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resources to mount an effective offensive. For most of the four decades of conflict that followed, the Seven Kingdoms, after severing their alliances with Norloch and Annar and strengthening their defenses, remained warily aloof from these internecine wars, waiting to see who would win. None of the claimants for the throne was an attractive prospect: the two sons of Ilbaran were as ruthless in their pursuit of power as Dhuran, and the fourth possible candidate, Dhuran’s daughter Ilseticine the Fair, was murdered by Baran early in the Long Wars. When Dhuran was cast off the throne by Baran in N749, the new King’s first act was to take the title of the White Flame (the prefix Nor), an act of staggering hubris that signified his appropriation of the traditional authority of the Bards. The newly styled Nor-Baran instituted a tyranny crueler than that of his predecessor: exacting an implacable revenge on anyone he knew or suspected of opposing him, and imprisoning and executing his brother, Ebaran, for treason. He also announced that the Schools would now exist only by Royal favor, and that any Schools that did not acknowledge this would be destroyed by force of arms. Even Dhuran the Red had not dared to alienate the Bards.

At this point, the Seven Kingdoms became deeply alarmed, as they rightly guessed that armed invasion of their territories was not far away, and made open alliance with the Bards of Annar. Nor-Baran’s defeat and death in battle occurred two years later.

The Long Wars led to the final overthrow of the monarchy, the end of the line of Maninaë, and the subsequent rule of Annar by the Norloch Bards. This outcome was often considered, especially in the Seven Kingdoms, a calamitous result, since it upset the balance between civil and Bardic authority, although two centuries of wise and fair rule by Noldor (First Bard from N745–N866) and Nardil (N866–N939) ensued. However, Enkir’s reign as First Bard from N939 amply bore out their forebodings.

The history of the relationship between the Seven Kingdoms and Annar was, therefore, by no means untroubled. This background contributed to the disquiet with which the First Bards of the Seven Kingdoms had been watching developments in Norloch after the sacking of the School of Pellinor in N935, ten years before the events recounted in the Naraudh Lar-Chanë. Although Enkir was a practiced politician, and was careful to stress his fealty to the Light, his uncompromising insistence on the necessity of central authority and his increased campaigning against female Bards ensured that his rapid rise to power and his appointment to Norloch’s First Circle in the early decades of the N900s was viewed with alarm in the Seven Kingdoms. The First Bards and civil rulers were disturbed enough to strengthen what had always been an unofficial alliance designed to protect the Seven Kingdoms against the machinations of Annar.

All their fears were confirmed by Enkir’s extraordinary Edict of Loyalty after the Burning of Norloch, which demanded their allegiance in terms that entirely rewrote the old alliances. The Kingdoms began to arm themselves against Norloch. Annar itself, with Schools and Fesses across the realm differing sharply in their responses to Enkir’s Edict, seemed to be dangerously close to the brink of civil war. Massive forces from Dén Raven marched against the fortress cities of the Suderain with the aim of taking Baladh, Turbansk, and Car Amdridh, and acquiring bases from which to attack Annar itself. Sharma, the Nameless One, was marshaling his armies to war against Annar and the Seven Kingdoms at a time when the forces of the Light had never been more bitterly divided.

The Pilanel

The Pilanel4 (or the Pilani, as they referred to themselves) were a nomad people who inhabited the northern land of Zmarkan, a wide tundra that stretched north of the Osidh Elanor. No records exist of when they first settled the Arkiadera, or Mother Plains, but it was probably before the time of the founding of Afinil, after the end of the Elemental Wars.

The Pilanel, having an almost completely