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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bob Aberton" data-source="post: 136784" data-attributes="member: 1518">And now, the third and final volume of "Historica Avalonica."*drum roll please*The Ruinous Wars and the Death of Nwren the Golden."Now in the year 289 ART, King Nwren was new-returned from a series of wars against the Allamidians.  He was ever looking for a new fight, and he resolved to rid Avalon of the Wizard once and for all, for the Wizard was a thorn in his side, growing ever longer and sharper each day.  So he mustered his army, and his personal guard, the Knights of the Golden Guard, rode at its head.  The Wizard had by that time laid claim to lands far beyond the Harshlands, and none would gainsay him, for his army was too great, and his general was a most terrible thing, a specter of a once noble knight, as the Wizard himself had been once, that was now neither living nor dead.  It was mute and terrible, foul and cruel beyond belief.  No weapon would bite on him and he slew for the cruel pleasure of slaying.  He was the Silent Rider, the Grey Huntsman whom not the bravest knight could withstand.The armies of Nwren encountered by far a grreater resistance than they had expected, and this cost them dearly.  They dug in and prepared for a long siege at the borders of the Harshlands.Day by day, losses grew on both sides.  At times, swift horsemen would break the siege to loot and pillage, burning house and village, breaking castles and manors.  The armies of Avalon were hardly better, for they trampled fields with their riding, and they took all food and livestock and horses, and everything of value within miles, until the common folk starved or ran away.  And then the looters, deserters from both sides, would burn empty house and cruelly slay the brave folk that lingered.  Their incursions grew ever deeper into the territories of the Nherianthir Kings.The sige went on for years.  Back and forth acroos countryside and wild moor the see-saw battle raged, first one side, thenthe other would be winning.  Avalon lay desolate and ravaged, and the people of Avalon were dead or driven away.  To add to the misery of both sides, in the year 299 ART, a plague broke out, the Great Pestilence, and no one could stop or cure it, neither Christian priest nor Druid wise man nor secular surgeon.  Mnay thousands died, and the towns not ravaged by war were brought low by pestilence.  Between war and plagues, nearly half the folk of Avalon died between 289 and 309 ART.The battle went on for 20 years, until the hardiest Norseman of the Icy Wastses would have been sickened with the bloodshed and slaughter and desolation.  No living thing grew for a week's riding between the Harshlands and the Tor.Becuase of this, that no living thing grew, upon war and pestilence, famine was added to the misery of all, and many more thousands died, or were beggared.  For the part of Avalon laid to waste was the part that had been the richest fields and best grazing-land.  Now even King Nwren was sickened with all this battle, and the common folk were beginning to hate him, who, in their eyes, had wrought all this.  So he did a very foolish thing.  He challenged the Wizard to single combat.  And the Wizard came!Now, while King Nwren was nigh on fifty years old and could barely support the weight of his armor, the Wizard could not be seen to have aged at all, beneath his black armor, and visored helmet behind which a pair of unblinking red eyes burned fiercely.  And it may be that due to the influence of the Rod that weilded him, that he had not aged a whit.  King Nwren held his own, and in a battle which the bards will long sing of, he and the Wizard fought until the sun went down, whereupon the Wizard fought with renewed vigor, and when Nwren's foot slipped on a stone, the Wizard brought the Rod down upon his helm.  And the weapon smashed through helm and skull alike, and King Nwren fell, and night at last came to Avalon."                                                         -Arolas, Merlin of Avalon, in "Historica Avalonica," circa 23 ARQ</blockquote>

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