The Marmaladid Invasion of Sihnimiyyah (concept)
In 1011 the first of the great Marmaladid Invasions struck Sihnimiyyah, with an army of hitherto unknown nomads wielding fell magics and riding strange beasts slaughtering the garrison at Tal Elmalayk in a surprise attack before falling on the cities of the upper Buran plains with wild abandon. Gawold, Qabilat Saalma, and En Msuffiyyun were sacked viciously and much of the population driven into the wilds, slain, or taken into captivity never to be seen again.
The nomads would retreat back into the desert, but returned in 1015 to raid even deeper into the Mamuramat. For the next 30 years the Mamuramat would struggle mightily to resist their raids. Though El Qulatha and its environs remained inviolate, the nomads raided daringly, occupying or forcing into submission territories ranging all the way to the Tasuri’a Gulf. Even the Regency of Kharadun was forced to pay humiliating tribute of silver.
The nomads were unstoppable because they were led by a warlord of great magical power known as Mutsar, said to have been a giant who stood thirty feet tall and to have a voice that could cause earthquakes and landslides. Wherever he went no Tathtalite army could withstand him. Worse, his many sons and daughters were all giants like him, and their strength tested the mettle of the bravest of the Wardenites, slaying many heroes. Mutarshid’s advisors and heirs squabbled endlessly over how to defeat them and free Sihnimiyyah from the nomad’s occupation.
Finally it was Musta’sim, Mutarshid’s often overlooked and bookish son, who proposed to rouse the Magi-Engineers of El Qulatha’s many colleges to wrest control of the quaking earth back from the giant and his kin. At first his father’s advisors dismissed his idea as a joke, for nobody had thought to use the bookish mages of the School of Manifestations’ skill in the Stone Arcana for such martial pursuits. When most of his detractors were slain during the Landslide Ambush Tragedy of 1045, the few wise men remaining in the court gave in to Musta’sim’s plans.
This culminated in the Battle of the Shrieking Earth in 1047, where the nomads and their false god was swallowed by the earth, their power overcome by a choir of magi conscripted from the colleges of Manifestations of El Qulatha, though at great cost.