The Silence That Shattered Kingdoms
Date: 148-151 AH
Also Known As: The Three-Year Night, The Silent War
The war began not with a declaration, but with a storm. In 148 AH, a blizzard of unprecedented scale and magical fury descended upon Niflheimar. This was no ordinary storm; it was the Æðr Niflhel given form, a howling gale that lasted for three years. The skies were perpetually black, the winds shredded Skyship sails, and a strange magical interference—a "Frost-static"—disrupted all forms of communication. Most critically, it grounded the Sky-Speak Parrots. The birds, sensitive to magical currents, refused to fly into the unnatural tempest. In a matter of weeks, the continent was plunged into an information vacuum. The Great Silence had begun.
With no way to coordinate, the nascent giant nations fractured. The Silence bred paranoia and fear.
The Stone-Shield Commonwealth, believing the Frost-Fang Clans had unleashed the storm, launched a preemptive strike against a nearby clanhold, triggering a bloody border war based on a catastrophic misunderstanding.
An Ashen Crest Legion, marching to reinforce a distant outpost and unable to receive new orders, accidentally crossed into Sun-Splinter territory. The ensuing battle, fought in white-out conditions, claimed hundreds of lives before either side knew who they were fighting.
Isolated settlements, unable to call for help, were overrun by opportunistic Hrímþursar or simply vanished, their populations succumbing to starvation and cold, their fates unknown for years.
In the third year of the storm (151 AH), as civilization teetered on collapse, a small faction of Ljósalfar (Elf) Giants from the Cloud-Spine Mountains emerged. These were the proto-Aerie Sovereignty. Using ancient wind-magic and an unparalleled bond with a few, supremely brave parrots, they managed to re-establish a fragile, intermittent communication network. They did not fight with weapons, but with information. They relayed troop positions, corrected misconceptions, and carried desperate pleas for cease-fires. Their intervention did not stop the fighting overnight, but it provided the threads of clarity needed to begin untangling the knot of war.
The war officially ended in 151 AH with the Pact of the Thaw, but its scars were deep.
Shattered Trust: The war proved that the alliance between the giant nations was paper-thin. Decades of diplomatic progress were erased in three years of silent, bloody confusion.
The Birth of the Aerie Sovereignty: The event was the founding myth and justification for the Wind-Talkers. They argued that the free flow of information was too vital to be left to chance or the whims of individual nations. They had saved the realm from itself, and they would ensure it never happened again—by controlling all messaging themselves.
A Permanent Shift: Every giant nation learned a terrible lesson: to be cut off from information was to be doomed. The Sky-Speak Parrots transformed from a convenient service into a critical strategic resource. The memory of the Howling Dark is why every Jarl, no matter how proud, treats the arrival of a parrot with a mix of hope and dread.
The War of the Howling Dark was a conflict where the greatest enemy was not a rival nation, but silence itself. It forged a world where information is the ultimate currency and the masters of its delivery hold a power greater than any army.