The Reaver Kingdom of the Divenhal Sea, commonly known as the Divenhal Kingdom, was the last formed of the great reaver kingdoms of the Era of Black Ice. With holdings all across its namesake, the Divenhal Sea, it extended from the island of Tef in the west to Drolas in the east, in mainland Bulwar.
History[]
Halfdal's Call[]
Four years after the death of his father, Henrik Divenscourge, Halfdal Henriksson, the second son, had ambitions that would lead to him to desire to match, and surpass the legacy and wealth of his father.
He sent out the call to many of the other Reaver kingdoms which had been established throughout the era of Black Ice, primarily Deranne and the Kingdom of the Pearl, appealing to the greed and desire for glory in the heart of many of the reaver veterans and second sons like himself, assembling them under his banner and, after months of preparation, striking at the last heir of the Damerian Republic: the Republic of Tef.
Thus in the latter half of the year 889, armed with his fathers maps and charts of the Divenhal, Halfdal set forth to conquer his own path across the sea.
The Conquest of Tef (890-891)[]
In Tef, the forces of the Republic found themselves suddenly stuck in a pincer maneuver between two halves of the reaver army, which had landed on the east and west sides of the island, and quickly stormed to the center. Amongst the captains leading this effort was the second child of Derhilde Reaverqueen: Gunnar Derhilding.
Many of the coastal cities capitulated quickly, already terrified into submission by the sight of the massive army of reavers and those who weren’t, negotiated with. What few didn’t surrender were quickly overrun and punished for their defiance. This set a brutal example for the others, which quickly led to the remaining few cities to surrender to the invaders.
Soon the capital of the Republic was surrounded and under siege by the army. Before Halfdal could sack the capital, the local patricians proposed negotiations, offering great wealth for the city to be left untouched, together with their cooperation. Satisfied, Halfdal took Lisbana Luminares, daughter of the important Tefori patrician and landowner Aldrisius Luminares, as wife, and proclaimed himself as the new Reaver King of Tef.
One short year later, and the last of the loyalist holdouts would finally surrender at New Tefkora. The Tef Republic, last remnant of the once great Damerian Republic, officially ceased to exist, and the island would become a staging ground of many great raids against Verne, Gnollish controlled Busilar and Akasik.
Reavers in the seas of Gemisle (894-896)[]
The early years of the next decade would see the reavers of the Kingdom of Tef raiding many trading ships all across the region without a particular focus up to the year of 894. Then, in 895, a fleet of reavers, confident after the capture of Damerian cargo in the Busilar straits a month earlier, sailed east and, by chance, stumbled upon a royal ship of Yametses on its trip from Gemisle to the mainland. This band, led by a reaver going by the name of Alfr Sigvaldsson, captured the ship and its precious cargo of sapphires, with the tale soon spreading to Tef itself.
Thus, a good number of reaver captains sailed east towards the famed island of gems, with many groups landing on Gemisle itself while others tried their luck on the Yametsesi mainland, even attacking trade posts and ships of Dwarven origin. The reaver raids and the attacks on his main source of income pushed the King of Yametses to action, and soon the entire Yametsesi navy was patrolling the entire gulf with Tûngric support.
A series of raids and counter raids would culminate in the Battle of the Waves of 896, where, in an agitated sea, a combined Yametsesi and Copper dwarven fleet engaged a reaver fleet of 90 longships, led by Alfr Sigvaldsson himself off of Gemisle. The local forces drove home the encounter, with Alfr dying in battle and his fleet scattering shortly afterwards. Most of the survivors returned to Tef, where Halfdal had been getting rich off of his raids on both coasts of the Divenhal.
The War of Aqatbar (897-901)[]
In 897, Halfdal Henriksson himself landed near the capital of Yametses, backed up by nearly 200 reaver ships and many thousands of reavers, threatening a full-on siege. This force, however, waited as Halfdal and the King of Yametses negotiated in private in a tent out of the gates of the capital. The two monarchs struck a deal, with king Halfdal taking Nairia Urzhana, daughter of the king of Yametses, as his second wife. This alliance started the Reaver tolls on the eastern Divenhalic ports, with a tax being applied to trading ships in exchange for protection against pirates and raiders of any kind, guaranteed by the Reaver King.
After such a deal was struck, Yametses and Halfdal allied against Aqatbar, the main enemy of the former. Both fleets combined soon achieved superiority in the Eastern Divenhal Sea, with the reavers focused on cutting off all trade and naval connections of their common enemy, taking part in deep incursions in the Aqatbari coasts and seizing the island of Pir Ail for themselves as an eastern base of operations. Drolas, the main ally of Aqatbar, was cut off with the fall of Pir Ail and the reaver dominance of the seas, as the land route was blocked by other realms who rivalled Aqatbar.
The war came down to a multitude of sieges after an initial year of daring advances, as the Aqatbari defended themselves with great skill, and the year 899 things looked mostly the same in Bahar. The war finished inconclusively in the year 901 due to the death of the king of Yametses of a sudden illness, being bedridden for days before his eventual demise. The Yametsesi elected a new king and Halfdal, now unrelated to the local monarch, made peace with Aqatbar: the Aqatbari agreed to pay tolls in exchange for the protection of their trade ships by the reavers, and ceded the island of Pir Ail to Halfdal. This peace let Halfdal follow the tale of a land deep south where gods walk amongst men and great riches await.
All in all, Aqatbar resisted well against superior forces, and exited the war mostly unscathed. The same could not be said about their allies in Drolas, however.
Gunnar's Early War (899-902)[]
A new reaver force left New Tefkora in 899, with most eyes fixed on the war in Aqatbar. After months of careful preparation, Gunnar Derhilding sailed for the peninsula of Drolakand against a realm that had been entirely unable to defend its coastline ever since Halfdal's reavers dealt it a sound defeat at the Glass Isles months earlier. The Prince of Deranne landed on the northern tip of the peninsula and rushed in with his mainly Olavish force, taking fortresses by assault and starting a siege of the Drolasesi capital in a matter of weeks. He captured the city in summer of the year 900: legends say he climbed the walls with a group of his best men as a solar eclipse darkened the skies.
By 902. Gunnar controls more than half of Drolas, with more captains joining his victorious army as he aims to push south, take the isthmus and thus end the enemy kingdom, yet the hills and swamps in southern Drolas slow his efforts greatly, as well as the exhaustion of some of his forces.
Reavers in the Sorrow (902-906)[]
Having achieved much of his aims in Bulwar- namely a ports, wealth and land - King Halfdal turned his attention to the west, to Kheterata, where he began to raid along it’s coasts, and even down the Mother's Sorrow. He captured the island of Ibtat in 903, making it his primary port and facilitating a huge amount of Cannor-Sarhal trade from his many ports.
Between 902 and 906, Halfdal terrorized Kheterata, raiding along the banks of the Mother Sorrow, and culminating in his legendary sack of Koroshesh, which would nearly level the city, and prompted the Khetarch to offer him yearly tribute to cease his raids. This is often believed to mark the beginning of his golden age, as Halfdal's wealth exploded dramatically between his funneling of Divenhalic trade and the immense strength of his reavers. It was in these years that he would proclaim the Reaver Kingdom of the Divenhal Sea, marking his dominance, and his propensity for accumulating gems and gold would earn him the name ‘The Hoarder’
His eldest son, Henrik Halfdalsson (son of Lisbana Luminares) was be sent to govern Tef in his stead during this time, with the combined efforts of his and his mother doing much to secure the loyalty of the Tefori.
Gunnar's Late War (903-909)[]
Meanwhile, on mainland Bulwar, the almost defeated Drolasesi king offered vassalage to the Republic of Brasan in exchange for help, and the Bulwari realm joined the fray in 904. Alongside the Brasanni spear formations came numerous Gnollish mercenaries, engaging in a great number of small skirmishes with the reavers, with the Brasanni turning to sieges, countersieges and multiple standoffs in the harsh terrain of south Drolakand.
This war went on for years, and by 909, the only threat King Halfdal could see to his reign as he sat on his golden throne in Ibtat was the continuing conquest of Gunnar in Drolas, or rather, his stalemated attempts to make progress against the Drolasesi and Brasani forces. Thus, Halfdal made peace with the Bulwari behind Gunnar's back, ceding some cities in the south of Drolakand in exchange for the recognition of his sovereignty and rule over the rest of the peninsula, the payment of a 5% tribute on all the trade flowing down of the Suran to the Reaver King and the inclusion of Brasan in the port toll system. Halfdal took a Brasanni noble wife, Arekis Azaraha, to seal the peace, and thus the reaver attacks on the western Bulwari coast ended.
The Golden Era (910-930)[]
Between the years of 910 and 930, the Kingdom of the Divenhal was one of if not the foremost naval power of Cannor, and it’s stranglehold over the Divenhal trade made the realm exceedingly powerful for its size. The presence of the reavers, first despised, became something of a comfort for Cannorian, Bulwari and Sarhali merchants alike, knowing they had safe access to all Divenhalic markets so long as they paid their dues.
Tef was primarily pacified, with only bandits in the very heart of the island offering any resistance whatsoever. It was from here that the legendary Gerudian captain by the name of Estrid av Orstengard embarked on her journey up the Dostanesck and, after two weeks of sailing up the river and fighting of Flamemarked gnolls, made it to Bal Dostan, the first trip of it’s kind since Daravan created the Folly.
Upon doing this, she would make quick friends and allies with Castan LI, travelling to Castonath after his insistance and opening a new trade route between Bal Dostan and the Divenhal Kingdom, propelling the wealth of their nation even further. Estrid would later settle on an island off the ruins of Corveld which was free from the curse that plagued the Folly: the port of Estridstaðr, which would later become Nathalaire after the fall of the nearby trade route first and the White Pestilence second nearly wiped it off the map.
Across the kingdom, the only serious resistance came from the Drolasesi people who resisted the reaver occupation of Drolas, mainly in the form of locals and old veterans from the war against the Gerudians attacking patrols and tax collectors. Their leader was a mystery, known only as Išhilibar (Shardscar in Brasanni) because of a scar that ran across his right eye, leaving him one-eyed.
The Death of the Hoarder and the Fracture of the Kingdom (930-931)[]
In 930, King Halfdal was 63 years old and the nearly undisputed master of the Divenhal. He had incredible power and might, from coast to coast, and their wealth was the envy of the world. However, not all the wealth in the world could protect him from mortality, as when he returned from the Brasani border with a great tribute from the Surani trade, a band of warriors wearing old Drolasesi armor ambushed his entourage, with the feared Išhilibar leading them. In the middle of the fight, Išhilibar seeked the Hoarder and the two killed each other.
It was later known that Išhilibar was the brother of the last king of Drolas, refusing to surrender and leading the last loyal Drolasesi instead.
The result of this battle would echo across the Eastern Divenhal, as Brasan seized the opportunity and broke their deals with the Divenhalic reavers, entering Drolas with their armies once more as the rural Drolasesi, encouraged by the sacrifice of Išhilibar, turned the countryside against the Gerudians. Sigvald Halfdalsson, second son of Halfdal and his heir presumptive in the east, inherited the eastern parts of a Divenhal kingdom in crisis and decides to surrender the remaining coastline cities to Brasan in exchange for peace. He himself converted to a syncretic variant of the Cult of the Ešeral Mitellu in an attempt to improve relations with the Bulwari realms, yet it fooled few: Gerudian power had been broken in western Bulwar. The tide had turned and Brasan was now growing in power and influence, yet King Sigvald still had more than enough gold and friends in Bahar and Tef to keep his throne and the control of the seas.
In the west, meanwhile, Henrik Halfdalsson, who had been ruling Tef for the last decades, held an honorary funeral for his father and saw his rule mostly unchallenged, raising to the throne as Reaver King Henrik I of Tef.
The End of the Divenhal King (945)[]
The years between 931 and 945 saw a diminished Divenhal Kingdom, as Henrik I refused to bow to a Sigvald who could not force his will upon his older half-brother. The gold and jewel reserves in Ibtat allowed the new Divenhal King to force his way through the next decade, controlling the seas between Bulwar and Kheterata, but this weakened Divenhal Kingdom was not to be. For in 945, a storm caught Sigvald and the core of his reaver fleet out in the open as they travelled to Yametses, where the king wished to meet his Bahari relatives. Most of the fleet sunk, and in the chaos of the aftermath the kingdom was split between the various reaver captains, as they laid claim to Pir Ail, the Glass Isles and various dens scattered across the coast.
Only in Ibtat itself did the young prince Svante Sigvaldsson keep his rule, raising as Reaver King of Ibtat and abandoning the title of King of the Divenhal Sea merely 15 years after the death of the Hoarder himself.