The Kingdom of Thenithria

The Kingdom of Thenithria has its origins as one of the first settlements ever established by the Drunathaen thousands of years ago. First called Thaenthorae, the city-state rapidly grew through early adoption of militarism and a hunger for domination. While minor states and cities dotted the coastlines of Southern Kallonia, Thaenthorae came to rule the fertile central grasslands which the city-state used to massively expand its population and capability to fight and expand.

Thaenthorae never came to be conquered by the Kaelonic Lords, but through trade and interaction between those who did, gradually adopted the language, customs, and culture of the Kaelonic peoples with a distinct Drunathaen flavouring.

Thaenthorae, now called Thenithria, was the first kingdom to ever be established in either of the two Kallonias. The first King of Thenithria, Taengyn I, was a tyrant by all meanings of the word. Ruling with an iron first and a savage desire for blood, King Taengyn I waged war against anyone who did not bend the knee. Legends and folklore from across Southern Kallonia give detail to the massacres and burnings of entire cities to fulfil his bloodlust. However, King Taengyn I was killed by his eldest son, who became King Jaenaryn I, ending the tyrant-King’s bloody reign.

Under King Jaenaryn I and his successors, Thenithria blossomed into a golden age of prosperity and expansion. Thenithria, the city, became the most populated city in the world while the kingdom established colonies in Senkaria, Watol, and the Southern coast of Aeloen. But Northern Kallonia, ruled by the powerful Three Kingdoms, continued to remain out of reach.

The annexation of Axia, a vassal city-state of Thenithria situated at the northernmost-tip of Southern Kallonia, approximately 600 years before the beginning of The War of The Five Nations, gave the Kings of Thenithria the staging-area needed to supply an invasion of Northern Kallonia.

With the conclusion of the Second War of the Bloodtree between Pacis and Aeigon ending oncemore in a devastating de-facto stalemate between the two powers, the Kingdom of Thenithria launched a large-scale invasion of Northern Kallonia. Two great armies, led by Prince Aetos and Prince Tharaen respectively, simultaneously invaded Pacis and Aeigon. Prince Aetos led the invasion of Aeigon, sweeping through the weakened and starving kingdom’s territories in a matter of weeks before descending upon its capital of Raehun. Prince Aetos lay siege to Raehun for four months while smaller detachments of his legion secured the frontier territories of Aeigon, defending against raids from semi-nomadic clans from the far-north which won the Thenithrian conquerors the support and admiration of the local population. Further compliance and support was gained and maintained via the imports of grain and livestock from Thenithria’s bountiful heartland which alleviated the famine that had gripped Aeigon.

Prince Tharaen fared less well. With word of the impending Thenithrian invasion quickly reaching their capital, the Pacisians quickly assembled the largest fleet to date and sailed to meet Prince Tharaen at sea, before his legion could make landfall. Caught within the Kailon Strait at the mouth of the Parcaein Bay, much of Prince Tharaen’s fleet was sunk with only a handful of ships managing to make a beachhead on the treacherous south-eastern coast of Northern Kallonia. Rallying some 2500 men who remained, Prince Tharaen marched north in hopes of capturing Pacis even with a diminished force in order to force the Pacisian senate into a surrender. However, Prince Tharaen and his force became bogged down in skirmishes on the road to Pacis, leaving him with less than a thousand men by the time he reached the outskirts of Pacis itself. Determined to obtain victory, Prince Tharaen marched on Pacis but was met by a formidable Pacisian army that outnumbered him tenfold. Prince Tharaen and his men were cut down in the fields outside of Pacis with no prisoners, but the Pacisian victory came at a pyrrhic cost, and only a month later Prince Aetos marched on Pacis and razed much of the city in revenge for the death of his brother.

With both Pacis and Aeigon defeated and completely annexed within less than a year, and facing a famine of their own following a massive crop failure owing to a once-in-a-generation storm, the Kingdom of Kyrenthia bent the knee and became a vassal to Thenithria. Kyrenthia aided Thenithria in mapping and pacifying the more northern and western wilds of Northern Kallonia before eventually being fully annexed into the now-solidified Thenithrian Empire.

The Kingdom of Thenithria held dominion over Northern Kallonia as well as territories spanning from the deserts and canyons of Senakria and Mekanis to the mountains and Fjords of Aeloen and the rainforests of Watol for over 500 years. But a series of crop failures in Northern Kallonia, accompanied by increasingly bolder raids by Norkinian raiding fleets to which Thenithria struggled to respond to, and a growing insurgency by nomadic tribes in Senkaria and Mekanis which divided the Kingdom’s resources, eventually allowed for a full-scale rebellion to take hold in Northern Kallonia. This rebellion, led by the self-styled King Oustarn of Pacis, was at first largely successful and forced much of Thenithria’s military to flee to forts and strongholds scattered across the continent.

The rebel-King Oustarn attempted to rally many minor lords and historical families to his banner, eventually coalescing into the Coalition of The Realms. While the Coalition did successfully hold Pacis and major cities across the Thenithrian provinces of Pacis and Kyrenthia, reinforcements from Southern Kallonia quickly defeated and pushed back the rebel forces into the thick alpine forests within Bouropheia and northern Tharinon.

While the rebel forces had been resolutely defeated and contained for the moment, Thenithria’s primary rival, the mighty Norkinian Empire, had seized on the opportunity and launched an invasion of the northernmost province of Aentlan, capturing the strategically-significant fort of Aephor in the process.

Facing rebellion and the Norkinian Empire in Northern Kallonia, alongside an escalating war with nomads in Senkaria and Mekanis which threaten Thenithria’s wealthy trade cities and colonies on the arid continents, the Kingdom of Thenithria seems the weakest it has ever been. However, the heir to the throne of Thenithria, Prince Anathaen, has been recalled from a thus-far successful military campaign against the nomads in Senkaria and given command of the 1st through to 9th legions of Thenithria and ordered by his father, the King, to sail to Northern Kallonia and re-establish Thenithrian dominion over the continent.