As written by the Bard Keto in her “Conversation with the Last Landian”.

In the early days of the First War the magickal knowledge and mastery of Den proved the greater. For as emotions had been turned to anger and hatred, so too could magick be easily changed. The emissaries of Calelden and Falden, their own anger growing at this baffling betrayal, were either slaughtered or turned back. The Leaders of Den, in the growing arrogance grown by the confidence in their unassailable might, struck upon a new path. They would subjudicate the other clans, in essence expand their borders beyond the Carotarks until all Landians once again fell fully under their control.

So the Warrior-Mages of Den pushed out and the first to feel the wraith of ambition would be the Clan of Kariou. The Landians of Kariou were largely farmers, perhaps crafters, writers, or musicians in their hobbies, but they lived a largely peaceful life upon their fields. Ever optimistic, they had sought to broker a peace in these growing hostilities, to be the Clan that could link past and present. So, it was unexpected when the armies of Den arrived and began to demand oaths of loyalty to the “First Line of the Landians” and to murder those Karious who refused subjugation.

What was perhaps even more unexpected was the resistance that would end up coming from Kariou. While they were mostly farmers, it was had to have the simplest of things, the smallest leap to realize that a paring knife could draw blood, that an axe could split a skull, and a scythe fell men nearly as well as it could grain. The Landians of Kariou had discovered weapons and soon to follow would be soldiers. In my less charitable moments as I have unearthed the past of Illithiust I have thought that it is perhaps this fact, the founding of men of war, that made my companion so begrudge and admire the long dead Landians of Kariou.

The Kariou’s resistance would ultimately be of no avail. While the unexpected martial turn of the farmer-soldiers surprised the leaders of Den, farming tools turned to weapons and inferior numbers were no matched for the might of magick. The Clan of Kariou would end, every man, woman, and child, at the gate at the very pass that the Clan of Den had built to restrict access to the Carotarks. It is said that after the war that the remaining Clans built a monument to the Soldiers of Kariou but I have never ventured to those lands to see it…

The death of the Clan of Kariou would serve two important purposes. The capability to fight with tools vice magick become known to the surviving Clans, and they in turn would learn how to make implements far deadlier than a paring knife. No doubt in some hall within the Hendarks, a blacksmith of the Clan of Falden would create the sword, the first tool with the sole purpose of killing other Landians. The Last Landian has said that somewhere that sword still exists, so infused with those early killings and further with ages of battles that no doubt it is a blade surpassed by no other save for perhaps the Sword of Lehn.

For the next part of the war there is little to say. Weapons of steel would face those of magick as the clans of Calelden and Falden fought against those of Den. The Finnupave Planes would be bathed in bloodshed before the war began to finally turn. Faced with the superior numbers of two clans, their lesser magick, and the martial implements of Falden, the Warrior-Mages of Den would fall and the territory they had claimed taken. The armies of Den were pushed back once more to the pass in the Carotarks, the pass around which so much death revolved. Here for a time they would be able to hold, the pass negating the greater numbers of their enemy-kin but in time even that would not hold and the Clan of Den would find its territories taken from it.

It was here that desperation began to settle within the Clan of Den.