Histories of the Homeworld

The Terror Wars, Part Two

27,000-28,382:1 (-21,618)

	By 27,000:1, the Daksah tribes had extracted a heavy toll from our people following the death of one of the Terrors under Sarthys’ division.  Several villages and settlements were completely ravaged, and as hard as the Tryhlian armies tried to combat them, the Daksah were too quick to be countered.  Resorting to hit and run tactics, the creatures would rush in to a settlement, kill every living thing, set fires, and rush out, all within a matter of hours.  The smaller villages made easy prey as the large armies normally centralized around major cities, such as Tryhl or Khal’Shye.

	In 28,319:1, the Daksah attacked a small village near Khal’Shye called Sha’Noval.  Many exarches will not know this place, but to us born on the Homeworld, there is no place more sacred in terms of reverance.  For in this village was born Arack in 28,310:1.  Just a child when his village was attacked, the young lad survived the Daksah, and escaped into the Khalian Highlands alone.  There is no record of him from this point until he surfaced again on record in 28,347:1, enlisting in the Legion of Khal’Shye.  While there is no evidence or permanent knowledge of his whereabouts during those 28 solstices, many savants believe that important directives of the Hrak’Shyia began to formulate in this time, perhaps even visions from the Old Ones.

	Regardless of where he may have been, his career in the Legion of Khal’Shye was exemplary to say the least.  Appointed to a command position of a battalion after a short time, he exercised the first usage of indirect tactics against the Daksah tribes.  Taking his advice, the Khal’Shye government authorized the construction of a village called Tolan.  This was no ordinary village, however.  Outwardly it gave the appearance of any common settlement, complete with agricultural projects and minimum fortitude.  But the citizenry of Tolan was completely made up of Legion soldiers in disguise.  The village was constructed on the western coast, just south of the Ashloga-Khal border, a territory thought to be infested with a sizable Daksah nest.  One hundred Legion soldiers and fifty Tryhlian soldiers took up residence in the village, while some 2,000 more resided in temporary underground caverns surrounding the village.  In 28,375:1, just two weeks after its construction, the village of Tolan was primed.  The bait was set, and a few days later, the trap would spring.

	The utter slaughter of the Daksah at Tolan was glorious.  As suspected, they directly charged the village, only to be flanked and surrounded by battle-hardened troops rather than unweary villagers.  The few that escaped the battle only served to lead the Legion back to the Daksah nest, which was raided and destroyed.  No Daksah was left alive.  The Battle of Tolan, as it came to be known, was the single most important victory leading up to the Battle of Sigil Rock.  General Hysha, commander of the Legion, in an event that has mixed views, was killed in the battle.  General Hysha was, by all accounts, a great man, and very deserving of praise, but it is apparent that looking back at our history, had Hysha never been killed, Arack may not have been appointed the new General, and history as we know it, may have never happened.  Some consider this the first example of the nature of reality.  

	Nonetheless, Arack was given command of the entire Legion of Khal’Shye, while General Torish’la remained in control of the Tryhlian Army.  Torish’la is not remembered kindly in our history, and thus his name is used in insult, as it appears in our word “torishacoix”, the lowliest of all living creatures.  

	Torish’la had not been at the Battle of Tolan, but rather had engaged in an assault on a known Daksah nest that was along the southwestern coast of the Urus province.  Torish’la had heard of the Tolan idea and had dismissed its probability of success, citing that the only way to defeat the Daksah was by turning their own strategies against them.  Basically, Torish’la firmly believed in the frontal assault.  It had been a successful tactic many times, but usually at great cost to life.  When Arack’s idea proved successful, Torish’la was forced into a position where he would have to achieve a grand victory to save his credibility.  He led his army into the vicious wetlands of Urus’s western peninsulas.  

	Those few and terrible weeks were referred to simply as “Torish’la’s Assault”.  Horrific stories of day-long battles in the swamps accompany tales of terrible encounters after divisions getting separated.  Torish’la himself never returned from the wetlands, but whether he was captured, killed, or committed suicide has never been discovered.  Even after the Terror Wars, scholars have searched the murky swamps of the Urus Peninsulas for evidence, but nothing substantial has ever been found.  The Daksah were never known for taking prisoners.  

	In 28,382:1, General Arack marched his Legion from Khal’Shye to Tryhl, and asked for the city’s forces to cooperate in a joint mission to the far north.  Arack suggested that he would take a battalion of the best men to the Ahl’She Mountains in northern Shyosa, and together they would do what Sarthys had done nearly 3,000 solstices before, they would slay a Deep Terror.  But unlike Sarthys, Arack assured them he would return with every single man he took.

	It seemed to be impossible.  But such faith was held in Arack that volunteers were not hard to find.  Arack recruited twenty of the finest warriors and set out from Tryhl to the desolate and chilling northern mountains of Shyosa.  

	There, along the bitterly cold coastlines, they found, as Arack had suggested, a Deep Terror, along with one of the largest nests of Daksah any of them had ever even dreamt of.  Legend holds that Arack and his men scaled a tall mountain and peered down from its snowy peak upon the Daksah tribe and the Deep Terror below.  There, he said to them, “Tonight, my warriors, we bleed for our children…”