The Battle of Esshellen was the most terrible battle of the War of Acceptance.
The Lady Eleriad of Rowan had concluded alliances with the viaquia, alalori, and curalli to help her in her war with the humans. She was returning from the Forbge Forest and the negotiations with the shadowed Elwens in the year 267 of the Age of Newness when the humans ambushed her forces in the narrow Valley of Esshellen.
The Lady was not at first alarmed. She set out lines of warriors and directed the creation of wards to shelter her people against human arrows coming from the high sides of the valley. However, before she could issue any more orders, a traitor in the pay of the humans shot and killed her.
It is said that that woman who slew the hope the Rowan died at the hands of Quirrin Shennalor, but only when a year had passed with her under his skilled torture. But though vengeance was paid to the Lady's name, it could not bring her back.
The humans cheered, thinking they had won.
The land Elwens, Eleriad's people, went mad.
They could not retreat, and their allies were far away. They could, it seemed, only die, or by some miracle hold out until their allies got there.
By a miracle of blood and emotional magic and spent lives, they held out. They held the valley, refusing to surrender an inch of ground, fighting like wildcats.
Psychic assaulters grasped the minds of the humans and turned them against their comrades, or caused them to commit suicide, screaming all the while. Hot-tempered Elwens tore the ground to shreds in furious explosions, destroying human positions. Terin Goatleap blew his magical horn, bringing down the birds of the air. Keesa Firehair, of a minor high blood line of Rowan, saw her mother and brother die before her, making her Lady of Firehair, and went into battle with a smile on her lips and a crazed light in her eyes. It is estimated that two hundred humans died by her sword.
The humans continued to pour numbers into the valley and draw in nearby troops, confident that they could win the War if they could only crush land Elwen resistance here. After all, the Lady, the Hope of Rowan, the Running Stag, was dead. How could the land Elwens go on if they lost here?
The other Elwen races Eleriad had allied with raced north, taking, in some cases, days to cover the ground. But the land Elwens held out until their kin arrived, and butchered the humans in overwhelming numbers. It is said that the viaquia, blood-drinkers that they are, were sated at the sight of the blood spilled on that battlefield, and that the curalli, when they came to Esshellen and turned the humans' retreat into a rout, were in awe of the carnage.
That battle turned the tide of the War, but not in the way that the humans had hoped. Though it took nearly another two hundred years to convince the last human armies to agree to a treaty, the Elwens won that day. All agree that it was a marvel of coordination and a mark of love for the Lady that so many Elwen races fought side by side and back to back.
They do not speak so much of the crazed heroism of the land Elwens. They know they owe too much to it. Were it not for the land Elwen ability to turn despair into hatred and vengeance, all of Arcadia might now be laboring under the human yoke.
