War of Shadows
The War of Shadows was the war in which Obellius Kalaar of Veskadoth, his Nelazgians, and the Olphins of Treenode made war on the Sacred Rulers and lost. Obellius was beaten but not destroyed, and the whole of the Olphin race was sentenced to Morgaedion for its part in it.[1][2]
When
The books do not date the war. What they give is a single figure: Barnaby Britto counts the sentence that sent his people into the depths of Morgaedion as falling nearly fourteen years before the events of Sacred: Eslura's Calling.[2] Separately, Alistair Archibald puts Amelia Lunala's choosing as Sacred Head fourteen years before Beatrice Tidal arrived in Eslura.[3] In A Sacred Tale Collection, set before the novels, the war is still spoken of as recent.[4] No year, no season and no length of campaign is recorded.
Sides
Obellius Kalaar led it, and the Nelazgians fought for him. So did the Olphins, who had until then kept to Treenode, their swamp kingdom, farming their own land and leaving the rest of Eslura to itself.[4] Shifters fought on his side and were valued for how easily they could be used to manipulate others.[5] So did Shadow Reapers.[6] Millennium Loftwind recognises the Nelazgian Drayzuzian years later as one who put up quite a fight in the war and could call a full retreat with a single roar.[7]
Against them stood the Sacred Rulers and the Sacred Head. Amelia Lunala, Beatrice Tidal's predecessor, fought Obellius and did not destroy him, and Alistair says she is remembered mostly, and unjustly, for that failure.[3]
Why the Olphins fought
Two accounts of this sit in the same book, and the second overturns the first.
The version Eslura tells itself is Alpin Loomin's: the Olphins were a hostile, savage race who betrayed the Sacred Rulers and sided with Obellius while he claimed to be restoring Nelazgus's land, that there was not a single drop of good in their blood, and that they deserved to be banished.[1]
Seely, a Knower of Many Things exiled from Galecrest for asking the question, could not believe a race so peaceful could turn to hatred overnight, and found the answer in a stone. He demonstrated it on Barnaby, who dropped, convulsed, stood up with his eyes emptied of everything that made him himself, obeyed an order, and afterwards remembered nothing at all. His conclusion is that Obellius Kalaar struck a deal with the god Nelazgus, as others of Veskadoth had before him, and obtained the power to control the Olphin race outright.[1] The Olphins, on this reading, were innocent.
Aftermath
Obellius was locked away in Morgaedion, where he stayed for longer than anyone cared to count.[6] The stone by which he controlled the Olphins was broken in the war, and when he returned he could no longer command anyone with it.[8]
The Olphins who survived were taken out of Treenode and imprisoned in the depths of Morgaedion. Barnaby was spared by Pemadee, who fought for his freedom, and grew up in Ovallia as the last free Olphin.[2][1] Tabitha Glowdish stayed out of the sentence by hiding in the alleys of Varaar.[9] Vorath, a word for people who slept in the streets with the rats and the trash, was afterwards applied to Olphins as well.[10]
The Shifters were hunted afterwards. Lumikki Otsby had been taught they were exterminated in the war, and only learned otherwise when Calamity shifted her voice in front of her and said that trying to get rid of the Shifters after the first war had made the ones who slipped through the cracks stronger.[5] Most, if not all, of the Shadow Reapers were killed, and those that lived were reckoned lost without their master.[6]
The academy of the Sacred City, said to have been the best in the world, was destroyed in the war. A new one has been built in its place, and Nindra, who studies there, says it is not the best but that they are working on building it better than before.[11]
The name
The war is called the War of Shadows almost everywhere it is mentioned.[1][5][11][4] Tab once thinks of it as the War of the Shadows,[10] and Calamity calls it simply the first war.[5]