| Tluukti Ideas | |
|---|---|
| 传统 | |
| Income from Vassals +20% National Supply Limit Modifier +15% | |
| 野心 | |
| Diplomatic Reputation +1 | |
| 理念 | |
| Honouring the Old | |
| Yearly Devotion +0.5 Yearly Legitimacy +1 Yearly Horde Unity +1 Yearly Republican Tradition +0.2 Foreign Core Duration -10% | |
| Cleaving the New | |
| Core-Creation Cost -10% | |
| Denying the Sun Its Glory | |
| Morale of Armies +10% | |
| Indirect Gnollish Rule | |
| Liberty Desire in Same Continent Subjects -15% | |
| Hidden Caches | |
| Land Attrition -10% | |
| Reignited Bulwari Slavery | |
| Goods Produced Modifier +10% | |
| Last Stand in Ekluzagnu | |
| Fort Defense +20% | |
The Tluukt pack was a gnollish nation that arose in Bulwar following the collapse of the Šad Sur Akalate and the ensuing conflicts of the late Age of Cinders. Formed in 1413 AA by Tluukt ‘Cleaver-of-Realms’, the Tluukt pack would embark upon a series of expansionist campaigns beginning in 1439, resulting in a thirteen year period of domination over the Suran Plain up until the Battle of Eduz-Buranun in 1452. The gnolls of Tluukt retained their sovereignty and control of the Šad Sur for another 55 years, until they were annexed by the Jaddari Legion in 1507.
Expansion and Decline of the Tluukt Pack 1413-1507 against the major polities of the Suran Plain.
History[]
Early History[]
The control of the Šad Sur had long been contested by gnolls and Bulwari, who have across various periods of history each seen themselves as native to the region. With the collapse of the Phoenix Empire in 1162 AA, Sandfang gnolls began once again to encroach upon the Akalate of Šad Sur, culminating in the early 1300s when a massive gnoll pack sacked the fortress-city of Ekluzagnu. The royal family and a considerable number of refugees managed to escape - escorted by Irrliami forces - to the city of Zanšap where the Akal pledged his allegiance to the Irrliazuir dynasty. Those who did not escape were largely forced into slavery, though notable populations of free Šadnatu remained prevalent throughout the mountains up until the rise of Tluukt.
The gnoll pack that seized Ekluzagnu did not last, however, and following the death of its leader dissolved into countless tribes. These tribes did not submit to any one pack lord but instead carved up the Šad Sur between themselves, subsisting primarily off of banditry of both the local Šadnatu populations and populations of the Suran Plain who dwelt nearby. The most powerful of these bandit packs divided control of Ekyrigrax - their name for the conquered Ekluzagnu - amongst themselves and frequently collected tribute from what they saw as the “lesser” packs of the Šad Sur. Ekyrigrax became a thriving market for slaves, and even saw custom from foreign merchants despite the lawlessness of the surrounding Šad Sur.
Rise of Tluukt[]
This status quo, which had persisted uninterrupted for nearly a century, began to shift rapidly in the 1420s when the gnollish witch Tluukt ‘Fishcleaver’ began to aggressively expand her pack’s influence in the Šad Sur through various combinations of diplomacy, subterfuge, and armed coercion. She bore in particular a grudge against the pack-lords of Ekyrigrax, and refused to pay tribute to them. Intermittent skirmishes between her forces and those of Ekyrigrax became common, and she earned a foul reputation for defying the ban against slaying the foreign merchants who otherwise connected Ekyrigrax to the lands outside the Šad Sur.
Despite her prior successes, Tluukt ‘Fishcleaver’ lacked the resources and defenses provided by Ekyrigrax, and so steadily began to lose ground in the early 1430s as more and more of her pack defected. Realizing that only bold action could cement the loyalty of her underlings and give her an advantage against her foes, she led her tribe northwards, away from their traditional hunting grounds and towards the lands still under the authority of the Zanšapi akals. Tluukt correctly surmised that Irrliam - weakened after the War of the Ember Queens - would be unable to defend their border territories against gorilla incursions, and so in 1434 she began a series of increasingly harsh and savage raids against notable land-owners in the province of Arfajazan. The atrocities conducted during these raids so incensed Akal Bavar III szal-Barseen of Zanšap that, against the better judgement of his advisors, he rallied together a force of his own and pursued Tluukt into the gnollish-controlled Šad Sur, intent on claiming the head of the vile bandit who had so tortured his people. Yet, unlike his royal forebears, Akal Bavar III had not been raised in the Šad Sur as Tluukt had, and had not grown familiar with its crags and peaks. So it was that he and all his forces - warriors all who prided themselves on their Šadnatu heritage - ultimately found themselves fallen victim to the Šad Sur’s labyrinthine passages, winnowed to the last man by traps and ambushes sprung by the crafty Tluukt. Tluukt herself slew the Akal Bavar III, and in the wake of her victory she and her pack pushed into the province of Arfajazan, enslaving peasants and nobles alike. Tluukt herself became celebrated by the gnolls of the Šad Sur as a mighty pack mistress, the first to lay claim to Bulwari land ever since the collapse of the Šad Sur Akalate.
Galvanized by this victory and the prestige it earned her - along with the substantial wealth seized from the landowners of Arfajazan - Tluukt immediately began subjugating the remaining packs of the Šad Sur, many of whom in fact joined forces with her willingly, so convinced were they by her promises of further victories against the Bulwari. By 1436 AA the only hold-out against her ambitions were the bandit-lords of Ekyrigrax who still persisted in their vain attempts to dominate her. Now at the head of a considerable gnollish host, Tluukt put Ekyrigrax under a brutal siege for two years, starving the defenders out while she and her pack continued to subsist off of the supplies seized from Arfajazan. The defenders inevitably broke, and their bandit lords were quickly put to death, their corpses strung from the battlements and left to be claimed only by buzzards. Tluukt had at last asserted herself as sole undisputed pack mistress of the Šad Sur, and she soon drove out whatever populations of free Šadnatu remained, rewarding the packs that had served her most loyally with the lands seized thereby.
Subjugation of Bulwar[]
By the spring of 1439 AA, Tluukt had begun mustering the tribes of the Šad Sur for battle, re-organizing their numbers into a cohesive host. In this matter she faced no small amount of resistance, as the packs of the Šad Sur still maintained a fierce tradition of autonomy and could not be easily cowed. She soon turned her attention outwards, seeking to secure a real victory under which her pack could rally behind. Instead of pushing further into Zanšap or Irrliam, however, she marched her host directly towards the city of Bulwar - the jewel of the Suran, chosen as her target for its symbolic value, its weariness under its Varamhari overlords, and of course its magnificent wealth.
As her forces settled around the walls of Bulwar, however, the enormity of the task at hand soon became evident. A protracted siege risked the possibility of a neighboring elven kingdom coming to the aid of their besieged Varamhari neighbors. Despite her background first as a fishcarver and second as a bandit lord, however, Tluukt had remained keenly aware of the political events occurring outside of the Šad Sur and was thus well aware of King Karodir I of Varamhar’s reputation as a prideful wizard. Seeking to exploit this, she challenged the monarch to a magical duel. Karodir I, confident in his ability as a classically trained elven mage, naturally accepted under the belief that he could quickly eliminate his gnollish opponent. This belief soon proved ill-founded, as Karodir had vastly underestimated Tluukt’s skill in abjuration and evocation. She quickly broke through his magical wards and soon had him on the backfoot, and many feared that Karodir would be ignominiously slain by this gnollish witch. Tluukt, however, did not perform a killing blow upon Karodir - she instead continued to savage him, practically torturing him in magical combat. Thus, the battle was long and gruesome, and Karodir’s defeat so sound that given the first opportunity he fled from Bulwar entirely, taking the bulk of his forces with him.
In the wake of this disorderly retreat, Tluukt’s forces stormed the city’s walls and captured them after a bloody battle with the remaining defenders. The subsequent sack of the city was brutal, with entire districts burnt to cinders overnight, their treasures seized to placate Tluukt’s loyalists. In a display of dominance Tluukt would force the Twelve Families of Bulwar to recognize her as their overlord before her assembled host of gnolls, but other than that she would leave them and the city’s governance structures largely intact. To dissuade any possible rebellion, however, she completely destroyed the city’s walls, leaving it totally undefended should her protection be revoked. With the jewel of the Suran now firmly under her control and the elven king Karodir I defeated, gnolls and Bulwari alike would from this point onwards come to know Tluukt as the ‘Cleaver-of-Realms’.
Alliance with Zokka[]
Even before Tluukt had seized control of the Šad Sur, to her east a gnoll pack led by Zokka ‘Devourer-of-Suns’ was enjoying an unprecedented level of success against the remnant kingdoms of the Phoenix Empire. Zokka ruled over a vast swathe of territory stretching from the Far Salahad to the Upper Suran and collected substantial tribute from the cities of Harklum and Eduz-Vacyn.
In 1443 the kingdoms of Azka-Sur and Sareyand, threatened by Zokka’s expansionism, sponsored rebellion amongst his human subjects. A coalition of human rebels supported by elven warriors marched against Zokka - and was utterly crushed, resulting in the death of King Erlian of Azka-Sur. Though this united effort ended in total failure of Azka-Sur and Sareyand, the danger of Bulwar uniting against the gnolls was now a more credible threat. Tluukt, already impressed with the control Zokka exerted over his territory, sought to forge her own alliance with the gnollish warlord, and an agreement was made to divide the Suran between the two packs.
Whether this agreement would have ultimately been honored is a matter of historical debate, as the alliance would prove short-lived. In 1445 Zokka, incensed by the “ghost of the Phoenix Empire" he saw in the Jaddari Legion, would declare war against the desert elves in order to determine rulership of the eastern sands. His advances into the territory controlled by the Sihrušam were initially successful, with even the combined forces of the desert elves and the Mašnsih nomads proving unable to resist him. At the Battle of Sun’s Providence, however, Zokka ‘Devourer-of-Suns’ met his end, slain in personal combat against the Divine Herald Jaddar. Following the death of their pack lord, Zokka’s pack quickly dissolved, with many fleeing to the safety of Tluukt’s borders. Those who remained - including Zokka’s heir - would ultimately be assimilated into the Jadd.
With Zokka dead and the territory controlled by his pack rapidly falling into Jaddar’s control, Tluukt would rush in an attempt to assert herself as sole overlord of the Suran Plain. Her forces quickly sallied out and subjugated Harklum, but by the time that she was ready to march upon Eduz-Vacyn, Jaddarin forces had already established a new border surrounding it.
Suzerainty of the Suran[]
With the expectation that Jaddar would continue marching in pursuit of Zokka’s gnolls directly into her own lands, Tluukt began to rapidly consolidate her forces and the Zokka refugees into a single fighting host. Her expectations would be subverted, however, when in 1446 Sareyand declared war upon the Jaddari Legion after diplomatic attempts to reclaim the territories they had lost to Zokka were rebuffed. With her forces already mustered, Tluukt seized the opportunity provided by this chaotic conflict to strike out against Sareyand as well, quickly seizing control of Zanbar. Accosted on both sides by elves and gnolls, Sareyand was forced to concede their claims to Jaddar and recognize him as the Protector of the Suran and Tluukt as overlord of Zanbar. During this conflict, Tluukt largely avoided Jaddarin forces, wary of the possibility of uniting Sareyand and Jaddar against her.
With Sareyand defeated and with Jaddar turning his attention away from Bulwar and towards his eastern borders, the Tluukt pack enjoyed a brief period as overlord of the central Suran Plain. In this time period Tluukt would begin imposing a number of regulations and unusual reforms upon both her gnoll subordinates and her Bulwari subjects, early steps in what she saw as the birth of a “modern gnollish kingdom”. Zanbar in particular would feel the brunt of these reforms, with Tluukt directly meddling in its governance such that even after the downfall of her pack the cultural impact of her overlordship would be enduring.
In addition to meddling with the day to day governance in her Bulwari subjects, this period of supremacy along the Suran saw the final crackdowns on insubordinate gnoll packs and the centralization of the gnollish host under Tluukt’s direct authority. Inspired by the Jaddari Legion’s flexibility and wary of the recovering elven kingdoms and the scheming of her own subjects, Tluukt would also establish the first gnollish standing army, a retinue of veterans drawn from her own pack and adopted Zokka refugees that would be known as the “Skull-Cross Ravagers”.
Rebellion and Decline[]
The Twelve Families of Bulwar had at this point suffered under Tluukt’s rule for over a decade, and since 1445 had seen their authority steadily eroded as the Tluukt pack began to assert its own laws over the areas it controlled. Inspired by Jaddar’s victory over Zokka, however, they began to act against Tluukt’s representatives and by 1450 had roused significant popular support among the Surani for a rebellion to overthrow their gnollish suzerain. The city as a whole took up arms and cast out the Tluukti envoys, soon securing control of the fields and villages surrounding Bulwar and the river-crossings of the Suran. These early victories had been hard-won, but as the rebellion continued it became increasingly clear that Tluukt had to some degree anticipated unrest among her subjects, and the Bulwari found their manpower reserves rapidly depleting as their cunning gnollish foe whittled them down with traps, raids, and ambushes, not deigning to meet them in open combat until her victory was assured.
It was in 1452 AA that this time came to pass, and Tluukt and her Skull-Cross Ravagers emerged from their garrisons in full force in order to crush what remained of the rebellion in an overwhelming display of dominance, her victory now all but assured. Her forces out-maneuvered the Bulwari and pinned them down in the plains of Eduz-Buranun, against the banks of the river. By all contemporary accounts what followed should have been a slaughter - yet the Bulwari held. For twenty-four hours, from the dawn of the first day of battle to the dawn of the second, the peasants and poorly-armed warriors of Bulwar held miraculously against tide upon tide of battle-scarred gnoll veterans. And as the sun rose on the second day, the tide of battle turned when troops from Harklum and Zanbar - inspired by Bulwari resistance - made a timely arrival, crushing Tluukt’s army in a devastating pincer strike. The three cities would band together in their resistance against Tluukt, forming the Naqtazan - the River Alliance. With her army decimated and herself wounded, Tluukt and the Skull-Cross Ravagers fled in retreat to Ekyrigrax, relinquishing the pack’s control of the Suran Plain to the Naqtazan.
Despite her humiliating defeat at Eduz-Buranun, Tluukt would retain a firm control over her gnollish subordinates and the Šad Sur as a whole, repelling any attempts by the Naqtazan to hunt her down. The Naqtazan rebellion simmered to an informal peace between both parties, though Tluukt herself would never officially recognize their independence. Even after she recovered from her injuries, territorial expansion out of the Šad Sur would cease as the various realms of Bulwar neighboring her recovered from the Age of Cinders. She would maintain a feared reputation of cunning ferocity, however, in her savage reprisals against any elven or Bulwari army foolhardy enough to attempt an incursion into her lands. Thus, the prospect of ousting the gnolls from the Šad Sur became increasingly untenable to the Bulwari kingdoms so long as the ‘Cleaver-of-Realms’ continued to rule from Ekyrigrax.
Over the next ten years, Tluukt would continue to administer her realm with an increasing level of ritual formality. Her will was enforced by the remnants of her Skull-Cross Ravagers while she dictated reforms she saw as crucial to reclaiming their lost territory and standing on an equal footing to her rivals. She is reported to have said that of all the powers of Bulwar, the only ones she considered her equals were those of the Jaddari Legion, who had defeated her former ally Zokka. Her greatest preparations were made to crush what she saw as an inevitable invasion of her lands by the Divine Herald Jaddar - a prediction that seemed increasingly unlikely as the years passed and Jaddar continued to focus on his eastern borders.
Death of Tluukt, Birth of Tluuktraak[]
On the 25th of Yshdament, 1463 AA, Tluukt ‘Cleaver-of-Realms’ passed away in her sleep, having suffered an illness acquired the week before. Having lived for seventy-two years and ruled over her pack for fifty, her reign was considered long even by non-gnollish standards. The contemporary expectation of her Bulwari enemies was that with her death the Šad Sur would devolve to the banditry and infighting that had prevailed before her ascension to power. Yet, unlike in Zokka’s pack, Tluukt’s death did not herald an immediate dissolution or even a protracted power grab. Instead her chosen successor, Aaryz ‘Cleaver-of-Realms’, hosted a grand feast at Ekyrigrax where the matriarchs of the tribes subordinate to Tluukt’s pack joined him in ritually cannibalizing the corpse of Tluukt. Following the feast the matriarchs offered formal displays of submission to his authority in an elaborate succession ritual - designed by Tluukt herself - where the last of the pack’s fading opulence was put on full display. Inspired by the bold actions of his predecessor, Aaryz would formally proclaim his inheritance not of a pack, but of a true kingdom - the Tluuktraak Akalate, and his oath upon coronation was to restore the borders established by his grandmother.
Yet one cannot subsist on dreams and loyalty alone, and without the rulership of Tluukt the kingdom founded by her successors began to steadily lose territory as elven and Bulwari forces increasingly incurred upon its borders. While the fifty years of Pack Mistress Tluukt’s reign saw both great successes and great defeats, the comparatively brief twelve year reign of Akal Aaryz saw only loss after loss, a trend continued by his own successors. The standing army established by Tluukt withered as the last of her treasure was spent, and her successors proved unable to devise new sources of wealth. With an empty treasury, Tluuktraak was forced to revert back to relying primarily on its subordinate packs for military support, and as wealth turned to poverty the government Tluukt envisioned was increasingly supplanted by ad hoc measures and arbitrary rule.
Annexation by the Jaddari[]
By 1491 AA, Tluuktraak had been reduced to a rump state that exerted control only over the fortress-city of Ekyrigrax and the hills that surrounded it, as well as a number of krahways stretching into the Salahad. Yet their existence at all still posed a problem to their neighboring states, and an alliance to push them out of Bulwar entirely was one of the topics that would be brought up at the summit at Samartal that year, alongside alliances against the harpies and the Jaddari Legion. The summit would end disastrously, however, with the Tragedy of Samartal shattering the veneer of unity between the Bulwari realms, rekindling a brief period of internecine conflict. With this collapse of relations, the pressures exerted upon Tluuktraak by Bulwari and elven realms lessened drastically, allowing its rulers time to fortify their holdings and muster for a reclamation of the Šad Sur.
This planned reclamation would never transpire, however. Following Samartal, Jaddar would at last return his attention to Bulwar. His forces toppled the remnants of Sareyand in 1494 and quickly thereafter conquered the Naqtazan in 1495. At the turn of the century, he would declare a final war against gnolls - against Tluuktraak, and would devote a portion of his army to invading the Šad Sur. The war would prove difficult for both sides, as it was soon made evident to the Jaddarin forces that the revanchist zeal of Tluuktraak had not waned since the death of Tluukt. In each battle the Tluukti warriors would fight to their final breaths, delaying Jaddar’s advance through the already unfavorable terrain. The capture of the fortress-city of Ekyrigrax would prove particularly costly, with Jaddar first dedicating considerable forces to seizing the krahways that supplied it, allowing his army to settle down for a long siege. The warriors of Tluuktraak held out against hunger and despair for over a year, however, refusing to surrender. Even when in 1507 a sizable breach had been created in the fortress walls, Jaddar and his warriors were forced to go through the citadel floor by floor, slaying the half-starved defenders to the very last gnoll.
Despite Jaddar’s victory in Ekyrigrax - which he promptly restored as Ekluzagnu - and his consolidation of the remainder of the Šad Sur in a subsequent war against Irrliam, the gnollish survivors of Tluuktraak who had not been present at the siege proved highly resistant to assimilation, in many cases adopting the religious and cultural traditions of the Jadd in name only. Even today many ancient customs and rituals that emerged in the time of Tluukt can still be observed among the Sandfang gnolls of the Šad Sur, though they are quickly being supplanted by more cosmopolitan behaviors as the region becomes increasingly interconnected with modern Bulwari cities.