Shireroth

The histories of Shireroth record that Goldshire was colonized first by Treesians and Istvanistani, and later by Khaz Modani and Brookshireans. But before all these colonizations, did anyone live there? Indeed they did. Who were these people? You may not be surprised to learn they were the Native Goldshireans.

We do not have any of their writings, for indeed, they could not write. What we know of them comes from the oral traditions passed down to the present day, and recorded at various points in the past by folklorists and historians. Many seem plausible, others seem fantastic, and a few sound downright impossible. But in a land still barely settled and teeming with strange occurances, who knows what might be true?

The Native Goldshireans lived as peaceful farmers in the hills and river valleys. They worshipped their own gods, and feared their own demons, against whom they erected standing stones that still litter the landscape. Less dangerous than the demons, but still strange and uncanny, were the Fair Folk, who lived in the valleys too secluded and isolated for mortals to reach. It was the Fair Folk who first taught the Goldshireans how to build standing stones to keep away demons, and who taught them many of their most beautiful songs.

For these gifts, the Fair Folk were respected, but they were also feared. Though they looked little different, they were not mortal, and their thoughts and emotions were inscrutable to men. Sometimes, a clan of Fair Folk would spend years helping a human village, offering them gifts of gold and rich food, training their children with what seemed genuine affection - and then in a single night, ride through on their great white horses and kill everyone they found outdoors, setting fire to crops as they went. The next morning, they would return as if nothing had ever happened, caring for the survivors like benevolent parents.

Unions between men and the Fair Folk were not uncommon, but they would always end with the human spouse leaving home never to be seen again. Sometimes, years or even centuries later, a boy or girl would wander into the village, claiming to be a long-lost child. When they reached adulthood, these half-fey always ended up either as great leaders or as raving madmen. Any magic in the blood of Goldshire is the legacy of these strange few.

In particular, we recall a day a few years before the first Treesian ship landed on the banks of Quinewynn, when the son of an apple grower married one of the mightiest of the Fair Folk, a sorceress older than Benacia itself. He was never seen again, but a few weeks after the wedding, a teenaged girl stumbled out of the thick forests near his village, claiming to be his daughter Moraquine. No one questioned her, because time moves differently among the Fair Folk, and the stronger the fey, the less predictable its course.

She grew into the chieftainess of the village, with a reputation for strength and wisdom that spread across Goldshire. When the first Treesian ship landed on the coast, and the newcomers began conquering and enslaving the lands nearest the gold they lusted for, the Goldshireans chose to unite around Moraquine. She became their queen, and halted the expansion of the invaders in the Battle of Nin Avkar (near the current city of Avakair). The two sides signed a treaty that granted land around certain harbors to the Treesians but preserved the interior of the region as Goldshirean.

Moraquine spent the rest of her life unifying the small farming communities into a queendom. She preferred negotaition, but when she saw someone as a threat, she was not afraid to resort to force. Only when both persuasion and force had failed did she resort to her magic, which was considerable.

Using the arcane methods of the Fair Folk, she identified two sacred sites in her domain, places where the magic of the inner earth met the sky. On these she built her two capitals, Summersong and Wintersong. Each summer she resided in Summersong, and while she was there the rains came on schedule, the sunlight was warm, the insects stayed away, and game proliferated. Each winter she stayed in Wintersong, and the frosts were mild, the blizzards stayed away, and the winterberries bloomed. Only when she departed, to go to war or to visit her people, would disasters or foul weather trouble the land.

She also established a curious method of succession. The children of the queen and her consort were married off to the Fair Folk, who came to the courts at Summersong and Wintersong regularly. Sometimes, the children of those unions would return, and it was the eldest half-fey granddaughter of the queen - not her eldest daughter - who would become queen upon her death.

The Goldshirean queendom, which in its own language called itself Ynnraile, "Mountainfringe", prospered for several centuries. Its farmers continued farming, during occasional scuffles with the Treesians it was able to protect its borders, and it absorbed Treesian learning and took its first few steps towards being an organized, literate society.

However, during the third millennium BASC, it begin to decline precipitously. The Istvanistani and Khaz Modani began encroaching on their territory. The Fair Folk loathed the newcomers, who they considered rude and boorish, and gradually became harder and harder to find. Soon quarter-fey and eighth-fey queens became the norm. The magic of Summersong and Wintersong began to lose its potency, and farmers who had never known frosts woke to find half their crops destroyed.

As the power of Goldshire waned, the invaders became bolder. The Treesians left the treaty ports and began settling well into the interior. The Khaz Modani took over most of the gold mines and burnt any villages that resisted. And the Brookshireans claimed all the land south of the mountains, including the entire course of the river Elwynn. These activities culminated in the Battle of Dun Amhour, when an Khaz Modani force defeated the garrison of Summersong and burnt the capital to the ground, taking the last queen of Ynnraile back to Khaz Modan in chains. The remnants of the kingdom quickly fragmented, and the entire area became a patchwork of Khaz Modani mining towns, Treesian fiefdoms, and whole swaths ruled by mercenary chiefs or no one at all. Most of the formerly free farmers of Goldshire were reduced to slaves or serfs.

For several centuries, the peaceful people of Goldshire, their leadership destroyed, toiled for foreign invaders. It was a bad time, but not as bad as those that were to come.

In the mid-third millennium, the Treesian cities, which had been hit by the Khaz Modani colonization almost as badly as Ynnraile itself, began to come back. Lum'Ruush Mercaja, leader of the area around Goldshire Hamlet, unified many of them and struck back at the Khaz Modani. Mercaja, who was part Treesian, part Istvanistani, and possibly part Goldshirean himself, was quite charismatic, and most of the non-Khaz Modan people of Goldshire rallied around his banner. His dynasty, the Mercajas, remained one of several regional powers for about a century, when the boats from the Khaz Modan suddenly stopped arriving. Their foreign trade destroyed and their morale shaken, the Khaz Modanian cities crumbled one after another, and by around 2460 BSC the Mercaja dynasty controlled all of Goldshire, even reconquering some of the land taken by Brookshire in times past.

But despite Lum'Ruush's charm, the Mercajas turned out to be just as brutal as their predecessors, if not moreso. Constant minor rebellions - sometimes Treesian, sometimes Istvanistani, sometimes Goldshirean - were put down with astounding cruelty. It was a bad time, but not as bad as those that were to come.

In 2400 BSC, Brookshire invaded after a conflict with Ju'Uliave Mercaja. At first, many Goldshireans angry at the Mercajas joined with the forces of the mysterious Duke Raynor. But as the war continued, Raynor and a group of cavalrymen going by the name "Raynor's Raiders" swept into the interior of northern Goldshire, burning villages and killing anyone he suspected of possible Mercaja sympathies. As news of their deeds spread, support for Raynor dropped off. But many of Goldshire's towns and villages, who had suffered under the Mercaja regime and feared the Raynor regime would only be worse, were left without a champion, without hope.

Around this time, a young man on a black horse rode into the ruins of Wintersong. He stayed there a week, calling the names of those long dead, until eventually the locals approached him (cautiously, for in those times any stranger was a potential murderer) and asked him his tale. He was, he said, the youngest son of the youngest daughter of Moraquine, Prince Tristram, who had lived with his mother among the Fair Folk. When the locals remarked that this would make him five hundred years old, he just said that among the Fair Folk, it had not seemed that long. But his memories were hazy, and the first thing he remembered was his mother, still a young woman, telling him that his path lay outside in the world of mortals, and showing him the road that led to the capital.

He took the name Tristram Wintersong, and gained a small following. His band roamed the hills and forests, defending the native people from the armies of both sides. When they could, they harvested the fields of the nobles by night and gave the grain to the peasants, keeping them alive during these troubled times. During a time of peace, he might have been easily found and killed, but with both armies occupied in the pursuit and destruction of one another, little effort was spared to hunt down a minor outlaw.

However, more and more people joined his band, and in a stunning victory, he defeated the garrison at Emsabh (later Demonsfall) and liberated the city, the first independent Goldshire territory in several centuries. Soon, both sides, seeing him as a threat, sent forces to kill him; these forces easily recaptured Emsabh but Tristram and his soldiers fled to the mountains and could not be found.

Eventually a stalemate was worked out. Tristram's area of influence extended through most of modern-day Syrewlynn, Goldendown, and Holwinn, except for the areas closest to the coasts or rivers. Within this area, neither Brookshirean invader nor Mercajan defender dared go. Instead, they fought along the banks of the Elwynn and on the plains of Ran, and in this way most of the people of Goldshire were spared the hell of warfare. Meanwhile, Tristram proclaimed a new kingdom of Ynnraile, with its capital at Emsabh until Wintersong could be secured.

The war ended with the complete victory of Brookshire. Duke Raynor declared himself Kaiser of the entire western part of the Benacian continent, announced it was named Shireroth, and gave no acknowledgment to Ynnraile whatsoever. He gave control of Goldshire to his chief general, Fenrir, declaring him Duke. Fenrir began raising a mighty army to send against the area united under the name Ynnraile, which unbeknownst to him actually had only a few thousand poorly trained men completely incapable of standing up to any sustained assault.

Luckily for Tristram, Raynor's old allies in Musica were less than excited to be told they were now a mere province of "Shireroth". Raynor was soon distracted with two new wars, one against Musica and one against Yardistan. Fenrir's army was requisitioned for the Siege of Musica, and the small villages of Ynnraile continued to dwell in peace, oblivious to the bloodshed all around them. But as Musica became less and less able to resist, it grew very clear to Tristram that his days were numbered.