Cambrecia and the Derlic War

This is an article on the History of Feyworld
Years: 800 NC to 1473 NC
Age: The Third Age of Man
Continent: Duria
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The History of Cambrecia
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Imperial Cambrecia	The Cambrecian Civil Wars

Under Legate Cyricus Isidorus of House Livius, Legion III Cambrecia moved into the trackless wilds of what had even then become known as the Cambrecian Mountains, chasing rumors of wealthy dwarven miners high in the peaks. In a mistake that would resonate for decades to come and permanently alter the political landscape of southern Duria, the Legion slaughtered an ostensibly peaceful dwarven ambassadorial party from the Kingdom of Derlos, which initiated what would become known as the Derlic War in the Empire with the express intention of conquering the subterranean Kingdom. The Legion spent the first few months of the "War" failing to even locate the entrance to the underground mountain kingdom. The dwarves were shocked by the behavior of humans they thought were friendly and prepared themselves for battle, but cooler heads prevailed and an envoy was sent to Neptaris, who had allied with the dwarves of Derlos some six centuries prior during the War of the Dark Rider. After brief deliberations, the Triumvirate of Neptaris secretly decided to maintain their alliance with Derlos and prepare for war against this new Empire. In 55 IC, Neptaris formally declared war on Zeth and immediately took one of their key military outposts in the foothills of the Cambrecian Mountains, Fort Pagulium.

What began as an exploratory expedition against Derlos quickly grew into a war Cambrecia had not prepared for. Neptaran Marshal Marshal Aador Manx, moving in concert with dwarven irregulars from Derlos, exploited the fall of Fort Pagulium to seize five more Imperial supply depots before the year was out, and for two years Legate Isidorus found himself fighting a war on ground he had not chosen. The tide turned only when the Imperial fleet broke Neptaris's navy at the Battle of Nimble Point in 57 IC and sealed Krios Bay, cutting the rebellious Freecity off from the sea it depended on. Any relief the victory brought was short-lived: a plague swept along the Cambrecian coast the following winter, and among its dead was Isidorus himself, the very Legate whose slaughter of the Derlic envoys had started the war in the first place. Command passed to Legate Valerius Lucius, who spent the next several years rebuilding the Legion's strength even as Neptaris, unbeknownst to the Empire, was doing the same in secret shipyards along its own coast. Marshal Manx fought on until his death at Fort Pagulium, and his successor, Marshall Greor Alcyon of House Markos, briefly seized command of the Maroshan Sea with a fleet of thirty warships, but Imperial spies located and burned Neptaris's hidden shipyards in the winter of 65 IC, and with reinforcement from the fleets of Paladinium in Imperial Simmeria, Valerius Lucius laid siege to Neptaris itself. The city fell within a fortnight when an Imperial sympathizer inside its walls opened the gates, and Marshal Alcyon, upon hearing the news, took his own life rather than witness Neptaris's surrender. With their human allies defeated, the dwarves of Derlos sealed off the entrances to their subterranean kingdom and disappeared into the roots of the mountains.

For Cambrecia, the years after the Derlic War brought no relief, only a change in the shape of their subjugation. The dwarven wealth that had first drawn the Legion into the mountains was never recovered; the Kingdom of Derlos had sealed its gates and vanished into the roots of the mountains rather than ever treat with the Empire again, so the war that cost Isidorus his life had, in the end, won Zeth nothing at all. Command remained with Legate Valerius Lucius, who spent his remaining years in Septarium keeping the Legion garrisoned and the tribute rolls full, but the endless cycle of rebellion made direct military rule an expense Zeth could not sustain indefinitely.

Cambrecia's own house was no steadier than the Empire's patience. In the plague-stricken winter of 58 IC that claimed Legate Isidorus, the same sickness reached Septarium and took King Tarnos III, leaving the throne to his young son, Prince Kestor, no more than five years old. A regency council, drawn from mostly Kamaros-descended nobility and backed by the increasingly influential priesthood of Zelos Goldenhand, ruled in the boy's name. With Zeth's full attention on the war against Neptaris and Derlos, no one in the capital was minding Cambrecia's own succession, and Bellenos Dravos, of the old Amesi-descended branch of the royal house, a line that had never accepted being passed over for the throne generations before, raised his own claim. The resulting Dravosid Kinstrife dragged on for sixteen years, a slow civil war fought in the shadow of the Empire's own occupation, until Kestor, grown to manhood, finally defeated and killed Bellenos in personal combat in 74 IC at the Battle of Vetrenos and reunited the kingdom under his own rule for the first time in a generation.

It was precisely this victory that doomed him. A legitimate, battle-hardened king who had reunified Cambrecia without any help from Zeth was a far more troubling prospect to the Empire than a child regency had ever been, and Emperor Emperor Leto I of House Livius had no intention of recognizing a monarch who might one day decide he owed the Empire nothing at all. In 78 IC, fresh Imperial legions arrived in Septarium, declared Kestor's rule illegitimate despite the regency council's own endorsement years before, and installed a man with no connection to House Dravos whatsoever, Quintus Sarnicos, as King of Cambrecia in his place. What became of Kestor Dravos, the last of his line, has never been settled. Some in Septarium still whisper that he was quietly put to the sword in the dungeons beneath his own palace and buried without rite, so that Zeth would leave the Cambrecian people no grave to mourn at and no martyr to rally behind. Others insist he escaped the city before the legions arrived and lived out his years in exile, some say in Neptaris, others in the depths of the Cambrecian Mountains, given quiet sanctuary by the dwarves of Derlos, who, whatever else divided them from the surface, understood better than anyone what it meant to be betrayed by the Empire's ambitions.

Over the next two centuries, Cambrecia saw many rebellions as its citizens tried to found a new Senate in the capital city of Septarium. The Imperial response was heavy-handed at first, but in 149 IC, the Emperor Metius the Elder decided on a more surreptitious approach to quelling the Cambrecians. In his role as Pontifex Maximus of the Imperial pantheon, he sent the Pontifex of Zelos, god of the State, to Septarium to build a great cathedral and begin the conversion of the populous to Zelos. The Pontifex of the time, Ionnanes II, was a persuasive man, and was able to quickly convert most of the local leadership to his banner. Over the next few centuries, as the power of the Empire waned in its northern territories, the Pontifex of Zelos was able to secure greater and greater power within Cambrecia, often without the Emperor's knowledge or consent. By 534 IC, Cambrecia had become a monarchy, independent in most of its internal affairs.