(597-853/4) The War of Terror was a roughly 250-year period of brutal Iskari occupation of the Highlands, following the fall of Karthis.
Before this time period, the Iskari of Iskandar and the Vaas had fought a series of bloody conflicts called the Karthic Wars over control of the Highlands region.
The Vaas had been defeated because of their lack of unity, Iskari military superiority, and simply bad luck. The Karthic Wars officially ended in the year 597/4, when the Iskari captured the city of Karthis, the most powerful Vaas stronghold and ended the defiant House of Madrigal.
But even after the fall of the city, the Iskari still had problems governing a gigantic region of territory, when most of their own resources were far to the west across the Iron Sea.
To control the hostile and unruly population, King Ilnavel IV instituted a program called "Pacification;" whereby unscrupulous Iskari nobles were given large Highlands estates in return for keeping the peace and remitting taxes back to the Onyx Throne in Wyn Falas.
For these nobles, "Keeping the peace" became nothing more than a vicious campaign of murder, torture, and mistreatment against the local Vaas population. The Iskari Royal Court took a blind eye to these acts of tyranny, and in some cases, even encouraged them.
After a brutal period of nearly 250 years, Vaas resistance grew ever stronger, culminating in what came to be known as the "Great Uprising," led by a rebellious Vaas Lord named Magnus Gildayne. After a bloody, ten-year long revolt, the the Iskari king Irovar II was killed in 853/4, at the epic battle of Vickers. Afterward, the Iskari signed the Treaty of Gildayne, retreated back across the Iron Sea, and the "War of Terror" officially came to an end.
Today, this term is not used by the Iskari people, who instead chose to call this historical period the "the Occupation."
