Seven Year War

Also known as the Bloody Seven, the Seven Year War was a brutal war that claimed over 30 million lives over the course of seven long years. It involved the vast majority of the realm's nations and ended in the establishment of the Conclave. In a state of total war, the major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. The Seven Year War remains the deadliest conflict in the recorded history of the Forgotten Realms.

Early History

Scholars agree that the biggest reasons behind the war were ethical and moral choices of early Humans and Elves that devastated Goliath culture, and eventually led to their armed resistance. In the first days of the Human and Elvish Kingdoms, Viking pioneers and explorers crossed the vast oceanic body of the Fordvern Advance and discovered the outer lands of early day Jotunrath. Before the days of Noble Goliath houses and cities, Jotunrath was called the Frostback Basin, a winding tundra of colossal mountains and valleys. The largest mountain range, the Frostback Mountains protected miles of untouched land home to undiscovered ecosystems of wildlife, raw minerals, and the Goliaths. The first human settlers cautiously attempted to make first contact with the large, blue-skinned natives that inhabited this new land. Strange, small pale men cutting down their trees and erecting flagpoles didn't do well with the first Goliaths who immediately took up arms and attacked any pioneers that got too close. This was met with greater resistance from the Vikings who treated the Goliaths as wild savages. The first conflicts paved the snow thick with blood. The Vikings eventually overpowered the weaker tribes of Goliaths and began to settle the land they had supposedly discovered. Conflicts like these preceded years of abuse, enslavement, and genocide.

Slavery and Genocide

The enslavement of Goliaths began with the need for manual labor for the expansion of the kingdoms overseas. The Alliance was expanding faster than it could construct, build, and maintain these transforming cities. The Goliaths were added to the rotation of indentured servitude and slavery in Viking territories similar to the early Drow and Orcs. A Goliath slave was capable of carrying twice the load a normal Orc could and for a significantly longer amount of time. The high-altitude physical activity that the Goliaths performed back home, made them physically superior slaves. Back at the Frostback Mountains, the remaining Goliath Clans put aside their differences to combat the foreign invaders that had all but squeezed the life out of their homeland. But the Vikings had the numbers to squash any resistance and raze villages at a moments notice. The surviving Goliaths retreated to the Frostback Mountains, and prayed for a miracle. They got Ygrid Ironborn.

The Goliath Uprisings

Ygrid Ironborn was a Goliath exile turned Alliance officer, turned slave. It was in the fight pits where she was sent to fight and die in, that Ygrid started an underground slave movement hellbent on armed, violent justice. Ygrid and other enslaved Goliath leaders came together to form the Forsaken. The uprisings had officially began on Liberator's Day, a day of celebration for the Alliance's armed service members. With thousands crowding the fight pits in Kartenheim, the Forsaken stormed the barracks, overpowered the guards, and slaughtered anyone in attendance. The goal wasn't just to free everyone they could, it was to send a message. That the masters were outnumbered and all the slaves had to do was rise up.

The Goliath Uprisings were a series of conflicts staged throughout the eastern coast of the Viking territories. Slave cities such as Kartenheim were ransacked and pillaged, and their slaves freed by the Forsaken. For every master and hired sellsword there were three Goliaths ready to fight to the death. In Goliath culture, death is but an honor given to the living who then join their ancestors in the afterlife. Goliaths who fear death have forgotten their heritage. Driven by an ancestral rage, the slaves had drawn out the conflict for over 2 years before the Alliance gave in and given those who wanted to leave, ironclad ships to return to the Frostback Mountains.

The Goliath Tribal Council

The newly freed Goliaths formed an alliance headed by the most prominent Goliath tribes and overlooked by Ygrid's sister-in-arms, Gremala Drathos. Drathos was from a prominent tribe of Goliaths known for taming and raising wild dragons. She had rallied the Goliaths and began construction of Jotunrath, the capital of what would be the Goliath Kingdom. Hundreds of thousands of hours were put into the construction of the Walls of Drathos, a supernaturally large wall of ice. When asked why she built a wall, Drathos said, "So the other races have no confusion about where our land starts."

It seemed, like many conflicts before it, that the match to the powder keg that was the relationship between Goliaths and the Alliance, was land. Once construction of the Walls of Drathos had been completed, Drathos and the Goliath Council leaders ordered that all Alliance owned operations, cities, and settlements were to withdraw from Jotunrath immediately. The Alliance argued that they owned the (imaginary) rites to the land and that Jotunrath technically was everything behind the Walls of Drathos. The Goliaths returned with a second warning, stating that the land was theirs from the start. It was their native home and birthright that the Alliance had taken from them. The Alliance withdrew one small village of Vikings, and called it even. The Goliaths ransacked the two surrounding towns next to it then gave a third and final warning. Leave Jotunrath.

Ygrid Ironborn sailed across the ocean and met the Alliance leaders at an undisclosed location. Neither side budged on the talks which were beginning to turn sour. As an exchange of vulgarities and insults between the two sides flew, Ygrid had grown furious with the Alliance and its ever watchful eye over her people. If the fist would not unclench itself from her people, then Ygrid would unclench it by force. On a warm spring afternoon, when the sun was highest on a cloudless blue sky, Ygrid and the Goliaths formally declared war on the Alliance Superpowers.

The Bloody Seven

Military Factions

The Alliance

• The Human Republic (Knights, Vikings, Samurai)
• The High-Elf Empire (High-Elves, Genasi, Aasimar)
• The Dwarves

The Goliaths

• The Goliaths
• The Orcs (Year 2)
• The Hobgoblins (Year 2)
• The Dragonborn (Year 3)
• The Warforged (Year 7)
• The Drow (Year 7)

Timeline

A list of commonly known milestones and events during the Seven Year War.

Year 1

• First Contact. The first battalions of the Human Army make landfall on the frozen shores of Jotunrath. Some ships are frozen entirely in place causing a bottleneck on the Human theater of war. Upon landfall, under-trained and under-dressed soldiers are met with frighteningly fierce resistance contrary to Human Intelligence. The Goliaths unleash a stunning display of military organization and decimate the first Human battalions that challenge them on their shores.

• First Winter. Alliance leadership gravely underestimates the elements and are forced to endure a lethal winter. Supply and communication lines are stopped dead forcing many outposts to ration out what little supplies they have. Ships struggle to maintain a steady supply line while fighting the frozen waters. Stories of starvation and frostbite spread across the theater of war. The Goliaths who have natural genetic resistance to the cold gain a significant amount of ground by sending guerilla fighters to raid outposts and bases in the dead of night.

• The Battle of Slaver's Bay. Commander Roman Windhelm of the High-Elves and Prince Edward Tyrell of the Humans make a significant advanced on the first coastal supply outpost located within the Frozen Maw. There they best the Orcs in their first, and almost last, skirmish of the war.