Ghazar the Black was a vicious warlord who had conquered a large part of The Beastfolk Heartlands fifteen years prior to the events of A Gathering Storm, and who has been dead for a little over ten years.
Before becoming Warlord
Ghazar was born in Duxanos, a small village in the south east of the Heartlands. Like many Greater Catfolk born in the region, he had a dark mane, in his case almost black, and was tall and strongly built. He was the bastard son of a Chief who already had many wives, and as such not in line to inherit much of anything. Though not fully shunned by his family, he was very much an outcast and left to his own devices, with rumours of his involvement in local street gangs and, as he grew older, rather questionable mercenary work. This gang would eventually become Ghazar's personal guard "the Blackened Bastards", who fought alongside him for many of his campaigns. It is around this time that he first met Seth al-Rawaz, a young orphaned Lesser Catfolk who stated that he was "half raised by" Ghazar.
A series of seeming unfortunate accidents started to befall Ghazar's trueborn siblings. A hunting accident here, a bad fall there, an outbreak of the Shedding Sickness there. In hindsight, it seems likely that many of these events were not accidents, but Ghazar's handiwork, especially as over time the accidents became less and less likely. It was heavily rumoured that a Chameleon bearing resemblance to the infamous assassin Sixskins was seen around the Shedding Sickness incident, until Ghazar's father exiled him from Duxanos.
Greatly angered, Ghazar plotted his revenge, employing Seth as his wetworks man to get around his exile. On his wedding day, Ghazar's eldest brother Mohir was found walking through town towards the altar flayed alive, bleeding out shortly afterwards in his fiancé's arms. The incident became known as "Mo the Skinless Groom" and is told as a horror story in the Heartlands to this day, usually with blame placed on Rawaz the Ripper. At the funeral, Ghazar launched an attack with a host of mercenaries, killing his parents, murdering many of his half brothers, and keeping several of his half sisters as concubines. Ghazar declared himself Warlord of Duxanos, and began assembling an army.
Warlord of the Southern Heartlands
Duxanos was broadly considered a minor backwater of the Heartlands, and Ghazar was never a man to settle for something when he thought he could take more. Using underhanded and brutal tactics, a gang of mercenaries, and Rawaz the Ripper as assassin and terror weapon, Ghazar set out to conquer much of the area around the southern and eastern Heartlands. Roughly a third of the Heartlands was directly ruled by the Warlord, and much of the rest paid some kind of tribute to avoid awakening his ire - Dimitra Adamos mentions that her father Ajax Adamos in Gendos once paid tribute to Ghazar, though this was likely near the end of his reign, as Gendos was much further north than even the greatest extent of Ghazar's realm. Notably, Equinos and much of the land west of it never paid tribute to the Warlord despite a series of bloody wars, and Redpride Village and the area near the Great Desert was largely left alone.
Ghazar was a tyrannical ruler, often taxing his subjects to the hilt in order to afford his mercenary army, and wiping out entire families and villages if they dared oppose him. The colour of his mane, and ill rule gave him his descriptor of "the Black", and his reign is often referred to as "the Black Reign" or the "the Black Times". Around seven years after taking Duxanos, Ghazar took the city of Caballus after a lengthy siege, only ended by Rawaz the Ripper sneaking inside to open the gates. The Warlord moved his capital to Caballus, and had himself crowned in the Grand Cathedral of Jak'ra the All-Father as "Grand Warlord of the Southern Heartlands". It should be noted that with Equinos never falling to him, what Ghazar conquered would be better described as the Eastern Heartlands, but Ghazar never ceased to claim it as his own, even when his reign crumbled.
Fall of the Warlord
Surprisingly, the beginning of the end of the Black Reign can almost be put down to a falling out between two men. Having ruled from Caballus for nine years, Ghazar and Rawaz the Ripper finally had their disagreement. Seth had been harbouring objections to the increasingly brutal and unhinged requests of the Warlord, when Ghazar crossed a line and told him to murder a rebel leader's children. Instead, the former Ripper had them smuggled to safety, and went to ground himself in the Great Desert and later Redpride Village, having left several false trails leading to both Equinos and Bēti.
By this point, Ghazar had steadily been getting more unstable - his plans showed less cunning and more madness as more and more rebels sprang up and the edges of his realm began to withhold tribute. Seth had been a more restrained influence (and may have been responsible for many of the more cunning plans), and it seemed on some level that the Warlord had cared about him, and was devastated by him leaving. In perhaps the last sensible act of the Black Reign, Ghazar pinned many of his crimes on the evil advisor and war criminal Rawaz the Ripper, asking his subjects "Surely one who had been crowned in Jak'ra's holy light could never have committed such atrocities?" This stalled the rebel movements, and the Warlord began to ingratiate himself more with his vassals, instead of ruling with an iron fist.
Unfortunately, this lasted for just over two years before the Warlord revealed his true colours. Having skirmished on and off with Equinos, and never seen a sign of his former right hand man, Ghazar had followed the other false lead and came to the conclusion that Seth was hiding in Bēti. Announcing plans to his loyal vassals and mercenary captains that he would invade the Republic was met with shocked silence instead of the rapturous applause that the Warlord seemed to expect. It is said the following tantrum and bloodbath caused even his most diehard supporters to question themselves. Many of the vassals joined the rebellion, and the mercenaries began to desert. It seems like Ghazar had been falling behind on pay - possibly due to lack of recent conquest, but there were ongoing rumours that Seth had taken the warchest with him. There is also the distinct possibility that they disliked the idea of crossing the Bētin Jungle.
This united disloyal vassals, existing rebels, the free peoples of the Heartlands, and a contingent of Bētin soldiers and Person Removal Union agents (who had discovered Ghazar's plans, and decided to nip them in the bud before they arrived on Republic soil). They rode against Ghazar, liberating village after village of his territories. A religious uprising in Caballus starting at the very Cathedral where Ghazar had been crowned led to him having to abandon the city. The liberators still had setbacks however. Ghazar and the Blackened Bastards formed a formidable fighting corps, launching daring night raids and routing armies many times their numbers. It took almost three years, but eventually a PRU agent tracked Ghazar to Duxanos and the alliance was able to surround the village and prevent the Warlord fleeing. Ghazar and the Blackened Bastards made a monumental last stand, slaying twenty times their number before being slain to a man.
After twenty one years, the Black Reign was over, Ghazar's Empire shattered into a hundred tribes and independent villages once more. The Warlord left an ongoing dark mark over Heartlands history, and the tribes have been known to take an incredibly reactionary stance to any would be conqueror since.