One such group were the Ilirans, the native people of the province of Valkania. Though occupying an important position between Bathura and the great city of Parsantium, this had never been a province that was easy to govern. The Ilirans had a reputation for savagery and truculence, and also for unsavoury religious practices which had only been forced underground, rather than eradicated or assimilated, under Imperial rule. In 713, encouraged by the withdrawal of much of the Imperial garrison to fight wars on behalf of one or other of the generals squabbling over Corandias’s throne, the Ilirans rose up in open revolt against the Empire.
Bloodthirsty Ilirans
Their first act was to recover control of their ancient fortress capital of Samseg, which had been turned into an Imperial garrison. From within its daunting defences, they ranged forth to massacre Bathuran settlers and raze the lowland cities, giving the unfortunate people of Valkania a foretaste of the utter devastation that would later be visited upon them by orc hordes in the Years of Darkness. The Ilirans were led by a man who is remembered as Ygron - a Valkanian dialect term meaning “The Beast” – though his real name was undoubtedly different, and who was said to command strange magics, particularly in the summoning of monsters.
Eventually, after a decade of horrors, reports concerning the nature of Ygron’s terror alarmed even the venal self-seekers who styled themselves emperors in the long shadow of Coriandas. An Imperial force under the devout Theophilus (known as “The Monk” for his excessive asceticism) was sent, along with a contingent of magicians led by the Wizard-General Carataxas to counter Ygron’s occult threat. After a couple of years of indecisive manoeuvring, clever tactics by Theophilus combined with subterfuge engineered by Carataxas (who bribed a Diomatic hill giant clan into changing allegiance), so that the Ilirans were flushed out of their mountain fastnesses into open battle. A serious of vicious encounters ensued as the rebels apparently attempted to flee towards Parsantium, their intentions unknown. The final, climactic confrontation occurred in mid-725, on the road from Trimontis to Parsantium where it crosses the Druba Gorge – a spot now known as Ygron’s Bridge. That battle culminated in a massive magical duel between Carataxas and Ygron, from which neither emerged alive, and which released magical energies which have lingered unpredictably in the area ever since.
Theophilus then mopped up the shattered remnants of the Iliran forces, and retook their capital at Samseg. What he found there so disturbed him that he declared an anathema against the place, ordering the city utterly destroyed and its very location struck from the records. Deep mountain forest reclaimed the site and it is lost to mundane knowledge.
Theophilus; a possibly fanciful detail from a later Lorantan painting
The Iliran Revolt is not now remembered as perhaps it should be. It occurred during a chaotic period of history and its major participants did not leave powerful descendants to sponsor hagiographic histories. Theophilus, notoriously, was blinded and sent into exile a few years later by claimants who feared that he would also seek Imperial glory*. Furthermore the catastrophe that Theophilus and Carataxas sought to avert – the separation of the Eastern and Western Empires – occurred anyway, for other reasons, so the war was not remembered as a heroic success. Miklos Cassio’s History of the World (Part I) is the only commonly known chronicle that covers the conflict in any detail.
* “He who cannot see, cannot turn his eyes to the throne.” – Quaestus Preceptor, Duke of Ancora, self-styled Emperor Argentus
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