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Arendia, Maragor and the Empire of Tolnedra.
It is a commonplace to observe that history is a by-product of war,
and with the exception of the Alorn invasion mentioned above and a
legendary conflict between Nyissa and Maragor late in the second
millennium, the Nyissans have had almost no conflicts with the
other kingdoms of the west.
The causes of the Maragor-Nyissa war are shrouded in the mists
of antiquity' and what few actual records we have of the conflict are
at best fragmentary as a result of the excessive zeal of Tolnedran
soldiery during the extirpation of the Marags in the third
millennium. What remains is a sketchy body of reports, requisitions, diaries
and the like which provide a shadowy outline of the conflict and
little else.
Whatever the unknown cause was, it appears that the Marags
considered themselves the offended side, and the mounting of their
expeditionary force was something in the nature of a holy crusade.
At any rate, during the mid-nineteenth century' Marag columns
struck down across the northeastern frontier of Nyissa and plunged
toward Sthiss Tor, 250 leagues to the west. Field commanders
reported the existence of broad highways through the jungles and
mighty cities which were besieged and pulled down. While some of
this may be shrugged off as primitive exaggeration, it must be
conceded that there may indeed be some grain of truth in those
reports. Tolnedran expeditions into northern Nyissa following the
Alorn invasion of the fifth millennium noted the existence of vast,
jungle-choked ruins and barely perceptible highways through the
dense growth
*An obvious reference to the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
. Whatever the truth may be, the Marags pressed on,
pausing only to violate Nyissan temples and to perform their own
disgusting rites upon the altars of the Snake God.
At the approach of the Marag columns, Queen Salmissra and her
retinue fled the city of Sthiss Tor and sought refuge in the jungles to
the south. The Marags found that they had conquered an empty city
surrounded by unpeopled fields.
At that time occurred one of the most monstrous incidents in the
history of warfare. After the Marags had occupied the city for
perhaps ten days, the soldiers began to sicken and die in alarming
numbers. The frantic pleas for food sent back to Maragor by field
commanders camped in the midst of a fertile plain burgeoning with
unharvested crops provide poignant substantiation to what had
taken place. Before their evacuation of the city the Nyissans had
systematically poisoned every scrap of edible food in the vicinity of
the capital. They had even, by means known only to them, poisoned
fruits and vegetables while they still hung from trees or nestled in
the fields. Such cattle as were left for the Marags had, with a
technique that staggers the imagination, been poisoned in such a way
that, while the cattle remained healthy, all who ate their flesh died.
A decimated and delirious column of the few pitiful survivors
stumbled out of the jungles and back to Maragor, leaving their trail
littered with the bodies of their dead.
While it is conjecture only, it is fairly safe to assume that the
lessons of the Marag invasion were not lost on the Nyissans. The