Isensump Campaign and Aftermath (ca. 2715 - 2730 I.D.)

After the Sack of Saxus Rubus, the magocrats no longer dared risk sending only wizards to fight the mundane rebels. Mardux Schutzorn levied a new kind of tax on his Mar subjects. For every five people living in any town, one would have to volunteer for a year of military service to the magocracy. The army this levy raised in its first year alone easily numbered several thousand strong, making it the largest army the Mar had ever created.

Led by a few dozen wizards, the magocracy's army swiftly crushed the nearest rebel outposts. Weard Erbmung and his allies soon determined they could not halt this assault, so they retreated before it, leading the urban Mar deeper and deeper into the wilderness while consuming or destroying all sources of food in their path. Once the magocrats realized their army would not survive much longer without better access to food, the wizards directed themselves at enemy towns, letting the rebel army flee without pursuit.

They captured Isensump and slaughtered its defenders to ensure they would face no resistance from within their new camp. Initially, this community's stores were adequate for the army, but as the first snows fell, the magocracy's army faced losses from malnutrition, lack of adequate shelter against the btter cold, and massive desertion. Only constant hunting and foraging provided the army with some sustenance.

The rebels soon learned how desperate their enemies had become and marched closer to Isensump. Rather than attacking, however, they patrolled the swamps just beyond the easy reach of Isensump army, picking off the hunters and gatherers who maintained the army's delicate position. The Siege of Isensump lasted two months, during which the magocracy's army shrank from several thousand to less than one thousand. Desertion accounted for most of the losses, but starvation, illness, and exposure played a significant role, as well.

When the rebels offered the defenders of Isensump an opportunity to surrender, the wizards initially resisted the idea. Their mundane soldiers were not so quick to dismiss the possibility. They seized the wizards among them and handed them over to the rebels as a peace offering, which the rebels accepted. The urban mundanes received food and safe passage through rebel lands to the nearest magocracy-held city. The wizards' fates were not so pleasant.

Veterans of Isensump spread the story of the disastrous invasion throughout the magocracy as they made their way back to their home towns. Mardux Schutzorn tried to levy a tax of military service again six years later, but his magocrats faced such violent resistance from the mundanes that he was forced to abandon the policy.

His successor - Mardux Tove Fribrin - regained the support of the mundanes only by refusing to take any action against the rebels. This might seem like a strange reaction to any rebellion, but it is important to realize that the urban Mar seldom felt any effects from the rebellion. By treating the rural Mar as political entities outside of themselves, the urban Mar were assured of a steady supply of food in exchange for the abundance of metal they had collected during the decades of metal levies. For the eight years of Mardux Fribrin's rule, metal flowed back into the wilderness.

Sadly, not all the iron traded to the rural Mar in this way returned to service as pots and tools. Much of the iron the magocracy's citizens traded to the rebels during these years of peace they would see again as spears and swords leveled against them and their sons. Mardux Fribrin bore the rebels no apparent ill will, but the rural Mar still hated the wizards with an intensity that needed only some excuse to express itself.

That excuse was the discovery Weard Nidhug Schnitt's experiments.

(Contributed by Weard Gilda Kronas)

Copyright 2005-2007 Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick. All Rights Reserved.
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