Hungrur War

When enormous iron deposits were found in the Hungrur basin, the leaders of the Orchish Empire, the High Command, designated the area of strategic importance. This meant it would be ringed with bastions and have a regiment based there. For the soldiers and workers, this was an unpleasant posting. It was always hot, rumblings of Torowkrorn erupted sleep, and the natives threatened them with a barrage of boulders and balls of magma. Many of these hostiles were fire giant, distant descendants of the mighty Titan Empire of Hofthorm.

The High Command's claim to the mining rights in the eastern half of Hungrur was contested by Krarthjar. This was then a city-state with a population a fraction of those they were squaring off against. Krarthjar, long ruled by Tolfreid kings, was eager to to bring glory to the fire giant people, reviving the warmongering ways of their Hofthorm ancestors.

Two years after digging started, war began between the belligerents. It did not go well for Krarthjar. Supply and reinforcing was taking too long. With a base roughly four hundred miles away, they could only send troops and supplies by way of the Skera Hrolmir. This subterranean lava river proved unassailable by the Orchish Empire.

What the High Command soon learned from their spies was that the volcanoes Birkrarg and Torowkrorn, hundreds of miles apart, were connected by the same underground lava river. This molten river, the Skera Hrolmir, allowed Krarthjar, by their laws, control of two distant areas from underneath while not controlling connecting land on the surface. There was no legal precedent for this in Orchish Law; the general interpretation at the time was that the owner of the land was based on surface rights and that you needed to control land adjacent to your claim.

The war between the two ended when Torowkrorn was made to go "hot". Krarthjar's soldiers, raising banners harking back to the days of Hofthorm, were largely unhindered in all the gas and fire, but not so their enemies. Numbers were on side of the Orchish Empire, a 1,000 to 1, yet the High Command under Emperor Blac'drugulois saw two reasons to give up the area. In a few years, the volcano's eruptions would flood most of the mining shafts, ruining the ore deposits, and making most of the shafts unusable with all the heat and noxious gases lingering about. The second reason was that his opposite was turning this conflict into a nationalist cause for all the fire giants living in Krarthjar, Hungrur, and areas in and near the Giant Steps highlands. Rather than be responsible for the rise of another Titan Empire, the Orchish Empire made peace. The Ageless Emperor would wait for a change in Krarthjar's leadership or until it tore itself apart from the inside.