The Invasion of Carettia was a series of military conflicts beginning in 1291 with the entry of Archebaud de Fleur and an army of 35,000 men into the Marquisate of Marziellana. Constituting the first instance of formal war between the Kingdom of Valens and the First Shining Empire, the Onyx King’s aims in this regard remain uncertain. The opening of a front in the southwest against the only other nation in Wudor whose military prowess matched that of Valens, in light of existing conflicts against the Evershining Empire and the Free Republic of Margard, largely regarded as the spiritual precursor to the Republic of Ettmark, is widely considered the beginning of the end for the former successes of the Onyx King’s War.
Later speculation raises the question of the Obscene Rite, and the idea that Archebaud invaded Carettia in order to secure the means to perform it. As the core region of the First Shining Empire, a large number of untouched magical artifacts and texts on pre-collapse rites were strewn about the country, with excavation slow due to the region’s consistent conflict with the Evershining Elves to the east and the resistance of the Carettic people to the authority of the Second Shining Empire, which despite it’s claims to the contrary, was largely a Teurechti state claiming the mantle of an empire the Carettics considered their own.