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For a couple decades, tensions had been limited to trade friction and limited immigration. In recent years, though, certain factions of caravan-traders and their princely backers had shifted their approach from gouging prices to gouging eyes, so to speak. That is to say: border raids by blackmen and beastmen had been striking northern trade outposts with alarming regularity, with organization beyond the capability of bandit bands, and better equipment than they ought to have been able to scavenge.
And so there’d been work for adventurers, protecting those who would brave the hostile natives to do business with those few sultans and sheikhs still willing to trade rare spell-components, luxury goods, and foodstuffs from the South for Northern food, gold, and Dwarven technology. And so, chasing coin and the old thrill of your youth, you’d followed the opportunity south.
And so, you’d determined the truth of the rumors for yourself.
You’d arrived in Chiffchaff to support a garrison and patrol the outskirts of the outpost for signs of trouble. You’d expected maybe some sabre-rattling camel-riders, or a few exotic animal-headed savage furry-folk with a dangerous proclivity for homophagy. You’d found both, but so much more: gnolls equipped with strange, stony armour, commanded by strange Southman sorcerers. The dwarven technology the Southlands had purchased had not gone to pot in the absence of regular cultural exchange: rather, they had augmented it in unwholesome fashion with the nefarious and reckless demon-magic of the Southron mages in their Black Tower, producing infernal artillery that blasted apart wooden palisades and <Shield> spells alike.
They weren’t there for robbery or for ransom. They had arrived in numbers suitable for invasion, for conquest. And they’d done it, too. You, as with the other adventurers and the garrisoned militia, had been woefully inadequate to stop them swarming over you like so many black ants over a zebra carcass out on the plains.
