The Alrennean War

Artist's depiction of Alrenn's undead infantry. By Leora Bocameci, 4084 VR. Performers

Alrenn & his Undead Hordes, Teveren Military, Akhentour Military, Kavonne League of Adventurers, Redfang Guild, The Wardens

Date

13 Midwinter 4055 - 22 Midsummer 4062

Location

Teveren & Akhentour, Dorian

The Alrennean War was a conflict on the continent of Dorian between the countries of Akhentour and Teveren and the lich Alrenn (formerly Novius Dorian, the eldest son of the last Emperor of the Dorian Empire, Urmenator Dorian) and his undead hordes. The war began in winter 4055 VR (5e 780 DR) with the sacking of Noveste and ended seven years later, in 4062 VR (5e 787 DR), with Alrenn's defeat in Garrod.

The war saw the utter annihilation of all civilization on Teveren and roughly 2/3rds of Akhentour. The southern country of Morentar was largely left alone, for unknown reasons.

Pre-War

The war's beginnings lie in Novius Dorian's ascent to lichdom, somewhere around 600 years prior to the war's onset. Novius adopted a shortened version his childname, Alrennikar, "pale and joyful child" in Elvish; Alrenn simply means "pale" but can be inferred to mean "devoid of life."

Alrenn took residence in Merfen's Tower in the Frozen Wastes north of Teveren. How long he resided there is unknown, but for at least 100 years prior to his eventual push southward, he had manipulated and subjugated the Northern Tribes of Teveren, forcing them to all but worship him and eventually slaughtering them to consume their souls and raise the start of his undead army. He achieved this with the help of the ancient white dragon Sav Garan, himself subjugated by Alrenn after a lengthy battle.

At some point, likely close to the start of the war, Alrenn or an intermediary traveled into the mines of Urster in Akhentour, waking an ancient atropal called Jarunvandir there and making a pact with it to power Alrenn's Siphoning Staff. The exchange was power for energy; Alrenn gave the atropal a portion of the life force he was siphoning from the land in exchange for a fraction of the atropal's entropic power. A symbiotic relationship, if you will.

Once he had a sufficient infantry, Alrenn began to push southward. Sav Garan fled westward soon after this and was last seen by the Northern Tribes of Akhentour.

The Beginning

Alrenn began his devastation at Coldhaven Academy in Noveste, where his brother Erlighein Dorian once taught, sacking the city and razing Coldhaven to the ground between 13 Midwinter and the end of the year, 4055 VR. The utter destruction of the city was so thorough and infused with such dark magic that it presumably created or at least called the Nightwalker into being, which wandered the ruins until Aloysius Pridd's intervention in later years. Alrenn then spread southward, collecting the corpses of the people killed to increase his army. Word spread quickly of Noveste's destruction, but Alrenn was swifter, using powerful necromantic magic to siphon the life out of the countryside itself; merely being within a certain radius of Alrenn's aura was sufficient to steal the life from any organic being, and was powerful enough to even shrug off antimagic fields.

By the end of 4056 VR, Alrenn had conquered the entire eastern seaboard of Teveren, taking the cities of Urel, Alyeata, and Jamafar with ease, and blighting the Pinewood and Pale Card forests so thoroughly that the trees in the east withered into ash, creating the "Gray Sea" between Teveren and Katalpa for roughly 50 years. Alrenn encountered significant resistance in King's Pride and Ogoni (the capital of Teveren at the time), with a stalemate which lasted over eight months as Ogoni's mages invoked numerous wards and walls of force to keep the hordes at bay. However, Alrenn's forces were able to easily outsiege the military of the two cities, as they required no food, water, or air to survive, and his shadow assassins were able to pick off sustenance-creating magic-users over time. Alrenn's forces eventually were able to blight the last of the crops of Ogoni a week before harvest, which caused the remaining people inside to starve to death and become recycled into undead allies of Alrenn.

The Push Westward

From 4056 to 4058 VR, Alrenn moved westward, draining Lake Akoa and turning the Great Marsh into cracked and dry desert. While in the Great Marsh, Alrenn met the twin green and black dragons, Galonar and Krybiir, with whom he allied in exchange for a full cut of whatever wealth they discovered. This increased the army's power exponentially. Vesta Gero, the last large city of Teveren, put up a solid fight for roughly six months, including the utilization of two wish spells in an attempt to eliminate the combatants entirely. Both of these spells were successfully counterspelled by Alrenn's undead archmages. It wasn't until the city had nearly fallen that they discovered that only half of Alrenn's horde had besieged the city; the other half, with Alrenn, had already pushed onward, taking the other cities and towns of the Westerlands with ease.

No one is quite sure what occurred in Teveren following Vesta Gero's fall, as there literally was almost no one left in Teveren to tell the story. It is believed that Alrenn bode his time, either gathering his forces in Oyonten or waiting for his power to fully siphon the life from the countryside. It is also believed that Alrenn may have been defeated around this point and had to wait to be reincorporated through his phylactery. Whatever the case, Alrenn did not cross over the Fangs until two years later.

Into Akhentour

In the winter of 4059 VR, Alrenn's hordes crossed the Fangs into Akhentour, reaching Kavonne by summer of 4060 VR. Alrenn completely skipped over the mining town of Urster, likely due to the pact he had made with the atropal deep within the mines itself.

Alrenn's downfall in Akhentour came in two forms: first, his two-year hiatus from crossing meant that Akhentour had time to bolster its defenses in various ways, mostly through magical wards and mages trained in countering spells. Second, shortly after crossing, Alrenn split his hordes into three forces: the First Horde to siege Kavonne, the Second Horde to press into Diomedes to take Diomed, and the Third Horde to travel south through the eastern hills to eventually take Garrod. While Alrenn's hordes were large, the command of these separate armies faltered at several key points, creating weaknesses that the armies of Akhentour sprang upon. Particularly, the Third Horde was weak against the dwarves, who had emerged from the Underdark to aid in fighting, and the orc tribes of the southeast, who proved to be strong and resilient.

The Southward Resistance

By the beginning of 4061 VR, Kavonne was nearly conquered and the Second Horde was approaching Diomed. Meanwhile, the Third Horde broke into the Orc Camps, where a significant number of undead were killed before they eventually pushed through, taking Lilingbroke. The Axebreaker dwarves set up a garrison on the surface, but were surprised themselves when a large section of the Third Horde broke away, descending into the Underdark to siege the city of Aster itself, killing most of the dwarven citizens there. The Axebreaker dwarves made the difficult decision to scuttle the entrance to the city, crushing the undead and/or leaving them trapped in the Underdark with their now ruined dwarven city. This was the only time the undead descended into the Underdark during the war.

Meanwhile, the Diomedean elves used strong obfuscation magic to confuse the Second Horde, sending them into circles through Diomedes trying to find the elven capital. The Second Horde never actually made it to Diomed proper, eventually continuing west-southwest and exiting Diomedes a few hundred miles north of Stonnet.

Alrenn, who had made his headquarters in Kavonne, now realized that splitting the hordes was not a great idea. So he traveled with the First Horde south along the coast, reuniting with the Second Horde just north of Stonnet in the winter of 4061 VR. The two hordes then pressed south.

It was around this time that the crystal in Wodesville cracked for the first time, sending the inhabitants of the city into a frenzy as they were terrified that the protective magic there was ending due to Alrenn's arrival. Many of those inhabitants fled westward, toward Stonnet, where they quite literally ran into Alrenn's hordes, marking one of the most gruesome scenes of the war, the Massacre at Stonnet Fields.

The Last Stand at Garrod

While Alrenn's forces traveled south, the Third Horde had already arrived at Garrod, though at roughly 2/3rds of its original size. Garrod was the largest and most powerful city in Akhentour at the time, and another 1/3rd of the Third Horde were cut down by the military there through a spirited strategic offensive devised by Captain Ballock of the Garrod United Resistance. The First and Second Hordes arrived in midspring 4062 VR and began the real siege of the city, eventually taking it in late summer of the same year. Alrenn made Garrod his new base, and established a strong magic ward there to prevent anyone from entering the city via teleportation or shifting magic.

At the same time, the Kavonne League of Adventurers (KLA) had sent a small adventuring group south to follow the First Horde. This group eventually infiltrated Garrod and entered Castle Garrod, where they flushed out Alrenn and began a fight against him. Meanwhile, other members sneaked into the basement of the castle and successfully stole Alrenn's phylactery, though their rogue, Petra Uldane, was killed by the death knight Whim attempting to escape.

On the surface, the phylactery was shifted into the Plane of Fire by the sorcerer Narellyn Ambersole, while the wizard Demetrius was able to contain the body of Alrenn before dying himself. In fact, all of the members of the party were thought killed except for Ian van Montelle, who survived and escaped Old Garrod.

The Betrayal

Decades later, it was revealed that Narellyn had been manipulated by Alrenn, who likely knew of the group's pursuit. The sorcerer was meant to sow discord among the adventuring party and make them separate in Garrod, where they could be picked off one by one. But in the end, Narellyn betrayed Alrenn by throwing his phylactery into the Plane of Fire. Alrenn responded by casting power word stun on Narellyn, freezing him in place as lava from the Plane of Fire burned his body to a crisp. Narellyn awoke in a cloned body in the ruins of Ogoni (presumably made by Alrenn), and escaped Avo via plane shifting. He was later discovered by his daughter, Glendower, and a joint force of Dragonslayers and two individuals from the world of Eberron. Narellyn had a modify memory spell placed on him to forget his betrayal and attempt a new life as a man named Fog on the plane of Mechanus. He was retrieved by the adventurers, his memory reinstated, and he was put on trial in Kavonne in 4091 VR and subjected to 30 years of imprisonment, but was released after 20 years for good behavior.

Aftermath and Return of Alrenn

Alrenn was thought destroyed in Garrod, with his phylactery on another plane of existence. In 4081 VR, the mysterious entity Dovar the Lightbringer descended from the "heavens," establishing a base of operations in the Temple of the Gods in northern Akhentour, before being defeated by the Dragonslayers and the Warden Korth of Avbrungia a year later. Dovar's amorphous form was revealed to be concealing a nearly dead Alrenn, kept in a liminal state by the acidic effects of his outer ooze form and the regenerative aspects of his lich form. This was likely the last plan of Demetrius--to keep Alrenn barely alive but unable to regenerate, thus preventing him from reforming at this phylactery upon death. However, the radiant aura of the Warden Korth of Avbrungia killed Alrenn's lich form, causing him to reform as a demilich near his phylactery, which had been moved to the Material Plane by firenewts, who did not know what it was. Alrenn was aided by Lucretia Voss, who brought him back to Old Garrod to begin the ritual of soul consuming, which would have returned Alrenn to his full lich form if it had been successful.

The Dragonslayers, aided by the guildmasters of the Redfang Guild, were able to defeat Lucretia and the demilich Alrenn, destroying his phylactery in the process, and preventing him from returning ever again.