📜 CODEX ENTRY: The War of False Dawn

Filed Under: #CodexEntry #PostDemonicAge #WarOfFalseDawn #DreamersRidge

#TarnisVeilBinder

Compiled by: Archivist-Scribe Haluron, Warden of Dreamer’s Ridge Records

Preservation Status: Flame-Sealed | Memory-Verified | Cross-Indexed with Founding Doctrines

“The sun rose that day. But it was not a dawn. It was a reflection—bright enough to blind, too false to warm.”— Memory fragment attributed to Tarnis Veil-Binder

⚔️ What Was the War of False Dawn?

The War of False Dawn (12–13 A.A.) was the first civil war of the Orcish people following the Demon War—and arguably, its most spiritually devastating.

It was not fought for land, resources, or dominion.It was fought over memory, meaning, and the right to remember unbound.

In the aftermath of Xelidan’s fall and the rise of the Accord of Ash and Blood, factions of Orcish survivors sought to reclaim their faith, their ancestral rites, and their sacred oaths. But what began as a renaissance of spirit fractured quickly.

Prophecy returned unregulated.Relics were unearthed and misinterpreted.And soon, faith became fire—and fire, war.

🩸 The Shattering of the Wounded Crossroads

The war began with the collapse of the Wounded Crossroads, a sacred gathering place where the Ember Oath had once been sworn. When seers clashed over a recovered vision—one claiming the Oath had been corrupted, the other insisting it was pure—the factions they advised turned upon one another.

The Stone Pact sought to contain memory.The Ash-Walkers sought to preserve it, raw and untouched.The Blackened Root rose from beneath—claiming that memory was power, and power belonged to the forgotten.

The Crossroads bled. And with it, the last hope for unity.

🕯️ Tarnis Veil-Binder and the Measured Flame

It was in this time of unraveling that Tarnis Veil-Binder emerged as a reluctant architect of order. Once an Ash-Walker seer, she bore witness to the spiral of memory into madness. Tarnis did not seek control—she sought survival.

She gathered visionaries from all sides and offered a bitter truth:

“Faith without measurement is fire without boundary. You call it holy. I have seen what it becomes.”

Her words became the foundation of the Doctrine of Measured Flame, later adopted by the Guild of Seers—an institution forged not to lead, but to regulate.

🗺️ Key Events of the War

• The Burning of Silent Hearth – A memory shrine razed when conflicting prophecies met in open combat.

• The Blooming of Black Hollow – The rise of the Blackened Root as a heretical movement, merging ancient rites with shadow glyphs.

• The Siege of Hal’golgra – A neutral fortress-city caught between factions; defended by Gornek Mountain-Sunder without taking sides.

• The Sundering of Dreamer’s Ridge – The final confrontation where the remaining war-leaders signed a bitter, silent ceasefire. No victory was declared. Only flame and blood remained.

🩸 Legacy and Consequences

The War of False Dawn ended not in triumph, but in repression.

• Prophecy became regulated

• Faith became taboo

• Memory became property of the Guild

From its ashes, Hasgram would one day rise—not as a beacon of freedom, but as a bulwark against belief unbound.

The cost?An entire generation of Orcs learned to distrust visions, silence the past, and bow not to truth—but to the measured flame.

“It was not faith that burned the world.It was our refusal to measure it.”— Closing line of the Doctrine of Measured Flame, signed 23 A.A.

📘 See Also:

• 📜 The Doctrine of Measured Flame

• 📜 The Shattering of the Wounded Crossroads

• 📜 The Guild of Seers: Enforcement Doctrine

• 📜 The Accord of Ash and Blood

• 📜 The Blackened Root: Rise and Rejection