The Fort Gildmark Slaughter (923 ACC) was the destruction of Fort Gildmark, a Goldhelm settlement built inside Darkmane territory, by the Darkmane Elves. The Goldhelms and the Darkmane Elves had been rivals for a very long time, kept at odds by living so close together and by their very different cultures and beliefs. In 919 ACC, King Aurilde, father of the current king Aldric, pursued a policy of expansion, and the Goldhelm Kingdom secretly sent ships across the sea to build a fort on the northern coast of the Darkmane forest. The Darkmane Kingdom, still united under the Darkmane Family at the time, first tried to make them leave peacefully: they sent messengers and snuck into the fort to leave scrolls. The fort was far out of the way, but in 922 ACC, when Goldhelms began coming too close to Wrediff, the hidden Darkmane warrior training ground, the elves grew angry. Over the next year the two sides met many times, sometimes violently and sometimes not. In 923 ACC, Vaelith the Hollow, head of the Darkmane Family, ordered an attack. For months beforehand, the elves used animals to watch the fort. Then, in the middle of the night, they dropped from the trees and slipped inside, so small and stealthy that the guards never noticed them. They killed all 900 people inside, 300 soldiers and 600 settlers, and left no one alive. Afterward the fort was abandoned, and its ruins still stand, used now and then by travelers as a waypoint but offering no safety. The slaughter ended Goldhelm expansion. The Goldhelms never again tried to take Darkmane land, and instead built their borders up to what they are today, with huge forts along the river that separates the two realms. The slaughter is also why Vaelith’s secret deal with a Goldhelm scientist in 937 ACC was so controversial.
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