History

Twelve hundred years ago, settlers from the then Duchy of Vaegirsen set out to establish new settlements on their eastern border, past the elven lands. This was made possible by passes that had been discovered in the Spine of the World, revealing rugged but rich high vales, full of ancient strong forests and laden with minerals.

When the human settlers first arrived, the land was rich in minerals and grew food by the plenty, with large forests and plentiful game. Scant decades after the settlement, however, some of the people far to the east of the Spine began to report encounters with strange un-men; the orcs, goblins, trolls, and other foul kin.

This new land was already too valuable to Vaegirsen, as they had come to depend on the ores and lumber from this new land to support their fight against the strange On'clact'ul peoples from the jungles to their southwest, and they would not be dissuaded from settling the region. The Duke of Vaegirsen mustered an army of two thousand men, and sent it east under the command of Lord Geoffrey du Hauk, with orders to secure a stronghold and protect the peoples of the Duchy.

The first battles were easily won, and the establishment of The Aerie provided a rugged, easily defended center for trade and command. Over the next hundred and fifty years, the ever multiplying peoples of the now Kingdom of Vaegirsen pushed the border further and further east, pushing the savage unmen tribes before them.

Settlement proceeded until nine hundred years ago, when the now Barony of Haukmoor stretched all the way east to the Black Crags mountains. Suddenly, it seemed as if the mountains themselves were bleeding, and that blood was unmen.

Tens of thousands of unmen streamed in to the poorly defended eastern settlements, razing them to the ground and slaughtering all that could not escape. Slowly, but now slowly enough, the hordes pushed further and further west, with a rising crest of refugees propelled before them.

By the time the Kingdom managed to send enough troops to break the onslaught at the Battle of Gorak's Pass, and to break the siege of the Aerie, the Barony had been pushed back to a mere sliver of it's former size. The people of Haukmoor were not content with this paltry holding, however, and within ten years had cleared out much of the Vale, and resettled in their new homes with one goal in mind - to build enough of an army to drive the unmen back whence they came.

The humans sallied forth in strength twenty years after the invasion of the unmen, and easily crushed the now uncoordinated and satiated tribes. They managed to push them almost all the way back to the feet of the Black Crag mountains, then the toll of constant battles became too much, and the assault lost it's heart. The troops wanted to return back to their families, and to begin reclaiming the rest of the ravaged lands they used to call home.

From that point onwards, the border of man and unman has drifted slowly back and forth, sometimes as the result of great wars, other times due to the vagaries of public settlements, economies, or environmental disasters.

To this day, roughly every one hundred and fifty years, the unmen rise; sometimes pouring forth again from the Black Crags, or else arise from deep caves, or descend from the northern wastes, and mount a major war with the humans. Every time, they are led by a mysterious figure, named Dar'tha Zulak. It is believed that as no unman lives longer than five score years, it has been a new tribal chief each time who has risen to prominence, then taken the name of their first great leader. Reports from witnesses that this general is sometimes an orc, other times a goblin, and even once a troll, lend credence to this belief.