Congratulations, you are the result of a modern Western education that includes a historical account of a a near continuous 6000 years, but the majority mostly only really know for sure about the last two hundred to five hundred years and generally. For example, Canadians know that new France was lost to the British in 1760 and Columbus discovered America in 1492 and that the war of 1812 was fought between the states and Canada (Britain), but they can't tell you that James Madison was President at the time, the Star Spangled Banner was written then, and which battle Laura Secord was involved in; it was Beaver Dam, the battle of Beaver Dam by the way—I looked it up. Boring, but which goes to show what our fabulous education system has given us.
Imagine a society where there is no great education system, reading and writing are not common, education is something you learn at home… how much History do you know?
Jarda, when the people escaped the great Gutral Mastekeena and established their new nation they named it after the Goddess Jard, goddess of Righteous Actions, and established their new realm. They had traveled for months and months, years to build their new land far from the shadow of the nation that they had rebelled against, and failed. The land they settled in was devoid of humans, but there were two Elven Courts, a large community of Gnomes, Dwarves and Halflings. The humans forged an alliance with these people because they were judged to be good kind people down on their luck. That was over five hundred years ago, see calendar.
The human population quickly grew in this protected situation, the high fecundity of humans outstripping the low fecundity of demi-humans, but since the people were good and kind they facilitated trade between the different groups and all the nations prospered.
Gutral Mastekeena was forgotten for a time, first because the rebellion was so horrible and their defeat so disheartening and the friendship of the the elves and the others so good, that most of the populous that survived those years did not want to burden their children with the tales and the history. Some wrote books that told the tale and they went to shelves and were covered in dust. Some of the other races who understood that history was important kept these stories alive or had libraries where this information was valued.
About three hundred years ago, Jarda entered a period of romanticism of e past and the greatness of its civilization and they uncovered these books and scrolls of their history and they learned of their past. Often is the case that when a people become great that they look to their history to establish that greatness has always been there. Perhaps this is why the Elves and the dwarves kept the history from being lost and forgotten. When Jarda learned of their humble roots it curbed their hunger for conquest and instead turned their purpose to discovery and exploration.
It was fate that they were strong and vital when they thirsted for the glories of the past because Gutral Mastekeena had been expanding all that time, and their emperor had remembered the rebellion and hunting those rebels down for the last two centuries. How the two empires, tha nascent Empire of Jarda and the Eternal Empire of Gutral Masstekeena first made contact is not known, but it is known that the Jardanese Empire abruptly stopped its expansion and began an intensive militarization which lasted nearly fifty years and culminated in three large battles in which the cream of the empire were killed and the advance of Gutral Mastekeena was halted. Contemporary accounts talk of feilds of dead that remained unburied because the dead outnumbered the wounded and the wounded outnumbered the well. A pyric victory because the losses were so high that Gutral Mastekeena was forced to abandon many of the gains made in the generations before.
Those three battles occured about 200 years ago.
From the Diary of Decarabia of the House of the Red Torrent, recovered from the Temple of Elemental Evil by Caeledrim the Bard:
… in the service to her Great dark Goddess Lloth, Decarabia ventured forth from the deep caverns deep in the ground to do what no Drow had done in recorded history and discovered herself within a small human town built at the behest of the Emperor of Gutral Mastekeena a human wizard at least a thousand years old far to the east. She and here family worked with the emissary of the Emperor to establish a temple that would, according to her, destabilize the kingdom of Jarda to the south, some three weeks travel, through untamed forests, away. She estimated that the emperor had spent over a million gold on this venture half of which was in tribute to a hapless demon prince named Zyggtomony. She contends that the emperor must have betrayed her leaking the location of the temple to his enemies in Jarda, hoping that the king there would overextend himself so that Jarda would fall …
Back to the History of Jarda official cannon.
Adventurers exploring the region to the North of the kingdom encountered a large and peaceful group of affiliated states known as the Gnösh-Kâ Confederacy, a loose enclave of a dozen tribes of Orc that had adopted agriculture and trade. Seeking allies to help them should Gutral Mastekeena ever come back in force the two lands join together. At that time the existence of e demon cult on the verge of the confederacy is discovered and Jarda anxious to impress the value of the alliance joins with them to crush it and the temple so that it's evil will not fester upon the world. Jarda then funds the general of the victorious Jardanese side to build an outpost to keep watch on the Temple and to foster better relations with the Gnösh-Kâ. The General is raised to nobility and is given the title of Duke, Duke of Greysteel.
The Duke of Greysteel was tireless in his desire to serve his nation, Jarda, and to do this starts many great works that are continued afterwards by his son. They build the citadel of Greysteel with its town, set the foundations for first Hommlet, Sunnydale, Saltmarsh and Neloar. They built a series of observation forts near the ruined Temple of Elemental Evil and along the tributary of the Mastekeena River, the Grey Mastekeena, near Hommlet and Nulb and the last outside Saltmarsh.
The last village Nulb was set to be built by the second Duke of Greysteel and after its founding the entire Greysteel family was ambushed by dissident forces of Gnösh-Kâ slaying the entire family except the Duke's youngest son, who was laid up with an mysterious illness
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