 |
Length: 7 Years | |
| Combatants | ||
- Gerudo | ||
| Commanders | ||
- Link | ||
The Imprisoning War was the war fought during the seven years when Ganondorf Dragmire ruled Hyrule. Many people died during this war, and many more suffered. It was dubbed the Imprisoning War since the denizens of Hyrule were practically imprisoned during Ganondorf's rule. The Imprisoning War ended when Link, the Hero of Time, with the help of the Seven Sages, defeated Ganondorf and locked him in the Sacred Realm. Accounts of the war have been exaggerated or altered since, so all stories of it are most likely false or contain bare threads of truth.
Following the end of the Great War, the land of Hyrule was reorganized by the victorious Hylians into a quasi-federal monarchy where the Hylian royalty assumed the throne for the newly-birthed Kingdom of Hyrule. The Hylians in turned ruled the other nations that participated in the war, to varying degrees. Some races, like the Zora and Sheikah took to the novus ordo with gusto, pledging themselves to he service of the Hylian regime. The Gorons did so as well, but not with the same amount of enthusiasm as the other two. The Kokiri did not enter the equation of the new kingdom, mostly because they neutrally avoided the conflict of the Great War, and moreso because the Hyrule government could not enter the Kokiri Forest and therefore could not reasonably enforce their rule there.
The Gerudo took to the new regime with a passionate hostility, but nevertheless begrudgingly swore fealty to Hyrule. Their young and impetuous King, Ganondorf Dragmire, personally served as ambassador from the desert to the capital in Hyrule Field, yet ordered that no one be allowed to enter Gerudo territory if not a Gerudo themselves, leading to the only bridge crossing the canyon into the desert to be closed off.
Ganondorf's loyalty, however, was not as honesty given as it seemed to the Hylian King. He used his ambassadorial position in the Hyrulian court to access the Castle's secret archives where the writings of the ancient Sages and other Triforce scholars were kept. There he learned the formula for entering the Sacred Realm and what items he would need to procure. The only problem with this success was that he could not outright take the keys he needed from those who possessed them, as it was necessary for him to mantain some semblance of peacefulness to the Hyrulian government.
Ganondorf decided the best way to achieve his aims was by proxy, to let someone else gather up the Spiritual Stones, open the Door of Time, and provide the path to the Sacred Realm. This proxy Ganondorf soon found in Link, and in order to appeal to the boy's sense of good and duty thereof, he put the three holder races of the Spiritual Stones--the Kokiri, Gorons, and Zora--in peril so that they would require Link's heroic services.
The plan worked like clockwork as Link expunged each of the three dire situations the Gerudo king had cast upon his three targets. The Great Deku Tree's infestation was quashed, but yet it was too late for the arbor deity as it soon passed. The Gorons were luckier and the Dodongo King? was defeated. The Zora's patron deity was also delivered from evil by the boy hero. With all three evils seemingly overcome, Link had gathered the three Spiritual Stones. Now, it was time to hatch the final phase of his place.
Using his position in the Castle, Ganondorf snuck in a small bandit force of Gerudo thieves loyal to him. After nightfall, they struck, attacking the Castle in a diversionary tactic meant to force the Royal Family's hand. Fearing the safety of his daughter, the King sent Princess Zelda to flee the Castle in the care of her nursemaid and tarry to safety at the hidden Sheikah camp in the mountains south of the Castle. In the escape, Zelda tossed the Ocarina of Time--the last key to the Door of Time--into the Castle moat for Link to find. Now, the boy Hero had all the keys necessary to open the Door.
As Link approached the Door of Time, Ganondorf lurked in the shadows, waiting for the boy to open the door so he could strike and enter the Sacred Realm first. But, to his surprise, as Link walked through the door and grabbed the hilt of the Master Sword, and pulled the blade from its pedestal, he vanished into thin air, and all that remained was a glowing portal, the entrance to the Golden Land?.
Bounding up the steps and across the threshold to that portal, Ganondorf quickly lept in to the divine land. What he had sought was beyond.
Hours later, Ganondorf returned to Hyrule, bearing the Triforce of Power on his hand, and at the command of a newly summoned army of monsters. His forces quickly overwhelmed Hyrule's defense, levelling the Castle Town, slaying the Hylian Knights, and murdering every inhabitant that did not manage to escape, including the King of Hyrule himself.
To prevent resistance to his rule by the Loyal Races, Ganondorf used his new power to inflict terrible suffering on them. On the Kokiri, he used the weakness derived by the death of their patron deity to send a plague of Deku Babas and Mad Scrubs upon the forest, sending the Kokiri into hiding. On the Gorons he resurrected the ancient enemy of that race, the dragon Volvagia who would slowly but surely eat all of the mountain-dwelling folk. To the water-inhabiting Zora he inflict a particularly cruel evil, freezing Zora's Domain in one swift stroke, locking away most of the race under the ice that now filled the Domain.
With each of those three races quashed, and the Sheikah long gone as any tangible force, and the Gerudo firmly under his own command, there could be no threat to his rule, Ganondorf thought. And, for seven long years, that was indeed true.
Seven years to the day he drew the Master Sword from the pedestal of time, Link awoke in a strange place he had never seen before. Standing before him was an aged and portly man, identifying himself as Rauru, the Sage of Light, and promptly informing Link that the boy Hero was no longer a boy. Rather, he had been sleeping for seven long years, so that he could mature and bear the Master Sword into battle against the King of Evil, who now controlled all of Hyrule. Rauru charged Link with awakening the remaining six Sages and calling them to his side at the time of the final battle.
As such, link travelled through forest and volcano, under water, and into the house of the dead, and across the blinding desert deep into the heart of Ganondorf's homeland, awakening a new Sage as he went. When Saria, Darunia, Ruto, Impa, and Nabooru were at his side as full sages, he was confronted by the mysterious young Sheikah man who had shadowed Link his entire adventure--Sheik. The Sheikah revealed to Link that he was none other than Princess Zelda and that the time had come to end Ganondorf's black reign.
However, she was soon captured by Ganondorf from the interior of the Temple of Time and spirited away to Ganon's Tower.
Undaunted, Link travelled to the Tower and climbed its soaring heights to the very pinnacle when the King of Evil dwelled. A fight ensued, and ultimately good prevailed and Link (with the help of Zelda) struck down Ganondorf, and his transformed facade (Ganon). The Sages stepped in at the point of victory and cast Ganondorf into the Sacred Realm and locked the door behind him, so that the King of Evil might never escape.
Peace had finally be restored to Hyrule after seven long years.
Hyrule laid in ruins after the War has passed and many years were spent rebuilding the damage Ganondorf has wrought. Nevertheless, the people of Hyrule venerated their hero, Link, and built statues in his honor and sang songs of his victory over evil down through the generations.
Ganondorf was indeed locked away, but he still possessed the Triforce of Power and therefore was in possession of the tools that would aid his escape. This would pose a disaster for the Kingdom in the coming decades.
