In the year 117 of the Eighth Age, a summary of conjectures regarding the historical figure known as Kal the Vanquisher. Produced by the Office of the Sixth Expeditionary Force of the West Mercantile Company in conjunction with the newly established Office of the Colonial Governor of Verazul.
It is recognized that some of the conjectures within this document contradict the official histories promulgated by the Imperial Academy of Doctrine and History and the Holy Writ of the Church of Tiamat. The goal of this document is merely to record to beliefs of the people of the Stygian Blue. The historical figure discussed within is very likely to be an imposter or other opportunist trading on the reputation of the Kal the Vanquisher. The author does not challenge the official record that irrefutably describes the defeat of Kal at the Battle of Regium in the ninth year of the current age.
Instead, this document should be viewed as a review of the lies and deceit responsible for the national identity of the people of the Stygian Blue. Long live the Infernal Empress.
In the aftermath of the Seventh Convergence, the historical figure Kal emerged from a primitive area in the Southern Ocean leading a band of indigenous warriors that sacked Greenmouth, a small outpost of the Southern Mercantile Company. These actions were consistent with expectations outlined in the Official Sovereignty Inferences and Protocols in cases where poor management by company agents results in the perceived ill treatment of native populations. The Colonial Protocols characterized Kal as a Type III warband leader and suggested that the revolt would end there. However, Kal turned out to be an anomalous figure. He unexpectedly refrained from attempting to fortify his possessions, reestablish native sovereignty, or conduct a pogrom against remaining Company agents or sympathizers. Instead, with his warband swelled by the native population as a result of his victory, he commandeered all of the ships in the harbor and sailed for the nearest Polonian colony at Sácre Larente.
The colony at Sácre Larente was unprepared and quickly fell. Again, without consolidating his gains, Kal’s warband - now swelled further by the indigenous peoples of that colony - seized every ship in port and sailed for the next Polonian target. This motley fleet of galleons, warships, sloops, and fishing boats spent the next five years pillaging the Agrumé coast before learning the location of the Holy Seat of the Infernal Empress, the city of Polonia itself. Kal and his army - now numbering as many as twenty-five thousand - lay siege to the Holy Seat for three years, unable to breach its walls, but doing untold economic damage to it and its management of its overseas colonies. That year stalemate was punctuated by repeated failures of Kal to breach the walls, but also a handful of failures by colonial forces that returned in an attempt to relieve the city.
Official historical records tell us that after finally realizing that the walls of Polonia were impregnable, Kal and his warband lifted their siege and sailed westward from the Holy City, burning the Paisáble Colonies and rounding Roché Inconnue in route towards the Hungry Sea. Here, the unskilled sailors of Kal’s armada were forced northward by the storms of the Hungry Sea, cornered in a the Bay of Regium, routed and sunk by the Imperial Navy of Polonia.
Local history from the Stygian Blue tells a different tale that - while undoubtedly false - may give some insight into the history of the region.
The indigenous population claims that Kal and his fleet sailed reached the Stygian Blue battered and nearly lost by the storms of the Hungry Sea. Those ships that arrived were barely seaworthy and many of them had deep drafts that precluded sailing into the shallower Stygian Blue. At the sea’s inlet, the sea averages about twenty feet in depth, and for the few dozen miles, shifting sandbars constantly threaten to ground any ship with a seaworthy draft. So, the fleet lay anchor at the fishing village of Verazul, a deepwater harbor on the southern edge of the inlet.
It was here that Kal learned of Lord Tyranus and vowed to break him. He ordered the damaged, ocean-going ships of his fleet to be torn apart in order to build flat-bottomed galleys that could traverse the shallow sea. He loaded his armies on board - perhaps twenty thousand had arrived in Verazul - and criss-crossed the sea searching for the stronghold of Lord Tyranus and his Death Troopers. Upon finding the island stronghold, his troops launched a costly assault that was repelled and then settled into another siege. As winter approached and the seas grew cold and his supplies ran low, Kal ordered his troops to disperse around edges of the sea with orders to regroup the following spring. Kal returned to Verazul hoping to be reunited with ships that had been separated during the crossing of the Hungry Sea.
Kal had left behind at Verazul many of the craftsman that had joined his force and they had spent the intervening months building in Verazul, constructing towers, walls and a stronghold to defend the harbor. The small fishing village had been turned into a fledgling city and - after ten years of campaigning - Kal grew to believe that his army might be best served by settling here.
On the first fair-weather day of the following spring, Kal took a small band of companions and sailed off for the stronghold of Lord Tyranus. It is said that he believed a small force attacking in stealth might prevail where an army had not. Kal, his companions, and their small galley The Invincible were never seen again, but neither were Lord Tyranus or his Death Troopers.
It is uncertain, of course, that a credible source of information regarding the final battle exists, but the following decades were filled with old men claiming to have been one of Kal’s companions and young men claiming to be the son of Kal, born on a remote island where Kal lived out his remaining days. Dubious first and second hand accounts were recorded and most describe some variation of Kal and his band descending deep into the stronghold of Lord Tyranus where Kal slew him in single combat but was slain in turn.
It is nearly indisputable that some force arrived in the Stygian Blue in approximately the tenth year of the current age and was led by a man falsely claiming to be Kal. No other explanation exists that accounts for the end of the reign of Lord Tyranus and many of the other changes in the area. The stone construction at Verazul was not previously before seen in the area. What was ithought to have been a homogeneous human population was radically altered by the assimilation of thousands of soldiers of varied backgrounds. Many of the previously uninhabited islands were settled in this time, often planted with new such as crops, sugar, coffee, and tobacco.
The true identity of the false Kal and his warband in uncertain. Timing suggests that at least some remnants of Kal’s force might have survived the Battle of Regium. A large statue of Kal was erected in Verazul of a large, human male that