The Years of Red Grain

one of the few Fethilian compounds that survived the Years of Red Grain

The Years of Red Grain is a term given by the Athenorkos rebels to the period between the fall of Alamadour in 937 OC and the formation of the Rebel Army roughly around 970 OC. While technically a discrete war in and of itself, the Years of Red Grain are typically thought of as a period of the Border Wars. This period is marked by a dramatic shift in the tactics of warfare, which decisively favored the Imperial Army.

For twenty years after the Burning of Neerhemfeth, the Imperial Army attempted to stave off the red elves, but took hard losses and had no definitive victories. Eventually, the troops were recalled and the queen sent out Prabil Worthis to establish diplomatic ties to the Athenorkos elves. The elves and many Elothninians (including, legend has it, Prabil Worthis himself) assumed that the change in strategy signalled the tacit defeat of the Imperial Forces. In actuality, Lilhelndine used this as an opportunity to strengthen her military forces and have her best and brightest devise a plan to counter the elves' guerrilla tactics.

Roughly a decade after the death of Worthis, Lilhelndine began a brutal but effective military campaign. Instead of trying to establish bases of operation, as they did previously, the now quite large and well-supplied Imperial Army laid siege to the elves' agricultural compounds, typically taking all their food and viciously slaughtering any of the elves they found there before warnings could be sent to neighboring compounds. If the army suspected that elves at the compound had left to make guerrilla attacks or scout out Imperial whereabouts, a contingent was left behind to kill the returning elves without mercy.

In the next 30 years, elvish compound after elvish compound fell to the Imperial soldiers. Military records from the period indicate that 114 compounds were destroyed, and it is estimated that several thousand elves were killed in the process. Elvish scholars, however, claim that these figures are unrealistically low. The end of the Red Grain period came around the early 970s, as the sightings of red elves dwindled dramatically while they fled into the Erkenheld Forest and up into the Klevarcht Mountains.