Knight of the First Empire

The war of four centuries ended in 3802 BIA with the death of the First Black Emperor and in-so doing shattering the unity between the Drow States she'd forged and maintained for over half a millenia. But for the High Elves, Dwarves and especially for the Student Men said victory was a Pyrrhic one. Over the course of the War the Drow had sacked city after city and armies had laid waste to countryside time and time again leaving famine in their wake. By the end of the war only seven of the Student Men's hundred and sixteeen capital cities had managed to avoid being sacked through the entirety of the war. Even these were shadows of their former glory and three of them would be destroyed after the conclusion of the war as their armies had been spent in the War's Final Battle leaving them vulnerable to the ambitions of the remaining Drow States as they fought to attempted to establish themselves as the new dominant power. Regardless a Dark Age fell across the lands West of the Dragonspine Mountains as the human population was reduced to thousands of primitive warring clans, for the most part.

Even so a few sparks of human civilization endurde in four cities, among these was the Kingdom of Drelsin. Situated near the boarders of Ilvanas the people of Drelsin were supported by the High Elves and under their protection had a renaissance. Even so the wars had shaped their once mercantile culture into one which valued the warrior above all else. In the late 3400s they began the process of expanding their realm, exterminating maraudinga orcs and bringing human enclaves back into the fold. At the tip of the Drelsinian spear was their wealthiest warriors who could afford high quality weapons, heavy armor and horses and acted as heavy shock cavalry. Said warriors were given control of areas of land to manage, tax and use to support them raising up more members of the chivalry who would expand their kingdom further. Even some Dwarven realms were brought into the fold. In a little more than a century Drelsin had grow from a small state less than 150 km across to a vast Feudal kingdom more than three times the size of the largest of the Student Men's states. As such in 3299 BIA King Ilmis-VI renamed the Kingdom of Drelsin to the High Kingdom of Men in the likeness to the High Kingdom of the Elves. Even so, today it is better known as the First Empire.

The culture of the First Empire was militaristic and hierarchical. Only those trained in arms could hold power, thought military service was only mandatory for the nobility. Like the nobility, the common folk of the First Empire were stratified into five tiers each with differing degrees of legal rights ranging from those with with the right to travel, receive trial and marry into the nobility to serfs who were bound to the land, barred from owning weapons and could be legally beaten by their liege lords up to ten strikes with a cane. Movement within the noble and common classes was possible, usually through military service, including plentiful elevations to nobility. Likewise many noble houses were destroyed. Though numerous religions were allowed within the First Empire, the Drelsinian Pantheon of Five was given particular favor. Members of the Nobility were required to pay worship to them and pay tithes to the Church. The First Priest of the Drelsinian Conclave was considered second only to the king and commanded a considerable force of holy warriors of the Faith Militant. Drelsinian Temples were composed of a rotunda with a conical roof with five shrines in the middle with five wings radiating from the central complex. Outside of Dwarvish craftsmenship, magic was the domain of the faith in the Empire. All mages were priests.

At first the Drow states viewed the First Empire as being an inconvenience more than anything. Reaving coastlines for slaves became less profitable and some minor attack forces were destroyed or repulsed. Their general response was to focus their efforts elsewhere and continue to view each other and the High Elves as the real enemy and snuffing out re-emergent necrite remnants as being a more pressing concern. They felt that this "High Kingdom" would eventually fall apart in civil war. This was until 3091 BIA. In 3094 the Empire's young and impetious High King Tilsim-III negotiated with the High King to launch an attack on the Drow State of Qwensilvos in what is now the Principality of Oestia to begin the extermination of the Dark Elves. After mustering up an army of some 10,000 mages, 25,000 knights, 260,000 common warriors and 20,000 holy warriors his host met with a high elvish army. For three years they laid siege upon the state's easten walls with spells to overcome the defenses before making a break which they poured through, laying waste to the farmland within and overcoming the more modest defenses around the state's core city and subsequently leveling it (despite fierce resistance) in a few weeks of blood and mayhem with not a single Drow being spared.

The triumph of this victory was short lived, however as the five westernmost surviving drow states put aside their differences and launched a counter attack against the First Empire. More than half the human forces involved in the Qwensilvos Campaign had fallen and the Empire was faced with attacks on all sides. Despite some famous last stands, a few victories over Dark Elvish forces and High Elvish intervention within a year the city of Dreslin was sacked and leveled. It's rulers were tortured to death, it's population taken as slaves and it's ruins cursed. The rest of the Empire was reaped for slaves and were leveled over the next four years. When the Drow had completed their bloody work the lands of the the First Empire had lost two thirds of their population and all semblence of order and common government. Those that were left for the most part reverted back to feudal clans.