The Coup at Venemond

64 BU

It may be expected that, in establishing the colony of Kelsma on the shores of Muralis, the Aeternian nation of Idrach would expect some degree of fealty from its distant children. The Kelsmic peoples, on the other hand, slowly came to resent the presence of a government rendered undeniably foreign by the passage of time and, albeit grudgingly, began to put into motion the steps necessary in removing the remnants of one's obsolete patrons. For better or for worse, the march toward civil war was halted by the appearance of the Fiendtide and its wicked rampage through Kelsma. The army the Kelsmic judges had raised in secret was considerably hobbled, but so too was that of the Idrachi government, housed in its ancestral seat at Venemond, the tower now overseen by Judge Ara. Altering their plans without hesitation, the Judges felt it prudent to march at once upon the tower while the government remained largely destabilized by the sudden plague and its own self-imposed isolation in the face of increasing local unrest.

The battle would prove short, the cramped chambers of Venemond proving lethal in the plague's spread. The Kelsmic Judges found their army to outnumber that of the Idrachis by almost three to one, leading to only the most formal and half-hearted of battles before the defending force surrendered, leaving the royal ambassadors to fend for themselves. Fearing a reputation for bloodlust, the Judges adopted a strategy later described as "cruel beyond measure": they simply locked the tower up, garrisoned forces at its base, and abandoned it. Time, they reasoned, was unconquerable. So it was that the Idrachi presence in Kelsma faded, making way for the independent nation of Kelsma known today. While this event would sour relations between Idrach and Kelsma for some years, with time the former would accept the necessity of independence in its colony.