The Alabaster Staff: A History of Unther

In the far east of Faerûn, the greatest and oldest of empires was that of the Imaskari, sorcerers known as the Artificers. Heady with power and hubris, the Imaskari refused to bow down before any divine entity. They worked mighty magic and researched strange technologies, fending off the predation of humanoids, dragons, strange creatures native to their homeland, and even the gods. When their population was decimated in a terrible plague four thousand years ago, the wizard-rulers of Imaskar opened a pair of great portals to another world, pulling forth over one-hundred thousand humans, the Mulan, then closed the portals and sealed all connections to that world forever. The Imaskari enslaved and oppressed the Mulan. Still, the slaves continued to offer countless prayers to their deities that went unheard because of the Imaskari barrier.

Through the intervention of Ao, the overpower of Faerûn's gods, the slaves' deities sent powerful but mortal versions of themselves through alternate methods -- using the Astral Plane to thereby bypass the Artificers' barrier. The deities battled and defeated the Imaskari in -2488 DR, leading their people westward. They settled on the southeastern portion of the Sea of Fallen Stars where they used magic to increase the fertility of the already rich soils. The nations of Mulhorand and Unther were born from these events -- Mulhorand in -2135 DR, and Unther in -2087 DR when the great god Enlil founded Unthalass upon discovering pearls on the coast of the Alamber Sea.

In -1967 DR, the two great Mulan nations, Mulhorand and Unther, clashed at the River of Swords, beginning the Mulhorand-Unther War. After years of war, the gods of both nations agreed the River of Swords would be the eternal boundary between them. It would 2,400 years before the Old Empires would war once again. This relative peace allowed both nations to begin to expand circa -1500 DR.

Unther's expansion, mostly westward into what is now Chessenta and south into the eastern Shaar, continued until around -1250 DR when battles against the wood elves of the Yuirwood to the northwest and the gold dwarves of the Great Rift to the south stopped their progression. As the millennia neared a close in -1087 DR, so did Mulhorand and Unther's first ages of empire, when Theurgist Adept Thayd, the last surviving apprentice of the Imaksari wizards, led most of the wizards of Mulhorand and Unther in rebellion against the Mulan gods. By -1081 DR, Thayd and his conspirators were defeated. Thayd was executed, but he prophesied that Mulhorand and Unther would decline never to be great again.

Thayd's execution, however, did not end his attacks on the two Old Empires. Just prior to his execution, Thayd opened a gate to a third world. Five years later in -1076 DR, a horde formed of a humanoid species previously unknown in Mulhorand and Unther discovered that gate and poured through seeking new lands to plunder. The Mulan gods emerged form their towers to lead their armies against these "gray orcs." In response, the orc shamans summoned the avatars of their pantheon to defend them. In a titanic clash known as the Battle of the Gods, Re, head of the Mulhorand pantheon, was slain by the orc patriarchal deity, Gruumsh, in -1071 DR, and many senior members of the Untheric pantheon were likewise slain, including Inanna, Girru, Ki, Marduk, Nanna-Sin, Nergal, and Utu. The avatars of the orc deities were severely weakened in the battle, however, and the Mulhorandi and Untheric pantheons rallied to defeat them two years later, subsequently driving the orcs from the region in -1069 DR.

The two old nations paused to rebuild their power and lick their wounds, while new empires -- the warlike Narfell and Raumathar -- filled the void to the north. However, in -734 DR, Unther's chief god, Enlil, decided to leave the Realms, abdicating his throne in favor of his son Gilgeam. Soon thereafter, Ishtar, goddess of love, also decided to abandon Faerûn, secretly delivering the power of her manifestation to the Mulhorandi goddess Isis and vanishing, leaving only Assuran (also known as Hoar), god of thunder, with Gilgeam. At first, Gilgeam was a just god-king, but power corrupted him. He placed limits on the faiths of other gods. Thus began Gilgeam's two-thousand year deterioration into despotic tyranny as the ruler of Unther.

The next several hundred years remained relatively quite as Gilgeam consolidated his power, maintained his holdings, and victimized his people. Always aggressive and expansionistic, however, Unther again grew with the cataclysmic fall of the northern empires of Narfell (from whom it had to defend itself in a naval conflict in -623 DR) and Raumathar in -150 DR. Eventually, Unther claimed all of what is now Chessenta, Chondath, the cities on the northern shore of the Wizards' Reach, the Shaar, and portions of Dambrath and Estagund in a second age of empire. However, this brutal expansion brought with it the hatred of the conquered and bankrupted Unther's treasury, forcing the rulers to raise taxes to absurd levels.

In 163 DR, itinerant Untherite pirates and the odd hermit or two "founded" Altumbel at the tip of the Aglarondan peninsula. In 202 DR, the barbarians later known as the Arkaiuns invaded Unther and Mulhorand from the south, but by 205 DR, were repulsed, chased back to their base settlement, and exterminated. A dying barbarian shaman, however, prophesied both empires would crumble. Around 400 DR, Unther began to recolonize the northern shore of the Wizards' Reach -- lands it lost centuries earlier during the Orcgate Wars -- beginning with Escalant at the mouth of the River Lapendrar. Also during this Ramman, an ancient Mulan god of storms, joined Gilgeam in Unther, driving out the god Assuran, the Doombringer.

Over the next several centuries and piece by piece, the outlying holdings of Unther rebelled. Unther's northern cities seceded, and the country shrunk by half when its western cities declared themselves the free nation of Chessenta.

In 482 DR, two of those colonies, Delthuntle and Laothkund, broke free of Unther. In 504 DR, two more cities, Teth and Nethra, declared their independence. Unther responded with a long campaign to reclaim its Northern Coast Cities. However, Unther's response did not stop the defections of its colonies, and in 625 DR, Escalant joined its sister cities in independence. By 679 DR, Unther was forced to recognize the independence of the Northern Coast Cities. In 823 DR, Mourktar, a city in one of Unther's western province, broke free of Unther, and in 929 DR, the Alliance of Chessenta rebelled against their masters in Unthalass, driving the Untherites back beyond the Riders to the Sky Mountains. Broken, Unther was less than half the size it had been some 400 years earlier.

Chessenta even succeeded in conquering Unther under the leadership of King Tchazzar (secretly a polymorphed red dragon of immense power) and ruled it as a vassal state for nearly a hundred years. With the disappearance of the Chessentan hero-conqueror Tchazzar in 1018 DR -- long planned by the wyrm in an attempt to gain godhood -- Unther freed itself and turned its focus inward on its own cruel people. The country that had made great advances in sculpture, poetry, and other civilized arts became engaged in a slow decline in morals and culture, as if following Gilgeam's descent into tyranny and madness. Unther became a "living" fallen empire.

By the fourteenth century, Unther's decline was almost complete. In 1301 DR, the Cult of Tiamat underwent resurgence, gathering folk desperate to throw off the tyrannical yoke of Gilgeam. In 1346 DR, the cult under the leadership of Tiglath, once a slave in Gilgeam's harem, summoned to the Realms its Dark Lady, an ancient foe of the Untheric pantheon slain long ago by Marduk, in the form of a three-headed dragon. The cult also allied with the moon half-elf bandit lord and one-time palace slave of Gilgeam, Furifax, who had begun a guerrilla war against Unther in the south. By 1357 DR and in response to excess taxation, Unther's northern cities, notably Messemprar, were in a full revolt led by a group of spellcasters known as the Northern Wizards. Despite the uprising, Gilgeam still celebrated his long-ago ascension to Unther's throne by single-handedly slaying a dragon turtle in Unthalass' harbor.

In 1358 DR, the Year of Shadows, the gods were thrown to Faerûn in mortal form by Ao in what was known as the Time of Troubles and the Godswar. Assuran returned to Unther at the head of a Chessentan army to battle his enemy Ramman. Ramman's avatar met him face-to-face and toe-to-toe, but in an act of poetic justice, the Doombringer wove a powerful spell that slew Ramman by causing a bolt of lightning to rebound after the Untheric storm god's third thunderous lightning attack. However, once again Assuran lost when, before he could seize Ramman's portfolio, the Untheric lord of war passed it on to Anhur, war god of Mulhorand. The empowered Mulhorandi god of war led his troops to Unther's defense and routed the Chessentan mercenaries, many of whom defected to his side. The Doombringer was once again driven from Unther in defeat.

Gilgeam slew the relatively weak incarnation of the chromatic dragon queen, Tiamat, but her essence dispersed into three of the most powerful chromatic dragons in the region. Tchazzar, a red dragon who styled himself "Father of Chessenta" and who had been seeking godhood for centuries, received one fraction of Tiamat's essence. He felt compelled to seek out Gestaniius, a crippled great blue wyrm who also served as a receptacle of Tiamat's divine power, and then slew and devoured her. Tchazzar felt the divine power surge through him and sprouted a blue head. He then sought out green Skuthosiin in his quest to completely absorb Tiamat's divine essence. After an abrupt transformation that included sprouting a green head, his mortal form was totally subsumed by Tiamat, and the chromatic dragon was once more manifest in the Realms. Following the Godswar, Tiamat again battled Gilgeam (who found his power much reduced) across the Outer Planes and in Unther, destroying much of the city of Unthalass. Gilgeam died, and Tiamat was weakened to the point where she ceased granting spells to her worshipers for a time. However, she quietly returned later, whereupon she continued to foment trouble in Unther.

Following Gilgeam's death, his seat of power, the Ziggurat of Eternal Victory, was sacked and burned. A few of his priests survived the general rebellion, however, and fled to a secret stronghold, the Citadel of Black Ash, hidden in the eastern branch of the Smoking Mountains. Mulhorand saw an opportunity to attack, and in 1371 DR, crossed the River of Swords, conquering first small towns and outposts and finally the Untherite capital, Unthalass, and cities beyond. The Northern Wizards maintain control over Messemprar, but, left with less than a third of the territory it held a year ago, Unther is on the brink of ceasing to exist. Only the mercy of Mulhorand's pharaoh or powerful intervention by outside agents (such as the Red Wizards, the Zhentarim, the church of Tiamat, or the dracolich, Alasklerbanbastos of Threskel) is likely to save Unther from becoming a territory of the new empire of Mulhorand. The Red Wizards in particular are loath to see that happen, and they supply both money and power to help Unther remain independent. Cautious Untherites are wary of the eventual cost of this aid, but many feel that any alternative is better than becoming subject to Mulhorand's rule.

For more information about Unther, check out the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, and older game products such as Powers and Pantheons and FR10 Old Empires. Also, check out the novel The Alabaster Staff by Ed Bolme.

About the Author: Thomas M. Costa is a professional staffer for a committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. He has been a contributor to several Wizards of the Coast products such as Demihuman Deities and Races of Faerûn, and he is the author or co-author of a number of Dragon Magazine and Wizards of the Coast website articles.