The most important event happening under Aeson IV’s emperorship was the invasion of the Tellarian Peninsula in the year 153 to defeat the Nikta Goblins. Aeson IV launched this campaign together with his close friend and ally, Amanthyn, the lord of Nemis. Their goal was twofold: to repel the growing threat of the united Nikta Goblin clans, and to divide Tellaria between Eros and Nemis, securing its fertile lands for the expanding populations of both realms.
Initially, the joint armies of Eros and Nemis advanced successfully, pushing deep into goblin-held territory. However, the tide turned during the infamous Fog Battle of Kowszie, where Amanthyn “The Goblin Killer” fell in battle. In this disastrous confrontation, the larger Erosian host was ambushed and decisively defeated by the goblin forces under Onfim “The Great”, a charismatic goblin warlord who had united the northern Nikta goblin tribes of the Gram, Szoyie and Prussyie.
Shaken by his father’s death and only fifteen years old at the time, Solon “The Wise”, son of Amanthyn, quarreled with Emperor Aeson IV and withdrew the Nemisian forces back to their homeland. Left without his ally, and a large part of the invasion army, Aeson IV retreated to the narrow isthmus known as The Gates, where he ordered the construction of a rudimentary wooden fortification, which was finalized in the year 154. This defensive line would later become known as the Wooden Wall of Phoclyos, a symbolic reminder of both ambition and defeat.
This first rift between Eros and Nemis, forged in the mists of Kowszie, would never fully heal. Distrust grew between the two cities in the following decades, especially as Solon came of age and began shaping Nemis in his own image. What had begun as a moment of strategic disagreement eventually festered into political rivalry, economic isolation, and simmering resentment—laying the seeds for the start of the Nemisian Civil War forty years later in the year 193.
Aeson IV never returned to Tellaria after the failed campaign. The loss of his beloved friend Amanthyn and the retreat of Nemis marked a turning point in his reign. Disillusioned and aging, the emperor withdrew from military affairs and spent the remainder of his life within the marble halls of his palace in Eros, increasingly isolated from the Senate and the people. He died in the year 159, remembered both for his ambition and for the costly war that reshaped the balance of power in Hellissia, and the realm as a whole.
