The following is from the 1680 Edition of [i]The History of Thorn City[/i], Chapter Nine: Thorn City Revolution, printed by the Rose Publishing House. This textbook is distributed free to all children in Thorn City.

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...of course, the revolution that took place in 1056 was hardly unique to the Thorn City Shore. The elven Zelenos Dynasty reemerged in the south after over a millennium of absence seven years earlier, the dwarves were trying to reestablish their dominance over the humans in the north, and various animalman groups were fighting the dragons constantly in the middle of the continent. What was different here though was that the main actors did not organize the revolt by species; they organized by class.

Even in the pre-revolution days, the druids of the area were tightly knit. Magic being forbidden to all non-dragons, they had to practice in secret. Druidic spells were only taught to people they could trust out of necessity; if anyone told the dragons what was happening, their families would be enslaved or killed. Consequently, the knowledge of druidism came to be closely tied with just a few families. Among these was the Spencer family, Treling family, and most importantly, the Rose family.

Wendell Rose, the patriarch of his family and founder of Thorn City, was a clever and patient human man. He knew that if he could convince the druid families to separate from the evil Blackscale Empire, which continues to oppress people to this day, they could use their magic to properly defend themselves. Even back then, the Thorn Ravine was a tough obstacle for any land-based foe, plus the area had many trees that would be useful for defense. But what even the other families did not know of was that Rose had been planning for this day for over 50 years. Even as a teenager, he was studious and saw what would be the downfall of the dragons: population rates. To put it simply, the humans, elves, and other races simply bred faster and were thus far more numerous than the dragons were or ever would be. Given enough time, something would happen that would cause the various dragon states to lose their grip on the world, and that would be the time to act.

Therefore, Wendell Rose had been preparing his greatest spell for over 50 years, pouring all of his magical energies and monetary savings into it. To protect Thorn City from invaders, the exact methods of the spell are only known to a select few, but the end result was the creation of the Great Oak that helps protect our great city to this day. 

The act of declaring independence was the easy part; the difficult part would be staying free. Doing so involved creating brand new institutions; our Army, system of government, and more would be successfully founded and tested during this time. What helped our great city succeed was that Rose was a pragmatist; he was not trying to kill the dragons entirely,* but rather to make a space where the druids would be free to hone their craft. Thankfully, the Empire was fairly content trying to fight other species rather than fight to conquer a piece of land that wasn’t even a single percent of the continent. That isn’t to say that blood wasn’t spilled though; while Thorn City mainly fought defensive wars, the forces of the Blackscale Empire tried invading the city on several occasions...

[hider=*]Editor’s note: we are not saying that this was not a noble goal that, with the exception of the black dragons, has been successfully accomplished. The authors of this book simply recognize the validity of Wendell Rose’s brilliant strategy to establish and preserve our great city.[/hider]