Raven Rebellion

 Belligerents The Raven Rebellion was an armed uprising by the Silver Ravens and their allies against the rule of Barzillai Thrune over the city of Kintargo that ended in the crushing of the rebellion and a shift of power in the region.

Background
On 9 Arodus 4715, Her Majestrix Queen Abrogail II issued an Imperial Proclamation removing the then-current Lord-Mayor of Kintargo Jilia Bainilus from power, citing her lax enforcement of Chelish law and repeated attempts to undermine House Thrune's authority in the city. Four days later, on 13 Arodus, she issued the Ember Decree, instating martial law in Westcrown, Corentyn, Ostenso, Blackridge, and Kintargo in response to the flaring rebellions in southeastern Cheliax, provoked by the Glorious Reclamation's attack on Citadel Dinyar. At some point in this period, Jilia Bainilus disappeared. Her whereabouts are currently unknown.

In her place, Queen Abrogail declared her cousin, Barzillai Thrune, the new Lord-Mayor of Kintargo. Though privately she considered him ill-suited to rule, his appointment served two purposes: it removed a troublesome and incompetent relative from the more vital southern country, and it served as a reminder to the people of Kintargo that the will of House Thrune could and must be carried out, even in a cosmopolitan coastal city far from the capital.

Barzillai took to his new post poorly, and immediately began issuing authoritarian and erratic proclamations, such as the banning of tea-drinking after sunset and the prohibition of peppermint-flavored goods. Barzillai was perceived as an ill-tempered and narcissistic ruler who governed entirely on his own whims, and discontent began to simmer.

The Night of Ashes
On 28 Arodus, Barzillai Thrune gave orders to the Kintargo Dottari and the Hellknights of the Orders of the Rack and Torrent to carry out raids against various anti-government groups, such as the halfling emancipation group the Bellflower Network, the Sacred Order of Archivists, and several criminal organizations, as well as the temples of several faiths, including those of Sarenrae, Milani, and Calistria. Forty-six people were killed and almost a dozen buildings burned over the course of what became known as the Night of Ashes.

The Aria Park Riot
One week later, on 4 Rova 4715, Kintargan citizens held a rally outside of Barzillai Thrune's newly-converted home in the former Kintargo Opera House. Most were simply protesting the new ruler's draconian proclamations and martial law crackdowns, but a small but significant minority called for free and open elections to determine a new Lord-Mayor, or even emancipation from Chelish rule. Though the rally started with just a few dozen citizens in attendance, the crowd gradually grew in size, and eventually were confronted by a small counterprotest of Chelish loyalists. Unbeknownst to the protestors, the crowd was also infiltrated by disguised members of the Chelish Citizens' Group, a militia group loyal to House Thrune.

After several hours, Barzillai opened a window of the Opera House to briefly address the crowd. In an odd, rambling speech, he issued another of his proclamations: That no ship's captain or crew would be allowed to leave their ship while docked at Kintargo. The outraged crowd began throwing rotten vegetables and other debris at Barzillai, angering him enough to order his guards to disperse the crowd. The Dottari, along with members of the Chelish Citizens' Group, began attacking the crowd, who, though unarmed, began fighting back in a bloody clash that lasted for almost an hour, in which thirty people were killed and almost a hundred wounded.

Founding of the Silver Ravens
Following the Aria Park Riot, a group of survivors of the riot, backed by dissatisfied merchants within the city's middle-class, formed the resistance group that would become known as the Silver Ravens. The original Silver Ravens had been a group that fought in the Chelish Civil War, sixty years before, defending Kintargo from domination by House Thrune, and had made their way into Kintargan legend. The new incarnation of the Silver Ravens adopted the moniker after discovering their predecessors' underground base of operations.

Initially, the Silver Ravens recruited primarily from members of disenfranchised religious groups, particularly the Church of Milani, recently devastated in the Night of Ashes. Their first offensive action against Barzillai's government was a minor raid on the Sallix Salt Works, recently converted into a makeshift holding pen for political prisoners, in which they killed several guardsmen and freed a group of mercenaries, who joined their cause. Their next major breakthrough came in an assault on one of the city's repositories of magical artifacts, netting the group arms and armor for further attacks.

The Bellflower Network, an organization dedicated to the liberation of slaves, particularly halfling slaves, in Cheliax, had been robbed of leadership in the Night of Ashes. They found new leadership, such as it was, in the Silver Ravens, and placed their lot in with the Ravens, mostly in the form of smuggling and information brokerage.

The Battle of Citadel Vaull
The Silver Ravens' first major setback was a failed attempt to sway the Lictor of the Order of the Torrent, which had recently been stripped of its charter, against Thrune, which turned out to be a trap set by the Order of the Rack for the Ravens. There was fierce room-to-room fighting in the towering Citadel of the Order of the Torrent as the Ravens desperately cut their way through the ranks of Hellknights, losing many of their number in the process.

The Ravens Seek Allies
After the devastating loss at the Citadel, the Ravens began to realize that they could never truly hope to challenge Barzillai with only the resources available to them inside Kintargo's walls, and so they began to look outward for potential allies. They found some unlikely ones in the aquatic elves of Acisazi, who had long taken pains to avoid drawing attention to themselves, but who brokered a deal with the Ravens and sent soldiers, assassins, and supplies. Less unlikely was the alliance they brokered with Vyre, a city whose fate is intimately linked with that of Kintargo's, as it largely depends on its larger sister city for sea-based trade.

The Battle of Menador Keep
The Menador Mountains provided Kintargo with an excellent natural barrier from the rest of Cheliax that would serve to hinder any attempts to reinforce and resupply Barzillai's forces. There were functionally three routes by which Cheliax might be able to send aid to Thrune: North of the mountains, through Nidal, which would require some tricky political maneuvering to avoid all-out war with Nidal, south of the mountains, a dangerous road past the rebel city of Pezzack and several nests of strix, or through the mountains themselves, along the treacherous Menador Gap. At the narrowest point of the Gap lies an ancient dwarven guardhouse known as Menador Keep.

The discovery of the original Ravens' hideout yielded, among other things, documents detailing Menador Keep's secret weapon: The Keep holds within its depths a Dwarven device known as the Anvil of Unmaking which, if triggered, could render the Menador Gap unusable by any sizable contingent of troops for years to come. It was this prospect that made an attack on the heavily-guarded and easily-defensible Keep worth the cost for the Ravens. Instead of a direct frontal assault, they elected to disguise a small party of elite fighters as merchants, and infiltrate the Keep via the Western Approach under the cover of night on 26 Calistril of 4716. Initially their plan succeeded, but on entry to the Keep the ruse was discovered, and after almost a full day of fierce fighting the entire party was killed or captured, including one of the four leaders of the Ravens.

The Battle of Kintargo
The severe loss at Menador Keep left the Silver Ravens reeling, and unable to take any real offensive actions temporarily. Barzillai and his loyalists exploited this opening to full effect, arresting and interrogating Ravens sympathizers and terrorizing the populace with impunity. In danger of being cornered in their subterranean hideouts and unwilling to sacrifice any more of Kintargo's population, the remainder of the Silver Council agreed: they would strike as soon as their forces could be ready. A date for the uprising was set: 3 Gozran of 4716, an Oathday.

3 Gozran, Oathday - Early Successes
The attacks began just before dawn, and achieved several early successes. A sizable force was sent to attack the Dottari guard barracks, in the Castle District, and achieved complete surprise, with many of the Dottari not on patrols being butchered in their beds before they could mount any kind of effective defense. Another raiding party burned the headquarters of the Chelish Citizens' Group and seized a large cache of arms. By mid-afternoon much of the Castle District and Jarvis End were under the control of the rebels. In other areas of the city, however, results were more mixed. A rebel assault on Redmark Tower, the base of operations for the Order of the Rack in Kintargo, was easily repulsed, and the rebels were drawn into house-to-house fighting in Villegre. Initial attacks on Citadel Vraull were successful, but had stagnated by early evening.

4 Gozran, Fireday - Dragonfire
At dawn on the second day of fighting, the rebels controlled most of the Castle District, virtually all of Jarvis End, and small pockets of Villegre. Up until this point, the loyalist forces had been fighting an exclusively defensive battle, but Nox, Barzillai Thrune's personal bodyguard and the de facto commander of the loyalist forces, began rallying soldiers for a counterattack.

The first major loyalist offensive began that afternoon, accompanied by the arrival on the field of the blue dragon Rivozair, in an uneasy alliance with the loyalists. Rivozair fell on the rebel-held Jarvis End, indiscriminately setting buildings ablaze and scattering rebel forces. The loyalists attempted several advances into Jarvis End but found themselves driven back by the dragon as well. The dragon was eventually felled thanks to the sacrifice of several powerful sorcerers of the Silver Ravens, but not before claiming the lives of several hundred rebels and leveling huge portions of Jarvis End and the Castle District.

In Villegre, the embattled Hellknights of the Order of the Rack found themselves aided by the badly-mauled remnants of the city Dottari, personally commanded by Nox. While not a huge force, it was enough to turn the tide, at least temporarily, and the loyalists eventually pushed back the rebel

The rebel reinforcements from Vyre, expected on the morning of 4 Gozran, never arrived. At first the Silver Council assumed they'd been waylaid on the road by loyalist forces, but as the day dragged on it became clear that something more serious had happened. In point of fact the reinforcements had never left at all; following the loss of the Battle of Menador Keep, Queen Manticce Kaleekii of Vyre judged the Ravens' cause to be suicide and had secretly withdrawn her support. She even sent a messenger to the Queen on the first day of the uprising to inform her of the Ravens' intentions. However, the information the Queen possessed on the scale and disposition of the rebel forces was outdated, and she wrongly believed that the force already stationed in the city could handle the uprising. Even when the full scale of the fighting became clear, Abrogail did not send reinforcements for almost two weeks; she was loathe to send soldiers away from the more valuable southern regions of the Empire when they, too, were in a state of rebellion.

5 - 8 Gozran - Turning the Tide
The next three days of the battle were marked by bitter, bloody battles of attrition and building-to-building fighting. On the 5th, the loyalists and rebels traded various patches of territory back and forth throughout the day, resulting in very little overall change, but as the fighting raged on, the superior numbers and better morale of the rebels began to show its worth. Slowly but surely, over the 6th and 7th, the rebels began to push back the loyalists in every district.

The Order of the Torrent, already badly mauled in the Battle of Citadel Vraull, were eventually overrun by the Silver Ravens and, cornered in their tower, fought to the death. Only fifteen Hellknights of the Order of the Torrent survived the rebellion.

On the 8th, at midday, Nox ordered a general retreat. Those who could were ordered to make their way to the Temple of Asmodeus, on Temple Hill, the highest point in the city and one of the most fortified, and where Barzillai Thrune had established his base of operations during the uprising. Those who could not were told to make a final suicide charge on the rebel lines, and to "die befitting a true Chelaxian, with a sword in your hand".

8 Gozran - 3 Desnus - The Siege of Temple Hill
On hearing that the loyalist forces were now trapped and besieged in the Temple of Asmodeus, Queen Abrogail II reportedly flew into such a rage that she had to be talked down by the Contessa from summoning a cohort of Pit Devils and leveling the entire city, massacring rebels and loyalists alike. Instead, she sent the next best thing: a full legion of her Imperial Guard. But as terrifying to behold on the field of battle as they were, they needed time to mobilize, and a journey to the frontier was time-consuming in early spring, so the loyalists were forced to entrench for a considerable siege.

Barzillai Thrune, furious at Nox's order to retreat and what he perceived as her failures of leadership, removed her from command. Finally fed up with her master's narcissism and lack of personal responsibility, she left the city by a little-used route, and despite being branded a traitor to Her Majestrix' government, has yet to be located. Barzillai, never a particularly stable individual, began to fracture under the stress of direct command. He began to attempt to solve critical shortages of both men and materiel through diabolism. He allowed minor devils to possess his men to assist them in functioning without food or sleep, and shored up his flagging numbers with infernally bound devils, signing away his soul and those of his men into debt he could never hope to repay. For a while, this was effective, and the rebels, not accustomed to fighting infernal creatures, were pushed back several times from the walls of the Temple by an onslaught of devils. But the Silver Ravens spellcasters began to develop workable strategies for disrupting these attacks, and even a possessed man can't fight indefinitely without adequate supplies.

The Ravens, meanwhile, were facing their own problems. Most of the rebel force had only ever fought in hit-and-run battles, and lacked the training and discipline for a prolonged siege. Desertion and malingering were rampant, as was battlefield fatigue. However, they maintained a bare minimum of battle-ready soldiers, and the siege held for almost a month.

4 Desnus - Hell Comes to Kintargo
At dawn on 4 Desnus 4716, Silver Ravens watchmen sighted a sizable force approaching from the southwest. Initially, this was assumed to be the long-awaited reinforcements from Vyre, throwing their lot in with the rebels now that circumstances seemed more favorable, but as the force drew closer, the chilling sound of Imperial war drums began to echo against the walls of Kintargo.

The Imperial Guard found the gates standing open, and virtually undefended. The rebel forces were disorganized and not expecting an attack from their rear - they scrambled to mount an organized defense but, after a month of difficult fighting, did not have the necessary manpower to defend against attacks from both directions and, outnumbered by a vastly superior force, their loose formations were quickly scattered and destroyed.

Several beleaguered units of rebels threw down arms and surrendered simply upon sighting the Imperial Guard, rather than engage, and were subsequently butchered where they stood. The remaining rebels, learning from their example, either fled desperately into the countryside or fought to the death. The Silver Council and their most elite troops held a desperate last stand in the ruins of Jarvis End, but were overrun before midnight. By dawn the next day, the defenders were relieved and the city pacified, ending the rebellion permanently in Kintargo.

Aftermath
Approximately four days after the Battle of Kintargo, Barzillai Thrune disappeared from his quarters in Castle Kintargo. His whereabouts are unknown, but the Queen's Court has been notably silent regarding his disappearance, and every mention of his name is slowly being erased from official records, suggesting that he is dead on his cousin's orders, or will be soon. He has been replaced by Zoveina Julistarc.

The elves and half-elves of the settlement of Acisazi, having shown their hand, could no longer escape notice by the Chelaxian government, and the settlement was razed and its inhabitants, for the most part, slaughtered in reprisal.

The city of Kintargo itself was badly damaged in the fighting. Most of Jarvis End and the Castle District were razed by magical attacks as well as the Ravens' battle with the blue dragon Rivozair. The Bleakbridge was moderately damaged, and was closed to through traffic until Erastus of 4717 AR for repairs. Old Kintargo, while left relatively untouched in the bulk of the fighting, was devastated by the Order of the Rack in subsequent reprisals.

Continued Fighting
Remnants of the Silver Ravens remain active within Kintargo, operating mostly as guerilla forces. They have lost most of their number and virtually all of their popular support. After all they've given up in the pursuit of freedom, most of the citizens of Kintargo are content, for the moment, to settle for peace.