Second War of the Races

The Second War of the Races was a fictional war in the Shannara series of epic fantasy novels by Terry Brooks. This war is chronicled in the prequel to the Original Shannara Trilogy, First King of Shannara. The war caused the forging of the only weapon able to harm the Warlock Lord, The Sword of Shannara. The Warlock Lord was seeking to destroy all of the Elves, Dwarves and Humans that remained in the Four Lands, the world all of them live in (it is named "Four Lands" because of how the four points of the compass correspond with the four different lands in it). With this weapon, the Warlock Lord was eventually "killed", though in reality, he was only banished until he could regain his physical form.

The War

Massacre at Paranor

The First War of the Races was a war where the Warlock Lord had tried to manipulate the entire race of man into destroying all of the other races; he failed, and he disappeared for a time. Centuries later, he reappeared and began a war that later was known as the Second War of the Races.

The war began with almost all of the Druids, a society dedicated to improving the quality of life for the people of the Four Lands through the teaching and application of technology and magic, being massacred at Paranor, a castle in the center of the Four Lands and their home. Having been defeated in part by the efforts of the Druids in the First War of the Races, the Warlock Lord decided to ensure that this would not happen twice. A banished Druid, Bremen, caught wind of these plans and attempted to warn them prior to the massacre, but his efforts were "doomed" from the start—as the Druids, led by Athabasca, refused to listen. As a result of their "arrogance", Paranor was opened by traitors to the forces of the Warlock Lord, and all of the Druids were slaughtered immediately or later walled away alive. The only survivors out of the Druids were Bremen and the three Druids who heeded his warnings and left: Risca, Tay Trefenwyd and Mareth.

Chasing the Dwarves

After this "horror", the Warlock Lord's army marched out of the Northland upon the Dwarves and their capital, Culhaven. A Dwarven army watched the progress of the army for three days while planning a strike, attacking during the night of the third. The Dwarves retreated to a chokepoint named the Pass of Jade, but the Northland army was catching them slowly. Once the Warlock Lord's armies reached the pass, they attacked three times, but could not take it; the pass negated the greater numbers of the Northland army. A day later, the Dwarves retreated out of the Pass of Jade, only to find that another part of the Northland army had gone around to the only other pass out of where they were; they were in a bowl with only two exits. Trapped between the two halves, the Dwarves retreated out through a long-forgotten third pass. After retreating for days after that, the Dwarves made a stand at one of their strongholds, Stedden Keep, but they were routed and forced to retreat once more.

The forging of the Sword

Main article: Sword of Shannara

In the Southland, Bremen, Mareth and Kinson Ravenlock tried to persuade Urprox Screl, the best human smith alive, to come out of his self-imposed retirement and forge the Sword. After days and a vision of his wife dying if he didn't do it, he decided to forge it. Using an "old-world" scientific formula for an alloy that was both strong and light, they forged the sword, testing the limits of Screl's skill along with the limits of Bremen's magic. They fused the Elit Druin, the symbol of the leader of the Druids, into its hilt as the source of its power (truth).

A sudden turn

The Northland army then turned and sacked Varfleet, a city in the country of Callahorn, burning it to the ground. A survivor of this attack was a twelve-year-old boy; he was found by Bremen, and after a time, he learns that the boy's name is Allanon. The Elves, with a man named Jerle Shannara as their king now after almost the entire royal famil was assassinated, mobilized their army and marched upon the Northland army. He planned and executed a midnight strike. The war continued to rage for days, with the Northland army attacking the Elves several times, but they were not able to break them. Bremen then bestowed the Sword upon Jerle; after this, it was known as the "Sword of Shannara". When the Northlanders brought up siege machines, Bremen and Allanon combined their magic and destroyed all of the machines; this combined with a large-scale evening strike upon the Northlanders by the entire Elven army and a small-scale Dwarven assault with Risca sent the Northlanders in full retreat. However, they were stopped a day later by the main body of the Dwarven army at the Streleheim. They had gone behind the Elven army and fortified their positions in this location, which was a major chokepoint. When the Elves caught up on the other side, the Northlanders were surrounded.

The final battle

The Elves and the Dwarves conducted a coordinated attack upon the Northland army at dusk. As the already decimated Northlanders were being routed, Jerle faced down the Warlock Lord. The magic of the sword worked and almost killed the Warlock Lord, but Jerle broke down after seeing images of his wife being attacked by a Skull Bearer. He became angry, and resorted to all of his years of training: he used the Sword as a weapon instead of a talisman. However, this allowed the Warlock Lord to be banished for a time while he regained his physical form instead of killing him. The duty of 'finishing him off' fell instead to Shea Ohmsford in The Sword of Shannara, 500 years later.

See also

• Shannara

Sources

• MacRae, Cathi Dunn (1998). Presenting Young Adult Fantasy Fiction. New York: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-8220-6.