Near the beginning of the Fourth Age, as much of the ancient settlements of Caelon were claimed by the earliest settlers of the post-demonic era, a problem of leadership arose. The men and women who set out to lay claim to the land were sent on expeditions chartered by the Prime Consul of the White Walled City, but at some point it became clear that the blood of the First Son would act as a chaos agent working against the order that the Torians sought.
The plans to run a unified bureaucracy under Torian rule were met with the ambitions of men with unnatural powers who would fancy themselves kings, unbeholden to the command of the Torian leadership. The ensuing conflicts that came next would be remembered as the Gifted Wars.
Setting the Stage of Wars to Come
After the land was scoured of the demonic fiends that prowled the land by the First Son and his expeditions, the land that would have been a unified empire with the First Son at its head suddenly came under a new threat of destruction as news came from the field that the First Son had been slain. The throne had been prepared for a divine and eternal king, but now there was no king to claim it.
The clergy quickly acted upon hearing the news. The Prime Consul, the religious leader of the Torians and the head of the city state of the White Walled City, now claimed command over all of the First Son’s forces, citing there were no legitimate heirs.
The First Son was said to have taken a multitude of wives over the years, fathering a large amount of children who possessed many of the fledgling powers that their father had. However, the clergy quickly moved to regain their control over the forces, stating that because Torian law decrees polygamy an abomination, none of the children had legitimate claims to the throne, nor could they hold any position of power.
The children of the First Son fled the White Walled City, spreading out throughout the land and seeking solace in the new settlements built upon the sites of ancient kingdoms. The first settlement to turn against the command of the Torian leadership was Iobina, a place to the East of the White Walled City. The leader of the revolt was a man named Joske, one of the children of the First Son who was said to possess several abilities inherited from his father.
Stifling One Rebellion but Inspiring Others
The Gifted Wars are said to have began in the year 51 of the current age, when the Torian army retaliated against the revolutionary forces in Iobina. Though the forces of Iobina were well fortified behind their castle walls, the Torian army outnumbered the men by an overwhelming amount. What made this particular conflict even more noteworthy was that at the head of the battalions for the Torian Army was a man named General Tonsior, who was also a child of the First Son.
After sixteen days of surrounding the fortress with minimal bloodshed, a message was sent to the Torian forces that a surrender would take place only under condition of loss of honorable duel between the self-proclaimed King Joske and General Tonsior. Because it was in the best interest of the capitol to rein in the inhabitants of the settlement and not result in total slaughter, the deal was struck.
The starved yet determined King Joske approached the duel grounds to face a well-fed and rested General Tonsior. While it was said that the very grounds upon which they stood rose up at the site of the duel now known as the Half-Brothers Half-Battle, the event was appropriately named because it did not take long for King Joske to become exhausted and incapacitated, losing the duel.
Taken into custody, King Joske was made an example of on a hill outside of the White Walled City called Roca de Ajenjo (or Wormwood Rock, for the amount of the native plant that covered its surface). He was beheaded and burned until nothing remained but ash, along with roughly 30 co-conspirators who were identified by the starving citizens of Iobina.
While this event was supposed to dissuade further rebellion, history tells us that the opposite was true. Soon, more settlements would rebel against the throne, ultimately resulting in many more such proclamations of kingdom. The peninsula of Caelon would soon be transformed from a central power to several feudal states, in only 32 short years. It would be the birth of many kingdoms, but the end of peace on the continent.
