Starting in the year 480 with the arrival of Gawedi invaders and the collapse of the Lencori Empire, the Lencori Warlord Period was a 45 years long period of Lencori history characterized by the lack of established realms in Lencenor, as Lencori tribes, Damerian remnants and Gawedi Warlords fought for supremacy in the region.
Causes[]
Migrating south in fear of the dragons after their conquest of Vertesk, the path of the Gawedi down the eastern shores of the Dameshead was stopped first by the victory of the Damerian Republic and its new vasalans at the Battle of Bal Hyl and then by Nimrith himself burning Damescrown to the ground while the Gawedi occupied it.
With their path to Esmaria apparently closed, the Gawedi wave turned to the southwest, where the Gnomish Hierarchy had just collapsed after the Kobold Rising. With the Sack of Beepeck having taken place in 474 already, they invaded the fractured Small Province, which reacted by forming the Small Kingdom. Meanwhile, to the south the collapse of the Damerian Republic had led to the formation of the Lencori Empire, a Damerian successor state led by Daromas, the former Lenco-Damerian governor of Damerian Lencenor who had mostly united the land after the First Daromasian War. The start of the Second Daromasian War in the year 479 saw Daromas move troops from the old borders with the Gnomish Hierarchy to the core of his empire in order to fight the rebellion, and shortly after the Gawedi invaders found lands ripe for the taking as they invaded northern Lencenor with little opposition.
By the end of the Second Daromasian War the Lencori Empire was no more: the capital of Daromath was taken by the Gawedi warlord Stovan the Arrogant and the Lencori Warlord Era began.
The Warlords of Lencenor[]
Gawedi Warlords[]
Tribes established by independent leaders of Gawedi origin who migrated south instead of submitting to Godrac the Invader:
Tribe of Eaglecrest[]
Founded in 475 by Lodan Scalecloak, a sadistic warlord who began the Eaglecrester tradition of manufacturing kobold scale armour and clothing, it controlled the southern side of the Dragonhills. It would be formally dismantled by peace treaty between the High Kingdom of Lencenor and the Gawedi Kingdom in 529, but many Eaglecresters refused to leave the Dragonhills even after the warlord period was over.
Tribe of Blackstag[]
Founded in 475 by Brandon Blackstag, a famed axe-wielding Gawedi chief, in the lands of the halfling Elkmarch, the tribe would be destroyed after Brandon's son, Otto, was defeated by Lorenan the Great at the battle of Red Reach together with half of the Gawedi royal army in the year 529.
Tribe of Orston[]
Founded in 478 by Odric Oarhand, who founded the city of Orston as its capital despite controlling the sacked city of Beepeck together with Viswall and a good portion of the eastern Small Country. His grandson, Humbar Oarhand, fled back to Gawed when Lorenan the Great approached his lands with his united Lencori army instead of joining the Gawedi royal army of Prince Alenn.
Tribe of Rycanreach[]
Founded in 478 by Rycan Redthroat in the lands of Rosefield and the southern Small Country, the Gawedi of Rycanreach were famed for their brutality against the Lencori. They fought the native Rubenti during the entire warlord period, having occupied half of their original lands in their initial invasion, and Rycan's son, Alvor Redthroat, was killed and most of his tribe dismantled during the Battle of Rosefield. The remaining Rycanreach Gawedi fled for Eaglecrest.
Tribe of Stovanfield[]
Founded in 480 by Stovan "the Arrogant" Steedslayer, it was the responsible for the final destruction of the short-lived Lencori Empire, taking Daromath and renaming the Daromsfort "Stovansfort" in the name of their warlord. At odds with the Entebic tribes, Stovanfield was destroyed by the now united Entebic Kingdom in the early 520s.
Tribe of Wrenswatch[]
Founded in 480 by Alina Wrenswatch in and around the Redwood, it is said that the Gawedi woman was driven partially mad by the fey of the forest. Joining forces with Rycanreach at Rosefield, Wrenswatch was defeated and dismantled as well after the battle, in the year 525.
Lencori Tribes[]
Tribes organized under native Lencori leaders who had lived under the Damerian Republic prior to the Dragonwake, and whose prior unity under the Damish state had shattered as they struggled for dominance.
Rubenti tribes[]
An urban and prosperous people, close allies of the Ruby Dwarves and founding members of the Damerian Republic, the Rubenti people suffered greatly with the chaos, and any semblance of political unity was gone when their capital, the Redfort, was burned by Nimrith the Red. In the posterior chaos, they were divided in three groups:
Lorenti[]
Living along the Upper Bloodwine River basin, they populated the Redfort when Nimrith attacked. Having founded a new capital with the survivors from the Redfort in Lorentei, the Lorenti slowly rebuilt their strength, being back on their feet when Lorenan Lorentis became chief of the Lorenti in the year 509. He would go on to unite the Rubenti under his rule and then all of Lencenor, putting an end to the warlord period in Lencenor proper in 525 and in the Small Country in 529, being thus known as Lorenan the Great.
Uenati[]
A subset of the Rubenti who lived in Rosefield prior to the Dragonwake, they were displaced from their lands by Rycan Redthroat, who killed many of them. Those who could fled south to their Lorenti and Cingeti cousins and wouldn't return to their lands until after the Battle of Rosefield.
Cingeti[]
A particularly warlike tribe of the Rubenti, they lived across the middle and lower Bloodwine, with their capital in Vasalford, a Damerian foundation on what would much later become the county of Rubenaire. Historically under the rule of Redfort, they opposed the Lorenti as much as the Gawedi and the Entebics, and only submitted to Lorenan the Great in 514, forming the Lorentish Kingdom.
Tribes of the Western Plains[]
Entebic[]
Damerized Beldanni of old, the Entebics fought alongside Daromas and his Lencori Empire and fell with it, with Stovan Steedslayer conquering more than half of their lands and subjugating a great portion of their pre-Dragonwake population. Reorganized under a local auxilia commander of the Lencori army, the Entebics would slowly regain their plains and, after uniting with the Crovanni, reconquer Daromath and expel the Gawedi from their ancestral lands, with Darom staying in Entebic hands until Derhilde's Landing in the year 860.
Crovanni[]
Living in the southwestern coast of Lencenor, the Crovanni avoided the brunt of the Gawedi invasions, but the collapse of trade brought by the end of the republic and the seeming lack of leadership deeply worsened their living conditions. Led by the High Priest of New Adea, the Crovanni reached a deal with the chief of the Entebics, whom the High Priest crowned as King of the Entebics. The Crovanni thus joined the Entebic kingdom as vassals.
The Old Kingdom[]
Kingdom of Sormannon[]
Allied to the Damerian Republic for hundreds of years, the Sormanni suffered famines with the collapse of Damesheadic trade following the fall of Damenath and Beepeck and repulsed an Entebic attempt to break into the Sormanni hills fleeing the Gawedi, but otherwise the kingdom endured, even if diminished in prosperity, in the Sormanni hills and the island of Corcia.
Remnants of the Gnomish Hierarchy[]
Kingdom of Iochand[]
Surviving the collapse of the Gnomish Hierarchy during the Dragonwake, the governor of the Portroy province stabilized the province through rapid reforms and establishing both Lencori and Gnomes as Graaffin under his rule, converting to the local Lencori faith in 471 and proclaiming the Kingdom of Iochand with himself, Fizwick Allspark, crowned as king. After a short war with the Small Kingdom to its east, both Iochand and the Halfling realm had to focus their efforts on stopping the Gawedi invasions into their lands. Iochander cavalry would be present at the Battle of Rosefield in 825, and Fizwick would swear fealty to High King Lorenan shortly afterwards.
Small Kingdom[]
Emerging as an independent realm after the Gawedi Sack of Beepeck and their conquest of the Dragonhills (Eaglecrest), Elkmarch (Blackstag) and Rosefield (Rycanreach), the halflings, Lencori humans and remaining Gnomes of the Small Country elected Tippin of the Hillfoots as Small King, and after a short conflict with Iochand managed to defend itself against the surrounding Gawedi, joining Lorenan's High Kingdom and proclaiming him as Protector of the Small Country subsequent destruction of the Gnomish authority in the Small Country,
Remnants of the Damerian Republic[]
Kingdom of Carneter[]
When the famed Daromas formed his Lencori Empire, many Damerian generals joined him, but those in the West Dameshead did not. Amongst those who rose in the chaos, the Lenco-Damerian general Attalus Nareus moved the fastest. A native of the Damerian city of Necevite, Attalus mobilized what few forces he had and secured Windtower as the city struggled to adapt to the newfound chaos. In the next year, as the inevitable collapse of the Republic was clear to all, general Attalus went into the Deruwren forest with his guard and, with a blessing from the druids, was crowned King of Carneter (Segonos Icarnatheiros). Taking the family name of Carnetoris, Attalus swore to defend the ancient Lencori faith of the Deruwren and, with the aid of the druids and his own Lenco-Damerian troops, came to unite the lands east of the Pearlywine.
His son, King Austanes, took advantage of Lorenan's advance against the Gawedi warlords and in 525 he attacked Exwes from the south, finding it mostly undefended by the Rycanreach Gawedi and annexing it as the northernmost province of Carneter.
The Kingdom would stay independent even after Lorenan's ascension to power, only falling into the hands of the High Kingdom of Lencenor in 591 during Ruben I's reign.
Arelaus' Province[]
A minor Damerian commander who sided with Daromas prior to his downfall, Arelaus gained the loyalty of the mixed people of Bróisand (modern day Roilsard), defeating both Rubenti and Tretuni armies that tried to subjugate them and governing a small yet independent warlord state from his fortification in the site of the future Castle Roilsard.
His death of unknown causes around the year 498 and the inability of the Bróisandi to find a worthy successor saw them fall to Catumas Tretunis, and the province was thus incorporated into the Kingdom of the Tretuni.
Kingdom of the Tretuni[]
In the Tretuni lands south of Bróisand and west of the Pearlywine, Catumas, a lieutenant of emperor Daromas, survived the end of the Lencori Empire and anchored down in his native lands of Tretun, severing ties with other Daromasian loyalists like Arelaus and proclaiming himself king Catumas Tretunis and claiming to be a descendant of the ruling clan of the Tretouni tribe of old. Whether this was true or not, Catumas' Tretuni roots were out of question.
The kingdom would clash frequently with Carneter, and in the middle of such a conflict Tretun allied Lorenan the Great, ensuring its safety against the Carnetori kings and joining forces at the Battle of Rosefield. There, king Caramas Tretunis, son of Catumas, would hail Lorenan as High King of the Lencori.