The History of Immer
Before the destruction of the Lloroi Empire, the land destined to rise as the kingdom of Immer remained undeveloped taiga only nominally subject to the emperor's agents, who ruled from a cold and lonely fortress called Agada. A small native population roamed the northlands herding snow ox or hunting wild game.

After the Cataclysm, what had been arctic borderland overnight became a temperate zone of hot summers and cold winters. Game multiplied and men adjusted to a new. easier way of life. These first inhabitants of proto?Immer developed into several large tribes. called by the general term of "Conodras." As much as possible they continued the peaceful ways of their ancestors, although more and more often invasion by Goblin tribes and savage men forced them to fight.

But the Conodras remained rather primitive and were not destined to found a civilized state upon their ancestral hunting grounds. That would be the work of a foreign people called the Vidarnas.

As with most tribal peoples, the origin of the vidarnas is cloaked in mystery. Dura Nabuna, their first important chronicler, completed his Kings of vidarna in the twelfth century after the Cataclysm. This is rather late, as far as Minarian histories go, but internal evidence argues that Nabuna worked from a tradition both written and oral reaching back several centuries. Moreover, the early vidarnas are often mentioned in the chronicles of their Muetarian neighbors, as well as the annals of the Invisible School of Thaumaturgy??where dwelled the Eaters of Wisdom from ancient times.

Nabuna states that the parent stock of the Vidarna tribe dwelt south of the Well of Lered. About five centuries after the Cataclysm, a portion of these people was forced by famine to migrate from the rugged lands of their nativity. The clan leaders drew lots and the losers were enjoined to lead their kin in search of new hunting grounds.

Says Dur Nabuna: "Therefore that section to which fate had assigned the abandonment of their native soil and the search for foreign fields??after two leaders had been appointed over them, to wit: Authari and Euin, who were brothers in the bloom of youthful vigor and more eminent than the rest??said farewell to their own people, as well as their country, and set out upon their way to seek for lands where they might dwell and establish their abodes. They were sprigs of the noblest clan of their warrior nation, and Damu, from whence their followers took the name of 'vidarna' [Vi?Darnu, 'Of Darnu']."

The aggressive vidarnas gradually displaced the earlier inhabitants of the north shore of Lake Lorimer. For the next several generations they maintained a canoe?borne trade with the young market town of Pennol, furnishing furs, honey, and amber in exchange for metal tools, armor and a few items of luxury. However, they resisted the example of Pennol and did not build permanent towns of stone.

The slow progress of Vidarnan culture was in part the result of the conservative triple?goddess religion that the tribe observed. This cult, led by a complex hierarchy of virgin priestesses, was closely related to other matrilineal cults of the barbarian north. Such worship developed naturally from the conditions of the early post?Cataclysm, when the fertility of the clan was the overriding factor in its survival. Its Dionysian nature was ill suited to the Apollonian arts of an advanced, ordered society.

By the mid?tenth century the old traditions started to erode and the vidarnan villages began to resemble in some degree the Pennolite towns on the other side of the lake.

This process of cultural assimilation was painfully interrupted by the catastrophic invasion of Minaria by what is called "the abominations of the land and the horrors of the air." These titanic monsters, surging up the River Deep and overwhelming Lake Lorimer, fell ferociously on the shore villages. Neither the Vidarnan warriors nor the priestesses could defend their homes and shrines. The Vidarnas survived only by a retreat into the wilderness of Immer??a term [Im Mer] that meant in the language of the vidarna. "The North. "

In withdrawing, the vidarnas rallied at their northernmost village, the town of Muscaster. They hurriedly raised ramparts around the hill where Muscaster stood. Fortified in Muscaster, the vidarnas withstood the drift of abominations from the south??until the monsters' momentum was lost and their numbers began to decline.

The abominations eventually vanished, leaving only some terrifying legends along Lake Lorimer (afterwards called "Lake Carth").

Cautiously the vidarnas advanced to the limit of their old range. But there was no hope of returning to the past. Pennol had fallen into ruin before the abominations and the Vidarnans were impoverished by the loss of its trade.

Within the same generation, Pennol also succumbed to the aggressions of Muetar. Only a decade after that, the vidarnans too found themselves the target of Muetarian invasion. Defeated. the Vidarnans retreated to Muscaster for the second time in less than a century. The Muetarians annexed the north shore of Lake Carth, but their subsequent attacks were sporadic and half?hearted. The milder climate of Hothior drew most of their aggressive fury southward.

Vidarnan history becomes murky in the eleventh century. Internal strife distracted the chroniclers of Muetar, while Dur Nabuna seemingly had to fall back on mythic and legendary material for his account. For earlier times he had depended on the sacred notes preserved by priestesses of the goddess cult; these ceased in the eleventh century due to the turmoil then current in Vidarnan religious matters.

In the context of these days, Nabuna gives a long and fanciful report of the life of Teredon, the son of the god Anshar, relating his innumerable combats and miracles. From the more prosaic testimony preserved in the Invisible School of Thaumaturgy, Teredon emerges not so much a warrior and a magician as a thoughtful man of philosophy.

His role looms large in bringing patriarchal worship to the vidarnas. His real father as a chieftain, not a god, who sent him to the Invisible School during the invasion of the abominations. There he studied theology. only returning to his people when he saw them defeated by the Muetarians and in need of a new faith.

One myth involving Teredon merits special interpretation. Shortly after leaving the house of his divine father Anshar, says the myth, Teredon journeys toward the town of Muscaster. On the road he encounters a fabulous creature with three devil?heads and a feathered body, called the Lubar. The Lubar endeavors to slay Teredon, but he gets the better of the creature and severs all three of its heads, afterward putting the body to cremation.

The victorious hero continues on to Muscaster, where he finds a beautiful girl staked out before the town in chains, as a prey for wild beasts. She is Zikia, the daughter of Elhalyn who rules in Muscaster, disposed so in accord with a prophecy that the survival of the Vidarnans demands such a sacrifice. Teredon announces the death of a Lubar, which had been menacing Muscaster, and is acclaimed by the town. Subsequently, he removes Zikia's chains and takes her to wife.

Later scholarship makes different sense out of this heroic myth. Dur Nabuna, who told it, may not have realized that "Lubar" was a variant name for the inner priestesshood of the triple goddess. The story recalls a violent assault led by Teredon against the supporters of the outworn old religion, removing the ceremonial devil masks from the priestesses (the Lubar's "heads") and burning their shrines (the feathered body??representing the sacred bird of fertility). "Zikia" was not originally a girl's name, but a title of high rank within the religious hierarchy. Neither was "Elhalyn" a human ruler. but describes the triple goddess in her aspect as "matron. "

Apparently, after Teredon's overthrow of the old cult, zealous followers and/or disillusioned old?believers attempted to do violence to the female clergy. Teredon. desiring no innocent blood to fall, prevented cruel reprisals and found protectors and husbands for the unfortunate woman, probably marrying one or more himself (legend credits him with fifty sons).

In the wake of the religious revolution. the Vidarnans reorganized swiftly. Anshar?worship provided a model of a modem kingship. A man named Kharkem of the clan Shirpur was acclaimed king behind whom the warleaders angered by foreign invasion willingly rallied.

Kharkem and those who succeeded himmaintained the Vidarnans' borders and even avenged themselves on the Muetarians??who were then weakened by internecine strife??by many punishing raids. Meanwhile, there developed a gradual expansion of the frontier northward through military colonization. Frontier life was much to the advantage of a new?fashion warleaders. These vidarnan dukes followed the paths of hunters and trappers into the fair lands beyond the borders, driving out the Conodras tribes who occupied northern Immer. The initiative lay with the dukes who. with their armed bands (thargals), wrested the land from its inhabitants and protected the agrarian settlers, to whom they granted the privilege of occupation. Thus the conditions under which these new principalities grew tended to enhance the position of the duke and fostered in the aristocracy a power that??locally, at least??was more tangible than that of the king himself.

At this point, the early thirteenth century, the Eaters of Wisdom intervened. The wizards had been studying the problem of aristocratic independence, disturbed by examples of its misuse in Muetar and Hothior. They judged that royal power had to take a decisive hold in the northland or the Vidaman state would be doomed to impotence and civil war for many generations to come.

They approached the reigning king in Muscaster, whose name was Mesilim, and prevailed upon him to marshal his forces for a thrust northward. As the Shirpur Dynasty of Muscaster was well disposed to the Eaters of Wisdom since the days of Teredon, the young prince yielded to their persuasion, going so far as to allow the Eaters to lead his expedition.

Moving northward, Mesilim impressed his authority upon the dukes whose land lay in his path. Upon reaching the frontier, he found the Conodras??now banded together in a confederacy??drawn up within the ancient Lloroi fortress of Agada, which they had crudely repaired.

Even in ruins, the fortress loomed majestically over the forest and the natives defended their stronghold manfully. But at long last they succumbed to Mesilim's more disciplined armies and the cunning magic of the Eaters of Wisdom. It was the 1209th year after the Cataclysm.

Even in triumph, Mesilim continued to defer to the wise counsels of the wizards. He received the surrendering confederacy leaders with mercy and justice. His clemency impressed the Conodras, who were more accustomed to the blades of the ruthless thargals. After having established good terms with the natives, the king transferred his capital from Muscaster??a town too isolated and tradition?bound to properly serve his government??to the fortress of Agada. Mesilim renamed Agada "Castle Altarr"??after the altarrwood that grew abundantly around it, a tree holy to the god Anshar.

Throughout the last part of his reign, Mesilim sought to set matters right in the north. To those tribes who submitted to his authority, he extended royal protection??limiting to some degree the predatory self?senring march of the vidarnan dukes. He admitted the sons of the Conodras' leaders into a university which the Eaters of Wisdom helped him establish in Castle Altarr. By this and other means at his disposal, he sought to accomodate the Conodras to Vidarnan civilization??not an impossible leap, as the young kingdom was still half?barbaric. Before his death, many parts of the north were wardened by Conodran dukes and native levies.

Mesilim had the misfortune of being pre?deceased by both of his sons. His throne passed to a young grandson, Pisiris. The Vidarnan dukes7 long resentful of Mesilim's restrictions on their ambitions, recommenced their attacks on the Conodras.

As the Conodras of the fronffer were by now subjects of Immer??a name that now officially designated the kingdom??these raids were clearly against the peace of the state. But the elderly regents surrounding the child?king??often in the pay of different baronial factions??could neither agree to support the dukes nor to oppose them.

By this time the Elven kingdom of Neuth had grown hostile to the developing state on its borders. Shedding their customary isolation, the Elves moved troops into several disputed border areas and deliberately provoked the [mmente government. The high pnnce of Neuth, Etirun, hoped to occupy the vacillating regents with the threat of war until the dukes' power grew too great to be curbed. By this policy, the Elves hoped to fragment their neighbor into many autonomous principalities, none a threat to Neuth.

It was the worst move the Elves could have made, for it convinced the royal party and its supporters that the truculent dukes were engaged in a conspiracy with a sinister, non?human power. The aristocratic party in the council was disgraced and rendered powerless, while royalists rushed zealously into a prolonged war with the Elves and the dissident dukes.

At first the war??the Ducal War??went badly for the royalists, who did not have as many trained fighters as the frontier dukes. But decisive victory eluded the enemy coalition, which could agree on nothing except a general enmity toward the royalists. Often?times the appearance of one faction in an area caused the withdrawal of the other, for the Elves' xenophobia was not diminished by the alliance, while the dukes were badly divided on the morality of fighting their own kind when a foreign power??a non?human one, at that??benefited by it even more than they.

The royalists held on until luck came to their assistance. A party of their Conodran allies attacked an Elven warcamp and captured the high prince, Etirun. Forced to sign a peace, the mortified high prince withdrew to Ider Bolis, leaving the dukes to their own devices. Disheartened, many of the weary thargals surrendered, accepting heavy restrictions on themselves and their dukes. Shakkan, one of the most daring of the rebel dukes, rejected the option of surrender to Pisiris. He led his dependents across Goblin?haunted territory and built a settlement on Ozerg Mountain. Another thargal, led by the outlaw duke Gorpin, anticipated no clemency after its excesses, so it withdrew into the barbarian north of Wild Woods.

With the arrival of peace, the next few reigns saw continued growth. The divisions between Conodras and Vidarnas blurred as the peoples mingled. The Elves kept the peace in the west, but a rising Goblin menace in the east compelled the construction of the Gap Castle. The discovery of gold in the River Rapid renewed the drive toward the north country. Another barbarian war followed, against tribes fiercer and stronger than the Conodras. The war brought at least a limited access to the River Rapid, as well as the conquest of the Wild Woods. The citadel of Lone Wizor was raised to consolidate these gains.

Early in the fourteenth century, in the reign of Mesilim II, the Elven problem burst forth again. Large Elven armies poured into Mivior Hothior and Immer, sworn to eradicate human life everywhere and restore the ancient dignity of Neuth.

Mesilim II, little like his namesake. quailed before the magical armaments of the Elves and withdrew to the Gap Castle, leaving rapine to reign in his place. Too?easy early successes led the Elven monarch to Insult and threaten the Goblins of Zom, who responded with a surprise attack that drove the Elves out of Immer.

His reign a failure, Mesilim Il abdicated in favor of his brother Reglissar, who had led the Immerite forces at the sack of Ider Bolis. When not repelling predatory raids from Zorn and Muetar, Reglissar worked to rebuild his kingdom. Cattle herding spread over empty land where the serfs had fled. The death of many large landholders allowed the king to distribute much new land to free yeomen, creating a vigorous new class of freeholder with strong royalist leanings.

After ruling twenty?one years, an assassin's blade cut short the noble reign of Reglissar. In the wake of the tragedy, his son Euwint returned from the Invisible School where he had been studying, and assumed the throne of the Immerite nation.


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