The Reiner Kingdom has long contended with the Khesil Watch, a militarized banding of Khesil communes which effectively cut the kingdom off of the lower half of the continent, boxing them into the mountains. The Khesil were too formidable a foe to take on directly, and their watchmen served as scouts and informants for other races and unaligned towns that prevented the kingdom from undertaking clandestine military efforts.

The Khesil effectively had a stranglehold on human trade with the outside world and placed sanctions on trading through their territory that demanded that humans did not keep slaves and respected Khesil sacred grounds; but the humans kept slaves in secret anyway.

Other human factions, representing other human cultures, were themselves just a few cities each. After all, even the largest kingdom, that of the Reimer, was simply 6 cities. They kept on relatively good terms with other races compared to the Reimer kingdom, although some xenophobia persisted there as well.

The humans were able to access the Vos through the mountains but an attempt to establish trade routes ended in war when the human church of Merekax declared the Vos to be a degenerate race. This war ended quickly in a snarling stalemate, with the Vos’ defenses too heavy and entrenched in alien territory for the Humans. At this point, the Reimer kingdom was boxed in and beginning to suffer.

Hakhar Reimer IV’s reign would bring this to an end. After years of attempts, some successful and some not, to acquire more slaves and expand outside of Khesil territory, he snapped. In his dementia he sent his armies to face the Khesil directly, who, prepared for this, summarily crushed them. However the humans had a promising new weapon: guns.

A public event in which the royal gunsmith announced the future of the kingdom’s military sparked efforts from all of the kingdom’s enemies to topple it. For a short time they were able to mass produce firearms, but the gunsmith kept his secrets so as not to be tossed aside by the King. Vicious conquest by the Khesil suppressed the human military while rebellion from within began to cause strain and resulted in Hakhar’s mental state declining further. The royal gunsmith was killed by Vress assassins ... just prior to the Last Word.