ESO - The End of the Alliance War
(This short Elder Scrolls fanfiction was originally written over 7 years ago as a hypothetical conclusion to the overarching storyline of The Elder Scrolls Online. I fell off of ESO a few years ago, so I have no idea if what I wrote here still works with the current lore, but I still think it's decently written.)
By year 285 of the 2nd Era, the Three Banners War had been raging for five long, arduous years. While the three alliances were all expecting a difficult battle ahead of them, none of them had ever expected the fighting to continue for this long. The will to continue fighting was all but lost, and the Ruby Throne of Cyrodiil was appearing less a prize and more a punishment for allowing the war to continue as long as it had. Central Cyrodiil had been completely laid to waste, the forts controlled by the alliances having been demolished and rebuilt so many times that most now looked more like piles of rubble than military installations. The once fertile land had been long replaced with war-torn battlegrounds, and the formerly prosperous cities and towns dotting the landscape have been left abandoned, the inhabitants fleeing to the relative safety of the Colovian Highlands, Niben Valley or whatever province would take them in. The few areas of inner Cyrodiil that were spared from the war had instead been left in ruins by the forces of Molag Bal, with daedra still swarming the lands even now, three years after the conclusion of the Planemeld.
Yet despite the destruction, those who remained in Cyrodiil were being impossibly persistent in resisting outside rule. What remained of the Imperial Legion still continued to fight back against the invading armies on all fronts, desperately fighting to protect what was left of their homeland. As this was going on in central Cyrodiil, separatist movements continued to gain traction at the empire's fringes. Kvatch and Anvil on the Gold Coast were still each attempting different approaches for independence, and their movements were beginning to attract the interest of those who fled to the Colovian Highlands. Similar movements were also budding throughout eastern Cyrodiil, with the goal of founding a self-governing Nibenay Valley. Between this unending persistence and the destruction that would some day need to be dealt with, the leaders of the three alliances were quickly losing interest in the one thing that started the war to begin with.
It was the Ebonheart Pact that was the first to fall. Given the historic rivalries between the Dunmer, Nords and Argonians, even the citizens of the Pact itself never expected it to last nearly as long as it had, so its effective self-destruction came as very little surprise to any of the people of Tamriel. The heart of the Pact's decline stemmed from House Dres of Morrowind, who of the four Great Houses that agreed to join the Pact, were by far the most unwilling and uncertain. While they were willing to agree to an alliance to fight off the Akaviri invaders and continued to support it as aggression rose across Tamriel, as the years wore on with no sign of the war ending, the House's long-standing "traditions" of xenophobia and racism steadily worked their way back to the surface.
This all came to fruition in 2E 285, when the councilors of House Dres unanimously agreed to a full withdrawal from the Ebonheart Pact. While the three remaining Great Houses tried their best to oppose this course of action, Dres would not go back on their decision and immediately began to withdraw all troops back to their territories in Morrowind. With the Pact restrictions now lifted, slavery immediately returned to practice within House Dres territory. Wasting no time, slavers and House members alike began to recapture their formerly freed Argonian slaves, many of whom did not have a chance to retreat to Pact territory following House Dres' unexpected withdrawal.
This act of aggression against the Argonians was met with severe backlash, with the Pact representatives of Black Marsh believing their Nord and Dunmer peers had done nothing to stop their people from being captured and forced back into the slavery they had already once escaped. While what remained of the Pact's leaders from Morrowind and Skyrim did what they could to calm tensions with the Argonians, it was seen at too little and too late. Less than a month following House Dres' exit from the Pact, the three Argonian tribes who had allied with the Pact announced their intent to withdraw as well. While the two Holds of Eastern Skyrim and the three remaining Great Houses of Morrowind did their best to maintain what remained of the Ebonheart Pact, this major loss of manpower and political support led to a near complete end of their offensive campaigns. With tensions rising between the Nords and Dunmer who remained, all Pact troops were recalled to their homelands and ordered to focus almost entirely on the defense of their own territory from the Imperials and the remaining alliances.
The Daggerfall Covenant was the next alliance to fall. While the alliance between the Bretons of High Rock and the Redguards of Hammerfell was arguably the strongest of all the alliances, the Covenant's relationship with the Orcs of Wrothgar was considerably more strained. While High King Emeric was more than willing to regard the Orcs as equals within the alliance, the citizens of the two provinces were far less inviting, with most still regarding them as little more than beasts. The only thing keeping the Orcs officially as members of the alliance was an agreement forged between High King Emeric and the Kurog gro-Bagrakh, the founder and first king of the newest incarnation of Orsinium.
This tense partnership finally met its end with the fall of King Kurog gro-Bagrakh. Upon claiming the throne Kurog's successor, King Barzag, immediately announced his plan to separate from the alliance and from High Rock as a whole, declaring Wrothgar an independent Orcish state and Orsinium its capitol. He also urged all Orcs serving under the Covenant to return to their new homeland, not wishing to see what he saw as the subjugation of his people to continue. With this announcement, many of the Orcs serving the Covenant immediately betrayed their former allies, returning to Orsinium and laying waste to anything in their way. What little trust the people of High Rock and Hammerfell had gained in the Orcs was immediately broken by the new king's actions, and the few Orcs who did remain loyal to the Covenant were instead forced out of service. With the new threat of the King Barzag's growing forces to the north, Imperials to the south, and rival armies on all sides, High King Emeric had all Covenant forces withdraw from Cyrodiil and focus entirely on defensive measures on all sides.
With the Ebonheart Pact and the Daggerfall Covenant both recalling their armies from the front lines, the Aldmeri Dominion was left in the perfect position to overtake Cyrodiil and declare themselves the victors of the Three Banners War. However, having victory in hand led many to wonder what would become of their alliance once the war was officially over. While Queen Ayrenn had intended for the Dominion to regard all the people of Tamriel as equals, the majority of the Altmer did not agree with her worldly views and ambitions. While the Veiled Heritance had been largely dealt with for a time, Ayrenn and her Dominion were still strongly disliked by a sizable portion of the High Elf population. Even many of those loyal to her saw the alliance as little more than a means to an end, believing that they should only work along side the Khajiit and Bosmer until victory was assured, then conquer the whole of Tamriel and rule as the superior race.
Many of the people of Summerset, Valenwood and Elsweyr alike were also quick to call the entire war nothing more than a waste of time, believing that the time and effort that would be required to properly claim and rebuild Cyrodiil would cost the Aldmeri Dominion as a whole considerably more than they would ever receive back from it. The inhabitants of Elsweyr and Valenwood were also becoming increasingly fearful of a potential Altmer invasion in the wake of the war, as the talk of High Elf superiority once again began to spread throughout the alliance. As more troops began to return from the front lines, these questions and fears grew more and more prevalent. Eventually, the civil unrest among the people of the Aldmeri Dominion grew to a point that Queen Ayrenn could no longer ignore, and following an agreement with the King of Valenwood and the Mane of Elsweyr, it was decided that the Dominion would terminate their plans of conquoring Cyrodiil as well. Following this decision the Mages Guild and Fighters Guild were contacted and requested to organize a second meeting between the heads of the three alliances to negotiate a proper end to the war.
On the 15th of Last Seed, 2E 286, the leaders of the Ebonheart Pact, Daggerfall Covenant and Aldmeri Dominion once again met on the island of Stirk, this time to discuss a mutual surrender and end to the Alliance War. It was agreed that all three alliances were to be formally disbanded, and that no major political alliances were to be founded within the span of 100 years. As part of these agreements, High King Emeric also agreed to formally recognize Wrothgar's independence so long as King Barzag agreed to cease his offensive against High Rock, and House Dres agreed to free any Argonian slaves they had captured or re-captured following their secession from the Ebonheart Pact. As Cyrodiil had no dominant leadership, and the Imperials themselves were universally considered to have been the root cause of the war, the Empire of Cyrodiil had no say in the decisions made at the forum. As such, it was agreed upon by those present that Cyrodiil would be left to deal with the aftermath of the war themselves, with none of the former alliances intending to pay any reparations. These agreements were officially recognized by all those present on Stirk that day, becoming known as the Stirk Accords. With their signing, the Three Banners War came to an end.
Following the end of the war, life across Tamriel largely returned to the way they were before its onset. In the former Ebonheart Pact, the Grand Council of Morrowind once again settled into its usual uneasy stability, eastern and western Skyrim officially rejoined as a single kingdom, and the tribes of Black Marsh returned to their typical solitude. In the territory of the Daggerfall Covenant, King Emeric returned much of the ruling power of High Rock to its City-States, Hammerfell resumed their prior loose trading agreements with High Rock, and Orsinium enjoyed a fair few years of freedom before once again being invaded and pillaged by the Bretons. In the remains of the Aldmeri Dominion, Ayrenn abdicated the throne of Summerset almost immediately upon returning from Stirk, believing she could no longer effectively rule in a way her people would agree with, while the Khajiit and Bosmer continued to enjoy a somewhat shaky peace.
As for Cyrodiil, with the Ruby Throne left empty, the Elder Council in shambles and the Imperial Legion a shadow of its former self, the Empire of Cyrodiil was all but over. With no official leadership, the various independence movements that had been occuring across what remained of the empire eventually merged into two larger political campaigns, with eastern Cyrodiil under control of the Colovians and western Cyrodiil controlled by the Nibenese. These two sociopolitical movements eventually formed the self-governing regions of Colovia and Nibenay, with each seeing themselves as the "true" continuation of the Empire. Cyrodiil whould remain divided in a near-constant state of chaos and ruin for centuries to come, until the rise of Tiber Septim in the final years of the 2nd Era.