Vancelmar, King of Spirits (II)

Vancelmar, half-elven bastard and former student of magic, now led a vast army in a quest for ultimate power. Marching in from realms above the earth, in the exotic aether, they were as diverse as they were numerous: among Vancelmar's forces were ten battalions of Numinate darklings, five hundred heartshapers, a division of elementals (frost, fire, and cacophony), and the battered remnants of the elvish military; not to forget the miscellaneous minor demons with which Vancelmar had begun his rise to power. Marching under the strict control of Vancelmar and his lieutenants, the Shadow Lords, the army set its sights on Vancelmar's home of three and a half years: Kornan by the Waters.

The Lorn were recent arrivals to the land of Vancelmar's birth, having arrived from across the sea a mere thirty years ago. They established trade ties with their neighbors, exchanging technology and goods. By the time of Vancelmar's arrival, Kornan by the Waters (the centre of the Lorn presence on the continent) had become a bustling city, beginning to expand beyond the walls that had initially defined and protected it. Jerel Thriceslain, Vancelmar's former master, had been drawn to the city by its unique intermingling of lore foreign and local.

Kornan by the Waters was defended by a force of six hundred Lornish infantry and eighty cavalrymen. They died within hours of the attack, as Vancelmar's forces sacked the buildings outside the citadel and then swarmed over the walls without need of ladders or siege towers, overwhelming the unprepared defenders. As Vancelmar commanded from the rear of his force, his army slaughtered nearly every inhabitant of the prosperous city. Jerel Thriceslain was responsible for the escape of his students and a few other lucky survivors. As the city burned around him, he protected his charges from the chaos all around, and then held nearly two hundred darklings at bay while the refugee ships sailed to safety. Vancelmar arrived to find his mentor dead on the ground, surrounded by terrible carnage. He could have sent his elementals after the survivors, to finish the destruction: but some sense of justice stayed his hand. Vancelmar's desire was not to destroy, but to rule.

After the battle, he met with his officers in the soot-blackened throne room at the heart of the citadel, to discuss their conduct in future battles. Vancelmar explained that he wanted conquest, not destruction, and illustrated the point by executing one in ten of his officers.

The point was taken. Vancelmar's army moved south, sweeping like a wave of destruction and darkness through the tiny kingdoms and city-states that filled the continent. Their militaries, poorly organized and frequently hearing word of Vancelmar's coming only hours before the attack came, were slaughtered by the hundreds and the thousands. Civilian casualties, however, were light - Vancelmar's officers feared further punishment, and ordered the execution of any in their command indulging in wanton slaughter. Within five years, the continent which was once divided between no less than thirty-six independent nations (and, depending on whether certain dubious claims were believed, perhaps up to fifty) was now ruled by a single man: Vancelmar.

Vancelmar, for all the horror of his conquests, did not impose unduly on the lands he had conquered. He raised up governors for each territory from among the people of that land, carefully watched by incorruptible elemental guardians, and levied only a token tax - for after all, his army required no pay nor food. Bandits were destroyed with extreme prejudice, and it was only years after Vancelmar's great campaign begun, after the ambush at Riker's Pass, that he began to issue a levy of militia to supplement his somewhat diminished forces. Trade began to link the once-divided continent into a single whole, especially as Vancelmar's great conquest drew to a close. The unreal had become real.

At the end of the five years, when no opposition of note remained on the continent to challenge Vancelmar, he decided to climb once more into the upper aether, to ensure that his kingdom remained secure and to reinforce his otherworldly army, diminished by attrition. In his absence, he appointed the remaining eleven Shadow Lords (one slain by Vancelmar's hand after the debacle at Kornan by the Waters, two lost at Riker's Pass) to rule equally over the subjugated continent. Scarcely had Vancelmar begun his climb up the Fivefold Stairway, though, when Lorn troopships landed in the harbour of lifeless Kornan by the Waters. A force of sixteen thousand Lornish regulars marched on Vancelmar's kingdom in retribution for the atrocity now five years past - led by Jerel Thriceslain's apprentices, who Vancelmar had neglected to pursue in the name of mercy.

Their first battle was a defeat, as gibbering vindersnarks folded up the left flank of the Lornish army and forced retreat. The Shadow Lord commanding, however, failed to pursue the retreating Lornish force - afraid of another trap like the one that claimed the left side of its body three years before. The Lornish army used the respite wisely, devising an altogether new tactic - the placement of native flamethrowers, used normally as fixed defenses (ineffective against the fast-moving aetherical forces), on Lorn chariots. When next the Shadow Lord took the field against the Lorn expedition, it sent its troops swiftly toward the Lorn line, hoping to overwhelm them with speed and numbers; only to be hit from the rear by flame-spouting chariots. The militias broke and ran; the darklings and elementals fought to the death, surrounded and blasted by Thriceslain's apprentices.

Vancelmar's empire began to unravel even swifter than it was conquered. The southern Shadow Lords marched their garrisons north to fight the Lornish expedition, but before arriving were forced to march back again to quell a wave of insurrection. The central Shadow Lords each refused to bring troops north for one reason or another - disbelief that the Lorn force actually existed, unwillingness to act without approval from Vancelmar - leaving the northern Shadow Lords to fight - and lose - alone.

The Lorn knew from militia captives that Vancelmar would return, bringing reinforcements and his own not inconsiderable strength. No matter how many victories they won, time was running out. Thriceslain's apprentices concocted a daring plan - an ritual, at the spot that Vancelmar summoned the portals to bring his army to earth, that would banish the aetherical foes back to the heavens once more. For ten days the apprentices chanted a banishing spell of tremendous power, as the Lorn army dug in and repelled attacks from the Shadow Lords. At last, just as Vancelmar stepped through a portal into the centre of the apprentices' circle, the spell was completed. The Shadow Lords, the darklings, the elves and the heartshapers - all faded away as though they'd never been. A great barrier came into being, forever separating the aether from the earth. The first and last King of Spirits was no more.

And no more do the real and the unreal meet.