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sanction of war.
The campaign in Maragor lasted for four years and was marked
with the kind of savagery seldom seen in the west. Tolnedran
legions operating out of Tol Rane quickly encircled the relatively
small nation, then turned and struck inward at the heart of Maragor.
The Marags, still weakened after their disastrous expedition in
Nyissa, were no match for the might of the legions. The
commanders of those legions, imbued with a kind of religious fervor,
systematically slaughtered the entire populace as they went, and
only at the last when the remnants of the Marags had been harried
into a single valley in central Maragor were they persuaded to
relent. Unfortunately, it was not humanity which moved the
Tolnedrans to mercy' but once again our national vice - greed. The
surviving Marags were spared in order that they might be sold to
Nyissan slavers, who, like vultures, hovered on the outskirts of the
battle.
. Thus perished Maragor and with it no small measure of
Tolnedran pride.
The horde of Tolnedran gold-seekers and commoners greedy for
land which had hovered on the border awaiting the conclusion of
the war swept into Maragor like a wave, frantic lest some other find
more gold or take more land. But, as we learned to our sorrow, the
grief-stricken spirit of Mara, God of the Marags, still abode in the
land. The wave which had descended broke and recoiled back as
Mara took his vengeance upon the adventurers. The tales which
returned from that haunted land have fed nightmares in Tolnedra
for over three millennia. The wailing of Mara is heard from one end
of Maragor to the other by day, and by night, the fearful shades of
slaughtered Marags stalk the land shrieking, their blood-smeared
faces glowing with a ghastly light.
The weaker among the treasure-seekers soon went mad and
cast themselves into rivers or hurled themselves off precipices; the
stronger returned, shaken and ashen-faced to Tolnedra without
gold, without land, and often only marginally with their sanity'
It was one of these survivors who devoted his fortune and the
remainder of his life to the establishment of the great monastery at
Mar-Terin where the monks for three thousand years have sought to
propitiate Mara and to comfort the spirits of the slain Marags. The
simple courage of the monks of Mar-Terin in the face of unspeakable
horror is a testament to all that is best in the Tolnedran character.
The remainder of the Dynasty was uneventful until the reigns of
the last four emperors. Trade was expanded with the Arends to the
north and to a lesser degree with the Nyissans to the south, and the
great ship-yards at Tol Vordue and Tol Horb were erected. Tolnedran
vessels began to ply coastal waters in search of trade, and by 2400
had reached as far north as the Sea of the Winds off the northwest
coast of what is now Sendaria.
It was at that point that we first encountered the Chereks. In 2411
a Tolnedran commercial flotilla was set upon by a Cherek fleet
which emerged from the Cherek Bore. Tolnedran vessels, slow and
wide, are built to carry cargo, and have never been a match for the
swift, narrow war-boats of the Chereks. The battle was short, and
the loss of lives and goods appalling.
Emperor Ran Vordue XVI quickly armed every available vessel
and mounted a punitive expedition against Cherek. The results, of