a
race of nomadic warriors; but her lieutenants, hoping to rebuild the great cities
and establish themselves as rulers after the war, betrayed her to the Orc General
Gob Ik-Bark in 9759. Gob brought her in chains to the Tower of Skulls, where
Gurfung personally tortured her to death at age 18. It is also said variously
that either none of these lieutenants survived the war, or that they did, but so
reviled were they by their own people that though they built a fine city, it remained
empty until it fell into ruins. And this history and legend explains much of even
present-day Halfling sensibility regarding their place in the world.)

Johalla's Exodus did indeed lift much of the pressure on the Elves--many of whom
regretted accepting the refugees to begin with. The Ferenkiir (Gemsky), Chief
Band of the High Elves, had been loathe to evict them, but had secretly been about
to try just that, so dire were straits in the forest. A Great Wyrm Green Dragon
had chosen this year to assault the Elves, and only a handful of sorcerers were
available to oppose it. Reports came in of losses on every front, of scattered
Gnomes, of pyres of massacred friends burning for days. At the same time, the
Gnome leader Gorry Nockum Rollingbarrel had been working hard since 9754 to
maintain a steady line of communication or at least news between the Elvish and
Dwarvish leadership. Once the Dwarves at last regained control of their mountains
(and allowed some face-saving time to elapse), Rollingbarrel's efforts finally paid
off; Guinness Baldboulder decided it would not be shameful to finally meet his Elven
counterpart and propose a joint effort.

In early 9758, the Elven leader Halamaran Ferenkiir shook hands with Guinness
Baldboulder just outside Silpharillon (the Elves' holiest vale), and the Endtime
Alliance was born--so named because it seemed this war might well be apocalypse.
The Alliance joined the Hill and Gray Dwarves, as well as a few of the Deep, with the
High and Gray Elves, those Gnome leaders in touch with Rollingbarrel, and less directly,
the Halflings led by the visionary Johalla.

The Endtime Alliance did not make an auspicious debut. Orcs routed the first few
armies they fielded, and only the steel nerves of Guinness and Halamaran kept their
races on course. By summer 9759, the two races arrived at an effective command
structure and won their first major battle, in present-day Niterra--and in its wake,
the rest of the Deep Dwarves joined the Alliance as well.

But Gurfang still ruled most of the continent, and the Alliance found his territory
so vast that no one victory seemed to make a dent. Not until, that is, a continent-
wide strategy devised by Dwarven General Hearthammer Hackstone, of the Sangradoro
Mountains. It was Hearthammer's genius to see the full utility of the Elven
gryphon-riders, and he devised tactics for them that the Elves themselves had never
conceived (but use to this day)-and he worked these tactics into a strategy to
dismember the Orc Empire one swath at a time.

The Hearthammer Plan met with smashing success, 9761-63, severing Orcs outside the
Midlands from contact with the Tower of Skulls, vastly reducing the size of the
problem. Gurfang however retained his hold on the Midlands, and just because the
forces outside the Midlands were cut off, didn't mean they couldn't still fight.
So in 9763, after a series of defeats as Gurfang grew wise to it, the Hearthammer
Plan was dropped. Dwarves, and the Elvish Airforce based in Dwarven mountain
castles, continued its essence by securing all passes to ensure the continued
separation of the outer continent from the Midlands; but it was Halamaran who
devised the next strategy, "Chiseling and Developing": very selective, small-potato
strikes inside the Midlands, just enough to keep Orcs on the defense without taking
big risks--while, through careful diplomacy, enlisting the assistance of a kingdom
of Storm Giants and two Gold Dragons. The Dwarves in 9763 enlisted the partial
aid of the entire race of Stone Giants--thus in the summer of 9764, the Endtime
Alliance seemed poised for a massive offensive push into the Midlands.

It failed. A well-organized force of Ogre Mages brought down one of the Gold
Dragons right away, and in three major battles across the southern edge of the
Midlands the Orcs proved quick, flexible, and readily reinforced. The Alliance
established a few forward bases, but at such great cost it was uncertain they
could capitalize on the advance.

However Gurfang, though he'd halted the Alliance, secretly reeled from this assault.
A master of deception, he was able to conceal the extent of his weakness; partly
through magic illusion, through careful maneuvers, by ordering increased attacks
in far-flung territories through the rest of 9764 and 9765. But he'd ordered so
many troops to the front, it was uncertain enough remained behind to keep the front
supplied much longer.

The weary Alliance believed he remained strong. In 9765, the Dwarf Clan Gunvein
suggested the Alliance offer a peace treaty. For a long year, the idea felt serious,
and Alliance resolve weakened; respected Gunveins said the war could be resumed in a
generation if necessary, that the Orcs might crumble on their own in the meantime
because they were not a civilized people; that a generation of warriors had been
slain, and now children were carrying weapons at the front while the elderly starved
at home--surely it needed to end any way it could. It was Halamaran who stood at
a meeting of the War Leaders in the Sangradoro Mountains and said "We must fight
them, fight them yet; fight them till we or they all die; we must fight them because
they will not accept peace or offer mercy; we must grind them from the face of the
world soon or agree to our own slow destruction later." At this, Hearthammer let
out a resounding bellow that moved almost all present to rise cheering, and Guinness
concluded: "I can not face my father and Orc-murdered brothers in the afterlife if
I must tell them I abandoned this contest."

Thus the consequent major push by the Alliance smashed through what they had thought
were strong Orc defenses--and a series of exhausted, desperate suicide attacks
became instead Alliance victories. A series of major battlefield victories followed,
all across the edges of the Midlands, and Dwarf engineers hastily built more
underground bunkers to hold the gains. An Orc counterattack took back the more
weakly held territories, but the War Leaders agreed: Gurfang's weakness was exposed.
In another three to five years of fighting, it seemed guaranteed the Alliance could
push up the crucial territory between the Mayyasah and Shadiyah Rivers (their present-
day Common names), straight to the Tower of Skulls.

The Alliance was weary of war, of course, and there were many to whom three years
sounded like an eternity. Certainly thousands would die. Thus when a secret project
underway since 9761--a joint effort between Dwarf and Elf wizards and clerics--in
9767 came to fruition, its creators bypassed the political leaders and took it
straight to the field generals. It was feared by the project team that the political
leadership would find grounds to reject their achievement, while the generals
watching people die every week would be very interested.

The wizards and clerics had devised a magic weapon of frightful potency. If
activated, it could strike instantly dead all Orcs within miles of each of its loci.
Today, the specifics of the spell are lost (perhaps by design), but it seems that
the loci had to be established in advance, and the spell cast from a central location.
It seems also some advisors hesitated because it was not guaranteed that the death
was permanent; some aspect of the magic left open the possibility that the dead Orcs
could be raised as easily as they were killed, perhaps with a single short chant.
But the specifics of the debate are lost--the decision was taken by a small cadre
of Dwarvish and Elvish military leaders to attempt the spell despite the cautions.

In Spring of 9767, the powerful new spell was cast, and it worked. Of the tens of
thousands of Orc soldiers in the field, at the utterance of the spell, perhaps half
dropped dead to the ground. The rest were routed by a carefully coordinated assault,
and by the end of the Summer, the Tower of Skulls stood no more.

Without a central command, the unity of Orcs outside the Midlands fell apart, and
the War was won. Gurfang was declared killed--but legend has it his body was never
recovered, that he may one day return to resurrect his Orc Army and reestablish his
Empire of Destruction. The largely massacred Halflings never again built a major
city of their own; the Gnomes chose to remain hidden after the war, and interact
often with their former allies but live in carefully concealed homes in remote
locations. The Dwarves returned to their mountains, the Elves to their woods, but
they agreed without hesitation to sustain the Endtime Alliance. It stood for the
next 900 years, until DR 10554/ER 19005, when the Elves chose to dissolve it after
the position of Chief Band passed to the more isolationist Vardacia.

But the days of isolation were over for all races.



KEY WAR EVENTS TIMELINE:

9736 = Gurfang of the Sawtooth unites the five major Orc tribes of the Midlands
9739 = Destruction of Yipillia foreshadows brewing trouble; Massacre of Halflings
continues unchecked; Gnomes under less direct assault form pockets of resistance
9742 = Extinction of Jalacimi Tribe and slaughter of Growlgutter warriors brings Elves
and Dwarves separately into war against Orcs
9745 = Elves open the Great Forest to massive influx of Halfling refugees
9750 = Ruler of the Midlands, Gurfang constructs the Tower of Skulls
9752 = Mightyrock Pact unifies Dwarves for first time
9753 = Pact Dwarves consumed by Civil War against Duergar; Orcs take mountaintops
9754 = Gnomes attempt to open communication between Dwarves and Elves
9755 = Orcs expelled from mountains
9756 = Halfling Exodus lifts burden on Elves, puts new Halfling army in the field
9758 = Endtime Alliance formed; Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings, and later
Storm and Stone Giants, Gold Dragons
9761 = Launch of Secret Project by Alliance wizards and clerics; aim is to develop
new, powerful war magic
9763 = Outland Orcs severed from Gurfang's command by successful Alliance strategy
9764 = Major Alliance assault fails in Midlands
9765 = Cracks show in Alliance resolve
9766 = Surprise Alliance success in battle exposes Orc decay; predict victory in 5 years
9767 = Secret Project yields risky new magic; Effective, it ends war within months

KEY WAR LEADERS:

Orcs = Gurfang Ob-Grash, Gob Ik-Bark
Dwarves = Guinness Baldboulder, Hearthammer Hackstone, the Gunvein*
Elves = Halamaran Ferenkiir
Gnomes = Gorry Nockum Rollingbarrel
Halflings = Dreamsnare Johalla Cometgallow

*The Gunvein Clan retired their name and forever departed the mountains after the
war was won, and today among Dwarves that name is synonymous with shame on the
grandest scale. Their ultimate fate is unknown.



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