Hemdorkas Incursion

1508
In early 1508 Grell appeared in the Hemdorkas Hills at the farth north of the Kingdom in huge numbers.

Queen Kiara, at age 19 in the first year of her reign, asked Nixiem to drive back the monsters. Nixiem refused, telling Queen Kiara this was her first big test as a queen and that she would never earn the trust or respect of her people if she didn’t do something about it herself.

After much arguing, Queen Kiara called her banners and sent General Mofkers to quell the grell.

The Grell proved to be more troublesome than expected. Their abilities of levitation surprised the Eridonian forces and huge numbers of men died when swarms of Grell descended from the sky at night onto unsuspecting troops camped below. This would prove to be a favorite tactic of the Grell, one that gave them their best victories, and one that eventually would be their downfall.

The incursion lasted 9 months, and badly bled the kingdom. So many soldiers died in the first four months of the campaign with no sign of progress that barons began appointing new landlords to replace knights sent to war under the expectation that they would not return. Many knights returned to find their lands and holdings given away or repossessed. Soldiers that were paralyzed by Grell, but ultimately survived, were shunned under the belief that Grell reproduced by laying their young inside those they paralyzed but did not kill.

The source of the grell was never found, but after their defeat at the Battle of Highland Camp, where the Eridonian forces set an ambush for the grell, they fled back into the hills and vanished. The ambush, comprised of building a fake camp for the army while hiding bowmen and wizards on the back edge of camp, resulted in the deaths of many Eridonian soldiers by friendly fire. Some would go on to call the use of soldiers as live bait, and the indiscriminate fire into their ranks (which were swarmed by grell), a betrayal of the very soldiers sent to fight these monsters.

Aftermath
The Bastards of the Firewood are veterans of this war, who felt betrayed. Based out of the Firewood led by Kerak the Vengeful, a cleric of Velthara, and the disavowed knight Zaerin, that has been raiding and sacking nearby villages and even Anvil itself. The area has been attacked over and over in the last six months of 1508. In the last month of 1508 one of the temples in town was burned, and the keep was attacked. The gatekeeper and guards on the walls were slain, the keep itself was raided, but the captain of the guard and the men in the keep managed to push back The Bastards of the Firewood, who fled with a sizable amount of loot. The captain of the guard died of his wounds.

In response, Anvil called it banners and marched into the Firewood. Somehow the bandits got word of this plan, and used it as an opportunity to sack and burn to the ground three keeps at three different villages. In exchange, the Bastards of the Firewood lost all their supplies and the fortified camp they had built in the woods. The bandits have been laying low since then, but it is only a matter of time before they strike again.