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In the valley of the dead, The whips cracked every day, Our people to slave away, The coloreds crown set to gain Our Kommando so proud, Hearty and stout, Men and women without life, Men without wife, Women without child, Giving to those, What they could not have And Hendryk would shout, Those people are ours, And ours alone! We'll crack our guns, Our aim without miss, For God made us free, And freedom is bliss. - The March of Freedom and Faith The Crusade of the Vengeful Damned (1850) by Kartnaal L.F. Reierfer (Translated into English) Hendryk Fransiskus Reierfer-fan Gautfanger (1801-1864), born Hendryk Fransiskus Stanthouwer, was a Variotan businessman, ex-slave, politician, first and only leader of the short-lived Frije Reepubliek Ferredaal and Kommandant of the 'Wraaksoekene Fertoemte' Laagher Kommandos. He is best known for his role in the liberation of Ferredaal, known in Bahinese as Mrtyata, and ending the white slavery practices by the Maranese inhabitants of this area. Domestically, Hendryk F. Reierfer is seen as a hero if a controversial one, ending the slavery and raids into Klan Reierfer-territory that he himself had been a victim of, while also enabling the former slaves to take over authority from their former owners and growing Het Huisselant. Internationally, opinions remain divided as historical reports say that Hendryk, changed by his experience as a slave, had an extreme hatred and blood-lust towards the Marenese and enabled and approved of retaliatory actions by former slaves. These actions led to most of the casualties in the conflict happening after the end of hostilities and stunted the growth of the Marenese population dramatically, whom until this day remain a minority within the Variotan province of Ferredaal. He was made a honorary part of Klan Reierfer for his role in the conflict in 1824 and carried the last name Reierfer from then on. The son of a hunter and a housewife, Hendryk was captured in a Marenese raid while his father was out hunting. The fifteen year old Hendryk had decided to stay home in order to aid his mother, who was bedridden at the time. When the Marenese raided the Stanthouwer home, on the peripheral of the village, they found Hendryk and his mother and while they would have normally captured her as well, her bedridden state made her more of a risk than she was worth in the minds of the Marenese, as she would have been able to infect other slaves. Not wanting to take the chance of her somehow crawling out of bed and warning the village, they slit her throat while Hendryk watched. In his memoirs, he lists this as the main event that changed him. 'My mother was weak and feeble in her state, only a danger to herself. They could have left her and in all likelihood, if my father had taken too long to return, would have died from her illness. But instead of giving her the one dignity she truly deserved in the world, a peaceful last rest, they ended her like a butcher would end a pig. As I watched the blood seep from her throat, I could feel myself change instantly. Harden. I could not cry, for they would win, for they would see me as weak. At that time, I promised myself and my mother something. I would never be weak ever again and I would take revenge. I would make them suffer, have their children go through the same as I did. Before, when mother was not yet ill, I had gone along with the hunt and my aim generally held true so in my eyes, I had the skills needed. And as I looked at the Marenese bastards, I found that I could no longer imagine them as human. As having lives other than being garbage, having a family to return to. Having children, being like us. All I could see was a creature not worth the air it inhaled, a creature poisoning the world simply by existing. Later, I came to the conclusion that this made me quite similar to them in regards to my mindset. It made me think like them, it made me think as if they were prey. But unlike them I have and had righteousness behind me, the blessing of God remains on my actions even if they made streets red from flowing blood, even if a lot of future Marenese slavers lost their fathers. I freed Gods Chosen People and ensured that no other child had to become like me. I take pride in that and when I die, I will spit down into Hell just in the hope of hitting one of those that I have killed.' Hendryk was sold to a wealthy butcher in the Marenese capital of Gulamina as he had experience with skinning and butchering animals. Here, he worked seven days a week, fourteen hours a day chained to the floor. He slept, ate and otherwise lived in an adjacent room, the smell of blood, meat and death always present. Doing this for four years, he became quite proficient with knifes and later used these skills to force information out of Marenese prisoners during the conflict. In 1820, he managed to escape by stabbing his master in the neck after he came too close and stealing the keys to his chains. Moving towards the border, Hendryk stumbled upon a small manor where a retired Marenese commander and his wife lived. While reports remain hazy on how he did it, Hendryk greeted the couple's five slaves with the severed head of the commander and the declaration that they were now free. Among these five would be Filomeda fan Gautfanger, heiress to the Gautfanger Mining Corporation and soon-to-be right hand woman of Hendryk, captured during a raid on a village that contained a mine she was inspecting. Like Hendryk, she too had been changed by the physical, mental and, in her case, sexual abuse suffered during her time as a slave and immediately pledged her family's fortune and herself to Hendryk's cause. Feelings slowly grew between the two similar souls and after the conflict, they got married. Due to the abuse Filomeda suffered, she had become infertile and while the couple could not gain children biologically, they ended up fostering and adopting six children, all of which were ex-slaves themselves. Arriving in Reierferplattoterp a month after their escape, parts done on horseback, Filomeda reconnected with her family, whom had thought her to be dead. Hendryk would name the feast that the fan Gautfangers threw in his honor to be something that he could have only dreamed of, both as a slave and as a rural village boy. At this point in history, the fan Gautfangers controlled the majority of gold mining within the Klan Reierfer Gebiet and had a finger in the pie in regards to all other forms of mining, their importance and wealth reaching throughout Het Huisselant. When Hendryk and Filomeda came with their plan, the fan Gautfangers agreed to finance it but advised them to plan and train for it carefully, an advice they took. While Filomeda stayed in Reierferplattoterp to arrange for a shipment of rifles and munition as well as trainers, Hendryk being the only one of the six with a reasonable amount of experience with a rifle, Hendryk went back to his village with the four other escapees. Finding his home vacant and gathering dust, Hendryk asked the villagers and received the grave news that his father had committed suicide shortly after his capture. Unable to live with his wife being murdered and his son gone, presumed dead or worse, he had loaded his rifle one last time and had made himself his last target. Hendryk's wail as he heard the news was said to be heard throughout the forest, piercing the ears of those that heard it and led to the whole village pouring out to see what had made that sound. In an emotional speech, Hendryk called upon every man and woman able and willing to join him in his plan to take revenge on the Marenese. Twenty-five signed up, fifteen of which were women who had lost their husbands to the slavers. Some joined Hendryk on his journey back to Reierferplattoterp while others elected to travel to other villages affected by the slaver raids and call upon the villagers there to join. By the time the shipment of rifles and munitions arrived, Hendryk held personal command over two-hundred men and women with two other Laagher Kommandos of the same size joining him. Six months of training in ranged and melee combat, ambush tactics, survival skills, discipline and more followed. The first skirmish of the conflict would be the Raid on the Shinde Plantation in December 1820, when Hendryk and fifty of his Vengeful Damned attacked during the night and slaughtered all twelve Marenese adults on the plantation. The only Marenese survivors, the six and twelve-year old sons of the plantation owner, were forced to sign documents stating that the former slaves now owned it. The forty former slaves, appropriating the rifles their former guards and masters used, pledged their support to Hendryk during a celebratory evening feast. During said feast, they forced the two children to fight each other for their entertainment. Both sustained major wounds, as those watching threw bottles and other objects at them, and did not make it past the morning, the first victims of retaliatory actions. The Marenese are a people originally originating from Bahinar. While it remains unknown what event precisely made the Marenese move to Ferredaal, it is known that they were deemed part of the lower castes and were generally despised by the Bahinese of that time. King Akul I, settling in Ferredaal in 1738 with his people and founding the Marenese Kingdom, was friendly towards Klan Reierfer and Het Huisselant and maintained trade deals with both. Under one of his successors, King Tamas, ruling from 1792 to 1804, the nation changed. The Marenese economy was flourishing and, in order to ensure said growth maintained, King Tamas ordered the capture of slaves from nearby areas to work the fields and provide services. Due to it being the frontier, this remained unnoticed or seen as wild rumors for some years. The central government of Het Huisselant was far away and while Klan Reierfer's government was nearer, it was also far less capable of taking action. Trade was halted in 1808, after a runaway slave managed to get to safety, and the Marenese raided frontier towns indiscriminately afterwards, as there was no reason to keep it hidden any more. Klan Reierfer military detachments were sent into the border area of the Marenese Kingdom in 1809, 1812 and 1816 in order to attempt to halt slavery but were generally forced to turn back, facing superior numbers. The slave population of the Marenese Kingdom in 1820 was estimated to be fifteen percent of their total population or sixty-six thousand out of four-hundred and forty thousand inhabitants, a large share of which lived on plantations or other rural properties. Retaliatory actions and casualties within the conflict had ensured that in August 1821, when Hendryk Fransiskus Reierfer-fan Gautfanger, then still Hendryk Fransiskus Stanthouwer, declared the Frije Reepubliek Ferredaal, it was estimated that one-third of the Marenese population had been killed. This large amount of losses, largely focused on males, ensured that their population figures were never the same and, in what could be called a sick form of irony, many Marenese women ended up marrying or remarrying Variotan men. In modern times, almost one million or near thirty-five percent of Ferredaal's population counts themselves among the Maretans, a distinct hybrid ethnic group that has taken traditions and parts from both cultures. Only ten percent, or two-hundred-sixty-four thousand, remain part of the Marenese ethnicity. Many parts of their culture and history in the area have been forcefully removed after the conflict, only Gulamina maintains a significant amount of Marenese architecture, culture and history. Eighty percent of all Marenese live in or around Gulamina, sometimes wrongfully named the best Bahinese experience outside of Bahinar by travel guides, sites and vlogs. This tends to anger the Marenese, who are quick to point out that they have their own culture and customs separate of Bahinar. OOC note: This is just stuff to help you (and me) to get a feel of the general setting. The actual RPing part of the RP will start with the Raid on the Shinde Plantation.