The Reckoning

Military action

The Sandsage Nomads, once reunited under a new Izen, amassed their people and marched to wreak vengeance upon the nation of Einborg for hunting them out of their ancestral tribal lands 1,000 years ago.

With their populations swelled well into the thousands, the Sandsage Nomads blitzed into Einborg. The tribes began razing every settlement, from isolated farmsteads to full cities, to the ground in sweeping assaults in which no inhabitant was allowed to live.

Their wrath was efficient, coordinated, and thorough. The heart of Einborg was gutted. Even walled keeps of stone or desert daub were no match for the tribes. Over the short few years of this war, every last settlement build upon the ancestral tribal lands was destroyed. The ruins of these settlements and forts can still be seen by those brave enough to travel the Sandsage Desert, protruding from the sand and dirt like the bones of a giant left to rot and bleach in the sun.

Einborg tried to field armies to oppose the nomads, but the tribes were far too mobile and coordinated to be contained to a battlefield. In the few cases when a proper battle took place, the casualties for Einborg were always catastrophic. The Izen utilized the strengths of each tribe to maximum effect in the conflict. The Naerean tribe fielded exquisite horseback archers who peppered enemy troops without being at high risk for injury. The Groshkata orcs and Furskin Shifters made up the primary infantry and met their foes toe-to-toe with ferocious fury that caused armies to turn and flee. The other tribes focused on guerilla and harassment tactics to weaken armies before battles took place. Against such tactics, the remaining cities of Einborg knew little could be done.

The nomads, upon reclaiming their lands completely, proposed peace with what remained of their enemies. Einborg would be allowed to exist, provided it made no interference in tribal life or land. The tribes would allow travelers to move and rest upon the roads that Einborg had built through the tribal lands during The Wandering. Einborg had few options to agree, and the large distances between the remaining cities essentially turned the great nation into a federation of individual city-states.