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Marrishland has a long and violent history. Several civilizations have risen and fallen, here, and the book tells about events during one of the most turbulant periods - a period whose events determine whether a civilization survives or dies.

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First Duxy (ca. 3550 - 3750 I.D.)

While the wizards wielded most of the power in Marrishland in previous centuries, they remained fairly disorganized except in times of war. After defeating the goblins, the wizards squabbled fiercely over who should control the new lands. Word reached Domus Palus of blood spilled among the Mar living in these annexed regions and deeply disturbed Mardux Roth Fraesund.

Mardux Fraesund and his successors sent first diplomats and then armies to put a stop to these power struggles. For the next several decades, unfamiliar races of Drakes, sensing this weakness, tested the Mar perimeter defenses and even managed to penetrate them in several places. It was not until a large tribe of ochres attacked the Mar lands south of Domus Palus that any Mardux was able to unite the wizards long enough to put a stop to these invasions.

Mardux Seti Ochreslayer was a competent general and a charismatic leader. After two years of bitter war and in spite of lost battles and slain lieutenants, she and the Domus Palus army drove the ochres out of Mar territory and into goblin lands. No one knows whether the surviving ochres passed through goblin lands and beyond the Morden Moors to rejoin their brethren far to the east or whether they perished to the last warrior in the swamps of starving goblins eager to play their part as scavengers, but the ochres did not harrass the Mar for centuries after their defeat by the Mar.

In the wake of her victory, Mardux Ochreslayer made full use of her popularity as a charismatic leader to add structure to the magocracy, naming powerful wizards magocrats in charge of the defense of all major Mar settlements. She created a crude but functional chain of command from the Mardux to the lowliest green that later generations used to build an increasingly effective bureaucracy.

By the middle of the 37th century, the boundaries and districts of the Duxy of Domus had become as fixed as any boundaries in Marrishland can be. Twenty years later, Marduxes began funding new mapmaker expeditions into the Drake lands surrounding the Duxy of Domus. Sometime near the end of the 37th century, Mardux Grack Drakesen placed a bounty on the heads of every Drake living south of the Rubus Amnus - the river that marked the southern border of the Duxy of Domus. By the middle of the 38th century, Mar raiding parties turned into Mar war parties. The Gunne War had begun.

(Contributed by Weard Gilda Kronas)