The Swamp Realm of the War-Torn

On the northern maps of the Second Age, Thassokar appears in soft green — a band of forested rivers and shallow floodplains glowing against the drier hills beyond. To a cartographer it seems tranquil, but every wall and levee in those marshlands carries the memory of siege. The Ida call it the Swamp Realm of the War-Torn, for no year passes without the drums of the marches echoing through its fog.

Thassokar sits between Corundelos to the west and Fenrakara to the east, its lowlands feeding the trade routes of both. The rivers that nourish it also invite invasion. From the southern bogs rise the Nummi Suppi, the scaled war-clans of the swamps — tall, powerful humanoids who strike by water and vanish into reed and mist. To the north, other marsh-born tribes descend seasonally when the tides shift, drawn by the scent of Ida crops and cattle. The Thassokari learned long ago that no wall can keep out a river, but a river can drown an army.

The Reign of King Darven Varn

The chroniclers begin the current era with King Darven Varn, who ruled when the southern marshes first united under the banner of the warlord Issor of the Reed Maw. Issor’s host was a tide of Nummi Suppi and lesser marsh kin — frog-born, eel-skinned, and horned — whose long canoes slipped through channels too shallow for Ida ships. They struck without sound, spears glinting in moonlight, dragging defenders into the black water before alarms could be raised. Within one spring, three river towns had fallen, their wooden walls rotting where fire could not burn.

King Darven was no conqueror. He was a builder. He ordered the construction of a ring of fortified causeways linking the walled settlements of the lower marshes — bridges wide enough for supply carts, yet high enough to survive the floods. From above, the pattern formed a seven-pointed star radiating from the capital Varneth. The Ida masons called it the Star Wall, and its raised battlements became both road and rampart. Trade revived where war had choked it, and for the first time the realm could move soldiers faster than the tide.

The War of the Green Flood

Issor answered with cunning. He dammed the rivers upstream and turned their courses overnight, flooding the low towns that trusted their walls. Crops drowned, and the marsh filled with the stench of death. The Ida chronicles name this the Green Flood — not for the color of the water, but for the sickness that followed. Thassokar’s priests said Moab wept for the land, yet its soldiers endured. Under Darven’s command, they unleashed their own counterflood, breaching levees and letting the rivers return to their natural paths. The ensuing deluge swept Issor’s army from the reeds, and when the waters receded, the warlord’s body was found impaled on a driftwood stake. The swamps consumed his followers within a fortnight.

Victory came not through might, but through patience. As the Thassokari saying goes: “Water wins the battle the stone begins.”

The Marsh Watch

After the war, Darven established the Marsh Watch — a brotherhood of wall-wardens sworn to guard the waterways. Each town maintained a bell tower fitted with mirrors of burnished copper; light signals replaced horns, carrying news from one end of the Star Wall to the other before a rider could saddle his horse. To the Thassokari, silence became strategy — the swamps were their ally now, not their curse.

The king’s crown reflected that creed: a circlet of hammered bronze lined with wet clay, replaced every decade before corrosion could claim it. The scepter, called the Levee Rod, served as both measuring staff and symbol of justice — for in Thassokar, a dishonest ruler could not hide behind dry ground. The first act of each new monarch is to wade into the shallows at Varneth and test the river depth. “Only he who knows the weight of water may judge those who live beside it,” the priests say.

The Legacy of the War-Torn

To this day, travelers describe Thassokar as a green mirror of the world — fertile, beautiful, but always trembling beneath its own reflection. The Nummi Suppi still raid the outer marches when hunger or pride demands it, and Ida soldiers still man the Star Wall with spears tipped in river-forged steel. But for every wound the swamp delivers, the Ida answer with patience. They do not drain the land; they endure it, rebuilding where the flood recedes.

In taverns across the Northern Realms, bards end their songs of Thassokar with the same verse, sung slow and low as a tide turning in the dark:

“We are the ones who built where the dead still sleep, We stand where the rivers refuse to keep. Our walls are reeds, our hearts are stone, And Thassokar endures alone.”