Karameikos - Vaults of Pandius

The History of Karameikosabsorbing the Traldar colonies in thoseislands. Trade with the Nithian Empire inthose years brought iron weapons into thesouthern lands of the Traldars; leaders,kings, chieftains, and elite guards sportedthem, but most of the Traldar statescontinued to lack the knowledge needed tofabricate them.THE GREAT BEASTMENINVASIONThe Traldars’ prosperity came to a suddenend when a huge horde of gnolls – thegreater part of those tjat had fled from theNithian Empire in BC 1050 – poured beyondTraldar borders from the north-west (BC1000). The Hutaakans, aware they could notresist the gnolls’ savagery, decided to retreatto their most secure mountain shelter, theValley of Hutaaka (seat of the Temple ofPflarr), even abandoning some of theirgreatest cities like Achelos; they brought withthem some Traldar slaves, and disappearednot to be seen again, leaving the Traldarsalone to face the fierce enemy.The terrible Great Beastmen Invasion whichfollowed (BC 1000-992) saw the nearly totalextermination of the Traldars. The humanswere no match for the gnolls’ iron weaponsand unheard of ferocity. Many clans and theircities were destroyed, while other fledoverseas (like the inhabitants of Mirlenos – atown on the site of modern Marilenev, whowere led by King Milen in a long voyagebeyond the Nithian dominions, towardDavania). The whole western half of theregion was ravaged by the invaders. TheImmortals, fearing for the very fate of theTraldar civilization, decided to preserve it bybringing a number of them into the HollowWorld.In the most tragic hour, however, KingHalav of Lavv and Queen Petra of Krakatos,with the aid of the Hutaaka-educated heroZirchev 24 , managed to gather together theTraldar forces that were left and stoppedthe gnolls at the Battle of Volaga (BC 992) 25 .The battle saw the deaths of both KingHalav and of the gnoll chief Flaghr; leftwithout a leader, the gnolls beganquarreling amongst themselves and theirwar effort suffered. United by the memoryof King Halav, the Traldars managed toslowly get the upper hand against thegnolls, but another forty years would beneeded to see the last gnoll warbandsdriven out of Traldar lands to the northwest(about BC 950).The war against the gnolls and theinvasion’s consequences (famine and24Both the Hollow World campaign setting and HWR3: TheMilenian Empire say that Halav was king of Luln, and that hebanded his warriors together in a guerrilla defense which slowedthe gnolls’ advance. Halav’s story as told in GAZ1 and Wrath of theImmortals instead sees him taking the leadership in Lavv (modernKelvin) after killing the local king. While mention of Luln in theabove-mentioned sources is likely a mistake for Lavv, I think itcould be used to further detail Halav’s past in the following way.Obviously Luln didn’t exist in the Traldar age, but Halav couldhave well been the king of Oyllenos, a Traldar town found on thesite of modern Luln; after a desperate defense of his city, Halavhad to flee and abandon it to the gnolls. Oyllenos was destroyed,but he organized a successful guerrilla war against the invadersfrom the forests, something that began to portray him as a herobefore the Traldars. Later, as the gnolls overran the whole westernTraldar lands, he tried to convince the king of Lavv to forgealliances with other kings in order to put an united front beforethe invaders. When the king laughed at him and tried to have himimprisoned, Halav killed him and took the throne of Lavv. The restof his story is well-known. As a side note, the names Halav, Petra,and Zirchev told by the Traladaran tradition, likely were not thethree heroes’ original names; probably – given the fact that theancient Traldar tongue should somewhat resemble theMycenaean Greek tongue – they sounded more like Halawas,Pyledra, and Zirkeus, or something like that.25While most canon timelines, for simplicity’s sake, have all theevents of the gnoll invasion compressed in BC 1000, from GAZ1we learn that “fighting was indeed bloody and went on for years”.Thus I chose to have the climactic Battle of the Volaga River in BC992, eight years after the invasion had begun.44THRESHOLD: The Mystara Magazine Issue #1