The Amurite-Lanun War eventually encompassed nearly all of Erebus. Despite their best efforts, neither nation managed to gain the decisive advantage. The loss of their initial attack fleet had hurt the Amurites, but their armies had been just barely large enough to stall the first Lanun attack toward Acaia. The Calabim's had made their choice, and the coinflip had come against the Lanun. However, since the initial assault fleet had not managed to capture a Lanun city (woo-hoo for unique spells!), the few battered remnants of the Cala-Amurite army had retreated to Calabim lands only to encounter a Sidhan army moving through the vampire's empire. Both sides had been surprised, and though a bloody battle was fought the end result was the same as it had been at Acaia: stalemate.
In the north, the Shazaak had attempted a betrayal of their Lanun masters. However, this ended up being more of a triviality than anything, since they were without boats to sail with. They instead went after Avelorn, only to meet with surprise the Doviello army already there. A three way battle was fought, with the desperate men of the Free City trying to keep their enemies' larger armies out of the city and attacking each other. In the end, it was the surprise appearence of a ragged Kuriotate army that broke the seige. The Doviello and the Shazaak were both bloodied, but retreated in good order both are still determined to take Avelorn. Avelorn still refuses to rejoin their southern brothers, but a steady alliance has been reached and a slow stream of Kuriotate troops have given the city enough strength to withstand either of the barbarians' armies, though not both at once.
The Lanun interference in Pinea ultimately came to naught. They fought well, but when their contracts ended they left the province in a worse state than before. The pro-Balseraph faction was weakened, not defeated, and the only lasting effect was to ensure the civil war continued for some more years yet.
The Khazad had agreed to help the Amurites expel the orkish refugees from R'Rgorac. True to their word, they marched alongside the wizardly brethren, and after a surprisingly equal fight managed to scatter the last remnants of the greenskins far and wide. However, the Amurites had been much more weakened by the fight than the Khazad had been, and to their surprise the dwarves had refused to leave once the job was done. The prospect of Gems had been to much to let go, and with the Amurites busy on other fronts the dwarves (rightly) figured the Order-lovers would be forced to accept this little coup.
The real losers in all this were the Patrians. Beset in the north, the south, and the center part of the continent, the Patrians lost again and again. However, like some nebulous ideological plague, each defeat only served to make them stronger as fleeing troops tried to hide within cities, and while there, convert others. The effect of such troops far outweighs their actual damage from war, and with the exception of the Hippus lands their influence actually manages to grow somewhat.
The center part of Erebus, controlled by the Hippus, is perhaps the bloodiest of all. Their inner civil war is influenced by not one, not two, but three forign groups - the Lanun are obviously the strongest, but both the Patrians and the Amurites hold some interest as well. In the end, it is the combined power of money and sword-arms that decide it, and the vast majority of the Hippus swear to follow their new leader, Karimir's son Granmir. Under his chief generals, Hybor and Magnadine, the horsemen ride to the aid of their sea-loving brethren.
The next few years are riven with blood, as the various conflicts of North, East, and South carry many battles but no decisive victories. The only ones to largely escape this bloodshed are the Balseraphs, the Khazad, the Grigori, the Luichirp, and the people of Marreka (sp? I don't remember...). These lucky peoples watch the rest of the world with worry, hoping they are not drawn in.
For the most part, their hope is failed. The Lanun are desperate; they hold the strategic advantage at the moment, but they and their allies are weaker than the Amurites and their allies. In this desperation, they reach out to whoever will listen, and scheme against whoever won't. Some attempts fail; a few crucial ones succeed beyond their wildest dreams.
At the Lanun's influence, the waiting armies of Marraka pile into their Kuriotate neighbors. This weakens them, which draws troops away from Avelorn, allowing a new alliance of orc and wolfman to conquer that fair city. Unfortunately for the orcs, their alliance lasted only as long as Avelorn did, since the beastmen (again at Lanun urging) swiftly betrayed them and slay them to the man. More orcs live to renew their strength, but with no allies, they appear doomed. Fortunately for them, the Doviello also attack the Grigori - this time without any foreign urging - and here, they soon realize they bit off more than they could chew. The Grigori, while disorganized and leaderless, are still strong enough to carry a vicious guerilla war against the northern folk and every acre the Doviello capture looses them more men then they can afford.
In the West, Pinea continues it's own bloody war, unconcerned with the affairs of the rest of Erebus. However, others watch, and are concerned, and the appearence of what appears to be dwarven troops changes everything. In reality, these are actually Lanun doppelgangers, but to the Balseraphs, it's enough justification for a full-scale invasion. For the first time, the Joyful Army moves against a true enemy, and it's strength is unmatchable. Bears, Paramanders, walls... nothing stops them, and just like that two cities fall.
The Amurites watch this with growing terror. Stronger than the Lanun they may be, but they are also much more divisive internally and the war has caused these fractures to split further and further. Their vampire allies are warring, mostly with success, against the elves - yet they clamor for ever-larger amounts of troops and money, and threaten to declare neutrality or change their alliegance completely. Should the Balseraphs decide to continue their blitz into Amurite lands, there is little that could be done to stop them.
They attack. A percieved pause in the battle with the Lanun allows them to divert troops from other areas, and in an insane move the released Wizards move toward Jubilee. Against all odds, against all reason, the attempt works - and the city falls, along with the offshore islands. Deprived of their capital (not to mention Gold), the clowns divert parts of their powerful army to the south and east, moving to recapture their lands and take Ciriail.
In the far East, the united Calabim and Amurites have recovered from their initial surprise, and with superior numbers and quality they steadily force the Sidhans back. The elves' forests slow them down somewhat, but not enough to prevent them from setting a full siege to Eaca. A desperate elvish stand managed to prevent the loss of the city, but the enemy simply changes their objective. Leaving a strong force in seige, a full half of the army moves north against Evermore, which is undefended. It falls in three days.
While these "sideshows" go on, the main fight is occuring in the bare 150leagues between the cities of Acaia and Altheriol-ta-Mealthiel. The largest, best equipped, and best led armies fight on this plain, and the very grass is drowned from the blood spilled here. Whole units are destroyed in a single day, and their nations count that a victory. Charges of horse and centaur meet summon's flesh, Lanun elites meet Amurite conscripts, Wizards fight Adepts, and feats of heroism are made every day.
Despite Amurite divertion of forces to other fronts, the lines of battle push northward a little every day. Eventually, the armies fight at the very edge of the Hippus capitol, then within it. Each building is fought for; each must be destroyed by the southerners before it's capture, then destroyed again as desperate counterattacks regain it. All know the eventual outcome, however, and after a thirty-year campaign with four years of city battle, Altheriol surrenders. Lanun ships evacuate who they can, but no fleet existing could hope to carry all the wounded, much less the dead.
With such crushing defeats in both the south and the east, the Lanun sue for peace. The Amurites have gained little to nothing as of yet, but faced with their own created war in the west, they take the offer. The Calabim, faced with the prospect of losing an ally while gaining the Lanun's full concentration, also agree to peace. In the east, everything is more or less status quo ante bellum territory-wise, although the Sidhans commit to reparation payments. The Amurites keep the territory they gained, but the Lanun refuse all payment and the wizards are forced to accept this deal.
However, the Hippus refuse to allow a peace while their lands are yet occupied. They see this peace as no more than a temporary cease-fire. They continue to build up armies, which are funded in large part by the Lanun. The Lanun are, as always, less than content with what they have and still clamor for the return of their isle. Not only do they fund the Hippus, but they use their Esusian and smuggling contacts to create insurrection in Amurite lands.
The new Clown War is odd. The Khazad and the Amurites are not allied, and in some cases openly fight each other - yet in others, they cooperate against their mutual enemy. No matter; the Balseraph continue to push forward on all fronts, and even the reinforcements gained by the Amurites seem to only slow the advance, not stall it. Ceriail does, in fact, fall; but the last dwarven city continues to hold. It is said that some Luichirp are starting to be found amidst the bodies of the Khazad, but this is not proven.
Meanwhile, the War in the North is no less odd, nor bloody. The Doviello are stalled on all fronts, and worse, the Grigori seem to have found a capable military commander to lead them. He is declared as a dictator, and their people willing submit to his harsh command. It's working, and the stable lines of battle prove that.
The Marrekans are swiftly realizing their mistake. Imagining themselves strong, the honeyed words of the Lanun had easily persuaded them into their rash attack. However, they find the Kuriotates to hold some strength yet, and within a decade the official state of Marreka is utterly destroyed. There is still some insurrection, but not enough to seriously occupy Kurio forces, and these now move north to join in war with any that challenge them.
The people of Shazaak regain their army in a seeminly impossible time, and march to regain Avelorn. They find it burnt to the ground, with all inhabitants dead or enslaved. Their army, not knowing what else to do, retreats in disorder. The Kuriotates catch them, and for the second time in fifty years the Shazaak army is slain to the last man. There is much weeping over Avelorn, and the Kurio army begins to set up walls in preparation for it's rebuilding.
During all this, the Patrians continue to gain power. They are all but extinct in Hippus lands, but they hold near pluralities in Naggarond, Edge, Nimaril, and surprisingly, Acaia. Of these cities, Naggarond is most strongly theirs as those without Patrian tendencies move away to rebuild Kwythellar and Avelorn. Acaia comes in a close second, as many Patrian sympethizers settled there to avoid the prosecution they faced in other parts of the Amurite empire. Between these two centers of power, a plot slowly develops, and is set into motion. It is a slow plot, and the results will not come for some years yet.
Luichirp lands are quiet. Few enter; fewer leave. Some rumors are beginning, rumors that declare their created servants have overstepped their bounds somehow. The rest of the world is too busy to notice or care about this, though some few wonder why dwarves would be evacuating Luichirp lands in favor of the warring Khazad's.
The Calabim, now at peace, declare themselves sequestered from the world. They create a new city, [insert name here], that lies between Prespur and Nubia. They forget about regaining Acaia, and by all accounts, are happy to pursue their various twisted studies.
The Sidhans are rebuilding, as well. While the war had been quite devestating to them, and the repayments hard to swallow, they had created an opportunity. The rebuilt infrastructure was better than ever, and the effort to recreate it allowed for some... subtle... changes to the power structure there. The Winter and Summer Courts had begun to resume their infighting, and who knows what will come of it?
The Lanun, never content in what they have, are doing some growth as well. However, most of their focus lies not at home but abroad, and they are central to many secret efforts throught the world.
The Clown War is almost over. The Khazad are on the brink of surrender; the Amurites may fight for some little time yet, but once the dwarves fall all is lost for them. However... out of the desert, a sleeping power wakens. Robed tribesmen, few in number but of battle skill unmatched, leave the Malakia Sands. They declare their goal to be the spread of their Lugus religion, but from the outside it looks like they'll settle for simple conquest. The mighty Balserpah armies, that have defeated vast numbers already, are confident they can wreck these fools. They die. In short succession, Tagaste and captured Hallowel fall to them, as does the new city of R'Rgorac.
Faced with this new threat, the three formerly warring powers agree to settle. The Amurites regain Ciriail; The Khazad, Khazaak - in a stunning diplomatic coup, they manage to get Pinea and the new city there, as well; the Balseraphs get back their lost territories, as well as enough surrendered funds from the other two to start a new city off Danalin's Tears named [insert name here].
In the north, the twice-defeated orcs of Shazaak see the renewed forces of the Kuriotates before them. They surrender, and Shazaak becomes yet another testament to growing Kurio strength.
However... the long-ago plans of the Hippus/Lanun, as well as the Patrian's plots, now come to fruition. The Amurites had finally ended their long, long time of battle - and just in time, as a succession of bad harvests had caused riots that had brought them to the brink of civil war. At this time of joy, however, their hope was once again dashed.
The Patrians of Acaia, having secured nearly all the major elected positions, declared themselves part of a new United Nation. In Cimarail, others tried to do the same, causing terrible street battles. In far-off Naggarond, and even further-off Edge, similar men with similar dreams did the same. At the same time, the mightly Hippus lead a two-pronged attack at the Amurite heartland and Altheriol both; though they did not carry the city, they managed to destroy no small part of the Amurite breadbasket before being slowly driven back.
The Amurites, weary of war, quickly clamped down on insurrection within Cimarial. However, once that was done, they contacted Patrian and Hippus leaders, and declared their terms for peace. All Patrian sympathizers would be allowed (and, in fact, strongly encouraged) to stay in the newly free city of Acaia, and the Hippus would be allowed their old capital back. All three parties were content at this, for now, and southern affairs were like that of the East: peaceful, for the moment.
The Patrians of Kwythellar had the same strategy of the Acaiates, and met with nearly the same degree of success. There was, perhaps, more bloodshed - but the Kuriotates have always been a united group, not a single people, so accepting the loss off the city was not difficult for them.
At Edge, though, things werre quite different. From the start, it was a debacle as the supposed group for a "United Nation" was itself split into several factions. There were many who opposed the Patrians, yet they were very much divided as well. To make things worse, the Doviello had finally managed to get within shouting distance of the city, and their new tactic of "kill the strong, enslave the weak, and breed a lot" was proving rather effective. The citizens off Edge merely weakened themselves, and the Doviello easily conquered the town.
With the mixed results of the Patrian uprising, Erebus is finally at a point of peace. Over a hundred years of near-continous war have reformed it, but at this day, peace reigns again. Not for long, however...