Witch Wars
From Ardesia
The Witch Wars, so named after the fact, were a series of conflicts between factions of witches that escalated into open warfare. In the latter half of the Wars, the armies of city-states and nations were drawn into the conflict, both as proxies of particular witch factions and as sovereign forces opposing the witches in general.
The Wars ended not when any one faction was victorious, but when the destruction and disruption caused localised collapses of civilisation that brought starvation and plague. The witch factions were weakened by their power struggles so much that mobs of farmers and the remaining organised soldiery overpowered the remnants.
[edit] Fallout of the Wars
There were several consequences of the Witch Wars apart from the direct destruction.
The Iron Curse was a ritual hex cast by one of the witch factions that came under assault by one of the non-witch sovereign armies. It brought a curse upon the head of anyone who traded in or worked iron, with the intention of undermining the army's supply of weapons. The curse was too late to turn the war in the favour of that faction; however, it effectively closed every iron mine and put every iron and steel smith out of work. When the five-generation hex expired, the art of steel-making was lost, and the iron mines had long since been abandoned, were lost, or were otherwise unworkable. Small amounts of iron are beginning to appear in circulation again, but its price is dear and few can work it well. The dwindling number of items of steel or iron left from the Steel Age are highly prized and often change hands by questionable means.
The Interdict Arcænum was the response to the damage wrought by witchcraft during the Wars. Witches were arrested and many were executed, though a significant minority fled and hid themselves. With no faction or individual powerful enough to oppose it, and with the bulk of the population in mob-frenzied favour, many governments endorsed a general ban on the practise of witchcraft. The ban stands in most nations and cities still, though there are always whispered rumours of witches being sighted.
