The battle of the Kingdom of Pars is a legendary turning point in the early war.

In the early days of what would come to be called the Artificer War, the Arkons seemed to treat those
that stood against them as little more than rebels to be crushed. It was the Kingdom of Pars that
changed all of that. The Arkons who jointly oversaw that region had left the
Parsian royal family in place as a kind of figurehead. They were popular,
and this generation took great pride in their place and care of their
people. And so, they prepared, covertly assisting the rebels, supplying
coin, weapons, safe passage, information - anything that could be done to
hurt the Arkons.

One of the Arkons, Slethkrat, was unamused. She appeared in the royal
palace during some grand ball and released a great magik that slew
everyone present.

Everyone for a mile around was found

dead, with not a mark on them. The
flower of Parsian nobility and royalty gone
in a flash. Well, the three scions, three sons of the Pars royal family
were performing military exercises in three parts of the country, and
when news reached them, they knew the time to stand was now.

They mustered their forces - magical and mundane alike - and marched
on the three Arkons.

The other Arkons of the world looked on with something like

bemusement, when three armies lay siege to three Skull Citadels. They
were less amused when they all fell against the power of what was,
during the Time of Sorcery, the greatest, wealthiest, and most
powerful nation in the world.
Those Three Arkons retreated and gathered their power and their forces, which, after much fighting, led
to the forces of the Arkons laying siege to the Pars capitol.

The bloody siege wore on. The first of the Titans were
seen in this siege, those ones merely fifty feet tall,
and the Artificers of Pars showed that by working
together they could stand against the Arkons.

Finally, the forces of Pars mustered out of the city,

knowing that to hold it any longer would eventually
mean their death, and chose to fight a last gallant
stand against all the forces of Corruption arrayed
against them.

No one knows exactly what occurred during those

next hours, but what is known is that there was a moment
when the tide turned, when the fighting turned decidedly against the Arkons, and two of the Arkons
turned in the sky against Slethkrat and cast some kind of powerful incantation. There was a bright flash
of light in the sky, seen for miles and miles around, and they seemed to have used her power and life as
some kind of catalyst.

All that remains of that country is now known as the Mithline Vasts. The Pars Ruins are surrounded by a
glassy desert that stretches for a hundred miles in any direction. But its devastation killed and twisted
everything even beyond that area.

The first of the Arkons had fallen. It had cost

hundreds of thousands of lives.

The greatest kingdom of the world had

fallen.

The Arkons went back to their Skull Citadels,

confident that this show of ultimate power
would settle the matter once and for all.
Surely no one would dare stand against
beings capable of such power and willing to
use it.

They were wrong.

By the end the year, a galvanized world, and all of her peoples, had risen against the Arkons.

There would be more than a century of fighting until the last Arkon fell.

Fall they would.

But oh, the cost.