THE HISTORY OF KORRESH
Courtesy CD Mjollnir

Korresh is the Human kingdom in Telgard. Humans are the newest race in the Known Worlde, following after the goblins. The creation of Korresh is a bloody tale, full of wars and infighting and assassination and greed.

Humans are like that.

Humans had been living in the area almost since they came into existance. The Race Wars, which supplanted the elves as the superior race and caused them to withdraw to Lirynn, freed up great tracts of land for use by the other races. Humans breed rapidly, and it did not take too long for them to grow to a respectibly-sized race after the Race Wars.

Of course, control of the Ahrin Straights helped a great deal. This is the main waterway into Telgard, watched by Maston, capital of Korresh at its mouth. Though humans are a bloody-minded race sometimes, they'd much rather gain power through trade, and the protected cove and islets in the Straights were soon heavily populated by enterprising humans, as well as simple fishing villages and military outposts. The Elves, though their ships were things of beauty, rarely fared on the sea, and so humans had near-complete control of the waterways.

At this time, Korresh was divided into principalities, and many a ruler lost his life by a rival human opponent for control of the Straights. But then Scourge of the Dark Enemy came. His dark minions seemed to spring up from nowhere, pouring from across the sea, from the unexplored lands to the West, and from inside the Kingdoms themselves. The Scourge put pause to this infighting, and the races of Telgard banded together to drive the enemy back, with the Wizard's Council sacrificing nearly all of its members to seal the Enemy away.

But not without cost. Fully half the human population--the most numerous race save only for the goblins--had died, and the borders of Korresh were pulled back from Gorr and Tahnn. A great woman, the only human Hero who survived the Scourge, put an end to the infighting among the principalities, sometimes with reason, sometimes with the sword. Her name was Leshya, and she became the first true monarch of Korresh--unusual, considering the attitude of humans towards their females at the time.

Gradually, through public works and through use of a strong police force, she managed to reestablish the old borders of the Kingdom and laid a framework from which her successors could build on.

By the time she died in AS 50, the human race had begun trading again, the primary source of income now trade instead of war. The population had grown to almost three-fifths its original size, and was well on its way to recovery.

She had left a strong throne in the hands of her son Rinoth I, but her son was weak, and by the time he died in AS 103, Korresh had grown little from the point it had reached in Leshya's time. He died without an heir, and the throne was siezed by a wealthy merchant, Kyrand I. Since then, the Throne of Korresh has been alternately strong and weak, though there seem to have been an almost equal amount of wealthy merchants who gained the throne than humans with noble blood. In AS 502, after more than 500 years of trade, the human population was decimated by plague, which touched the Ss'tiss and goblins as well, though the dwarves and elves proved mostly resistant to it. This led to the establishment of a strong medical research foundation in Tegn, and other general improvements such as water filtration systems and sanitation designed to help prevent such an occurence from happening again.

Leshya had also set the standard for inclusion of women into public life. A statue to her still stands in the center of Maston. It was put there by the city's occupants during the Second Dynasty, as if to venerate the foundations the second dynasty stood on. It is made nearly entirely of precious materials, hair of gleaming gold, skin of white marble, and armour and sword made of elven mithril. It is guarded by an elite ceremonial guard division of the city's police force, and a ward-spell keeps birds from fouling it. Littering in the area is grounds for an extremely hefty fine, and only once has someone actually tried to damage it. His corpse hung from the battlements of Maston until it had dried to dust.

--By the hand of Ranic Torden, Grand Scribe