King Wulfram Haansa

reigned 753-784 vS

Wulfram Haansa ascended to the throne at the age of 26. He declined to adopt the Gesselring family name of his father, instead keeping his mother’s name. He immediately repudiated all of his father’s frivolous ways and began strengthening the army yet again. He had geasa laid upon the other sons of King Roland never to oppose his commands, and banished them from court. He sent strong letters of warning to those who had supported his half-brother, and also formally declared war upon the Elves and the Kzinti of Taakritch. He commissioned the construction of Faereaver Fortress on the Elven border, and began the practice of sending good troops there to guard the border. The remainder of his army he prepared for an assault on Taakritch.

Unfortunately for his plans, the northen Kzinti from the Patriarchies attacked again in 756vS (LY 2115). This time they captured Contradina, the northeastern seaport of Smeisserand. King Wulfram marched his troops northward to retake the city, but this was not to be. Elven archers and saboteurs disrupted supply lines and slew messengers throughout the border counties, and the Kzinti summoned demons to disrupt operations and slay hundreds of troops. Meanwhile, the southern Kzinti attacked Degloss province in small naming-parties, creating havoc. More Heroes from the Patriarchies landed in Kästeldorf and Mainhafen, succeeding in the capture of all Smeisserander nothern ports.

It took seven years for King Wulfram to expel the Kzinti from the north and south of Smeisserand. His army suffered great losses in the process. The Kzinti managed to maintain their ownership of Contradina, but this was no victory for them. The demons had managed to emplace one of their own as ruler of the city, a halfbreed fiend known as "The Lady." Even the Kzinti were virtual slaves to her control. Many fled into the forest on the western border of Kyriabor to live nomadic lives hunting and gathering. King Wulfram nursed his hatred of the Kzinti and the Elves and rebuilt his strength.

In 771vS (LY 2130) Smeisserand mounted a three-pronged attack on Taakritch. After two weeks of fighting, King Wulfram rode into the captured city. By the end of the year, however, it was clear that his armies could not hold the territory. Kzinti from the southern coastal Patriarchies arrived in force to retake Taakritch. Rather than squander his forces needlessly, the king ordered the city abandoned. The former Kzin slaves were freed and indentured in Degloss, the city was looted, and the bridges and docks burned. King Wulfram personally oversaw the evacuation of Taakritch.

Returning to Katraal, King Wulfram had apparently decided that greater means were necessary if he was to be able to defeat his powerful enemies. He ordered his wizards and scholars to unearth the research into an artifact of power that his grandfather had commissioned eariler. He allocated resources to rebuild his army, but his passion had turned to arcane methods of domination and control. His army had little to do but fight skirmishes with the Kzinti, Elves, and Kenku for eight years while the search for an ultimate weapon continued. Most of the nobility felt that this was action enough.

The Redcloak War (779-780vS)

In the late summer of 779vS (LY 2138) an army of foreign crusaders captured Contradina from the demons. Led by the unlikely figure of a Dwarf Knight Priest mounted on a war-trained hog, the Scarlet Legion of Landers took Contradina and the surrounding environs. King Wulfram refused to negotiate with a non-human. The second representative sent by the Scarlet Legion was even worse–a kzin! The king's emissary demanded the return of Contradina to Smeisserand, promising a generous reward as payment and thanks. The kzin general demanded instead that serfs and indentured servants be released from bondage and that the laws against demihumans be repealed.

King Wulfram's emissary was shocked beyond speech. When he had recovered from the surprise of this pronouncement, he unequivocally informed the general that the commoners of Smeisserand were treated as befits their station in life and that the laws of the nation had not been set up so that they might serve as bargaining chips with foreign powers. Still the kzin commander remained firm in his demand. The emissary promised to relay the conditions to the king.

King Wulfram was stunned and furious when he received the news. It was unthinkable that a foreigner should have the audacity to dictate matters of internal law and custom to an emissary of the King of Smeisserand. The insult was further compounded by the fact that the representative of the foreign power should be a hated kzin! The king sent word that he would speak only with a true representative of the Scarlet Legion, and not some furred aberration, and then only when the Legion was ready to behave reasonably as regards matters between nations. Naturally, the Marshall of the Scarlet Legion supported his general, and refused to deal with the king of Smeisserand on his stipulated terms. Instead, he stated that he would hold the Contradina territory and hope that God would show King Wulfram the light of truth and reason.

This, of course, amounted to a mortal insult to King Wulfram's honor, race, religion, and pride. He did what any self-respecting monarch would do in the same circumstances–he declared war. He mobilized his troops toward Contradina, expecting to begin a short spring campaign to regain the lost territory and teach the red-cloaked foreigners a lesson in manners. The immediate fall of Maastricht County to the Legion in the autumn of 779vS (LY 2138) came as a surprise. In retrospect, it appeared obvious that the Legionnaires had been preparing for war while offering bizarre terms for negotiation to the king. King Wulfram ordered even more troops to the front line and prepared for an early spring assault.

As snow left the ground, a combination of Scarlet Legionnaires, elves, and kenku decimated the regiments of Faereaver Fortress, even as the Smeisserander troops prepared to recapture Maastricht. With Smeisserand's right flank unguarded, troops had to be shifted yet again. Finally, though, the army was prepared. The red-cloaks would be taught a stern lesson! The arrival of a great black dragon in the sky over the Legion's positions in Velaana Pass caused much destruction and provided a great morale boost to the Smeisserander troops. The commanders ordered an immediate assault.

The combined might of the Smeisserand Northern Army quickly destroyed the surprised forces of the Scarlet Legion and broke through the pass into Maastricht. Within two days, the forces of the king had reached the central stronghold of Aalfa Keep where the Legionnaires had regrouped and massed their forces. Several bands of adventurers aided the Legionnaires, and a great dragon of ruddy gold scales fought valiantly on their side. All of this might was no match for the battle wizards and greater numbers of veteran Smeisserander troops, however. A troop of elite Smeisserander knights gained the wall of Aalfa Keep under the cloak of invisibility. As the battle wizard archmage destroyed the south wall with sudden great blasts of fire, the knights swarmed through the breach. Thanks to the healing abilities of the Red Priests and the high morale of the legionnaires themselves, the Scarlet Legion was merely routed, and not destroyed outright.

Within five days, the rest of the Legionnaires had retreated to Voyreem, Faereaver, or Highwall. In Voyreem, the Legion held the town and the river bridge across the Benaaflen River. In the south, the Legion held the great fortress on the border of the Aelvenwode and could not be dislodged. In the north, the ancient stronghold of Highwall blocked the passes between the western coast and Maastricht. All three strongholds were besieged as the Smeisserand army marched north to capture the port city of Contradina. The war drew quickly into stalemate as the Scarlet Legion forces were isolated and unable to escape, but the king's army was unable to starve them out or take the strong points.

Over the course of the summer of 780vS (LY 2139), very little changed.

Prophetic Visions as the Cycle Turns

Early in the autumn, one of the King's close friends was assassinated. Duke Ernst Liezt was a noted foe of the elves and one who spoke out vociferously against any sort of loosening of the class barriers among the human and orcish folk of Smeisserand. He was preparing for a hunt with his sons and several friends in his castle stables when a messenger arrived to give him a missive. As the duke opened the scroll, the messenger drew a glass sword and sliced him into six great bloody chunks faster than anyone could see. The assassin fled, leaving only a solid black card of polished resin — the mark of the world's most infamous assassin, Adriana the Black.

The death of his friend had a profound impact on King Wulfram. On the evening following his funeral, the King had a series of prophetic dreams. Upon awakening, he went to the grove near the capital city of Katraal and spoke to the druids. He returned from the grove in a pensive, yet hopeful, mood. That afternoon he called a cabinet of his advisors and emerged late that evening with a proclamation. In this new proclamation he granted all Smeisserander citizens the freedom to pursue their own destinies based upon individual powers, freed from the restrictions of class. He abolished inherited servitude and slavery, and restructured the obligations of the peasantry. He also extended a truce to the Scarlet Legion and invited their leaders to talk of other enemies. Though he did not extend friendship to the elves, he allowed them to leave Smeisserand as neutrals.

The war between the Legion and the Smeisserand nobility was quickly ended. Smeisserand regained all of its original territory and offered the Legion the chance to help retake the southern port of Brulhafen/Taakritch. Most of the crusaders accepted, satisfied that they had achieved the aims for which they had come.

Regaining Brülhafen (781vS - 783vS)

The northern Duchy of the late Duke Liezt was given to the rule of Duke Benjamin Nassir, a former baron with great wealth and political connections. Duke Nassir was a man who had the trust of many throughout the court and kingdom. The County of Maastricht was given to the old Baron Aalfa, whose lands saw the greatest battles of the recent war. Voyreem became a barony, and shortly thereafter a county, under the rulership of a foreign noblewoman, Lady Anissette DuKott. The Lady Countess received her title as a gift for service to the king. Many Scarlet Legionnaires used Voyreem as a waystation between Contradina on the coast and the crusades in the south.

The Countess, a swordswoman and merchant princess by trade, greatly increased the reputation and and prosperity of her new subjects in Voyreem. As Maastricht began to recover from the scars of war, Voyreem became the meeting place and crossroads of northern Smeisserand. Merchants, soldiers, and adventurers regularly passed through the bustling town. The Lady's marriage to the Baron Sir Drake Hedgerton, Archmage of Landers, in 782vS (LY 2141) brought a swift and sudden leap of magical power to Voyreem that burghers believed would ensure its safety and prosperity.

With the crusade of the Scarlet Legion ended, King Wulfram turned his energies to the recapture of Brulhafen. The additional military might of the Legion turned the holding action against the kzinti into a full-fledged campaign of conquest. After several inconclusive battles in which the kzinti received great damage but retained the port, the war drew into a seige of the city by the king's troops and the Legion. In late 782vS (LY 2141), the great ruddy gold dragon known simply as "Lady Dragon" led her inhuman minions in a surprise attack on the kzinti to capture Brülhafen for herself. Consolidating her gains, Lady Dragon offered the city up to the highest bidder. King Wulfram raised several million krugerrand to buy back Brülhafen. The kzin patriarch suspected a trick, and replied that conquest was not to be won by money, but by blood. With an adequate bid from the king, and no bid at all from the kzinti, Lady Dragon gracefully turned over Brülhafen to Smeisserand. King Wulfram ordered the nobility to raise additional troops to solidify Smeisserand's hold on the southern territory and began to survey the lines of an additional southern duchy.

Half-Elven Rebellion

In 783vS (LY 2142), the great half-elven patriot, Ruger the Fox, used mighty necromancy to capture Faereaver Fortress with an army of the dead. A secret call went out to all half-elves throughout Smeisserand to join together at Faereaver. By the time that the king and court realized what was happening, nearly 8,000 half-elves had joined Ruger and his lieutenants in the border stronghold. To the great surprise and alarm of folk throughout Smeisserand, it was discovered that more than half of these people had been living in disguise, and had never even been recognized as halfbreeds. Duke Nassir and the nobles near Saalz sent troops to beseige the fortress until a suitable force could retake the place and put an end to what became known as "the half-elf question." Ruger himself was slain in a sorcerous duel in Voyreem by a rival, a human in the service of Duke Nassir known as "The Dragon Wizard." The renegade druid, Dark Schniedar, and the Master Bard, Jann Wenner, helped the Dragon Wizard to destroy the artifact of power that allowed Ruger to create undead armies. By winter, the half-elves had dug in and renamed their territory Tir Parivel, meaning "Land of Freedom" in elvish. Meanwhile, half-elven problems and unrest in Kyriabor were also on the rise. King Wulfram prepared for a massive spring campaign.

On the 5^th of Growing of 784vS (LY 2143), King Wulfram Haansa was slain in his royal privy on a break from holding court. He was sliced into several pieces, and a solid black card was found on his body. Adriana the Black had struck again. His eldest son, Florian Haansa, was crowned on the 15th of Growing.

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