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After High King Borgas was killed by the Wild Hunt in 1E 369, a power vacuum was created that the Houses of the Skerd rushed to fill. When it became clear Borgas' widow, Skerd-Queen Hera, was attempting to bypass the Moot and take the throne by force, the three Houses turned on each other. Ancient treaties were broken and daggers were drawn, and so began the fateful War of Succession.
Jarl Hanse, the patriarch of House Fjora, was forced to abandon his own city of Winterhold given it was where the Skerd Queen's most loyal supporters were based. He fled to Windhelm under the protection of his cousin, Jarl Froki Steel-Hammer. The jarls of Eastmarch, Dunkreath and the Rift pledged allegiance to House Fjora and consolidated their armies.
House Asbjorn was headed by Jarl Vokiir of Markarth, and as war broke out he gained the support of Haafingar, Whiterun, and the Western Reach. Jarl Ingrid Skjoralmor of Falkreath, seeking to avoid conflict, refused to pledge allegiance to any of the Houses but was eventually dragged into the war.
Skerd-Queen Hera mustered the least amount of support - only her nephew, Jarl Stenvaar of the Pale, was willing to remain loyal to the crown. Perhaps the Skerd Queen's greatest asset was the Black Watch regiment, who she immediately recalled back to Winterhold.
With battle lines drawn, the entirety of Skyrim became the arena for a bloody three-way conflict. In the early years, the fighting was fierce and unrelenting. Enormous battles took place on the plains of Whiterun, in the forests of Falkreath and on the slopes of Shearpoint. The Nords inflicted all manner of warfare upon each other and the citizenry suffered greatly.
Fall of an Empire
As more and more troops were slain, full-scale battles eventually subsided and sieges became more commonplace. Every great city in the realm suffered at least one crippling siege or attack over the course of the war. Soldiers stationed in the outer reaches of the empire, such as eastern Morrowind and the Western Reach, were recalled back to Skyrim to bolster the Skerd armies. With no standing army to hold these outer territories, they broke away from the empire. The Direnni elves took advantage of the defenseless Western Reach and took the entire region with relative ease in 1E 390. Similarly, the Annals recount the Dark Elf rebellion in 1E 396 as follows:
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- "...and seeing that the Nords were divided, and weak, the Dunmer took counsel among themselves, and gathered together in their secret places, and plotted against the kinsmen of Borgas, and suddenly arose, and fell upon the Nords, and drove them from the land of Dunmereth with great slaughter."
An empire, which once stretched from Daggerfall in the west to Necrom in the east, shrunk significantly and lost all its conquered lands, never to be reclaimed again.
The following years saw the demise of both Jarl Hanse and Vokiir - the patriarchs of House Fjora and House Asbjorn respectively. This was a fatal blow to both Houses. Their successors didn't command the same level of respect and leadership as they once did, and as a result, the Houses fractured and split into several lesser tribes and clans, weakening them significantly.
Skerd-Queen Hera didn't fare much better. She was locked in a bitter stalemate with the Jarl of Solitude, but after a lengthy siege, Skyrim's capital fell. She was purportedly slain in the throne room of Vrage's Keep as Solitude's troops sacked what remained of Winterhold. The surviving troops of the Black Watch either deserted after the fall of the city or were executed. And so the mighty House of Hjornskar was ironically wiped out by the very city their patriarch, Hjornskar the Wolf, built.
Olaf and Numinex
The years passed but the war was no longer three royal Houses vying for the throne. Instead, the war degenerated into several disparate clans, minor houses and brigand armies skirmishing over territory and resources. Accurate records of the war became scarce and many versions of notable events became clouded. One such event was Olaf One-Eye's battle with the great Dragon Numinex.
Around 1E 415 Jarl Lokheim of Whiterun was killed when Numinex unexpectedly attacked the city. Lokheim was succeeded by a fearsome warrior named Olaf One-Eye who vowed to seek out the wyrm. Olaf purportedly confronted the dragon atop Mount Anthor, where he used the thu'um to defeat him. Olaf then conveyed the dragon back to Whiterun where he imprisoned it in his castle, dubbed Dragonsreach in honor of this task. King Olaf's Verse famously challenges this account and claims Olaf was a fraud who was the one truly responsible for the sacking of Winterhold.
Virtually all variations of the legend, however, agree on what happened next. His great deed made him the only leader upon whom all could agree upon, and so in 1E 420 the warring factions ceased fighting and crowned Olaf High King. Olaf became the first monarch in the empire's history who was not of Clan Skerd. Regardless, he brought peace to the land and began rebuilding a wounded nation.
The Pact of Chieftains was formed from the leaders of the largest surviving clans and convened in Whiterun after Olaf's coronation. In an effort to avoid another disastrous war the Pact agreed that the Moot would only be called if a High King died without direct heirs. As a result, the succession of Skyrim wasn't disputed on the field of battle for over four thousand years.
As Skyrim embarked on the path of recovery, it would be without the revered House of Skerd. Over the course of the war, each and every descendant of Ysgramor met their doom in one way or another. A five-hundred-year-old dynasty - that claimed total dominion over countless foes - was ultimately destroyed from within and the known bloodline of the Harbinger came to a fateful end.