From the papers of Dunbart’s Guide to Telara: Freemarch.

The Freemarch took its name when Jakub the Tyrant was overthrown as ruler of the March. When the Eth Empire fell in the Convocation, many local rulers rose up to fill the gaps in leadership, squabbling to carve up the world. Few were just or kind. The people of the March, however, overthrew their warlord and instituted a system of elected leadership known as the March Wardens, which survived the rise of the Mathosian Empire and still flourishes today.

The following is a recently discovered account from the perspective of one farmer who survived the slaughter of the final battle against Jakub:

“The way I remember it, and I am a very old man now so I am sure these things have gone fuzzy with time, but I remember that we had almost no trained soldiers left on our side. They’d all been bought by Jakub, or died in the early fighting. What stood before Jakub was nothing more than the small folk armed with whatever they could find. But we were fighting for more than they were. We were fighting for the right to live with our bellies full, to choose how we would live, who we would live it with, and where our steps could take us. We were fighting, in short, for everything. Dying didn’t matter, because there was nothing to live for if we lost.

In the end, I can think that’s the only reason we won. We had a will to win. That and Eliam. Without Eliam, none of us would have had the courage to rise up.”