Xarkly

AH is a detriment to RP dynamics and cities. Remove it.

christiansen-mick ... ?

insecure about something?

conor#8203 xarkly dragon knight - 500

dragon knight - 450

When the fighting was done, Vanhart the Carrot dropped to his knees amidst the cheering Coalition soldiers, and prayed that his siblings had not been among the Orenian dead.

Far away, a memory reflected on his own lessons. I realise now. We're the same.

Re the colonization aspect -- this is what the 'map end event' should actually be. Needless to say, we're all tired of the ham-fisted trope of some 'unanticipated' disaster forcing us off our homeland, so why don't we borrow a leaf from real-world history and incorporate colonization as a more core concept that both (a) serves as a new, fresh, and immersive way to end the map; and (b) provide a better basis for how the next continent is settled. A - Map End: Like I said above, we really shouldn't perpetuate the whole calamity stuff. Like in real history, we should look at a narrative where we migrate not because we're forced to, but because we want to. As Almaris drags on, through the course of some eventline, various nations and factions learn about this new land overseas; a land rich in resources, a land of fertile soil, or maybe cultural significance, that serves as a beacon for the Descendant races to send expeditions that eventually come to colonize it, building up new cities and civilizations that eclipse Almaris and prompt the relocation of royal courts and capitals. Obviously, even as a preliminary concept, there are a lot of creases to iron out with something like this - i.e., why nations might fully relocate to this new colony - but nothing that can't be worked out with a bit of brain-power. B - Colonization RP: It's definitely true that it's a bit jarring when you step onto the new land and all the cities or whatever are built, but also because you know nothing about this new land except it looks a bit different in the sense that the plain, bland biomes are in a different pattern. We should have a narrative connection to the map, even just as a very broad, simple overarching concept, from the get-go, which goes hand-in-hand with a colonization event-line, which should ideally take the form of Descendant expeditions finding the new continent, exploring it, and setting it up for it becoming the main Descendant colony in the future. The process of this colonization RP - which should, as a base concept, take the form of the Athera eventline done right - would provide this narrative and immersive basis for when the Descendants move over to the new colony in full.

Conor#8203 Xarkly Dragon Knight - 400

At this point, I enjoy the variation in PvP playstyles rather than everything being the same. I don't find timers particularly clunky, only that they allow for more player choice based on skill and preference. It facilitates slow warhammer crit-spammers and rapid combo'ers all the same, allowing people to fight in the way that they like best, which I think is good. I don't think removing the second row of hearts is viable, especially due to Surge procs.

im starting to suspect epstein didnt kill himself

VANHART FIRES THE CONFETTI BARREL.

It's still pointless because that same objective can be achieved, though. I can still say "stab with XYZ material" in 15 words to achieve that exact purpose, so putting some arbitrary realism cap on oversaturated CRP rules just makes it more incomprehensible and difficult to approach.

I don't think anyone's saying it doesn't make sense; rather, it's silly to regulate. Clauses like speech limit - which in no way effect the actual fight - just oversaturate the already muddy rules to make it just incomprehensible. Regulating every little thing won't make CRP better, and the ST definitely shouldn't be involved in regulating inconsequential details of how players interact.

Word limit per emote is unbelievably silly

Removing a cap at the cost of 1 day extra for 4 extra players is pretty unbalanced. That's one 28-player raid per week. Think it's important to remember a gap of 5-12 is generally pretty generous compared to the past, and you have to bear in mind the chief weapon of raiders -- organisation, and speed. These weapons can allow most settlements to be stormed often before the rally cry can go up, and even when the bell is rang, it's often a case where there's a limited time window for people to actually get on. This organisation and speed - giving attackers the ability to catch settlements off-guard and block off points of escape and paths to rally bells - is what necessitates a balance in the form of a cap in the first place. Now with our most recent tech update, attackers can also use explosives and ladders to trivialise most defences. Like, with these new changes, I can drop a 28 man raid, who are organised for the raid and ready to block off, surround, etc. on a settlement who will probably get taken by surprise, whose walls I can ladder up, whose gates I can blow up, and who I can probably prevent reaching the rally bell at all because I have so many people to spare. Even if the defenders did reach the rally bell, it's really unlikely they could rally enough numbers to contest the raid before I initiate combat properly. I can do the above once per week on the same place in the current rules. I just think it's pretty imbalanced, and there's 0 potential for a good fight involved at all. I don't really think any nation on LotC presently or even in the past could win against the formula I described above if used correctly. All the new changes are cool and all, but in their totality it's hard to see how it's balanced at all for the current server. Best solution is just a cap, raids aren't meant to be mini-warclaims. @itdontmatta

do you know what the point of walls are

A WALDENIAN WEDDING WER RASTET DER ROSTET Issued by the DUCHY OF REINMAR On this 2nd day of Wzuvar and Byvca of 428 E.S. A southern lamb of dashing charm Whose lack of wits are no cause for alarm Is carried north by wayward chance Without enough practice for his wedding dance A baroness with a burden great Whose path was set by unlikely fate To expunge the shadow of her brother Whose life did that Crowdrake smother A Waldenian union fitting and true To mark a future bright and new A match to be christened in the autumn snow (The groom thinks it’s too far north for any guest to go) The wedding of Vanhart von Alstreim He who makes many maidens beam And the Lady Johanna of House Barclay A betrothal that took little parley To be held this coming autumn For this is where God has brought them. ______________________ The nobility of the Kongzem of Haense and Kingdom of Oren, and the denizens of the Duchy of Reinmar, are invited to attend the matrilineal union of Lady Johanna Barclay - Baroness of Sigradz, and heir to the Duchy of Reinmar - and Lord Vanhart von Alstreim, her future consort, in the Cathedral of Saint Tylos within the Duchy of Reinmar this coming autumn. The affair will be a simple one, marked by a ceremony and feast. Due to time constraints, the balloon race had to be cut, much to the groom’s disappointment. Gifts are not mandatory, but militarily encouraged. [[WEDDING OF BARCLAY HEIR - THIS SATURDAY, 3PM EST/8PM GMT, AT REINMAR, HAENSE - MAP BELOW]] Her Ladyship, Johanna Klaudia Barclay, Baroness of Sigradz

unbelievably cool, fantastic work

yes idea is that it shouldn't be "alright, and in the middle we're gonna have an AWESOME spruce forest with a road and some bushes" and more cool shit people remember. ice biomes with frozen waterfalls you can walk up, mushroom forests, floating islands, other cool fantasy shit

Interesting + memorable biomes, and an actually story to the map are sorely needed.

The ashes marked the wind in grey swirls as they drifted up and up, flashing gold in the setting sun. Until the end, he had had only one regret. But that much, Emma knew.

Sorry I posted early by mistake, give me 15 mins to add the rest of the info (almaris).

Ve Denlichte Fahna THE BLACK BANNER SUPAE OE VE CZAENIN I VE LANSZK VE REVENYA VE TUOSK IT IS THE DUTY OF THE LIVING TO REMEMBER THE DEAD ________________________ Our history is a bloody one. Within the hallowed longhall of the Brotherhood of Saint Karl sits the Black Banner, a rolling span of black cloth that stretches the entire length of the hall and beyond. Upon that great expanse of black cloth is golden embroidery depicting rows of marching soldiers, galloping lancers beneath murders of crows, and archers unleashing iron rain, all surrounded by flowing New Marian script proclaiming the tale of battles and wars. For the Black Banner records each bitter defeat of the Kongzem of Haense, and each glorious triumph, in which the Haeseni have given their steel, blood, and souls for their liege, their kin, and their homes. With each new war, the Black Banner grows, commemorating the freshly fallen. This is the record each war the Kongzem of Haense has ever participated in, whether alone or as allies. This is the Black Banner. ATHERA (23 - 66 E.S. | 1470 - 1513 A.H.) Third Human-Dwarf war (47 - 58 E.S. | 1494 - 1505 A.H.) - Victory VAILOR (66 - 123 E.S. | 1513 - 1570 A.H.) The Dukes' War (71 - 74 E.S. | 1518 - 1521 A.H.) - Defeat The Eighteen Years' War (82 - 100 E.S. | 1529 - 1547 A.H.) - Victory The Rurikid Uprising (109 - 111 E.S. | 1556 - 1558 A.H.) - Victory The Riga War (112 - 117 E.S. | 1559 - 1564 A.H.) - Victory The Krajian Rebellion (118 - 129 E.S. | 1565 - 1576 A.H.) - Victory AXIOS (123 - 195 E.S. | 1570 - 1642 A.H.) The Orcish Subjugation (132 - 133 E.S. | 1579 - 1580 A.H.) - Victory The Bellum Coaliti (143 - 148 E.S. | 1590 - 1595 A.H.) - Defeat The Brawm Rebellion (153 - 153 E.S. | 1600 - 1600 A.H.) - Victory The Great Northern War (155 - 157 E.S. | 1602 - 1604 A.H.) - Defeat The Greyspine Rebellion (164 - 165 E.S. | 1611 - 1612 A.H.) - Victory War of the Beards (184 - 189 E.S. | 1631 - 1636 A.H.) - Defeat The Third Crusade (191 - 194 E.S. | 1638 - 1641 A.H.) - Victory ATLAS (196 - 257 E.S. | 1643 - 1705 A.H.) The Czena Conflict (206 - 209 E.S. | 1653 - 1656 A.H.) - Defeat The First Atlas Coalition War (210 - 216 E.S. | 1657 - 1663 A.H.) - Defeat The Second Atlas Coalition War (220 - 222 E.S. | 1667 - 1669 A.H.) - Defeat The Third Atlas Coalition War (242 - 245 E.S. | 1689 - 1692 A.H.) - Victory The Vaeyl Wars (199 E.S. - 258 E.S. | 1646 - 1705 A.H.) - Stalemate ARCAS (257 - 349 E.S. | 1705 - 1796 A.H.) War of the Two Emperors (268 - 274 E.S. | 1715 - 1721 A.H.) - Defeat The Lorrainian Revolt (282 - 283 E.S. | 1729 - 1730 A.H.) - Victory The Rubern War (293 - 313 E.S. | 1740 - 1760 A.H.) - Victory The Scyfling Invasion (320 - 330 E.S. | 1767 - 1777 A.H.) - Victory The Begrudged War (328 - 333 E.S. | 1775 - 1780 A.H.) - Defeat The Inferi Invasion (331 - 335 E.S. | 1778 - 1792 A.H.) - Victory ALMARIS (396 - Present E.S. | 1796 - Present A.H.) The Rimetroll Rumble (360 - 383 E.S. | 1807 - 1830 A.H.) - Victory The Nachezer Infestation (379 - 385 E.S. | 1826 - 1832 A.H.) - Victory The Silver War (386 - 398 E.S. | 1827 - 1845 A.H.) - Victory The Sutican Civil War (387 - 388 E.S. | 1828 - 1829 A.H.) - Victory The Sinners' War (402 - 421 E.S. | 1849 - 1868 A.H.) - Victory The Successors' War (431 - 434 E.S. | 1878 - 1881 A.H.) - Victory 23 - 66 E.S. | 1513 - 1570 A.H. ATHERA The birthplace of Haense. In these ancient times, the blessed Saint Karl first began the tale of his lineage with the Duchy of Haense, loyal vassal of the Kingdom of Oren. This existence was one earned with blood and steel in the fires of the Third Human-Dwarf War, in which the Haeseni warriors of the fledgling Duchy stood alongside the storied King Andrik Vydra to secure his reign over mankind. Although only one major war was fought on the continent, it was a definitive one in which Orenians, Haeseni, Waldenian, Scyflings, and Ruskans took up arms following the collapse of the 2nd Carrion Empire to determine the future of Canonist humanity, and the Highlander peoples over which Karl's descendants would come to rule. I. The Third Human-Dwarf War (47 - 58 E.S. | 1494 - 1505 A.H.) - Victory ________________________ I THE THIRD HUMAN-DWARF WAR OREN, HAENSE v. URGUAN 47 - 58 E.S. | 1494 - 1505 A.H. VICTORY Siege of Hiebenhall (48 E.S. | 1495 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of Drakenburgh (49 E.S. | 1496 A.H.) - Victory Fall of Hiebenhall (49 E.S. | 1496 A.H.) - Victory Siege of Nerezza (50 E.S. | 1497 A.H.) - Victory The conflict which formed the foundations upon which Haense was built. King Andrik Vydra of Oren had taken a hard stance against the series of unruly independent human lords north of the Ebunad River in Athera, who he named ‘Nord Lords’. With the declaration of ‘The Northsnow Doctrine’, which ordered these Nord Lords return to the ‘true Kingdom of Man’, many Nord Lords sought alliances and vassalisation under other kingdoms, namely the Grand Kingdom of Urguan. For the Grand King Zahrer Irongrinder’s willing and purposeful violation of his authority, as expressed in his ultimatum letter, King Andrik demanded that the oaths of fealty from the Nord Lords be released and the Dwarven expansion into the north halted. Grand King Zahrer refused, and a declaration of war followed. During all this, the son of the deposed Emperor Aleksandr Carrion, Karl Aleksandrovic, had made his home with his maternal uncle, Grand Duke Otto of Vanderfell, north of the Ebunad River. As both an Orenian vassal and one of the sole remaining Canonist colonies, the young Karl pledged his aid to King Andrik against the Dwarves. Stalwart Dwarven defences at the Irongut held keep of Hiebenhall proved a strong match for the Orenian forces coming northward. The strategic position of Hiebenhall was important, with an insurmountable cliff to two sides of it, a distance outwith the reach of siege weapons, and towering over the only bridge to cross the Ebunad River north. Thus, when the Orenian force failed to take the fort in the Siege of Hiebenhall, it was dubbed a resounding failure that ground the war to a halt. Emboldened by their victory, the Dwarven army pressed onto the Orenian’s own fort of Drakenburgh, where they were caught completely by surprise when the Orenians sallied out of the fort to attack while the Dwarves were setting up their camp, triumphing in the Battle of Drakenburgh. Hiebenhall, however, remained a deadly obstacle to any victory. That obstacle became Haense’s opportunity. The cunning Karl, with a small retinue, infiltrated the keep with grapples and black cloaks under the cover of the new moon after studying the patrols of the rampart guards. From within, Karl attacked and took the keep by bloody surprise in the name of King Andrik in the Fall of Hiebenhall. So impressed by Karl’s wit, the King enfeoffed Karl as the Count of Siegrad, where he took the family name of 'Barbanov' in honour of his ancestor Barbov the Black. Now unimpeded by the bulwark of Hiebenhall, the human army marched on the Nord Lord castle of Nerezza, where the namesake Siege of Nerezza - a quick and bloody assault - marked the end of of the War. After the fall of Nerezza, a long series of peace talks resulted in the Dwarven surrender several years after the battle. The new Grand Dwarven King - Balek Irongut - acquiesed to King Andrik's original demands and released the Nord Lords as his vassals, while also paying 75,000 mina in weregild. When Karl inherited the lands of Vanderfell not long later, his success in the Third-Human Dwarf War and his expanded holdings allowed the Orenian King to elevate him to the title of Duke of Haense. 66 - 123 E.S. | 1513 - 1570 A.H. VAILOR A land on which the Haeseni people earned their keep in some of the most contentious wars in human history. After an initial and devastating loss in the infamous Dukes' War, the Haeseni people endured for the majority of the Descendant occupation of Vailor in the rump state of Carnatia, under their future vassals of House Kovachev, where frequent wars over the fate of the Highlander people were fought. Emperors, both bevelolent and tyraniccal, rose and fell as feudal lords seeking selfish power or the betterment of their people tested their ideals and ambitions in bloody and divisive clashes. It was not until the end of Vailor that the Duchy of Haense was reformed, some thirty years after it had fallen in the Dukes' War, and the way was paved for them to be elvated to royalty after the Krajian Rebellion, which was fought on both Vailor and Axios. I. The Dukes' War (71 - 74 E.S. | 1418 - 1521 A.H.) - Defeat II. The Eighteen Years' War (82 - 100 E.S. | 1529 - 1547 A.H.) - III. The Third Rurikid Uprising (109 - 111 E.S. | 1556 - 1558 A.H.) - Victory IV. The Riga War (112 - 117 E.S. | 1559 - 1564 A.H.) - Victory V. The Krajian Rebellion (118 - 129 E.S. | 1565 - 1576 A.H.) - Victory ________________________ I THE DUKES' WAR HAENSE, ADRIA, VANAHEIM v. SAVOYARD OREN, LAUREH'LIN, HAELUN'OR, KHALESTINE 71 - 74 E.S. | 1518 - 1521 A.H. DEFEAT Massacre of Wett (71 E.S. 1518 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of the Blackwald (73 E.S. | 1520 A.H.) - Defeat Siege of Barrowyk (74 E.S. | 1521 A.H.) - Major Defeat The epoch of dishonour and infamy in Raevir history. After the migration to Vailor, the King of Oren - Olivier de Savoie, successor of Andrik Vydra - grew unpopular among his Raevir vassals, who had grown in power thanks to the Raevir city of Brelus overtaking the Orenian heartlands in activity and trade. This general sentiment of discontent erupted into full scale rebellion when Xavier de Sola, bastard half-brother of the Duke of Istria, was charged with murder and consorting with dark mages, but was rescued from his guilty verdict when the guards of House de Sola stormed the courthouse and slaughtered any present members of the Raevir House of Vladoc and wounding Hugues Sarkozic, the lord of Brelus, who escaped to spread word of this incident, which became known as the Massacre of Wett. Duke Hugues, supported by other Raevir nobility in Adria and surviving Vladovs, sent the Ultimatum of Redmark to King Olivier, demanding the execution of the de Solas who had participated in the Massacre, and threatened they would take the matters into their own hands if the King remained idle. When King Olivier responded only with stalling and inaction, Duke Hugues declared rebellion against Oren alongside the Duchy of Haense and the Duchy of Vanaheim, who sought to execute Duke Titus and Xavier de Sola and depose King Olivier. Shortly after the declaration of war, High Pontiff Sixtus III is mysteriously murdered; although the culprit is never found, it was widely believed to have been done on Istrian or Orenian orders for the Pontiff's alleged plan to crown Duke Hugues as King of Oren. Border skirmishes and raids bloody the borders of Brelus and the de Savoie castle of Peremont, but neither side gained an advantage until Duke Hugues was murdered while praying in the Cathedral of St. Lothar in Brelus at the hands of Roland Sparrow - a Marked-Man. Given that the Duke had been in prayer in a cathedral, the assassination of 'Hugues the Headless' is widely condemned as one of the most dishonourable acts in human history, even to this very day. Duke Signar Barbanov then takes the helm as leader of the enraged Ducal Coalition to sperhead the Highlander revolt and avenge Hugues. As the Ducal forces prepared to march into Savoyard lands with a fire in their hearts, King Olivier secured the aid of Elves of Laureh'lin and the Farfolk of the Caliphate of Khalestine. Despite Oren's superior numbers thanks to their alliances, the following clash at the Battle of Blackwald was an extremely hard-fought victory for King Olivier, but his triumph shattered the Ducal morale and allowed his army to press into the Raevir lands. The Orenian loyalist forces laid siege of the seat of House Vladov, Barrowyk, where the Ducal Coalition was not only demoralised but vastly outnumbered, even despite the defensive castle. After some months of siege to weaken the defenders, the Orenians attacked in the Siege of Barrowyk, which cost hordes of Orenian, Elven, and Farfolk lives before the battlements were breached using brute-force and numbers to drive out the Highlander defenders, and secure a second costly victory for King Olivier. In the aftermath of the devastating defeat and without any other castles to rival the defensibility of Barrowyk, Duke Sigmar flees in self-exile with his wife and son, leaving Franz Sarkozic as leader of the Coalition, who proceeded to formally surrender. King Olivier responds mercilessly, and begins by executing all enemy leaders before sacking the city of Brelus and burning the Cathedral of St. Lothar, in which Hugues was murdered. The Highlanders became a persecuted race within Oren, and most of them were driven from the realm. As a final insult to their plight, King Olivier gives the former Adrian lands to Augustus de Sola, thereby creating the cadet House of d'Amaury and the Duchy of Lorraine. ________________________ II THE EIGHTEEN YEARS' WAR OREN, CARNATIA, LAUREH'LIN, HAELUN'OR, SUTICA, KRUGMAR, VANDORIA v. URGUAN, DUNAMIS 82 - 100 E.S. | 1529 - 1547 A.H. VICTORY Battle of White Mountain (89 E.S. | 1536 A.H) - Victory Siege of Rhewengrad (90 E.S. | 1537 A.H.) - Victory Siege of Khro'nogaak (91 E.S. | 1538 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of Cape Bronson (93 E.S. | 1540 A.H.) - Victory Battle of Hoar Hill (94 E.S. | 1541 A.H.) - Victory Siege of Kal'Valan (95 E.S. | 1542 A.H.) - Victory Siege of Kal'Ordholm (96 E.S. | 1543 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of Marnadal (99 E.S. | 1546 A.H.) - Victory Siege of Fort Dunamis (100 E.S. | 1547 A.H.) - Major Defeat Battle of Seahelm (100 E.S. | 1547 A.H.) - Victory One of the longest wars on the Banner, and unlike other long wars, filled with frequent fighting. As the so-called 5th Holy Orenian Empire was reformed, Grand King Midgor Ireheart of the Dwarves increasingly worried about further human expansion which would, in turn, cripple his own ambitions for Dwarven rule over the continent. In a bid to nip this threat in the bud, the Grand King marched into Felsen - the Orenian capital with a retinue of Dwarven warriors and the acclaimed Horde of Dunamis sellswords, where he demanded that Emperor John I renounce his rule of huamnity and disband the Empire, or face war. Following Emperor John I's unequivocal rejection, the Dwarven retinue is driven out of the city, and Grand King Midgor consequently declares war. The Emperor summons the forces of his vassals, which included the Duchy of Carnatia, which had taken in many of the Haeseni refugees after the ruinous Dukes' War and was thus a temporary successor state of Haense. Despite the mobilisation, however, little happens for a number of years other than occassional raids, and thus the Empire came to rest assured that Grand King Midgor had no intention to actually fight. This all changed when the Grand King choked on his blood - some scholars believe he was poisoned - and was succeeded by Grand King Rhewen Frostbeard. Fearing Rhewen to be a more formiddable foe, the Imperial forces decided to seize the initiative and marched into Urguan, where they faced the surprised Dwarven army at the Battle of White Mountain, which was left red after the Orenian victory. In a string of blitz assaults, the Imperial force triumphs again in the Siege of Rhewengrad - which is rechristened as the Imperial Province of Cascadia - but, too confident after their two victories, the human army faces a harsh awakening at the Siege of Khro'nogaak, where bombardment and siege towers fail after the Urguani legions finally organise their defense after the chaos that was Grand King Midgor's death and the defeats at White Mountain and Rhewengrad. After concluding that another assault oh Khro'nogaak would prove too costly, Emperor John I changes tactics and his forces take to the seas from Felsen. They intend to sail to the Dwarven territories on the Isle of Avar, but the Dwarves launch their own ships just in time to intercept. After volleys from ballista, scorpions, and crossbows, and back-and-forth boarding, the Imperial navy gains the upper hand, sinking enough Dwarven ships to secure victory in the Battle of Cape Bronson before proceeding to Avar as planned. Much like their initial advance, the Imperial forces began to conquest with minimal resistance, prevailing first in the Battle of Hoar Hill, and then later in the Siege of Ka'Valen to cement control of the island and allowing them to annex it, making it the Province of Avar. The success had not come without cost, though, and many Imperial veterans had been spent, and thus the Orenian forces were reinforced with fresh recruits. The decision to proceed to assault the Dwarven heartlands proved disastrous, as inexperienced siege engineers at the Siege of Kal'Ordholm forced the Imperial infantry to try storm the fort, and when faced with ceaseless Dwarven arrowfire, the fresh recruits broke ranks and fell back, handing Oren it's second defeat. Despite this, the Orenian army holds together to withstand the Dwarven attempt to drive them out of Urguan at the Battle of Marnadal. This victory, however, turns out to be in vain -- Emperor John I orders a full recall of the army to Felsen after internal division and conspiracies among the nobility threaten his crown in an incident known as the Taxman Conspiracy, dubbed so after several nobles refused to pay their taxes. Although in a state of bankruptcy, Emperor John I makes a gambit to regain support and strength by attacking Fort Dunamis, namesake fort of the infamous sellswords. Alas, the Siege of Fort Dunamis turns out to be the biggest blunder of the entire war: after a year-long siege - during which time both armies took time to recover and reorganise after Marnadal - the Imperial forces, which were suffering from malnutrition and disease thanks to the bankruptcy, succeeded in their bombardment of the mercenary fort, but were taken by surprise when an Orcish warband exited behind the Imperial siege lines to draw their attention, after which the main army charged out of the fort to pincer and slaughter them in a decisive victory for the Grand Kingdom and its allies. In the chaotic retreat to Felsen, Emperor John I is struck by a crossbow bolt and falls from his horse into the Eroch River, where his armour causes him to drown. His successor, Emperor John II, elects to continue the war for only one more battle -- the Battle of Seahelm. This battle in the Norlandic capital - which, at the time, was a vassal sworn to Oren - came about as a result of the Norlander exile, Beo Ruric, attempting to capitalise on the Imperial defeat at Fort Dunamis to win Norland's independence. With assistance from the Dwarves, Lord Beo met with the Orenian interception outside Seahelm, where an intense back-and-forth of flanking maneuvers eventually resulted in a failed bluff-attack by the Norlanders, leading to an Orenian victory. Both sides were, at this stage, utterly spent. The Orenian Empire was deeply in debt from the Taxman Conspiracy, and the Dwarves were spent on manpower and military fortresses. The two sides thus signed the Peace of West Avar to end the war, allowing Oren to keep their two new annexed provinces. These territorial gains, and a higher number of battles won, lend to the conclusion that the war was a victory for Oren, albeit an expensive one. ________________________ III THE THIRD RURIKID UPRISING OREN, CARNATIA, COURLAND v. NORLAND 109 - 111 E.S. | 1556 - 1558 A.H. VICTORY Battle of Dogger Bay (110 E.S. | 1557 A.H.) - Victory Sack of Seahelm (111 E.S. | 1558 A.H.) - Victory The conquest of Avar in the Eighteen Years' War laid the seeds of unrest. The local Norlander population made repeated petitions to Emperor John II for independence, to no avail. In a manner reminiscent of the start of the Eighteen Years' War, Thomas Ruric, son of Lord Sven of Seahelm, took his father's retinue into Felsen to demand full Norlandic autonomy. When John II refused, Thomas, upon his return to Seahelm, expelled and even killed Imperial citizens within the city, and thus the Emperor declared a war in retaliation. Expecting an easy victory, the Orenian crownland and vassal forces set sail from the capital of Felsen to sail for the Isle of Avar. The Norlanders launched their own fleet of swift longships to oppose the blow-buffed Orenian galleons, and clashed in the Battle of Dogger Bay, where the scorpion-mounted Orenian ships shot down Quadrinaros, the Ruric flagship, after which the Norlanders retreated to Seahelm and allowed the Orenian advance. The folly of the Norlanders in declaring war alone and without allies - since the Grand Kingdom of Urguan was left unable to assist after the Eighteen Years' War - as the Orenian host landed on Avar and encircled Seahelm while their fleet blockaded the port. After a few months of siege in which the Norlanders quickly ran out of provisions, Oren attacked the weakened defenders, overwhelming in the slaughter known as the Sack of Seahelm where all but women and children were cut down in the streets by the Orenian, Carnatian-Haeseni, and Courlandic army, leaving Seahelm in utter ruins and ending the ill-fated conflict. ________________________ IV THE RIGA WAR CARNATIA, KRAJIA v. COURLAND 112 - 117 E.S. | 1559 - 1564 A.H. VICTORY Storming of Kraken's Watch (111 E.S. | 1558 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of the Curon Forest (114 E.S. | 1561 A.H.) - Victory Siege of Kraken's Watch (115 E.S. | 1562 A.H.) - Victory Battle of Westmark (116 E.S. | 1563 A.H.) - Defeat Sack of Riga (117 E.S. | 1564 A.H.) - Victory The war that marked the start tensions between the Haeseni and Courlandic people. The Duchy of Courland had served alongside the Haeseni remnants in Carnatia and the warriors of Oren in previous wars, but any comradery was forgotten when, just one year after the Sack of Seahelm, Duke Alexander Staunton marched an army into the keep of Kraken's Watch, seat of the ancient House Vanir, and occupied it with little resistance in the Storming of Kraken's Watch, supposedly out of disdain for Lord Britannus Vanir. The exiled Lord Britannus finds refuge with Duke Jan Kovachev of Carnatia, liege of the Haeseni remnants, and Hetman Sveneld Ivanovich of Krajia, who offer House Vanir military support to reclaim his castle. Britannus' heir and celebrated hero of the Eighteen Years' War, Ser Fiske Vanir, was elected as leader of the so-called Carnatian League. Emperor John II hosts a diplomatic meeting at the Second Diet of Saltstone, and assents to the vassals carrying out the war amongst themselves with the signing of the Pacta Conventa. With the vassal war sanctified by the Emperor, Duke Alexander marches his army into Carnatian territory after a small prelude of border raids and skirmishes. Ser Rickard Barrow leads a Carnation League force to intercept, despite being outnumbered, and utilised pitfall traps and guerilla fighters to harry and drive back the Courlandic advance in the Battle of Curon Forest, securing a landmark victory for the Carnatian League. Ser Rickard's command wastes little time in pressing their advantage and march onto the occupied Kraken's Watch, which they promptly besiege. The League initially intended to starve out the defenders, but upon learning that the Courlanders had brought the harvest inside the keep before their arrival, were forced to proceed with a full assault. This worked well regardless; the Courlanders were running out of funds, whereas the League had the resources of multiple Dukes, and afforded far more siege engines that shelled down an opening for the League to take the fortress in the Siege of Kraken's Watch, a devastating loss for Courland. Before the League could proceed to the Courlandic capital of Riga, a dispute broke out between Lord Britannus Vanir and the Hetman of Krajia, which leads the latter to defecting to Courland. This coincided with the involvement of Dreadland warriors and Norlandic Rurikids in the Courlander army, violating the Emperor's Pacta Conventa. Outnumbered by foreign forces, the League is unable to retreat from Courland in time: they are pinned against the banks of the River Vydra, where they are defeated at the Battle of Westmark. With the League bloodied and the Pacta Conventa broken, Emperor John II prepares to intervene, but events outpace him: Duke Alexander of Courland is overthrown, and his child son Percival is placed in his stead. The Peace of Ambrosa is signed soon after to end the Carnatian-Courlandic feud, and the young Duke Percival becomes Lord Britannus Vanir's ward. However, somewhere in the chaos of the turn of events, soldiers of the Carnatian League acquire keys to the gate of Riga, which, despite the Peace, they use to storm the city, kill any remaining soldiers, and burnt and plundered the city in the infamous Sack of Riga, leaving Courland destroyed. In the newly-taken lands, the Duchy of Haense was officially reformed from the remnants who had served Duke Jan Kovachev of Carnatia. ________________________ V THE KRAJIAN REBELLION OREN, HAENSE, CARNATIA v. KRAJIA/RUSKA, COURLAND, HAELUN'OR, HARIA, WAR UZG, DREADLANDS, WARHAWKES 118 - 128 E.S. | 1565 - 1576 A.H. VICTORY Battle of Krajia (123 E.S. | 1570 A.H.) - Victory A bitter, drawn-out affair that turned brother against brother. Celebrations after the Riga War were short-lived, as Duke Jan Kovachev of Carnatia, attacked Ser Jaromir, who he blamed for Hetmen Sveneld Ivanovich of Krajia's betrayal of the Carnatian League during the Riga War. Ser Jaromir escapes to the safety of Krajia, where he appeals to aid from Hetman Sveneld, his father-in-law, against Carnatia. An outraged Sveneld immediately declares war, and Emperor John II responds by labelling him as a traitor to the Empire. Sveneld raises the stakes, and declares himself as the self-anointed King of Ruska and forms another coalition comprised of anti-Imperial factions, namely the Courlanders who had gone into exile from Oren after the Riga War, the Principality of the Dreadlands, the Silver City of Haelun'or, the Sultanate of Haria, the Orcish War Uzg, and the Dark Elves of the Warhawke Tribes. Led by Prince Daniel of the Dreadlings, they dub themselves the Axis Powers (yes, really).The Grand Kingdom of Urguan joins initially, but declares neutrality again soon after. Despite the scale of the nations involved, there was strikingly little major action for most of the war. Instead, the conflict was characterised by border raids, skirmishes, and clashes of scouting parties all throughout the continent. The sole exception was when the Crown Prince of Oren - John Owyn - was kidnapped by the enemy coalition. The reformed Duchy of Haense joined the Duchy of Carnatia and the other Orenian forces at the Battle of Krajia, where they storm the rebellious capital to free the Prince and hand the Axis its first, and the only, major defeat of the war. Tensions were set aside for several years when the Descendants were forced to migrate from Vailor to the Isles of Axios, where their efforts are focused on erecting cities on the new continent before the raiding and skirmishing begins anew. After settling on Axios, Emperor John II abdicates in favour of the rescued John Owyn - who is coronated as Emperor John III - and the war continues with fresh vigor, as the new Emperor begins a naval invasion of the Dreadlands, only for the Dreadlanders to abandon the land before the Orenian landing. With much of the driving force of the Rebellion lost in the migration, some of the enemy nations began to wane in power and presence, chiefly the disappearance of Prince Daniel of the Dreadlands, and thus Emperor John III declares victory and occupies the Dreadlands. His allies gone, Sveneld is forced in exile and stripped of all titles, prompting his former Ruskan followers to take refuge with the Duchy of Haense. Likewise, House Staunton also has its titles stripped and its members are exiled, and the High Elves of Haelun'or become a subjugated province of the Empire. Ser Petyr Barbanov and Ser Rickard Barrow's command during the war saw Haense rise to newfound popularity, and this display is often regarded as the defining moment that led to Emperor John III elevating them to the Dual Kingdom of Hanseti and Ruska two years after the war's conclusion. 123 - 195 E.S. | 1570 - 1642 A.H. AXIOS The land on which Haense became a Kingdom. In many regards, Axios was a time of great change. Not only did Haense attain royal status, but it was the first continent on which it gained complete independence from its heartlander brethren, under whom they had served since the days of Karl Barbanov in Siegrad, and this independence became the focal point of conflict in many later wars. Overall, Axios was a time in which the Haeseni truly defined themselves not merely as a vassal, but a unique and steel-willed people that laid the foundations for the Kongzem’s success in the centuries to come. While the first conflict on the continent - the Krajan Rebellion - began on Vailor, it carried on into Axios, in which Haense fought as a Duchy before it was later given the titles of Hanseti and Ruska, elevating the realm to the Kongzem it is today. It remained a vassal of the 5th Holy Orenian Empire until the Courlandic Coalition War, after which it gained independence for a brief period before it had to win it back in the string of wars against the Kingdom of Courland. I. The Orcish Subjugation (132 - 133 E.S. | 1579 - 1580 A.H.) - Victory II. The Bellum Coaliti (143 - 148 E.S. | 1590 - 1595 A.H.) - Defeat III. The Brawm Rebellion (153 - 153 E.S. | 1600 - 1600 A.H.) - Victory IV. The Great Northern War (155 - 157 E.S. | 1602 - 1604 A.H.) - Defeat V. The Greyspine Rebellion (164 - 165 E.S. | 1611 - 1612 A.H.) - Victory VI. The War of the Beards (184 - 189 E.S. | 1631 - 1636 A.H.) - Defeat VII. Third Crusade (191 - 194 E.S. | 1638 - 1641 A.H.) - Victory ________________________ I THE ORCISH SUBJUGATION OREN, HAENSE, LAUREH'LIN v. KRUGMAR 132 - 133 E.S. | 1579 - 1580 A.H. VICTORY Battle of Altay (132 E.S. | 1579 A.H.) - Victory Siege of San'Kharak (133 E.S. | 1580 A.H.) - Victory After the enthronement of Petyr I as first King of the Kongzem of Haense, its royal banners were called upon in the Orcish Subjugation. In a bid to keep anti-Imperial sentiment in check after the Krajian Rebellion, Orenian Emperor John III decided to move against the Warnation of Krugmar to cripple them and prevent them joining any future coalition. The Emperor chose Krugmar as his first target after the Warnation had persistently raided the Principality of Laureh'lin, an Elven ally of the Empire, and took slaves. When Laureh'lin petitioned the Empire for aid, the Emperor issued an ultimatum to Rex Vorgo'Yar to stop, but not only did the Rex refused, but he began enslaving humans, too. The Orenian host, consisting of the new Kingdom of Haense, sailed to the shores of Asul. In the southern heat, they met a modest army of Orcish interceptors, but with the massive host of humans, they had little difficulty defeating them in the Battle of Altay. The Orcs retreated their stronghold further south, which the Orenians carved a clear path to. Emperor John III became intent on not only crippling the Orcs, but completely destroying them, and this rhetoric prompted the Rex to flee with many of his warriors to prevent genocide, leaving three-thousand Orcs to face a crushing defeat at the Siege of San'Kharak. Following the Empire's total victory alongside Laureh'lin and Haense, the lands of the Warnation were annexed. The Subjugation forms the prelude of the Bellum Coaliti, the rise of Courland, and the Haeseni wars that followed decades later. ________________________ II THE BELLUM COALITI OREN, HAENSE, WESTERLANDS v. COURLAND, URGUAN, FENN, KRUGMAR, NORLAND 143 - 148 E.S. | 1590 - 1595 A.H. DEFEAT Battle of Mount Gorgon (143 E.S. | 1590 A.H.) - Victory Battle of the Gorge (146 E.S. | 1593 A.H.) - Defeat Coup of Metz (146 E.S. | 1593 A.H.) - Victory Battle of the Goldfields (147 E.S. | 1594 A.H.) - Major Defeat Fall of Johannsburg (148 E.S. | 1595 A.H.) - Major Defeat Simply known as the 'Coalition War' in common. Despite the victories in the Krajian Rebellion and Orcish Subjugation in the past decades, anti-Orenian sentiment was far from subdued. Opponents of the Empire took up arms against the fiery-tempered Emperor Philip I after he aggressed against the Dwarven realm of Urguan, who had given refuge to Orcs after the fall of San'Kharak, which Philip I claimed violated the existing peace agreement between Oren and Urguan. When Grand King Algoda Frostbeard ignored Orenian demands to exile the Orcs, Philip I prepared to march, and the banners of Haense, the Kingdom of the Westerlands, the Archduchy of Lorraine, and the Principality of Laureh'lin rallied under him to fight the Dwarves. With well-trained, veteran commanders who had earned their renown in the Orcish Subjugation, Krajian Rebellion, and Riga War, the united Orenian army struck with striking speed after they crossed into the borders of Urguan and smashed a surprised Dwarven host, who did not expect Philip I to move with such speed, at the Battle of Mount Gorgon. Content that the Dwarves had learned their lesson, Philip I turned to wipe out the last remaining Orcish settlement, but was delayed by an attempted rebellion by his vassal, House Savoyard. Though the rebellion fails, the Dwarven army takes this time to regroup to reinforce the Orcs. However, a second frustration ended Philip I's ambition for good: in the Archduchy of Lorraine, Tobias of House Staunton inherited the small Barony of Ostwick, from which he rebels and declares the reformation of Courland and his intention to destroy the Empire. Ostwick became the focal point for anti-Imperial factions, and thus Courland formed a massive coalition with the Dwarves, Orcs, Snow Elves, and Norlanders. Philip I wastes little time in responding, and tries to out-speed the Courlandic Coalition and destroy the Orcs by rushing this army through a narrow gorge near the Orcish settlement, but he is cut off by a large Coalition advance force. Pinned between the enemy and the forge, the Orenian crown suffered its first defeat in a field battle in nearly fifty years - since the Siege of Fort Dunamis in the Eighteen Years' War - at the Battle of the Gorge. A delay in the order to retreat, spurned by the Emperor's wrath towards the Coalition, leads to excessive casualties amongst the Orenian side. A year of minor raiding and army movements follow, during which a rumour circulates that John d'Amaury, Archduke of Lorraine, intended to defect to Courland. In response, pro-Imperalist Lorrainians seize control of his capital in the Coup of Metz; while it was never confirmed whether the Archduke actually did plan to change sides, the Coup became a self-fulfilling prophecy that saw John d'Amaury declare for King Tobias. The Coalition quickly begins efforts to retake Metz and lays siege to the city, which begins a high-stakes countdown as the Orenian army rushes to lift the siege before the defenders surrender. On the wind of a morale boost after Grand King Algoda Frostbeard is captured and executed, Emperor Philip I hurries south to Lorraine with his army of humans and Elves. This time, the full might of the Courlandic Coalition was ready to block their path on the massive grain fields on the outskirts of Metz. The infamous Battle of the Goldfields took place in the southern sun, an eight-hour bloodbath where over sixty-thousand soldiers clashed in one of the biggest battles in recorded history. Despite relatively even numbers, the vastly varied warriors of the Coalition allowed them to employ a combination of strategies that Oren ultimately could not withstand, as heavy Dwarven infatry paired with Nordlandic and Courlandic arrow-fire pinned the Orenian infantry, while Haense and Elven horsemen were spread too thin to contain the encirclement by the enemy cavalry. Like a sheet of ice, a final push from the Coalition shattered Philip I's host, handing Oren one of its most significant defeats in all history. Naturally, the aftermath was devastating: Metz was retaken by Archduke John d'Amaury, cementing Coalition control of Lorraine, and Haense, Laureh'lin, and the Westerlands all signed peace agreements with Coalition to exit the war, leaving Philip I and the Orenian crownlands alone. Severan smaller Orenian vassals, namely Cantal and Mardon, followed suit by swearing to King Tobias, and left the Orenian capital of Johannesburg totally exposed. Many of the city's inhabitants evacuate to Haense and the Westerlands. The Coalition lays a heavy siege to the city, exchanging bombardment with the towering walls day and night, as King Tobias prepares to take the capital for his own. Before a full assault is launched on the under-defended city, Emperor Philip I detonates a cache of Thanhium under his palace to completely destroy the city in a freezing explosion. Not only is everyone inside the city killed, but the impact of the blast even caught the Coalition encirclement, killing hundreds before they could pull back out of the blast radius. Thus, the Fall of Johannesburg leaves only an icy crater behind. Though robbed of his capital, King Tobias and his Coalition stood victorious as the new power on the continent. ________________________ III THE BRAWM REBELLION HAENSE v. HOUSE BRAWM 153 - 153 E.S. | 1600 - 1600 A.H. VICTORY Siege of Houndsden (153 E.S. | 1600 A.H.) - Victory Following the Bellum Coaliti, Haense had become an independent kingdom for the first time. A few years of peace followed in which many new settlers came to the frigid northern realm after the fall of Oren while the Kingdom of Courland busied itself with the construction of its new capital far to the south. In this time of growth, House Brawm, infamous for their origin as thieves before they had been given land in Haense by King Andrik II, had long harboured disdain for the reign of the young King Marius I. Not only had House Brawm been the only Haeseni vassal that had supported King Andrik II in the Deep Cold Uprising, but they had also been supporters of King Tobias in the Bellum Coaliti. Lord Reeve Brawm declared rebellion in an infamous showing of poor planning, as his castle of Houndsen was in the very middle of Haense and surrounded by other vassals. From the very start of the war, House Brawm was completely surrounded. King Marius I raised his banners and had little difficulty laying siege to Houndsden. Instead of choosing to starve the rebels out, the Haeseni forces exchanged trebuchet fire in the Siege of Houndsden, and, after brief clashes between the two forces' vanguard outside the keep and the burning of a Haeseni siege tower with Alchemist's Fire, the Brawm trebuchets were disabled. The Haeseni siege engines shelled Houndsden down to rubble, before the army easily walked in to slaughter any surviving rebels to definitively wipe out House Brawm and win the war. ________________________ IV THE GREAT NORTHERN WAR HAENSE v. COURLAND 155 - 157 E.S. | 1602 - 1604 A.H. DEFEAT Battle of Elba (156 E.S. | 1603 A.H.) - Defeat Siege of Vasiland (157 E.S. | 1604 A.H.) - Defeat The war that ended Haense's short-lived autonomy. Despite reaching peace before the Fall of Johannesburg at the end of the Bella Coaliti, tensions existed between the Kongzem of Haense and the Kingdom of Courland since they had fought against each other in the Riga War on Vailor, and these tensions continued to mount now that Courland and Haense were left as the main two human powers on Axios. There were two main catalysts for the war that soon followed: the first was the murder of Prince Meric Staunton at the hands of a rogue Haeseni noble while on a diplomatic mission to Haense; and the second was the abducation of a Princess Anabel of Courland by House Kovachev - who ignored King Marius I's orders to have her released - which led t othe execution of the Duke of Marna, a premier Courlandic vassal, who had tried to negotiate her release. To settle matters, King Marius I dispatched Count Boris var Ruthern as his own diplomat, but he is killed in Aleksandria - the new capital of Courland - in response to the Duke of Marna's death, sparking the war in full. Very unusually, there were almost no allies involved in this war; the Kingdom of the Westerlands was occupied with the Mordring threat in the west, while only Clan Frostbeard of Urguan provided outside aid to Courland. In the build-up to the clash of the human armies, skirmishes occur in the woodlands near the ruins of Johannesburg, marking a no-man's-land of trenches, ruined buildings, and stakewalls. The two armies clash shortly after the new year in the Battle of Elba; here, the highly-skilled Haeseni cavalry under Duke Sergei Kovachev clashes with the Staunton horses, commanded by Sven Staunton, as part of a strategy to wipe out the enemy cavalry and flank the Courlandic infantry, without which the Haeseni infantry could not withstand the larger Courlandic army. The Haeseni horsemen, however, fail to dispatch Sven's cavalry in time, and the Haeseni infantry is forced to retreat in defeat. After an extortionate peace deal was offered by King Tobias and rejected by King Marius I, Courland surprises Haense by ignoring the border castle of Metterden, and instead targetting the fortified seaport of Vasiland. With some assistance from their Dwarven allies, coastal access to Vasiland is blockaded while the main army besieges the fort, intent on starving the Haeseni defenders into surrender. However, King Tobias vastly underestimates the northern cold; once winter arrives, he begins suffering staggering losses from cold and attrition, and is thus forced to revise his strategy and decides to risk an open assault on Vasiland. The gambit pays off, and the Courlanders defeat the tired and demoralised Haeseni defenders after smashing an opening in the wall with trebuchets to secure victory at the Siege of Vasiland. After the defeat, King Marius I convenes with his lords, and they conclude that a sustained war against Courland will only result in further slaughter of their people. In a moment of sorrow that rings across Haeseni history to this day, King Marius I surrenders unconditionally to Courland; his lands are annexed, and he goes into exile with many of his people to the recently-formed Kingdom of Mardon. ________________________ V THE GREYSPINE REBELLION HOUSE RUTHERN, HOUSE BARUCH, HAESENI REMNANTS v. COURLAND 164 - 165 E.S. | 1611 - 1612 A.H. VICTORY The Aleksandrian Incident (164 E.S. | 1611 E.S.) - Defeat Reclamation of Saint's Rest (164 E.S. | 1611 A.H.) - Victory Battle of Rothswald (165 E.S. | 1612 A.H.) - Major Victory One of the most celebrated and storied wars in Haeseni history. After the Kongzem had lost the Great Northern War and the Royal House of Barbanov had gone into exile, the northern lands were divided between Duke Francis of Akovia, Count Joren Ruthern of Metterden, and other minor vassals. After seven years of tenuous peace following Courland's victory, conflict sparked after House Ruthern began to feud with Duke Francis over the annexation of the lands of Istria, which resulted in the death of the Count of Istria, much to the upset of Duke Francis. Before a vassal war could break out, King Joseph of Courland summoned the two nobles to his court in Aleksandria to resolve the issue. Not only did this prove ineffective, but after the King sided with the Duke unilaterally, fighting erupted in the palace that led to the death of the young Count Joren in the Aleksandrian Incident, prompting his House - namely Lords Uthred and Harren Ruthern - to declare open rebellion in their mountainous keep of Greyspine. House Ruthern secured the support of House Baruch and other Haeseni remnants on the condition they retake the Ayrian keep of Saint's Rest, near the old, razed Haeseni capital of Saint Karlsburg. In a daring, lightning assault, the Greyspine Rebels act with their modest troops before the Courlandic army can march north to face them. Using grapples to scale the walls while bombarding the fort with arrows and Alchemist's Fire from the hill overlooking the fort, the Rebellion stormed the keep and wiped out the pro-Courlandic garrison in the Reclamation of Saint's Rest, the first encounter of the war. Fuelled by this victory, scattered Haensemen from the Great Northern War begin to flock back to Haense in droves to join the Rebellion. Harren Ruthern travelled to secure the support of King Marius I's son - Stefan - a figurehead for the rebellion, while also hiring the Horde of Dunamis and Knights of the Black Sepulchre as mercenaries. However, before Lord Harren can return to Haense, the Courlandic army arrives with their allies of Clan Frostbeard. They reinforce Duke Francis of Akovia, who had been struggling to contain the mostly-guerilla rebellion until now, setting up their camp on the north road by Saint Karlsburg. The Rebellion was forced to face Courland in an early battle to prevent them from besieging Metterden, and thus the armies met in the vast snowy field in central Haense -- the famous Battle of the Rothswald. An over-confident Duke Francis expected to crush the Rebellion with brute strength, and marches carelessly into the middle of the Rothswald. The smaller Greyspine host showers the Courlanders with arrows, leading to Duke Francis' fateful decision to take shelter in a ruined manor with only one exit. After bottlenecking himself, the Courlanders fell in droves, and were completely and utterly defeated. When news reached the Courlandic survivors that the Archduchy of Lorraine had also rebelled from Courland following disagreements with King Joseph, the threat of Lorrainian reinforcements blockading the Haeseni valley led to the complete Courlandic withdrawal to Aleksandria, abandoning their control of Haense entirely. Thus, Haense was reclaimed after the fateful victory at the Rothswald and all remaining Courlandic vassals joined the army in fleeing south to Aleksandria. The way was paved for Stefan Barbanov to be elected the next free King of Haense by the reassembled Haeseni nobility, who rebuilt his Royal Court in the humble wooden fort of Alban, at the foot of the Greyspine Mountains. ________________________ VI THE WAR OF THE BEARDS HAENSE, OREN, URGUAN v. KAZ'ULRAH, KRUGMAR, SANTEGIA, NORLAND 184 - 189 E.S. | 1631 - 1636 A.H. DEFEAT Battle of Jornheim Fields (186 E.S. | 1634 A.H.) - Defeat Siege of Fort Vanir (187 E.S. | 1635 A.H.) - Defeat After the formation of the 6th Holy Orenian Empire from within the Kingdom of Mardon, Haense once again joined as a stalwart vassal. However, Oren soon learned the military supremacy that had characterised the 5th Empire until its downfall in the Bellum Coaliti was a thing of the past. In an unlikely turn of events, Emperor Peter II and Haeseni King Otto II found themselves allies with the Grand Kingdom of Urguan, whom they had fought dozens of wars against throughout the past two centuries, after the disenfranchised Clan Frostbeard abandoned Urguan to create their own Dwarven nation, Kaz'Ulrah, from their mountain stronghold of New Jornheim. At first, the two Dwarven realms coexisted, but this delicate peace was inevitably shattered by a feud among the Silvervein Clan. Many of the Clan had defected to Kaz'Ulrah, but their founder Throri Stonemace refused to leave Urguan. When a Silvervein delegation from Kaz'Ulrah travelled to the Urguani capital of Kal'Omith to try and persuade Throri to join them, the Grand Legion of Urguan assaulted the Silverveins, beating them an inch within death. A vain attempt to keep peace between the two nations followed, featuring an honour duel at Cloud Temple, but when his champion was defeated, Grand King Zahrer Irongrinder refused to pay the agreed compensation to Kaz'Ulrah for the attack on the Silverveins, and so High King Verthaik Frostbeard of Kaz'Ulrah declared war. Urguan made a surprising alliance with Oren, but this proved to be a double-edged sword; seeking to contain any Orenian aggression, Norland and the newly-formed Santegia joined with Kaz'Ulrah. The Human-Dwarf host seized the initiative after joining together near the ruins of Johannsburg, and marched on New Jornheim to prevent Kaz'Ulrah from launching their own offensive. On the foothills of the mountains, the armies met in the Battle of Jornheim Fields, where the large hosts exchanging volleys from hilltops and vanguard skirmishes to little effect, before the Kaz'Ulran coalition assailed the enemy position with Alchemist's Fire to force them off the hill and into a charge. While, at first, the Human-Dwarf army transitioned into an effective counterattack, the coalition vanguard was reinforced by the rest of the army, trapping them between the Kaz'Ulrans and the burning hilltop. The Human-Dwarf army was forced to retain a defensive position that cost hundreds of soldiers, before the flames died down enough for them to retreat to the nearby Haeseni seaport of Fort Vanir with massive casualties. The Kaz'Ulran coalition pursued down from the mountains, undeterred by Fort Vanir's heavy defensives, and laid siege to the castle. The Siege of Fort Vanir lives in history for the daring feat of one of the mercenary companies in Kaz'Ulrah's employ; from atop the nearby mountains, they leapt off the slopes with hand-gliders, with which they used to drop Alchemist's Fire over the Fort. With the defenders left in complete disarray and unable to operate their siege engines, Kaz'Ulrah moved their own trebuchets forward to shell an opening in the walls, which they charged to secure victory. After the defeat at Fort Vanir, the Orenian Empire and its Haeseni vassal left the war. The Grand Kingdom of Urguan formally surrendered to Kaz'Ulrah the following year, and was annexed, cementing Kaz'Ulrah as the only Dwarven nation. ________________________ VII THE THIRD CRUSADE HAENSE, OREN/MARDON, RENATUS, REITERS v. NORLAND, SANTEGIA, KAZ'ULRAH, KRUGMAR 191 - 194 E.S. | 1638 - 1641 A.H. VICTORY Battle of the Bloody Road (191 E.S. | 1638 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of Rochdale (193 E.S. | 1640 A.H.) - Victory Siege of Vjorhelm (194 E.S. | 1641 A.H.) - Victory The final war fought on the Isles of Axios. After the defeat of Oren and Urguan in the War of the Beards, the pagans of Norland sought to capitalise on this and avenge the Sack of Seahelm from nearly a century ago. However, while the Norlanders were marching, the Orenian capital of Adelburg was usurped by Aurelius Horen, an act which shatters the Holy Orenian Empire into the Kingdom of Marna, and the Kingdom of Renatus. It also restores Haense's independence. In disarray from this political upheavel, the Orenian - now Marnan - garrison preparing to intercept the Norlanders are thinned when half of them are recalled to the capital in the aftermath of the coup, leaving the other half to suffer defeat at the hands of the Norlanders in the Battle of the Bloody Road. The Norland army proceeds into the former Imperial heartlands, only to learn that they are now ruled by Renatus. Unwilling to fight Renatus out of either self-preservation or a desire for friendly relations, Norland returns home. The war might have ended there if not for events in the Kingdom of Santegia, where King Leo IV exiles all clergymen and denounces the Canonist Church after repeated raids by the Holy Order of Saint Lucien. High Pontiff Everard IV consequently declares a holy crusade against not only Santegia, but also Norland, and so the Kongzem of Haense joined forces with Mardon and Renatus, alongside several holy orders and mercenary companies such as the Reiters. This crusader army marches towards Norland, and avenges the Bloody Road and the Battle of Rochdale, where the combined Canonist host almost trapped the entire Norlander army in an encirclement before King Javier of Norland calls a retreat back to their homeland. Shortly after Rochdale, High Pontiff Everard IV and King Leo IV agree to peace terms that dictate that Santegia becomes Canonist again and assists in the crusade against Norland. Now reinforced by Santegians, the Canonist army marches into Norland, where King Javier pulls all his people back into the capital of Vjorhelm, abandoning the countryside. After besieging the capital for five months, the Siege of Vjorhelm takes place, a bloody battle in which the Norlandic defence had to be undermined with sappers to disrupt their archers and allow the crusaders to erect siege ladders to breach the keep, and fight for a gritty close-quarters victory. After the battle, the then-King of Norland, Jevan I, flees the occupied capital, leaving Jory Ruric as King, who in turn swears fealty to Aurelius as a vassal of Renatus. With both Norland and Santegia capitulated, the war ends, and the Descendants turn their attention to the Mordskov Incident and the subsequent exodus from Axios. 196 - 257 E.S. | 1643 - 1705 A.H. ATLAS Atlas was a time of great upheaval and conflict for the Haeseni people. For the first time, it migrated with the Descendants as an independent kingdom since the collapse of the 6th Holy Orenian Empire. Fuelled with renewed zeal and endurance following its victory in the Greyspine Rebellion, Haense stood ready for the challenges of Atlas -- or so it thought. Led to the these new lands under King Otto III the Builder, an enemy slowly reared its head in the form of the Renatus Imperium, or Empire of Man, who would go on to usurp the reformed Holy Orenian Empire, from which Haense was independent at the time, and launch a viscous conquest across most of Atlas, eventually leading to Haense joining under it several decades later. Other than minor wars and the Renatian conquests, Atlas was also characterised by the Vaeyl Wars, a generation-spanning conflict against the Vaeyl Order, natives and original lords of Atlas before the Descendants arrival. I. The Czena Conflict (206 - 209 E.S. | 1653 - 1656 A.H.) - Defeat II. First Atlas Coalition War (210 - 216 E.S. | 1657 - 1663 A.H.) - Defeat III. Second Atlas Coalition War (220 - 222 E.S. | 1667 - 1669 A.H.) - Defeat IV. Third Atlas Coalition War (242 - 245 E.S. | 1689 - 1692 A.H.) - Victory V. The Vaeyl Wars (199 - 258 E.S. | 1646 - 1705 A.H.) - Stalemate ________________________ I THE CZENA CONFLICT HAENSE, CURON, SANTEGIA v. RENATUS 206 - 209 E.S. | 1653 - 1656 A.H. DEFEAT First Raid of Markev (206 E.S. | 1653 A.H.) - Victory First Raid of Cyrilsburg (206 E.S. | 1653 A.H.) - Defeat Second Raid of Markev (207 E.S. | 1654 A.H.) - Defeat Second Raid of Cyrilsburg (208 E.S. | 1655 A.H.) - Defeat Third Raid of Cyrilsburg (209 E.S. | 1656 A.H.) - Victory After usurping the Kingdom of Marna, the Kingdom of Renatus turned their eyes further afield. To become the sovereigns of mankind in truth, Haense, Santegia, and Curon, among other smaller human factions, became their natural enemies. After initial small-scale borders raids in each of these lands, these human nations united to create the Czena Confederation to oppose the Renatian expansion. In reality, the Czena Conflict served to set the stage for the much larger Atlas Coalition Wars to follow, and rather than any pitched battles that saw loss of territory, instead the Czena Conflict was confined to massive raids that saw the two armies pit their strength against each other. A Renatian warband remained in southern Atlas, where the Czena Confederation was based, and travelled between the enemy nations, methodically trying their hand at breaching the walls. The Haeseni red walls stood in the First Raid of Markev, however the low-walls of Curon proved easy targets for the Renatian warband in the First and Second Raid of Curon, while they also succeeded in killing more Haeseni defenders in the Second Raid of Markev. The Confederation prevailed at the Third Raid of Curon thanks to the aid of the Reiver Mercenaries. After their second defeat, the warband returned to the Renatian crownlands and, under increasing pressure from the Empire of Man, the Czena Confederation disbanded largely thanks to the defection of Curon and Santegia to Renatus. ________________________ II THE FIRST ATLAS COALITION WAR HAENSE, HAELUN'OR, NORLAND v. RENATUS, SANTEGIA, CURON, KRUGMAR, DOMINION, KAZ'ULRAH 210 - 216 E.S. | 1657 - 1663 A.H. DEFEAT Battle of the Sleeping Swamps (213 E.S. | 1660 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of the Forkwoods (214 E.S. | 1661 A.H.) - Defeat Storming of Cyrilsburg (215 E.S. | 1662 A.H.) - Defeat Siege of Ruriksgrad (215 E.S. | 1662 A.H.) - Major Defeat The direct, and much larger, sequel to the Czena Conflict. After the Renatian warbands had familiarised themselves with the southern landscape in the Czena Conflict, it began immediate preparations for attempts at annexation. With both Curon and Santegia now under the yoke of Renatus, King Karl II of Haense was forced to seek new allies to withstand the conflict he knew was coming, and these allies came in the form of the atheists of the Silver State of Haelun'or and the pagans of Norland, who dubbed themselves the United Southern Alliance. In response, Renatus formed the Northern Atlas Alliance, comprised of itself, Santegia, Curon, Krugmar, the Wood Elven Dominion, and the Dwarves of Kaz'Ulrah, and came to vastly outnumber their southern counterpart. The two armies mobilised, and it was more than mere warbands that crossed into the Czena plains this time: Renatian raiders turned the borders of Haense and Norland red in the build-up to their first major clash in the Battle of the Sleeping Swamps, which came about after Renatus forced a battle on the lands between Haense and Norland, where the Southern Alliance had been trying to secure the border against Renatus so that there was a secure line of transportation between the Haeseni capital of Markev, and the Norlandic capital of Ruriksgrad. Renatus showcased its reformed army, which used light and quick tactics as opposed to traditional preference for heavy armour in past empires, and proved highly effective at harrying the defensive position of the Southern formations who hoped to wear the Renatians out in a battle of attrition. After this defeat, Renatus led their allies further into Norlander territory, cementing their control of the borderlands several months later in the Battle of the Forkwoods, which drove a serious logistical division between Norland and the rest of the Southern Alliance. While they gradually prepared to besiege Ruriksgrad and annex Norland, Renatus was briefly distracted by rumours that Curon was preparing to rejoin Haense to oppose Renatus. When the rumours turned to truth following a declaration by the Curonian Prince that the pact between Curon and Renatus was null and void, the Count of Gotha was dispatched from Renatus to put down the rebellion. Backed by Renatians legionnaires, the Count secued Cyrilsburg by force, quelling a brief resistance at the city gates with bloodshed before the rest of the city surrendered in the Storming of Cyrilsburg. Curon, as punishment, was then dissolved. With all opposition out of the way, Renatus returned its attention to Ruriksgrad in the south. The high-spirited Renatian alliance wasted little more time before launching a full and victorious assault, capturing the capital in the Siege of Ruriksgrad with relative ease. Norland was consequently annexed, and Haelun'or announced its withdrawal from the United Southern Alliance, leaving Haense with no allies. Despite this, Renatus chose to reach a temporary peace with the Kongzem while it consolidated its new control over Norland, and ensuring it was not weak to anymore Curonian incidents, and so the war ended. But the peace would not last long. ________________________ III THE SECOND ATLAS COALITION WAR HAENSE, COURLAND, CONFEDERATION OF HAMMERS, REIVERS v. RENATUS, SANTEGIA, NORLAND, KRUGMAR, DOMINION, KAZ'ULRAH 220 - 222 E.S. | 1667 - 1669 A.H. DEFEAT The Crimson Coronation (220 E.S. | 1667 A.H.) - Defeat Siege of Whitepeak (221 E.S. | 1668 A.H.) - Major Defeat Siege of Cyrilsburg (222 E.S. | 1669 A.H.) - Defeat Siege of Ashwood (222 E.S. | 1669 A.H.) - Defeat Also known as the Staunton Uprising. In a bizarre turn of events, the Kongzem of Haense found themselves fighting alongside their former mortal enemies, Courland. After prolonged tension between two Renatian vassals - Ostmark and Styria - led to the execution of Count Eimar of Ostmark, the widowed Countess gifted all her late husband's lands and titles to Tobias Staunton, a member of Eimar's court, who immediately declared the reformation of the independent Kingdom of Courland, and himself as King Tobias II. After brief and failed negotiations, Renatus declared war to reclaim its lost territories and stomp out the Staunton rebellion. Although Renatus was advantaged with its well-drilled army, now comprised of plenty of seasoned veterans from the First Coalition War, King Tobias II offset this by bolstering his own levies by forming a new coalition, the Anti-Renatus Alliance, with the Reiver Mercenaries and the Dwarves of the Confederation of Hammers. Meanwhile, as the two factions prepared for battle, King Franz II of Haense had his coronation interupted by Renatian raiders, who captured the young king and brought him before Emperor Aurelius of Renatus in the Crimson Coronation. When King Franz II refused to swear unconditional fealty, he was executed, and drove Haense to join the Anti-Renatus Alliance. Their aid, however, did nothing to avert the same fate as the prior coalition war; after a five-month siege of the Courlandic capital, Renatus and its vassals brazenly charged the walls, relying on siege ladders instead of conventional artillery, and triumphed at the Siege of Whitepeak, after which the Confederation of Hammers withdrew from the Alliance. With their forces in disarray after Whitepeak, Renatian warbands, in rapid succession, stormed the remaining pockets of Courlandic support. The Siege of Cyrilsburg and the Siege of Ashwood occurred back to back, with the main Coalition unable to reach the settlements in time to even contest their fall. Consequently, Tobias II's short-lived Kingdom was effectively destroyed, and he and his supports went into hiding. Just after these battles, the Haeseni succession crisis caused by the Crimson Coronation was resolved by the ascension of King Sigmar Barbanov-Bihar to the throne, the first King from the Biharian cadet branch of House Barbanov, who secures white peace with the Renatians after a second failed coalition war. Not long after, King Sigmar I suffered a humilating defeat to a much smaller, Renatian-enforced rebellion in the Battle of the Manor, after which he voluntarily swore fealty to Renatus after generations of Haeseni resistance. ________________________ IV THE THIRD ATLAS COALITION WAR RENATUS, HAENSE, GLADEWYNN v. NORLAND, ARBERRANG, KRUGMAR, KAZ'ULRAH 242 - 245 E.S. | 1689 - 1692 A.H. VICTORY Siege of Nordengrad (243 E.S. | 1690 A.H.) - Victory Siege of San'Kala (243 E.S. | 1690 A.H.) - Victory Siege of Arberrang (244 E.S. | 1691 A.H.) - Victory Siege of Kal'Tarak (245 E.S. | 1692 A.H.) - Victory In the two decades since the defeat at Whitepeak, King Sigmar I pledged fealty and joined Renatus' Empire of Man. While the controversial decision would forever be plagued with criticism, it certainly bode well for the Kongzem's internal stability, if not for their pride. Although now on a different side, the Third Coalition still occurred as a result of Haense; after rumours that the Haeseni vassal of Arberrang was planning to rebel and seize independence, King Robert I, King Sigmar's successor, sent his Knight-Paramount - Hans de Ruyter - to investigate. In reality, the cunning King Robert I wanted to bait the Arberrangers into rebellion so that he could give their lands back to House Baruch, which had long claimed their territory was stolen, and to preemptively address the seditious intentions of Arberrang. In a surprising turn, however, Arberrang appeals to aid from Earl Torsten of Nordengrand, which was also a vassal of Renatus at the time. Earl Torsten answered Arberrang's plea, and led an unsuccesful raid on the Haeseni capital of Markev, before he raised the stakes by declaring himself King of Norland and rebelling from Renatus. With Arberrang, the Warnation of Krugmar, and the Dwarven Kingdom of Kaz'Ulrah, Torsten formed the Anti-Empire Coalition to kickstart the war. Fighting on the same side as Renatus for the first time since the Third Crusade at the end of Axios, the Renatian force cleaved through the Norlandic hinterlands until they reached Nordengrad itself. A two-month operation to capitulate the farms and countryside culiminated in the Siege of Nordengrad shortly after the harvest. Despite the near-impenetrable Norlandic citadel of the New Krag, the battle was won after a Farfolk warrior - Muhammad ibn Qasim - single-handedly infilitrated the castle and opened the gate, alowing the Renatian, Haeseni, and Elven attackers, who had been pinned artilery fire, to storm the fortress and force King Torsten to flee. This extinguished the Coalition's fire, and thus the Empire of Man had little difficulty in marching their forces further north to the Orcish stronghold of San'Kala, whose main interest in the war was to weaken the Elven nation of Gladewynn, and smashed the keep to bits with hilltop trebuchet fire before the Haeseni and Renatians braved a tide of flaming arrows to strike at the last remaining tower in the holdfast, an endeavour which cost hundreds of lives to claim victory at the Siege of San'Kala. With its obligations to Renatus and Gladewynn fulfilled, Haense turned its attention back home, where Arberrang remained open rebellion as one of the last remaining strongholds of the Coalition. While Renatus and Gladewynn prepared to deal with the Dwarven members of the Coalition, Haense prepared to annihilate Arberrang, even after the pagan settlement had tried to offer peace terms. Arberrang was a small township with only wooden palsiades and manors for defence, and so, desptie the large Coalition garrison positioned there, the Haeseni army had little trouble expunging the rebels and putting them to the sword in the Siege of Arberrang. Meanwhile, to the north, Renatus and Gladewynn marched into the Dwarven lands of High King Thoak Goldhand of Kaz'Ulrah, who led the rest of the Coalition forces. After nearly a year-long siege of his capital, the treacherous assault of the mountain city - the Siege of Kal'Tarak - began, marked by trebuchet bombardment from both sides that eventually yielded an opening through the city's main gates after Renatus were forced to adapt their trebuchet positions three times to gain a proper angle on the Dwarven gate. Once the opening was made, however, the Renatians were able to storm into the city using battering rams that took them all the way to the Kaz'Ulran throne room, where they declared victory against the High King, and the Coalition forces as a whole, ending the third consecutive coalition and further cementing Renatian dominance over Altas. ________________________ V THE VAEYL WARS THE DESCENDANT RACES v. THE VAEYL ORDER 199 - 258 E.S. | 1646 - 1705 A.H. STALEMATE Revenge at Markev (199 E.S. | 1646 A.H.) - Defeat Battle for Curon (203 E.S. | 1650 A.H.) - Victory Battle of Poppy Hill (205 E.S. | 1652 A.H.) - Major Victory Choking of Santegia (226 E.S. | 1673 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of the Burning Snow (238 E.S. | 1685 A.H.) - Defeat Struggle for the Borderlands (245 E.S. | 1692 A.H.) - Victory Battle of the Snowfields (250 E.S. | 1697 A.H.) - Victory Battle of the Darkways (251 E.S. | 1698 A.H.) - Victory Siege of Lasthope (251 E.S. | 1699 A.H.) - Victory Battle of Caer Badyn (258 E.S. | 1705 A.H.) - Victory The Vaeyl Wars were a decades-long clash between the immortal Vaeyl Order and the Descendant races for control of Atlas. After a tragic and gruelling history, the Vaeyl Order - a remnant of Horen’s army that had fought in the mythic Thirty Years’ War - had been cursed with the ability to regenerate from nearly all wounds. Fiercely protective of their homeland, they brooked little mercy for the Descendants that they discovered invaders. The legendary conflict began its slow build-up after a Haeseni expedition travelled to the frozen fortress of the Vaeyl, Lasthope, and stole their sacred artefact, the Oathstone, from which they gained their immortality. In response, the Vaeyl Order - though very few in number, now - stirred from their slumber and sought to reclaim their relic in the Revenge at Markev, a raid in which the Haeseni witnessed the resurrection powers of the Order first hand and suffered huge losses, though kept the Oathstone. Thereafter, the otherwise peaceful period of early Atlas was marred by continual border raids near the Yatl Wasteland, the most notable of which was when the Order used portals to transport troops to attack Cyrilsburg in the Battle for Curon, at which they were repelled. The Vaeyl remain focused on retrieving the Oathstone from Haeseni hands, which they finally succeeded in doing after a Haeseni captain stole the Oathstone back from King Otto III in a vain attempt to secure peace with the Order. At last, the Kongzem of Haense united with the Holy Orenian Empire and several Elven nations to face the Vaeyl Order at their snowy encampment at the Battle of Poppy Hill. Despite the immortality of the Vaeyl, they were vastly outnumbered, and forced to retreat to Lasthope after their field commander - General Vanhart - was permanently slain by beheading. The Vaeyl Order faded into obscurity for a time: though they remained at Lasthope and carried out some raiding, the fortress was in the depths of the frozen Yatl Wasteland and no Descendant nation could hope to besiege it. The Descendant nations themselves largely became occupied with the Renatian conflicts in the form the Czena, First, and Second Coalition Wars, which similarly frustrated a unified response to continued Vaeyl Order attacks. After the ancient Smoke Drake Avendal was released from a Vaeyl-made temple, which proceeded to wreak havoc on the Descendant lands in savage attacks, particularly at the Choking of Santegia. Under the leadership of two Wick mages, a Haeseni party tracked Avendal down to the Yatl Wastes where they did battle, finally killing the savage Drake in the Battle of the Burning Snow. However, the Vaeyl Order intervened, using the Oathstone to resurrect Avendal as their thrall. Years continued to pass, marked by small clashes while the Descendants waged larger wars with each other. However, the Vaeyl problem remained, but now some of the Vaeyl Order began to concede that it may be better to strike a peace and work together with the Descendants to protect their homeland, but this prospect was abhorred by other Vaeyl Knights. This led to a split in the Order, creating the pro-Descendant White Vaeyl, and the anti-Descendant Red Vaeyl. As the White Vaeyl began to forge fragile alliances with Haense and some other Descendant races, they began to move towards an eventual assault on Lasthope to defeat the Red Vaeyl. To do so, they faced the daunting challenge of forging a siege-path to the frozen castle, starting with the Struggle for the Borderlands where they warred against the Red Vaeyl in a string of bloody clashes to secure a path into the Yatl Wastelands. After King Robert I joined Haense under the Empire of Man, the Empire and their allies began a deadly and bitter march to transport siege engines through the endless snows of Yatl with the aid of the White Vaeyl. As they approached Lasthope, they were harried by Red Vaeyl warbands who jeopardised the erection of siege lines, and so they were forced to fight in the Battle of the Snowfields, a several-day affair that saw the Red Vaeyl use their advantage in their home turf to inflict devastating losses on the attacking Descendants, but superior numbers ultimately allowed them to prevail. Siege lines were established, but because the Descendant armies could not afford to wait in the bitter cold, the alliance of Descendant races and the White Vaeyl immediately prepared to attack Lasthope. Just before the assault, a small detachment of Descendants from several nations attempted to intercept Red Vaeyl flankers in the network of void portals known as the Darkways, which would have allowed them to appear behind the attacking army through a secret portal. The interceptors were defeated in the Battle of the Darkways, but they inflicted sufficient losses on the Red Vaeyl flank to render their ambush ineffective. In the Siege of Lasthope itself, the large Descendant army - mainly Renatians and Haeseni - battered an opening in the fortress, before storming it and successfully driving out the Red Vaeyl with no small amount of bloodshed. As the Red Vaeyl retreated over the fabled ice wall - Krug’s Folly - into the frozen ravines of Serrimor, they adopted a new strategy: through their unique weather magic of Stormsinging, they began to send an endless blizzard to drown the Descendant lands in inhospitable cold. As this blizzard slowly crept north into Haense and beyond, killing harvests and people, the clock began to tick to undo it. Working with the White Vaeyl, the Descendants drove the Red Vaeyl out of their last northern outpost in the Battle of Endmoor, in which they established an allied camp. Unable to stop the Red Stormsingers without the aid of the White Vaeyl, the Descendant nations variously, and reluctantly, made pacts with the White Vaeyl, promising they would leave Atlas if they worked together to stop the Red Vaeyl’s plans to kill them all. Under the guidance of the White Vaeyl, the Descendants gathered the four seals needed to open Krug’s Folly and migrated their people into Serrimor. There, on the long march through the canyons, they joined together with the White Vaeyl one last time to slaughter the last of the Red Vaeyl at the Battle of Caer Baddyn, before sailing from the southernmost point of Serrimor to Arcas, leaving Atlas in the hands of the White Vaeyl as per their pact. Once the conflict was done and the Red Vaeyl blizzard ended, some Descendants theorised that the split between the Red and the White Vaeyl had been deliberately orchestrated as a bloody, but successful, method of securing Atlas for the Vaeyl Order. Regardless, as the conflict ended, so too did the Descendant occupation of Atlas. 257 - 349 E.S. | 1705 - 1796 A.H. ARCAS After the gruelling wars of Atlas, Arcas became a proving ground for the growing Kongzem. With this ambition came countless trials and tribulations that would culminate in some of the most renowned and infamous wars in all history, namely the War of the Two Emperors. However, having been humbled many times by the Empire of Man before joining them for many battles in the latter half of Atlas, both against other Descendants and the immortal Vaeyl, the warriors of Haense had been tempered for endurance, hardship, and battle, and Arcas would test this to the highest degree. After settling in the north of the new continent in the city of Reza under King Robert I - though the capital would later be rebuilt by King Andrik III as New Reza - the Brotherhood of Saint Karl, which would later become the Haeseni Royal Army again, stood alert and ready for the threats they would face in this new land. When these threats came, they came like lightning. I. War of the Two Emperors (268 - 274 E.S. | 1715 - 1721 A.H.) - Defeat II. The Lorrainian Revolt (282 - 283 E.S. | 1729 - 1730 A.H.) - Victory III. The Rubern War (293 - 313 E.S. | 1740 - 1760 A.H.) - Victory IV. The Scyfling Invasion (320 - 330 E.S. | 1767 - 1777 A.H.) - Victory V. The Begrudged War (328 - 333 E.S. | 1775 - 1780 A.H.) - Defeat VI. The Inferi Invasion (331 - 335 E.S. | 1778 - 1792 A.H.) - Victory ________________________ I WAR OF THE TWO EMPERORS OREN, HAENSE, CURON, ADRIA, LEUVEN, FENN, ELVENESSE, REIVERS v. RENATUS, NORLAND, KADARSI, HAELUN'OR, KRUGMAR, COURLAND 268 - 274 E.S. | 1715 - 1721 A.H. DEFEAT Battle of Upper Rodenburg (268 E.S. | 1715 A.H.) - Victory Battle of Lower Rodenburg (268 E.S. | 1715 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of Helena Fields (268 E.S. | 1715 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of Nordengrad (269 E.S. | 1716 A.H.) - Defeat Siege of Helena (269 E.S. | 1716 A.H.) - Major Defeat Battle of the Rivers (269 E.S. | 1716 A.H.) - Defeat First Battle of Leuven (269 E.S. | 1716 A.H.) - Defeat Second Battle of Leuven (271 E.S. | 1718 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of the Silver Sea (272 E.S. | 1719 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of the Koengswald (273 E.S. | 1720 A.H.) - Defeat One of the most prolific wars in modern history. Prince Joseph I had planned to coup Antonius I, Emperor of Man, for some years before Antonius I abruptly dissolved the entire Empire of Man. In a scramble to fill the massive power vacuum, Joseph I declared himself Holy Orenian Emperor with the support of the Kongzem of Haense, Curonia, Ves, Leuven, Fenn, Elvenesse, and the Reiver mercenaries, while a council of Antonious’ kin of the Pertinaxi lineage declared the young child Godfrey III as Emperor of Renatus, liege of Norland, Kadarsi, Haelun’or, Krugmar, and Courland. When Haense marched under King Marius II with Joseph I in a preemptive strike against the Renatians, it sparked one of history’s bloodiest wars. All across the freshly-settled continent, armies mobilised as Joseph I and Godfrey III prepared to vindicate their claims to the throne of mankind on the battlefield. In a bid to secure an early victory, Emperor Joseph I had his army began to move down towards the Renatian capital of Helena in the hopes of cutting Godfrey III off from his allies, but the Renatians - masters of war from their many conflicts on Atlas - were ready to intercept. Despite this, the Orenian faction secured an early and motivating victory in the Battle of Upper Rodenburg where their numbers forced the Renatian defenders back towards their crowndlands. Unbeknowist to the Orenians, however, this would be their sole victory -- as they continued, they learned that the clash in Upper Rodenburg had served to buy the rest of the Renatian forces time to assemble, and battle blazed once more in the Battle of Lower Rodenburg. This time, though, the more numerous and organised Renatian soldiers would not give under the emboldened Orenian advance. After wearing out Joseph I's attackers in a defensive formation for two years, the Renatians abruptly transitioned into an offensive charge, catching the tired Orenians off-guard and claiming victory for Godfrey III. With the realisation that Renatus would not be as easily toppled as they once thought, doubts began to spread amongst some of Joseph I's allies, doubts which were further nurtured by Renatian subterfuge, and which led some minor allies defecting to support Godfrey III. Regardless, Joseph I still had a large army, and proceeded with his ambitions. After a second incursion towards Helena was repelled by Renatus at the Battle of Helena Fields, Joseph I's army retreated from the crownlands to reorganise for several months. When a childhood friend of King Marius II - Cylus Caunter - was kidnapped by Norlanders shortly into the following year, the Haeseni King mobilised his Brotherhood to try and rescue him with the rest of Joseph I's supporters. After news of these mobilising spread to Nordengrad, King Alvar of Norland sent for reinforcements from his Renatian overlords in Helena, and so the forces of both Emperors hurried to reach Norland first. Neglecting advanced scouting formations out of a need for haste, both armies stumbled into each other unexpectedly, leading to a bloody and chaotic melee on the border of Norland with the Battle of Nordengrad. However, the superior warring experience of the Renatian commanders allowed them to be the first side to pull their soldiers into formation, under which the scattered Orenians crumbled to conclude with a decisive Renatian victory. Any doubts that Godfrey III's council were unable to keep their army together against Joseph I were eliminated; with their backbone of Renatian veterans reinforced by their many allies, no longer could anyone deny they had the winning hand. With his morale falling apart, Emperor Joseph I knew he had to stake everything on a winner-takes-all battle. And so, the Renatian army remained camped in Nordengrad for some time to celebrate after their victory and the hard-march it had taken to get there, and they expected no Orenian counterattack after their defeat. Joseph I, however, marched his full force through the Haeseni hinterlands, off the main road, and cut down south towards Helena, bypassing the Renatian outposts on the road. This climaxed in the fateful Siege of Helena. In this intense battle - which, despite the result at Nordengrad, would undoubtedly determine which Emperor would prevail - the Orenians breached the walls after six-hours of bombardment and attempts to erect siege ladders. Many soldiers and onlookers took this to be a death knell of Renatus - the walls of their capital had fallen, and Joseph I's army was inside. The Renatian garrison enacted a full retreat, abandoning the walls and city alike as they fell back to Godfrey III's palace. Chaos consumed the streets of Helena, in which both armies were in disarray from the breach, and suffered staggering losses before the battle finally moved to the palace. Here, both sides were nearly completely spent -- a mere token garrison of elite warriors held the throne room, while Joseph I's army had suffered enormous casualties. It was written in blood that the winner of this final push would go on to be the true Emperor, but God was not with Joseph I as he charged the throne room and was forced back, and pulled out of the city. Much like the Battle of the Goldfields had for Emperor Philip I over a century ago, the bitter defeat at Helena shattered Joseph I's army; Curonia switched sides as Renatus capitalised on its narrow win to drive the last of Joseph I's attacking army out of their territory at the Battle of the Rivers, before securing the border at the Battle of Leuven, regaining any morale they had lost after Helena's walls had been stormed. Prospects continued to worsen when King Marius II was assassinated in his own gardens, suspiciously after a feud with his council, which left his young son to take the throne under regency. Around the same time, the Adrians of Ves signed peace terms with Renatus to exit the war. Left bearing the brunt of Renatian aggression, the Haeseni Regency under Prince Georg Stanimar also tried to reach peace with Renatus. This act has been widely condemned as a dishonourable choice by modern historians, in no small part because Renatus refused peace with Haense, and instead made them their primary target. Haense's act drove the Snow Elves of Fenn to abandon the war, and Renatus and its child Emperor honed their sights on the Haeseni capital of Reza, securing encirclement of the Haeseni border after the back-to-back victories at the Battle of the Silver Sea and the Battle of the Koengswald. With Renatus on their doorstep and little allies remaining, Haense took yet another blow when the Lord-Regent Georg Stanimar, alongside his brother Prince Godfric Alimar, were captured by Renatian Dragon Knights and executed, leaving Lerald Vyronov as Regent of the young King Andrik III. Haense grimly braced itself to fight for its survival in what it thought was an inevitable assault on Reza, but this dreaded siege never came -- instead, a final plea of peace led to tense negotiations, at the end of which the Treaty of Reza was signed to end the devastating war after Haense vassalised under Renatus. The conflict served as Renatus' swan song, as after the peace, the Pertinaxi lineage dissolved the nation. The short-lived successor state - Cascadia - quickly became the 8th Holy Orenian Empire in an ironic turn of fate, which Haense became a part of once again. ________________________ II THE LORRAINIAN REVOLT OREN, HAENSE, ADRIA, KAEDRIN v. LORRAINE 282 E.S. - 283 E.S. | 1729 - 1730 A.H. VICTORY Siege of Guise (283 E.S. | 1730 A.H.) - Victory The first of Haense’s wars under the reformed Orenian Empire. Conflict began to brew in the Empire when Leufroy d’Amaury was landed as Duke of Lorraine next to the Duchy of Adria, their historic enemies, and tensions inevitably rose as a result which went unaddressed by the absent Emperor Alexander II. At the same time, similar tensions stirred between the Kongzem of Haense and Kaedrin, the latter of which had taken to insulting and assaulting Haeseni nobles. The conflicts began to coalesce when, after an Adrian former was assaulted by a Lorrainian soldier, Duke Adrian of Adria called upon his Haeseni allies to confront the Lorrainians, but open battle was forestalled by negotiations and the Haensemen returned home. With still no intervention by the Emperor, despite an infamous row between the Empress Mother and King Andrik III over the issue in Reza, men from Kaedrin attempted to kill Lord Erich Stafyr and Sigmar Baruch, both of whom were lords of Haense. The duo escaped, and when King Andrik III learned of this, the Haeseni army joined the forces of Rubern and Adria in marching against Kaedrin in retribution with a force of over four thousand men. Upon meeting with the Kaedrini, however, they learned that the men who had attacked the nobles had in fact been dissidents allied with Lorraine, whose goal had been to pressure the Kaedrini to ally with Lorraine against Adria by sparking conflict. Quickly after, Kaedrin joined Haense and the others in arresting the Lorrainian conspirators led by Lewis of Lorraine, who was brought to Reza and executed. The joined armies rode to Lorraine itself, where the Lorrainians sheltered the attack within their walls. The Emperor finally took action, revoking the Duchy of Lorraine and calling Leufroy d’Amaury to stand trial for treason, but Lorraine forces began a guerilla war across the Empire while operating from the castle of Guise. Haense and the other vassals laid siege to the castle, culminating in the Siege of Guise, which finally put down the conspiracy. ________________________ III THE RUBERN WAR HOLY ORENIAN EMPIRE v. THE ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENT STATES 293 E.S. - 313 E.S. | 1740 - 1760 A.H. VICTORY The Three Skirmishes (293 E.S. | 1740 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of Helena Fields (294 E.S. | 1741 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of Hangman’s Bridge (295 E.S. | 1742 A.H.) - Victory Doran’s Folly (295 E.S. | 1742 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of Adria (304 E.S. | 1753 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of Krasna (305 E.S. | 1754 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of Rubern (307 E.S. | 1756 A.H.) - Victory Also known as the Alliance of Independent States, or AIS, War. After tensions had mounted between Morsgrad and both Haense and the Orenian Empire, Duke Godric of Morsgrad formed the Alliance of Independent States with a vast number of smaller nations to combat any future aggression from the Empire, and this aggression came in the form of the King of Auvernge, a member of the A.I.S., getting captured by Haeseni raiders who had been hunting deserters. Godric led a host of A.I.S. soldiers to Reza, demanding that King Andrik III pay blood-money or in bloodshed for the capture; in response, King Andrik III claimed the capture had been a mistake, and offered negotiation to resolve the issue. When Godric declined, he issued an ultimatum to the Holy Orenian Empire as a whole, which Emperor Peter III refused, sparking the war in earnest. The war was largely constituted by intense but small pitched battles between forces. The AIS dominated in these initial clashes, starting with the Three Skirmishes of Rubern at the outbreak of the conflict, in which Emperor Peter III himself was captured and sustained serious wounds before escaping. This loss was swiftly followed by the Battle of Helena’s Fields a year later, bloodying the farmland of the Empire’s capital, both of which served to send a chilling message to Haense and Oren. On the foot of these defeats, the Duchy of Suffonia - a fellow human vassal neighbouring Haense to the north-west - seized the opportunity to declare independence in pursuit of their long-sought autonomy. Though Suffonia’s issues lay with Peter III, their proximity to Haense forced King Andrik III’s army to stain their hands with the blood of their former comrades. After a successful raid into Suffonia, the AIS prepared to mount a counterattack against Haense by striking at New Reza. When the alarm was raised of the mobilising enemy forces by a scout, the Kongzem mustered 3,700 defenders, which were bolstered by another thousand soldiers sent by the Emperor and the Mercenaries of Russ, who clashed with a smaller AIS force of 3, 000 in the Battle of Hangman’s Bridge, achieving the Empire’s first victory in the war. However, Haense’s victory was short-lived, as the AIS levelled the playing field once again after striking back at the Battle of Doran’s Folly later that year. While the AIS had achieved some remarkable victories against the larger nations of Haense and Oren, as the war progressed their fragmented structure became a considerable detriment. Disorganised supply lines and conflicting interests among the states themselves - such as those sympathetic towards Haense and hateful to Oren, and vice versa - brought the war to a standstill, reduced to tiny unremarkable raids as both sides grappled logistically. Tensions remained vitriolic between the warring nations, but it would not until eleven years after Doran’s Folly that the war resumed in full force at the Battle of Adria, where an AIS force primarily comprised of Norlanders, Ruberni, and Al-Faiz Farfolk defeated an opposing force of Haeseni and Orenians, and proceeded to defeat them once more at the Battle of Krasna. Sixteen years after it had begun, the Rubern War saw its last major clash at the Battle of Rubern itself, which came about as a result of Suffonian scouts trying to sabotage Imperial engineers constructing highway watchtowers. Local forces were able to hold off the Suffonians long enough for the engineers to be extracted and for reinforcements to ride out from the Orenian capital under Captain Peter d’Arkent, but by this time the Suffonians had called upon reinforcements from the rest of the AIS, primarily Al-Faiz, as Morsgrad had declined in martial prowess since Doran’s Folly, and faced off against the Empire’s forces on the eastern road to Rubern. An over-extension of the AIS ranks was taken advantage of by the Orenian and Haeseni cavalry, who broke their formation and drove them back to Rubern, where the Imperial force used their superior numbers to overwhelm the scattered AIS and defeat them on the fields of Rubern. Though the Battle of Rubern marked the last clash, the war would not yet end. It had not been an instrumental victory for Oren and Haense, as it had yielded no land, but it served to add another strain on the already-crumbling AIS, who, at this point, found themselves unable to coordinate another assault like those before Doran’s Folly. The AIS continued to slowly decay, and when Al-Faiz surrendered four years later and Suffonia was brought back into the fold, the war was finally considered over by all sides. ________________________ IV THE SCYFLING INVASION HAENSE v. SCYFLINGS 320 E.S. - 330 E.S. | 1767 - 1777 A.H. VICTORY Fall of Camp Rock (320 E.S. | 1767 A.H.) - Defeat Siege of Valwyck (320 E.S. | 1767 A.H.) - Major Victory Battle of the North Sea (321 E.S. | 1768 A.H.) - Stalemate First Siege of Vasiland (321 E.S. | 1768 A.H.) - Major Defeat First Siege of Metterden (322 E.S. | 1769 A.H.) - Victory Storming of Fort Buck (322 E.S. | 1769 A.H.) - Major Defeat Second Siege of Vasiland (322 E.S. | 1769 A.H.) - Defeat Third Siege of Vasiland (322 E.S. | 1769 A.H.) - Major Victory Raid on New Reza (323 E.S. | 1770 A.H.) - Victory Razing of Fort Buck (324 E.S. | 1771 A.H.) - Victory Second Siege of Metterden (324 E.S. | 1771 A.H.) - Stalemate Raid on Valwyck (325 E.S. | 1772 A.H.) - Defeat Raid on Monstadt (326 E.S. | 1773 A.H.) - Victory Battle of the Flooded Forest (326 E.S. | 1773 A.H.) - Victory The Moonfire Massacre (327 E.S. | 1774 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of the Shoals (327 E.S. | 1774 A.H.) - Defeat Great Battle of the North (328 E.S. | 1775 A.H.) - Major Defeat Raid on Valles (328 E.S. | 1775 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of the Bay (329 E.S. | 1776 A.H.) - Victory Siege of New Reza (330 E.S. | 1777 A.H.) - Major Victory The fabled Scyfling Invasion is fully chronicled here. When Haense joined the Athera Expedition to visit their ancient homeland, so too did they find an ancient enemy -- the Scyfling tribes, with whom they had warred for land back when Haense was not yet a kingdom. The Scyflings had lived as rudimentary raiders, stuck in a constant state of raiding for food and power on the ruined continent, but the tribesmen believed in a prophecy called Crowslayer’s Vow which proclaimed that whoever slew the descendant of Saint Karl would be the divinely-anointed unifier of the Scyflings. Eager to fulfil the prophecy to save his people from themselves, one warchief named Bralt the Boar followed the Haeseni back to Arcas with a fleet of longships to begin the Invasion. Prior to the arrival of Bralt’s fleet, the Kongzem had plenty of notice of the invasion thanks to the friendly Volik Clan of Scyflings and the NGS discovering the Scyflings preparing their fleet on their later trip to Athera, and they used this time to fortify their north-eastern coast, primarily with the construction of Fort Buck and Camp Rock. After a confrontation between King Sigismund II and Bralt the Boar at Valwyck, one of Bralt’s warchieves - the Vile Tooter - handed Haense its first defeat by distracting the defenders of Camp Rock with music while Scyfling raiders used oil pots and fire arrows to set it ablaze, causing the Wickwald to burn down in the Razing of Camp Rock. In an attempt to capture the rest northern Haense - the Almanland - in one fell swoop, the Scyflings launched a three-pronged assault on the northern fort of Valwyck, the battleship in Valwyck’s bay, and Fort Buck in the Siege of Valwyck, in which Haense narrowly triumphed on all frontiers. With most of the Haeseni Royal Army and levies concentrated in Almanland, Bralt tried to sail his fleet further down the coast to attack the Crownlands, and the Haeseni launched their own fleet from Vasiland to oppose him in the Battle of the North Sea, which ended in a stalemate after several ships were burnt and sunk. The Vile Tooter’s warship, however, sailed around the battle alone and landed at Vasiland, where they took over the castle. Despite the Haeseni retreat to drive him out, a surprise attack by Bralt the Boar, who led a secret contingent of raiders south by land during the naval attack, led to the Haeseni defeat in the First Siege of Vasiland, incurring major casualties, including Dame Karolina Barclay and Arianne Helvets. The war spread out across the rest of the Kongzem as the Scyflings tried to expand their holdings; the Kongzem held them off at the surprise First Siege of Metterden in which the Vile Tooter switched sides and the fearsome Scyfling archer Luvir Ironrain was killed, but later Bralt’s lieutenant - Yva Stoneguard - forced the H.R.A. to surrender Fort Buck, leaving Valwyck as the sole fort in Almanland after the Storming of Fort Buck. The rest of the year saw the H.R.A. preoccupied with retaking Vasiland, which proved to be a bloody and arduous affair after they were defeated at the Second Siege of Vasiland before finally retaking the castle in the Third Siege of Vasiland. However, the time spent reconquering the seaport allowed Bralt to establish a base camp with the majority of his forces in Almanland. From this base camp, the Scyflings were able to launch a series of raids that frustrated the Haeseni counteroffensive for years, starting with the Raid of New Reza where Scyflings disguised as Voliks briefly took over the Ekaterinburg Palace, and led to King Sigismund II losing his right arm in the hard-fought victory. The H.R.A. successfully disabled the fort and rescued several hostages in the Razing of Fort Buck, but not without Ser Bjornolf Sturm sacrificing himself in a duel with Bralt to buy time for his comrades to escape. Several more intense raids followed over the next few years, but Bralt’s army retained a dominant position in the north where they prepared for an eventual attack on New Reza, though this was delayed after the Haeseni victory at the Battle of the Flooded Forest. Following the infamous Moonfire Massacre where Bralt broke the sacred Scyfling tradition not to kill anyone on the celebration of the new moon, several Scyfling factions believed he had gone mad and defected to Haense in return for a promise of land after the war, such as Yva Stoneguard. The war began to move towards it climax as the remainder of Bralt’s army prepared to move New Reza, precluded by the Haeseni defeat the Battle of the Shoals before the Great Battle of the North was fought on three fronts - Lord Marshal Manfred Barclay led the cavalry to defeat the Scyflings at Metterden, while the Bushling guerilla raiders were triumphant near Vasiland, leading to an overall Haeseni defeat at Valles and allowing Bralt’s Scyflings to besiege New Reza. Despite division in the Scyfling ranks after the Moonfire Massacre, Haense faced dire circumstances by this point in the war: it had lost massive tracts of land and resources and incurred enormous casualties, including the suicide of King Sigismund II, who killed himself in protest to the policies of the Holy Orenian Empire as tensions worsened between Haense and Oren in the build-up to the Begrudged War. Leaving Haense in the hands of Lord Regent Konstantin Wick, Lord Marshal Manfred was left in charge of defence of the city. After Haense repelled naval reinforcement of the siege in the Battle of the Bay, the climax of the war came when Bralt’s army launched an assault on the Haeseni capital. In the Siege of New Reza, the Scyflings proved unable to breach the walls in an attack on all three gates in what appeared to be uncharacteristically poor strategy on Bralt’s part. A unit of Scyfling Shamen infiltrated the throne room with Bralt, where there was a final confrontation where the throne room was set ablaze with Bralt trapped inside. Afterwards, the warchief’s charred body was found on the throne. The remaining Scyflings surrendered, and were given a small plot of land to live upon under Yva Stoneguard. It was later theorised Bralt deliberately lost the final leg of the war, but never proven. ________________________ V THE BEGRUDGED WAR OREN, HAENSE, KAEDRIN v. SUTICA, URGUAN, KRUGMAR, NORLAND, VANMARK 328 E.S. - 333 E.S. | 1775 - 1780 A.H. DEFEAT Battle of the Whispering Wood (331 E.S. | 1778 A.H.) - Defeat Also known as the Sutican War, the Merryweather War, and the Moustache War. Unresolved tensions from the Rubern War erupted into fresh conflict when Corwin van Alstreim, a fierce opponent of the Orenian Empire, became King of Sutica in the final quarter of Descendant occupation of Arcas. Rumours shrouded his interactions with Emperor Peter III’s Oren, which at the time still included Haense, but the main source of war came in the form of the death of a Sarkozy noble of Oren, who disputed with King Corwin over the death of his mother. When Emperor Peter III declared that Oren would invade Sutica, the Suticans in turn responded by resurrecting the Alliance of Independent States, this time taking the name of the Begrudged Alliance, consisting of Sutica, Norland, Urguan, Vanmark, and several mercenary companies. Oren was left at a severe disadvantage, as its chief vassal in Haense was not only grappling with the Scyfling Invasion, but widely despised Peter III and his choice to pursue war with Sutica and thus were completely unsupportive. King Sigismund II went so far as to commit suicide to protest Haense’s involvement in the war, leaving Haense under a regency. Frontline trenches and fortifications are erected as the two armies prepare to do battle, with this prelude marked by countless small-scale skirmishes between the two sides. After nearly two years of these minor clashes, the Imperial State Army, with minimal Haeseni backing, launches its assault in the Battle of the Whispering Wood to incur on Sutican territory, but are beaten back by the Begrudged defensive. As the two sides remained fortifying their position and preparing for what many thought was an inevitable great battle, growing concerns of the impending Inferi Invasion in the south prompted the Church to compel the Orenians to negotiate, eventually resulting in the Peace of Merryweather and ending the war, albeit with great reluctance, to instead deal with the Inferi threat. The Alliance, however, did succeed in permanently curbing Orenian power and expanionism. ________________________ VI THE INFERI INVASION THE FIREWATCH ALLIANCE v. THE INFERI HORDE 331 E.S. - 345 E.S. | 1778 - 1792 A.H. VICTORY The First Skirmish (331 E.S. | 1778 A.H.) - Defeat First Siege of Al-Faiz (333 E.S. | 1780 A.H.) - Defeat Siege of Vanmark (338 E.S. | 1785 A.H.) - Victory Siege of the Doghouse (340 E.S. | 1787 A.H.) - Defeat Siege of General Pol’Gorous (340 E.S. | 1787 A.H.) - Defeat Siege of Aegrothond (341 E.S. | 1788 A.H.) - Victory Second Siege of Al-Faiz (344 E.S. | 1791 A.H.) - Victory The Final Battle (345 E.S. | 1792 A.H.) - Victory The war for the fate of Arcas. When a meteor landed on Arcas, which scholars later identified as the corpse of some kind of deity, the lingering power within the meteor lured the daemonic Inferi to invade from planes beyond. They appeared at first in the Korvassa dunes, far in the south, in the environs of the Farfolk city of Al-Faiz. At first unequipped to deal with this otherworldly threat and with many of the larger nations occupied with political affairs like the Begrudged War, the Inferi made initial territorial gains the First Skirmish, and then in the Siege of Al-Faiz, drowning the Korvassa in blood and fire. Alarmed by the events in the south, the Descendant realms forged the Firewatch Alliance to address the threat with unity, and proceeded to cooperatively defeat the Inferi for the first time at the Siege of Vanmark. The southern half of the continent remained awash in hard-fought battles, most of which the Firewatch Alliance were defeated in throughout the middle phase of the war, namely at the Siege of the Doghouse and the Siege of General Pol’Gorous. While the fighting was primarily limited to the south, there was Daemonic activity in the form of the ‘Toad Prince’, a purported enemy of the invading Inferi, who occupied the ruins of Rubern but vanished when the Kongzem of Haense refused to strike a deal with him. Thereafter, however, the enhanced unity of the Firewatch Alliance and greater strategy, which came about as the Descendants came to better understand the tactics of the otherworldly Inferi, allowed them to triumph at the Siege of Aegrothond, halting the Inferi advance, the Second Siege of Al-Faiz where they were expunged from their first stronghold, and, finally, at the Final Battle where the Inferi fled Arcas to end the war. 396 - Present E.S. | 1796 - Present A.H. ALMARIS No Haeseni was sad to leave Arcas behind. A homeland it might have been, it had been a homeland soaked deep in blood. From the War of the Two Emperors to the Scyfling Invasion, the Haeseni people held the fallen close to memory, but that the aftermath of the Inferi Invasion forced them to abandon their hard-fought home was a bitter, cruel conclusion. When the Descendant exiles landed upon the shores of Almaris, the Haeseni chose the spruce-cloaked tundra just south of the frozen Rimeveld for their new home, and they prayed it would not be one that they would need to mark in blood once more. Of course, none were truly naive to believe that for a certainty. The years of peace that followed almost induced a state of lethargy, but it would not last, for the Black Banner would soon grow with new songs of Almaris, from the freezing Rimetroll Rumble, to the greatest war in recent Descendant memory -- the Sinner’s War. I. The Rimetroll Rumble (360-383 E.S. | 1807-1830 A.H.) - Victory II. The Nachezer Incursion (379-385 E.S. | 1826-1832 A.H.) - Victory III. The Silver War (386-398 E.S. | 1827-1845 A.H.) - Victory IV. The Sutican Civil War (387-388 E.S. | 1828-1829 A.H.) - Victory V. The Sinners’ War (402-421 E.S. | 1849-1868 A.H.) - Victory ________________________ I THE RIMETROLL RUMBLE HAENSE v. THE RIMETROLLS 360 E.S. - 383 E.S. | 1807 A.H. - 1830 A.H. VICTORY Great Raid of Karosgrad (361 E.S. | 1808 A.H.) - Defeat Trouble in Troll Town (363 E.S. | 1810 A.H.) - Stalemate Defence of the North Road (366 E.S. | 1813 A.H.) - Stalemate Great Raid of Reinmar (368 E.S. | 1815 A.H.) - Victory Battle for Krusev (370 E.S. | 1817 A.H.) - Defeat Siege of Krusev (376 E.S. | 1823 A.H.) - Victory The Red Blizzard (383 E.S. | 1830 A.H.) - Victory After the Royal Capital of Karosgrad had been built, the Haeseni Royal Army took to surveying the Rimeveld to the north. Under Lord Marshal Manfred Barclay, a H.R.A. expedition braved the bitter blizzards on a survey mission and stumbled across the most peculiar sight - a fully-functional farm in the bitter cold. Before they could puzzle it out, the H.R.A. was forced to set aflame a strange totem on the form to ward off the crushing cold, but as the flame consumed the totem, the crops around them immediately failed. As they would soon learn, the enchanted totem had been a source of food for the local Rimetrolls - vegetarian, woolly behemoths, with the brainpower of a toddler. This loss of food soon forced the slow-witted Rimetrolls south, where they began to plunder Haeseni farms. The Trolls themselves were far from violent, but their stole such quantities of food that Haense faced the threat of famine. In response, the H.R.A. - now under the command of Friedrich Barclay - was forced to attack any Rimetrolls that neared the remaining farms by the city, relying on cannonfire to combat the Rimetroll’s deadly frost breath. After a few initial raids were repelled, the first major incident came in the form of the Great Raid of Karosgrad, where over fifty Rimetrolls stormed the capital farms while a ball was held in the city. Braving bombardment of thrown rocks, the H.R.A. answered with their own artillery. What they lacked in intellect and strategy, the Rimetroll’s made up for in brute strength and their ice breath, and so the city gate nearly fell if not for the command - and subsequent sacrifice - of the Knight Paramount, Borris var Ruthern and Ser Viktor Rauen. However, as the Trolls succeeded in plundering much of the farms, it had been a tactical defeat. The surviving Rimetrolls began to raid farms in smaller bands, worsening the impending famine on Haense as refugees flocked to the capital in droves. Matters were not helped when the H.R.A. was forced to burn the Astfield farms to repel the Trolls at the Defence of the North Road. The mage Corbin Wick led Haeseni volunteers into the Rimeveld, where they found the Troll Village, and, despite being welcomed as guests, Corbin used magic to trigger an avalanche over the Village, slaughtering the Rimetrolls and nearly killing his own allies before fleeing. In what is known as the Trouble in Troll Town, a rescue party from Haense had to be dispatched to pull their comrades out of the ice and corpses. Disease and famine became the main killer in the war as food grew increasingly scarce. The Rimetrolls sought aid from their cousins - the Rock Trolls - whose near impenetrable rock-skin was exhibited at the Great Raid of Reinmar, where Ser Brandt Barclay was slain after a Troll threw him a hundred feet in the air. The last breadbasket of Haense - Krusev - capitulated when the Rimetrolls, assisted by the near-unkillable Rock Trolls, attacked with their remaining number at the Battle of Krusev. Instead of merely pillaging the farmland, though, they made a new Village there, using their frost breath to create walls and defences. King Henrik II was faced with rampant disease and peasant uprisings in the capital, but eventually Haense drove the Trolls out in the Siege of Krusev. Although most of the Rimetrolls had been slaughtered - though a small party had, to no avail, attempted to find a peaceful solution to the war by rebuilding the Troll’s farm - Haense remained mired in disaster as famine threatened to collapse the social order. At last, however, farms were able to be resettled once the Pestilent Winter had passed. Following Lord Friedrich’s retirement as Lord Marshal, his successor, Lord Ailred Steelheart, ventured north, exterminating the last of the Rimetroll population in the massacre of the Red Blizzard. ________________________ II THE NACHEZER INFESTATION HAENSE v. THE NACHEZER HORDE 379 E.S. - 385 E.S. | 1826 A.H. - 1832 A.H. VICTORY Defence of Vidaus (379 E.S. | 1826 A.H.) - Victory Siege of Valwyck (380 E.S. | 1827 A.H.) - Defeat Reclamation of Valwyck (382 E.S. | 1829 A.H.) - Victory Defence of Astfield (384 E.S. | 1831 A.H.) - Victory Assault on the Mother Tree (385 E.S. | 1832 A.H.) - Victory Battle of Lundfall (385 E.S. | 1832 A.H.) - Victory Even throughout the Rimetroll Rumble, Adrian Colborn had led the Attenlund Expedition to colonise the woods and marshes east of Haense. Throughout their years-long escapade, they allied with local Swamp Trolls and unearthed an ancient evil in the Staalmarsh swamp -- the Nachezer Parasite, an evil subdued that the Expedition accidentally unleashed from a sealed tomb. The parasite, set free, began to collect bodies and hosts in the swamp before spreading east, into Haense proper, as an all-consuming tide. The Brotherhood rallied to stop this threat as soon as it was made known, but by then the parasites had already established ‘nests’ along the eastern frontier. After a blitz attack at the Defence of Vidaus, from which Haense emerged victorious, a defensive perimeter was erected on the east with the keep of Valwyck as its epicentre. However, when the Nachezer horde attacked, even Valwyck was overwhelmed, and the Brotherhood was forced to retreat at the Siege of Valwyck. The parasite numbers had been thinned, giving both sides time to regroup with only mild skirmishes before the Haeseni drove the parasites from the east at the Reclamation of Valwyck. After determining that they could no longer let the Nachezers build up more parasitic thralls, the Brotherhood forced a decisive conclusion, and began an all-out offensive on the Nachezer nests after the Defence of Astfield. The Haeseni strategy paid off, leading to the destruction of the first nest at the Assault on the Mother Tree, before the climactic Battle of Lundfall came about. The Brotherhood faced off against the Nachezer in a pitted and bloody battle, before Ser Flemius Rubens led an assault up the nearby mountain to detonate explosives, triggering an avalanche on the Nachezer nest to end the pests once and for all. ________________________ III THE SILVER WAR HAENSE v. HAELUN'OR 386 - 398 E.S. | 1833 - 1845 A.H. VICTORY The battleless war. When King Henrik II of Haense's Knights were tasked with hunting a heretical woman who had besmirched the honour of Prince Otto, they tracked her down to Karinah'siol, capital of the Silver State of Haelun'or. Lord Jan Kortrevich was dispatched as the King's diplomat to negotiate her extradition, but through some ill-fated misunderstanding, he found himself under attack by denizens of the Silver State and driven from the city. King Henrik II, never the type to brook compromise, immediately issued a demand for compensation to Haelun'or. When the reclusive High Elves gave him no answer, he promptly declared war against the Silver State to avenge the dishonour, but also as a display of Haense's new-found military strength since their independence from Oren some decades prior. Famously, no major battles were fought in this war. As the Silver State lacked a conventional army of its own, they retreated behind their fortified island city to wait out the conflict. Meanwhile, Lord Marshal Ailred Steelheart led Haeseni raiding parties to Karinah'siol and the roads leading to its ferry, where he captured any unwary High Elves for ransom. On several occassions, Steelheart and his men even managed to infilitrate the city itself, leading to more high-profile captures, but the High Elven government refused to acknowledge the war for years, much less concede to Haeseni demands, despite the bloodshed. Unable to transport siege equipment so far across the sea, Haense was left with only raiding parties as its tool of war. The war lost considerable steam once it became clear the High Elves would not leave their walls, and as the years dragged on, token raiding parties patrolled the Haelun'orian roads to remind the Silver State of their ongoing feud. After the war's halfway mark and the ascension of King Sigismund III to the throne of Haense, the recently-resurrected Principality of Savoy abruptly announced that it had accepted fealty from the Silver State as its vassal in the Crimson-Silver Concordat, thrusting the stale war back into the spotlight as the prospect of open warfare became much more likely against the Esheveurd Brigade of Savoy. Still, however, no battles came. Under political pressure from not only Haense, but its ally in the Grand Kingdom of Urguan, Savoy eventually agreed to peace terms on behalf of Haelun'or that saw huge financial and territorial concessions to Haense in the Silver Peace, well over a decade after King Henrik II had declared the war, and achieving Haense's original objective. Not long after the Silver Peace, the Concordat was dissolved. ________________________ IV THE SUTICAN CIVIL WAR HAENSE, SUTICA v. SOUTHERN SUTICAN ALLIANCE 387 - 388 E.S. | 1834 - 1835 A.H. VICTORY Battle of the Rhein (387 E.S. | 1834 A.H.) - Victory One of the first wars featuring independent Haeseni intervention. In the far south, the lands of Sutica were inherited by Queen Johanna I, wife of the late King Georg, who were relatives of the Haeseni House of Barclay, and they were thus close allies of the Kongzem of Haense. After Johanna I's succession, however, one of her vassals - Filippos Komnenos, the Baron of Trabzon - rebelled and formed the Southern Sutican Alliance to seize the throne. The Brotherhood of Saint Karl promptly marched to her aid, leaving only a small Brotherhood garrison to patrol the Haelun'orian roads in the ongoing - and stale - Silver War, while Lord Marshal Ailred Steelheart led a large Haeseni warband south. In the blistering southern heat, in which no Haeseni could be comfortable, Steelheart's army occupied the Barony of Rhein in southern Sutica as a military outpost, and from there they began to secure the region in the name of Queen Johanna I. The Southern Sutican Alliance mobilised to contest the occupation, eager to drive the Haeseni out before they could march a larger army south to reinforce Johanna I, and this led to the confrontation at the Battle of the Rhein. Here, Johanna I - immeasurably assisted by the Brotherhood forces - claimed victory over the rebels, who promptly began to fall apart after their defeat. King Henrik II of Haense personally travelled south with more troops to see the war's conclusion, and, in a brazen show of international interventionism, negotiated the surrender of the Alliance without the inclusion or even consent of Queen Johanna I, ending the war. ________________________ V THE SINNERS' WAR HAENSE, URGUAN, NORLAND, KRUGMAR, NEVAEHLEN, SAVOY v. OREN 402 - 421 E.S. | 1849 - 1868 A.H. VICTORY First Battle of Ephesius (402 E.S. | 1849 A.H.) - Defeat Battle of St. James’ (402 E.S. | 1849 A.H.) - Victory Storming of Kal’Darakaan (402 E.S. | 1849 A.H.) - Defeat First Battle of Jarad’s Tavern (403 E.S. | 1850 A.H.) - Victory First Battle of Stone Tower (403 E.S. | 1850 A.H.) - Victory Second Battle of Ephesius (404 E.S. | 1851 A.H.) - Victory Second Battle of Jarad’s Tavern (404 E.S. - 1851 A.H.) - Victory Battle of Providence Bridge (404 E.S. | 1851 A.H.) - Victory Battle of Cape Whitcombe (404 E.S. - 1851 A.H.) - Defeat First Raid on New Providence (406 E.S. - 1853A.H.) - Victory Battle of the River Petra (406 E.S. - 1853 A.H.) - Defeat Second Raid of New Providence (407 E.S. | 1854 A.H.) - Victory Siege of Southbridge (407 E.S. | 1854 A.H.) - Major Victory Second Storming of Kal’Darakaan (409 E.S. | 1856 A.H.) - Victory Second Battle of Stone Tower (409 E.S. | 1856 A.H.) - Defeat Third Battle of Stone Tower (410 E.S. | 1857 A.H.) - Victory Battle of Karosgrad (410 E.S. | 1857 A.H.) - Stalemate Battle of Lower Petra (411 E.S. | 1858 A.H.) - Major Defeat Battle at the Fields of Haverlock (412 E.S. | 1859 A.H.) - Defeat Siege of Haverlock (413 E.S. | 1860 A.H.) - Major Defeat Disgrace of Arichsdorf (414 E.S. | 1861 A.H.) - Defeat Providence Tea Party (417 E.S. | 1864 A.H.) - Victory Phillip's Folly (419 E.S. | 1866 A.H.) - Major Victory Also known as the War of the Wigs, this conflict was the largest war in over one-hundred years, since the War of the Two Emperors. After settling the viscous warriors of Blackvale in his lands, Ulfric Frostbeard, Grand King of Urguan, struck an agreement with Philip II, Holy Orenian Emperor, that their two nations would fight a one-on-one war to settle a dispute over allegations that Dwarves of Clan Ireheart had been attacked by a member of the Orenian government. This initial war, though, never amounted to more than a few months of brief skirmishes before Emperor Philip II was ousted in a coup by his grandson, Emperor Philip III, backed by the Principality of Savoy and conspirators in his father's court. After Philip III's coup, Urguan announced, in far from courteous terms, that it had defeated Philip II and had no interest in further conflict with the Orenian Empire. Philip III, however, took their proclamation as an insult, and responded with an extortionate demands, namey an enormous sum of money and for Urguan to release all its human vassals - such as Sedan - in an echo of the Third-Human Dwarf War centuries ago on Athera. When Urguan naturally refused, Oren began to mobilise its forces, which were in high-spirits after Philip III's coup, while further south their Savyoard allies-turned-vassals prepare to join them in the war. Urguan, facing a much more formiddable foe in two human armies, appealed to their Haeseni and Norlander allies for aid, and King Sigismund III and King Vane Freysson answered by raising their banners. To further bolster their army, the Grand Kingdom hired the legendary Ferrymen mercenaries. Together, these factions formed the Tripartite Accord to oppose Oren. Just before the war had broken out properly, Philip III had fallen into disfavour with Haense and the Canonist Church after the Michaelite Schism, where a rogue clergyman interupted a Savoyard coronation to declare himself High Pontiff Michael I and that the current High Pontiff - Everard VI - was to be deposed. In exposing clear orchestration, Philip III and his government immediately supported Michael I, and blades were drawn on Everard IV. Were it not for the presence of a Haeseni delegation at the coronation who, at the command of Lord Palatine Eirik Baruch, intervened to escort the High Pontiff to safety, he would have been killed. Upon safely returning to Haense, King Sigismund III reaffirmed the Haeseni acknowledgement of Everard VI as rightful Pontiff, who in turn stripped Philip III of his title of Fidei Defensor and gave it to King Sigismund III - this was the first time the title had ever left Orenian hands since the Fall of Johannesburg and the dissolution of the 5th Holy Orenian Empire on Axios nearly three centuries ago. The Empire soon disavowed the so-called Michaelite Schism, and the Emperor and Empress underwent a walk of penance to Karosgrad where they sought forgiveness from Everard IV and recognised his authority. Yet, only months later, Haeseni disdain towards Oren was furtger incited by a letter had been published by the infamous Azdrazi, Antonius Vilac, who revealed that Philip III's wife had attempted to hire him to kill Prince Philip Aurelian, the previous Emperor Philip II's would-be heir, whose mysterious death had paved the way for Philip III's coup. In response, High Pontiff Everard VI excommunicated the Emperor and Empress, driving Haense to fully commit to the Tripartite Accord. Hesitant now that a daunting coalition had formed, Oren's forces remained marshalled on the southern border with Urguan, while, in the south, divisions amongst the Savoyard government over their vassalage to Oren and the excommunication frustrated their initial plans to aid Oren. This presented a perfect window of opportunity for the Accord, who seized the initiative and stormed the Lower Petra riverlands in southern Oren. As the Accord army marched north through Eastfleet into Oren, Philip III decided to call his army back to the border fortress of Southbridge, where he planned to weather and drive back the Accord assault. A massive raiding campaign precluded the clash of armies; at first, Oren exhibited an iron-clad defence by cutting down Dwarven raiders at the First Battle of Ephesius and, after a brief upset caused by Ferrymen raiders at the Battle of St. James', were so bold as to charge into the Dwarven capital and capture the Grand King himself in the Storming of Kal'Darakaan. Grand King Ulfric was brougth before Philip III, and when he refused to adhere to his original demands, he had his beard shaved - a humiliating punishment for a Dwarf - before he was let go free. To this day, scholars disagree over whether the Grand King was released in the hopes that his capture and de-bearding would demoralize the Dwarven troops, or as a genuine act of mercy. Regardless, it fuelled the vitriolic raiding campaign further, and the Orenian-Urguan border ran red as the Accord raiders - spearheaded by the Ferrymen - won five consecutive victories in the Petra riverlands and eastern Urguan at the First Battle of Jarad's Tavern, First Battle of Stone Tower, Second Battle of Ephesius, Second Battle of Jarad's Tavern, and the Battle of Providence Bridge. While Captain Banjo of the Ferrymen led this raiding campaign, Field Marshal Ailred Steelheart of Haense began to erect siege lines at Southbridge, preparing for an eventual assault. An over-confident attempt by the Dwarven navy to land ships at the Orenian capital of Providence ended in the Accord defeat at the Battle of Cape Whitecombe, with the Ferrymen and Blackvalers later compensated for in the First Raid on New Providence. As the Accord prepared to assault Southbridge, Accord raiders heading south to join the main army were intercepted and killed in the Battle of the River Petra. With the Urguan-Oren border aflame from raids, the time came for the Accord to attempt to annex the Lower Petra riverlands. In the Siege of Southbridge, Dwarven ships positioned trebuchets out on the water and on the beach east of Southbridge. Bombardment began under the command of Ailred Steelheart, while Captain Banjo led infilitrators to harass the Orenian defenders as they tried to match the Dwarven artillery. Due to the broad positioning of the Accord trebuchets in contrast with the clustered placement of Orenian ones in the narrow keep, Southbridge's siege engines were quickly blown apart, and the keep's walls soon followed. As Haeseni and Dwarven siege engineers worked tirelessly, an elite Orenian force sallied out from Southbridge to disable multiple enemy trebuchets before they were cornered and killed on one of the Dwarven ships. The sally had, however, been too late: Southbridge's walls had been so utterly rent by the Accord artillery that the keep began collapsing in on itself. Steelheart ordered a charge inside the cape, wiping out one wave of the surviving Orenians, before they withdrew to order another round of bombardment. With the keep in utter ruins, one final push secured an overwhelming victory for Haense and the rest of the Accord. Though Lower Petra had been annexed by Urguan, the celebrations were short-lived; serious disagreements broke out between Grand King Ulfric and both Blackvale and the Ferrymen over their promised payment and the Dwarf King's handling of the war. This led to the Ferrymen taking a contract to fight for Oren, which was soon followed by Blackvale betraying Ulfric for massive offers of titles in Oren. These two factors emboldened Philip III to launch a re-conquest of Lower Petra mere months as it had been taken. Despite best efforts by the Orenian government, King Sigismund III of Haense refused to leave the war and abandon his Dwarven allies despite the lower odds - a decision he would soon pay for in the lives of his soldiers. The weakened Accord maintained high morale after achieving key victories against the Ferrymen-and-Blackvale enforced Orenian army at the Second Storming of Ka'Darakaan, followed by a loss at the Battle of Stone Tower, and culminating in driving an enormous raiding warband to Norland in the Battle of Karosgrad, but serious doubts remained over which army would triumph in open battle. This answer came in the Battle of Lower Petra, where the Orenians advanced into their lost territory, and triumphed over the Accord largely due to the Accord cavalry and flank squads being far too over-extended, where they were cut off and slaughtered by the Ferrymen, leaving the main army isolated and overwhelmed. Philip III's army proceeded to the newly-constructed town of Haverlock, built on the ruins of Southbridge, where the demoralised Accord mustered once more in a vain attemp to withstand attempts to drive them back into Urguan. The same fate of Lower Petra repeated itself in the Siege of Haverlock, as the Accord struggled to defend the broad perimeter of Haverlock against a multi-pronged Orenian offensive. With his lost land reclaimed, Philip III had no intention of resting, and set his sights on Blackvale's namesake territory within Urguan. As both armies prepared for a third campaign in the war, a brief period of tense peace occured n which negotiations between Grand King Ulfric and Emperor Philip III were held. An agreement was reached, but just before all of the Accord signed off on it - which would have ended the war in Oren's favour - Grand King Ulfric abdicated, and was replaced by Grand King Bakir Ireheart, who promptly denied the Orenian terms and breathed a second wind into the Accord. Haense remained firmly by Urguan's side, in no small part because of the Disgrace of Arichsdorf, where Haense had travelled to the Orenian vassal of Arichsdorf for a duel to settle a dispute after a Haeseni knight had been attacked during a ceasefire by a soldier under the protection of the March of Arichsdorf. After Lucien of Savoy fought as the Haeseni champion and won the duel, the Orenian soldiers of the Aurelian Brotherhood refused to lay down their arms, and attacked the Haeseni party. In order to defend his promise of protection to the Haeseni, Lord Manfred of Arichsdorf defended the Haeseni, but they were both defeated by the Aurelian soldiers. Lord Marshal Johann Barclay was captured in the fighting, but he was released back to Haense. And so, King Sigismund III reiterated his support for the Dwarves as Philip III declared his Final Offensive into Urguani territory. However, Grand King Bakir's enthronement completely shifted momentum of the war; although Blackvale remained the military backbone of Oren, the Ferrymen yet again changed sides to support the Accord, but this time the coalition numbers were further inflated by the Elves of the Vale of Nevaehlen and, shockingly, the Principality of Savoy, Oren's former staunch allies, in response to High Pontiff Tylos II's commitment to the excommunication of the Emperor and Empress. As the massive armies assemble for the offensive, the Accord achieves one last victory before open battle in the Providence Tea Party, where Ferrymen and Haeseni raiders stormed the Orenian capital during a social masquerade and captured many high-ranking nobles, including Emperor Philip III himself, the future King of Oren - Frederick I - and Prince John Aurelian. While Philip III was released several days after his capture as repayment for his mercy in the First Storming of Kal'Darakaan, King Frederick I and Prince John were brought to Haense, where the former was released by King Sigismund III, and the latter beheaded. After twenty years of conflict and hatred, the final battle came in the form of Philip's Folly. Here, the two huge armies met on opposite sides of the bay at Eastfleet and, after exchanging a monsoon of arrow-fire, they charged the low tide and turned the water crimson as they clashed around a beached ship. The superior numbers of the Accord prevailed after a few hours of the drenched melee, and drove the scant survivors back over the hills into Lower Petra. Emperor Philip III professed that he no longer had any intention of invading Urguan after his defeat, but the vengeful Accord kept its army rallied and prepared to invade Lower Petra for the second time. Before this fourth campaign of the war could commence, peace talks resumed between the Empire and the Accord, which finally concluded in the Peace of Eastfleet, which saw massive territorial concessions to the Accord, making it a clear victory. Not long after the war, Emperor Philip III dies shortly after declaring the dissolution of the Holy Orenian Empire, leading to the War of the Brothers between Peter IV who sought to rebuke his father's legacy and become Orenian Emperor, and King Frederick I who desired to honour his father's will and become King of Oren. ________________________ VI THE SUCCESSORS' WAR HAENSE, URGUAN, BALIAN v. OREN, KRUGMAR, HAELUN'OR, ELYSIUM 431 - 434 E.S. | 1878 - 1881 A.H. VICTORY Battle of the Light Purse (431 E.S. | 1878 A.H.) - Stalemate Storming of Daeland (433 E.S. | 1880 A.H.) - Victory Battle of Acre (433 E.S. | 1880 A.H.) - Major Victory Battle of Red Snow (434 E.S. | 1881 A.H.) - Victory _________________________ The Successors' War was christened so because it mainly featured the heirs of King Sigismund III and Emperor Philip III as a direct sequel to the Sinners' War. The years that followed the Peace of Eastfleet, which brought an end to the 19-year-long Sinners' War, brought many changes: in Haense, King Karl III took the throne after his father fell ill and died in an honour duel against Ser Walton the Wall; after a Thanhium blast destroyed her capital, Princess Renata de Savoie dissolved the declining Principality of Savoy; the Elven tribes of Celia'nor, Nor'aseth, Fenn, and Elvenesse (later renamed Amathea) formed the High Principality of Malinor, and set their sights on uniting all Elves under their banner either peacefully or otherwise; and the Orcs of Krugmar briefly grew influential after they vassalized the High Elves of Haelun'or, who feared attack by Malinor, and invaded the Kingdom of Elysium, but they soon found themselves trapped in a doomed war against Vytrek Tundrak, High Prince of Malinor. The most substantial change of the period was the dissolution of the Holy Orenian Empire through a final decree - the text of which has been mysteriously lost - in the will of the late Emperor Philip III and Empress Anastasia I, who sought to reform Oren as a Kingdom under the rule of their third-born son, Frederick. The same decree also ceded the Grenz region of north-western Oren to the scions of the late Manfred of Arichsdorf, who created the independent Crown of Westfall. This monumental edict deeply divided Orenian society, and was contested with steel by the Emperor's first-born, Peter, who was prepared to neither sacrifice his lawful throne nor Oren's imperial status. The viscous Brothers' War followed, which, after a bloody climactic battle in the streets of Providence, ended in the consolidation of the Kingdom of Oren under King Frederick I and the creation of the Grand Duchy of Balian by the exiled supporters of the short-lived Emperor Peter IV under Grand Duke John Casimir. "Them two king's be gettin' ready to swing. I can feels it in me bones." - Billy Barnmallow, a farmer of Honeyhill Both King Karl of Haense and King Frederick of Oren were ambitious young men, and wary of one another. The scars of the Sinners' War ran deep, as many in Oren and Westfall, which remained administratively dependent on Frederick's court after the chaos of the Brothers' War, remained bitter about the cessation of the Upper Grenz to Haense in the Peace of Eastfleet, while King Karl's nobility and council reckoned Frederick was a power-hungry kinslayer and prospective warmongerer. Geopolitics hinted at their eventual confrontation as the two monarchs kept a close eye on the island of Karinah'siol - the home of the High Elves of Haelun'r - off Almaris' eastern coast. In the hands of a military nation, the island was immensely strategically valuable for controlling the eastern sea corridor, and with the High Elves' overlords - the Horde of Krugmar - occupied fighting Malinor far to the west, the island had never been more vulnerable. While King Karl and King Frederick courted Al'Borok, the Rex of Krugmar, to convince him to sell the island, Grand King Bakir Ireheart of Urguan was about to complicate matters. The Dwarven warrior-king had grown bored and belligerent since the end of the Sinners' War, and so he leapt at the prospect of action when it came in the autumn of 431 E.S. | 1878 A.H. after his kin, Balor Ireheart, and his companions were killed after an honour duel had gone askew while visiting Krugmar. Mere hours after the news reached the underrealm, Grand King Bakir marched a retaliatory force of 2,700 Dwarves westward from Kal'Darakaan, and negotiations ensued when they reached Krugmar two evenings later. The Horde expressed a genuine desire to make amends, and the reason was clear: they were losing badly to the Elves of Malinor after their invasion of Elysium had backfired, and they had recently suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of Mount Karimir. Warring another major power would spell their doom. Despite this, they could not afford the 11,000 mina the Dwarves demanded as recompense, and the Grand King brooked no compromise -- he ordered an attack. The ensuing Battle of the Light Purse was a brief affair, as the tired Orcs engaged the Urguani encirclement for less than an hour before pulling back to their stronghold and resorting to bombardment from their walls. Without the means nor patience for a siege, Grand King Bakir withdrew as night fell. Swallowing his hunger for battle, he begrdugingly marched back home to Urguan to avoid being trapped in the west by the coming winter snows, but he made sure to leave the corpses of slain Orcs as road-markers on his way back. Once back in Ka'Darakaan, Grand King Bakir issued a new ultimatum to Krugmar demanding 7,500 mina, the heads of Balor's killers, a tribute of Orcish leather, and the purging of all Azdrazi, the draconic cultists of Azdromoth rumoured to reside in the volcanoes of Krugmar. It was at this interval that the machinations of Urguan and Krugmar in the west collided with the plans of Haense and Oren in the east. King Karl stood on the verge of striking a deal with Rex Al'Borok to cede Haelun'or in return for sorely-needed funds for his war against Malinor, but the new Urguani threat delayed the agreement. The Orcish Rex called out to all former nations of the Tripartite Accord for aid, but to little avail: Haense was unprepared to alienate Urguan, its closest allies, and the Kingdom of Norland and the Vale of Nevaehlen lacked the strength to act without Haense. King Karl stomached his fury at the Dwarven King for his antics, and arranged a peace conference in his capital of Karosgrad to resolve the matter. As he would soon learn when the conference was attended by a goblin messenger who told the Dwarven and Haeseni kings to suck his toes, the damage had been done; for all Haense's careful planning, the rift caused by Urguan created an opportunity for the Kingdo of Oren. King Frederick not only offered Krugmar payment, but also he promised to broker peace with Malinor - his close ally - and join Krugmar in a war against Urguan. It was, without any doubt, a better deal, and both Haense and Urguan were rightfully alarmed that Oren's intervention to defend Krugmar could lead to a punitive invasion of Urguan and a repeat of the Sinners' War. Forced to act quickly before the Rex could accept the Orenian deal, King Karl and Grand King Bakir declared a joint war on Krugmar with Haelun'or as their first target. "Bah, 'tis like my papej used to say. What Dwarves lack in brains, they certainly do niet compensate for in height." - Utvand of Karosgrad, B.S.K. footman Haense and Urguan did not act alone. While Nevaehlen and Norland, disdaindul of Grand King Bakir's wanton aggression in the last decade, refused to join a second Tripartite Accord, the Grand Duchy of Balian was both eager to make its military debut and mitigate King Frederick's gains as revenge for the Brothers' War. Together, Haense, Urguan, and Balian formed the Eastern Almaris Treaty Organisation, and championed the "Azdrazi purge" as their primary justification for invading Haelun'or (as a territory of Krugmar). This rational found little favour internationally, and even many Haeseni doubted the presence of Azdrazi on Haelun'or. It was, for all intents and purposes, a hasty excuse relied upon by Haense and Balian to launch their invasion before Oren could intervene. Their haste, however, was not rewarded: in the summer of 432 E.S. | 1879 A.H., Krugmar officially ceded the island of Haelun'or to the Kingdom of Oren in the Peace of Vienne. Consequently, the land that the Eastern Treaty was preparing to invade was now a part of Oren, not Krugmar, and King Frederick hoped that this political maneuver would intimidate the Eastern Treaty into relenting. This led to a deadly game of chicken as Oren rechristened Haelun'or as "Fi'Halen" and declared that both the island and Krugmar had been purged of Azdrazi. With Fi'Halen now under the rule of a Canonist monarch, the Canonist Church warned the Eastern Treaty - namely, Haense and Balian - to abandon their planned invasion of Haelun'or in order to avoid a war between Canondom. This gave the Eastern Treaty pause - although the Holy Orenian Empire had been soundly defeated by the Haeseni-Urguani alliance twenty years ago, many other members of that alliance were now missing, and, though the Kingdom of Oren had lost many old Houses in the Brothers' War, it was strengthened by a new generation of martially-minded leaders in King Frederick's court. In particular, Oren had found a powerful vassal in the levies of the Barony of Acre under Lords Gustaf and Hannes de Villain, who were competent and charismatic commanders. If the Eastern Treaty backed down, it would permanently damage their political prestige and cement Oren as the chief power on Almaris, not only through their intimidation of the Eastern Treaty, but also by militarising the Haelun'orian island. No steel had yet been drawn against Oren, but King Karl and King Frederick were far too deep into a battle of political wills to turn back. Regardless, the pleas of the Church still placed King Karl in a particularly difficult position - he had inherited the title of Fidei Defensor from his father, and the reigning High Pontiff Tylos II - previously known as Klaus Barclay - was a Haenseman and the former Court Chaplain, which prompted many in Haense to question if the war was a righteous cause. "Isn't it a little too south for an Eastern Treaty?" - Ordys Sivarrin, N.G.S. Cartographer King Karl eventually resolved to see the war through, as turning back now would relegate Haense into a toothless secondary power. King Frederick, surprised at Haense's perseverance, quickly began to bolster his own forces, and a second non-physical battle ensued between the Haeseni and Orenian kings to hire the services of Almaris' two primary mercenary companies, the Ferrymen Band and the Blackvale Vrijkorps, with Haense employing the former and Oren the latter. While Norland and Nevaehlen could not be convinced to join the war, Matyas Baruch - Lord Envoy of Haense - scored an essential diplomatic victory by ensuring they would not join Oren. As tensions mounted and armies mobilised, the Grand Duchy of Balian found a chance to assert itself in the south, where the fledgling factions of Hyspia and Daeland met with the Grand Duchy to ensure that neither of them supported Oren and created tension in the south. Daeland, however, refused to acquiesce to the wishes of Balian and Hyspia. Although only a minor power, the Eastern Treaty was not prepared to stand idle when it looked as if Daeland intended to pledge its banners to Oren -- in the Storming of Daeland in 433 E.S. | 1880 A.H., an Eastern Treaty strikeforce overwhelmed the southern settlement and captured the Piast of Daeland, Casimir Kovaceski. He was brought back to Karosgrad, where he remained under house-arrest for the duration of the war after vowing Daeland would not assist Oren. After a final warning to desist in the upcoming war was issued by Oren and rejected by Haense, King Frederick formally consolidated his allies and formed the United Sovereign States of Almaris, consisting of the Kingdom of Oren, the Horde of Krugmar, the Kingdom of Elysium, and, of course, the High Elves of Fi'Halen. Additionally, the Crown of Westfall pledged its banners to King Frederick, but the short-lived independent Grenzi nation had withered into complete obscurity since the disappearance of Wilhelm van Aert, and had effectively been re-absorbed into the Kingdom of Oren. After over a year of politics and posturing, the first, and most significant, incident of the Successors' War came in the late-spring of 433 E.S. | 1880 A.H. The Romstuns, ferocious bannermen of the Haeseni House of Baruch, captured a noble of the Orenian House of Komnenos and took him to Karosgrad as a hostage, where a ransom was issued to King Frederick. For the first time, the feuding monarchs answered not in words, but with steel, and Oren called the forces of the Sovereign States to his capital of Vienne to march on Haense and answer the insult of capturing his vassal, and so too did the Eastern Treaty gather in Haense. Under the command of Lord Hannes of Acre, the Orenian-led forces sent a rider across the Haeseni border, who brokered an agreement that the two forces would meet in the field and do honourable battle. Thus began the Battle of Acre, where months of vitriol and threats would finally be put to the test. Night came and went as the Eastern Treaty and Sovereign State forces manoeuvred around the north-eastern Orenian border, positioning themselves strategically like pieces on a chessbord, before the Eastern Treaty finally rushed Lord Hannes' army at his home of Acre just after sunrise. The advance caught the Sovereign State in the middle of shifting position, and isolated their cavalry on a cliff while the bulk of the Eastern Treaty forces crashed into the unsuspecting Sovereign State infantry. The Eastern Treaty had some one-thousand more soldiers than the Sovereign States, and even then the Dwarves, Haeseni, and mercenaries were far more experienced in battle than the non-militant High Elves and Elysians bolstering the Orenian and Orcish frontlines. By midday, over-extended Sovereign State lines crumbled, and they sustained enormous losses disengaging. Not only was this a critical victory that proved the Eastern Treaty's strength to the world amidst enormous uncertain as to whether Haense or Oren was the stronger nation, but both the lords Hannes and Gustaf de Vilain of Acre were captured and taken to Karosgrad, where King Karl released Gustaf in exchange for keeping Hannes under house-arrest in Haense, robbing Oren of an important military commander for the remainder of the war. Adding even further to Oren's loss, the Blackvale Vrijkorps nullified their contract and exited the war. "Me lord, not to be a nark, but I think them Blackvale boys robbed us." - Fergle of Acre, Orenian Levyman Not all was well for Haense, though, and the war was far from over. In a final bid for peace, High Pontiff Tylos II summoned King Karl, King Frederick, and Grand Duke John Casimir for negotiations, where it was established that, while the Eastern Treaty would not forego the planned invasion of Fi'Halen, the Canonist nations would not engage in any raids or battles against each other until the invasion proper. This was an infamous diplomatic blunder on the part of Haense and Balian, and the Eastern Treaty forces were initially outraged - they had long-since held the momentum in the war, and a pledge not to raid Oren utterly destroyed that. King Karl and Grand Duke John quickly issued a statement reneging on the agreement, claiming that the High Pontiff had twisted their words and intentions. Even today, it was unclear what went wrong. Some accounts indicate that the Lady Palatine of Haense, Isabel Baruch, had consented to the ceasefire unwittingly, while others believe that Haense and Balian were forced to break the agreement due to backlash within the Eastern Treaty. Irrespective, the consequences of the ordeal remained the same - High Pontiff Tylos, entirely alienated, stripped King Karl of the title of Fidei Defensor and, while lamenting on how it had been twisted by political prestige, dissolved it. A second boost to Orenian morale followed just weeks later when an Orenian raiding party was dumbstruck to come across Grand King Bakir Ireheart idly walking the roads of Urguan alone. Upon his capture, King Frederick promptly urged the Grand Kingdom of Urguan to withdraw from the Eastern Treaty in return for the life of their Grand King, but the Dwarven Senate famously stated "this changes nothing" and, whether out of commitment to the war effort or content to let the Grand King suffer for his own mistakes, the rest of the Eastern Treaty remained steadfast as plans continued to construct siege-ships and assemble supplies and forces to besiege Haelun'or, which had proven to be a colossal logistical endeavour. The Orenian morale quickly plummeted once again when the Battle of Red Snow ended in disaster for the sovereign States; Targoth Zahgori of Krugmar led a warband of 2,500 that plundered Haeseni villages en route to Karosgrad, but they were trapped and slaughtered at the Haeseni capital by the defence of Lord Marshal Hieran Melphaestus and incoming Eastern Treaty reinforcements. A second blow to the Sovereign States came later in 434 E.S. | 1881 A.H. when the Romstun bannermen added another hostage to the roster of Piast Casimir and Baron Hannes when scouting the roads of Elysium -- Ellathor Vanari, Lord Commander of Queen Leika de Astrea of Elysium's modest army. In contrast with Grand King Bakir's capture, Haense successfully leveraged Lord Ellathor to secure peace with Elysium, as the Elysians were not a militaristic people, already tired from the recent Elysian War, and most Elysians were of the opinion that their nation had no business fighting this. Queen Leika had joined the Sovereign States in order to endear Elysium to Oren, but paired with dissatisfaction amongst her realm and Oren's growing losses, Elysium withdrew from the Sovereign States in the Treaty of Crow and Fox, and signed a defensive alliance with Haense to protect from Orenian or Orcish retaliation. "The Church scorned, the path to power lined with human corpses ... how could the Fidei Defensor do this?" - Prior Ostvan, Karosgrad Monastery Things continued to fall in favour of the Eastern Treaty as summer passed, continuing with Grand King Bakir's liberation from Orenian captivity by the Romstun warriors and a turncloak of Frederick's court. While the traitor's identity remains obscured to history, the Orenian court and army - the Petrine Legion - was rife with disenfranchisement after their military and diplomatic losses to the Eastern Treaty. What had started as an optimistic and clever political play had devolved into a disaster: Oren's raids were overrun with raiders and their harvests had suffered from razed farms, driving droves of refugees to Vienne; Elysium had withdrawn, Krugmar's strength was entirely spent from entering the Successors' War immediately after the Elysian War, and the High Elves had no military prowess in the first place; Westfall had effectively ceased to exist, and Malinor and Nevaehlen refused to join the war. Growing tensions in Oren finally erupted when Gustaf de Vilain, Baron of Acre, declared that he was withdrawing from the war without the blessings of his King. This sedition amounted to open rebellion against King Frederick, and utterly destabilised Oren, especially when Haense released Lord Hannes de Vilain as a show of good faith and implied support of the Acrean rebellion. Faced with an insurrection from his largest vassal and his allies waned and withered, King Frederick was left with no choice but to concede the war against the Eastern Treaty. By the end of 434 E.S. | 1881 A.H., the Kingdom of Oren, the Kongzem of Haense, the Grand Kingdom of Urguan, the Grand Duchy of Balian, and the Horde of Krugmar had officially concluded the Successors' War in favour of the Eastern Treaty. The High Elven island was yielded to Haense, and though the High Elves themselves had no say in the matter, they were gifted 5,000 mina to relocate. Additionally, the United Sovereign States of Almaris was dissolved, and a memorial bench was constructed in Vienne depicting Grand King Bakir and Emperor Philip III holding hands (the two were long-theorised to be lovers). Through a series of dangerous gambles, Haense and her allies triumphed in the Successors' War, which acted as the hammer to the Sinners' War's nail -- it achieved the second major consecutive victory and gained a vital strategic stronghold on Haelun'or, where it would later settle Hyspian vassals. If Oren had been cracked by the Sinners' War, the Successors' War shattered it as King Frederick was left crippled by rebellion. In the ensuing Harvest War, the rebellion Barony of Acre would defeat King Frederick and dissolve the Kingdom of Oren after its death. This victory, however important, had not come without risk nor consequence - historians readily agree that Haense could have ended up facing a dire defeat if some events had gone even slightly differently (such as Nevaehlen and Malinor's neutrality, or Urguan's commitment to the war despite their Grand King's capture). King Karl had lost the title of Fidei Defensor, a prestigious title of deep symbolic importance from the Sinners' War, and earned himself a much more aggressive and warlike reputation than many of his predessecors which would act as both a boon and burden throughout the rest of his reign. Though victorious, not all in Haense were content, especially due to the feud with the Church (particularly the Waldenians of Reinmar). Yet, at the end of the day, none can deny the Successors' War was a phenomenal victory that cemented the Kongzem of Haense as Almaris' strongest nation for decades to come. By Conor and Nolan. Thanks for reading.

HIS NAME WAS SIGISMUND The clock ticked atop the mantelpiece. Sigismund was not sure how long he laid there in his bedroom, where the air was heavy with medicinal incense, and beams of the afternoon sun shone through the open balcony, bringing noise of the city beyond with it. Whether hours or days, Sigismund could not say how long he lay motionless on his bed, his face slick with sweat, and his chest rising weakly with each shallow, rasping breath. Over the intermingled torrent of laughter, work, and voices from Karosgrad, the clock ticked. How … much longer? Faces had come and gone throughout the day with prayers, smiles, and misted eyes. Katerina had brought soup, Dimitri had made him a promise, Klaus had heard his confession, Karl had understood, the Oracle had decided to be Franz again, Harold had given him his wooden sword, Tylos II had blessed him with his prayer rope, Frederick and Lucien promised they would keep the peace of mankind, Theodosya had tried to cure him, Isabel had sworn to support Karl, Mariya told him she had found her child at last, Ser Reinhardt knelt before him one last time, Maya had given him his last rites, Adrian had asked him if he had found the answer, Elimar promised he would live again, Jakob swore to always make Klara happy, Klara herself held him one last time, he hugged his beloved Sergei, and Maya had given him his Last Rites. Even then, they were but a handful of those he had said his final farewell to over these last weeks. Not for the first time, he looked up to the elaborately-carved Hussariyan Cross hanging above the bed. “Don’t need me anymore … now that I’ve done all vyr … dirty work, eh?” he managed through a hoarse chuckle. The clock ticked. Soon, I think. I … hope. His body was wracked with pain; each breath through his ailing lungs sent a sharp jolt through his chest, and duller shooting pains along his limbs. His throat ached as if it had been scorched, and the lack of oxygen had dulled his senses. This was the part he hated -- the slow decay. Despite having made his peace with what would come next, the final steps to get there were agonizing. Tick. His spirit, though, was iron. Aren’t you scared? That had been the question so many had asked him over these last week. Aren’t you frightened? When he had been a younger man, the answer would have been in the affirmative, of course. Even as a young boy, he had believed his lineage had been cursed with grizzly, premature deaths - his grandfather drank himself to death, his great-grandfather had taken his own life, and his great-great-grandfather had died saving his wife. But now … Tock. He was a young man no longer, no longer the boy with wide-eyes and a mind always captured by fairytales. He had stained his hands in the bloodiest war in recent history; he had passed judgment, and executed those he had once, and still, called friends; he had given commands and made decisions that had cost lives, shattered families, and broken dreams. Hardest of all, he had had to say farewell to those who he had thought would always be there to share the burden of the Crown with him. There were some things even a King - even the Fidei Defensor - could not change. Tick. Yes. I’ve seen enough. I’m not scared. Not anymore. He closed his eyes, inhaling shakily. I have lived … a blessed life. He had reared a family, taken a loving wife, and had no shortage of those he could truly call a friend. He had only two regrets -- the first was that he would leave behind all those he had loved, most especially Emma. He had said goodbye so many times to those he loved, from his parents to his own children, and that pain had hurt more than any blade, and scarred much deeper. The thought that he would finally be the one to inflict that pain … Well, a troubling prospect, no matter how inevitable. Tock. The second regret, however, was what gnawed at him. He opened his eyes, and raised a shaking hand into the sunlight. The slow decay … that everyone has to watch me become a sickly husk of what I once was … that is no way for a King. That is no way for any man. As his hand fell limp back to the covers, his eyes drifted his blade - Aeternus - resting in its scabbard against the bedpost. Is it too late? He had promised Emma he would wait for fate to take him, that he would take every last moment God afforded him, and yet … Tick. What God affords me … He clenched a fist with what little strength remained. God had taken his firstborn and Josef both; God had taken all his siblings before their time, and before Sigismund’s eyes; God had let the war happen, and taken thousands more in those bloody clashes. And now, he is taking me. The irony made him laugh again. I’ve paid your tolls all my life. I’ve bowed to fate, to what you wanted. Just … just this once … His breathing grew erratic. As the clock ticked once more, he looked back to the sword. … Just this once. The sun had begun to set on Karosgrad. Wayward snowflakes from northern clouds drifted down across the city in the warmthless, golden sun, where a crowd of Haeseni had gathered in the square. Despite their number, the city was unusually quiet; no forge hammer rang, no songs echoed from the taverns, and not even the church bell tolled the hour. The Haeseni of Karosgrad gathered with solemn faces, and held candles and torches. Patriarch Klaus stood at the foot of a wooden cross in the centre’s tiled centre, draped in flowers and leaves, as he led them in prayer. Prayer for their sick King. Their dying King. Back in Sigismund’s room, the clock ticked, but he was not there. "Last us escort you, my liege," had been the words of a dour-faced Ser Reinhardt, at the head of column of Knights with Dame Mariya and Ser Walton, when Sigismund had told them of his plan. So it was that they had made the fateful final journey through the halls of the Nikirala Palace together. Sigismund stopped one last time outside of the sauna, and recalled the emotional talks he had had with Andrik and Eirik there. He stopped one last time in the dining smile, and fondly reminisced on all those chaotic family dinners, on all the absurdities that had made him laugh, all the speeches he had made at his family's engagement dinners. He stopped one last time to pet the magic cannon. He stopped one last time in the throne room, the focal point of his life, and stood in the sunlit aisle, beholding his throne for the final time. A loud clang rang out across the square as the Palace doors were thrown open. Katerina’s prayer cut off as surprised murmurs rippled across the crowd, and their eyes climbed the Palace steps as the snow glowed in the golden sun during its descent. They looked up, and they saw him standing there, draped in his red cloak, his coronet nestled in iron-grey hair, and his scabbarded sword in his hand like a cane, in the company of his Knights and family. Of those who loved above all. Sigismund’s lungs laboured for every atom of air his ailing body would yield. Under the weight of his cloak, he felt like he might collapse if not for the support of his sword. He could not make out a word from the surprised crowd over the sound of his lungs wheezing. He felt sweat roll down his face, contorted into a determined scowl, despite the cold. No … not yet. Can’t … give up yet … The leather of his sword’s hilt creaked as he tightened his grip. Not … yet! “All my life …” The sword scraped as he began to limp forward, down the steps. The murmurs had died, now. The crowd watched in shocked silence. Each descent down a step sent that lance of pain through his body, but now, with the last vestiges of his strength, he endured. He had to. “... I have let fate carry me, and … now, fate wants me to decay on my deathbed … to let my body wither, and my mind fade …” He reached the end, every ounce of his energy devoted to keeping his shoulders straight. “ … and … that’s nie way for … a Koeng to die.” Their eyes followed him with apprehension, with confusion, with concern. He was in no state to be out of bed; that much was clear. But as he stopped in the square, the crowd parting around him, he closed his eyes, letting the snow flakes dapple his hair. “I’ll … be dead within the week. But … just this once, I … I’m going to make a selfish request. In … in my last hour, I’m going to control my death … I’m going to … master my fate,” he opened his eyes, and ripped Aeternus from its sheath, letting the scabbard fall to the ground. “For once in my life!” The silence returned, absolutely now but for the snap of the Palace banners in the wind. With a metallic sheen, Sigisimund raised his sword, shaking in his grip. He turned his head to Ser Walton, the Wall, who had joined the others in escorting him out of the Palace one last time. “ … Ser Walton … will you ... honour my ... last request?” he drew a quivering breath, “Will you … duel me?” Ser Walton met his look with misty eyes. "I ... will honour your last request," he affirmed with a gulp. "... It would be my honour, my King," he uttered through grit teeth as he slowly drew his own longsword. He stepped back slowly, as if having forgotten how to move, before he planted his feet, blade pointed at Sigismund. He managed his own smile as the shocked talk erupted again. He did not hear the words, though; instead, he thought back on what his daughter, his Klara, had said when he had told her of his decision - of his final act. “I-I wish this life .. had not been so cruel to you,” Klara had sobbed back in his bedroom earlier that afternoon. In turn, Sigismund had laughed; a full-body laugh that prompted pain to flare from every joint. “Klara,” he wheezed through the painful chuckles, “you … could not be more wrong. This life … has been a blessed one. I have … loved a wife …" He heard someone began to cry, and dart away up the Palace steps. “ … I have reared beautiful children …” As Walton assumed his sword-form, his sword poised outwards, Sigismund summoned every last fibre of strength in his body. He lifted his sword through the air, into his own high-guard stance. “ … and I have made true friends …” He locked eyes with the Meyster Knight as the wind gusted, sending the shining snowflakes in a flurry around him as his hair and cloak whipped back. He summoned everything, expunged every crevice of his being, and grit his teeth until his jaw ached. He released it all, his very last act, in a roar as he staggered forward, and let his blade fall down upon Walton. “I’ve let fate guide me all my life. I was … powerless to save Edvard, to stop the war, to do everything right. I was … powerless against so much.” Amidst the golden snowfall, Ser Walton clashed his blade against Sigismund's. For just a moment, time seemed to slow, and sound seemed to fail, for the King as sparks erupted from the clashing swords. Through those sparks, he smiled through tears at his Knight - his Wall. “ … I have the power for this one last, futile act of defiance …” Utterly spent, he could do nothing as Ser Walton parried Aeternus to the side, leaving Sigismund wide open. “ … my swan song.” As the Knight's sword skewered through his heart in one precise counter-thrust, Sigismund was vaguely aware of crows taking flight from a nearby rooftop. It's so ... painless, he thought incredulously. Then, sound seemed to return like popped eardrums as Aeternus clattered to the bloodied tiles, and he sagged forward into Walton. Feeling left his body; perhaps it was because he had used everything to even lift the sword, but it was as if there was nothing left to feel pain. Everything, every feeling was gone ... except for relief. He felt Ser Walton catch him as the crowd surged. He could see their lips moving, calling out, and he could see tears on their faces, but he could not make out any of what they said. Is ... this all it was? I ... feel so ... light ... Ser Walton had dropped his own sword, letting blood ooze out from the King's fatal wound. He held Sigismund close, his head pressed against his. Tears leaked through the visor. "W ... Walt ... ton ..." he breathed. The words came out in slow breath. He could not feel the pain in his lungs anymore. "Th ... thank ... you ..." "It was ... my greatest honour," the Knight whispered back. Sigismund felt his vision blur. Is it really ... so easy? Even his thoughts grew sluggish, now. He could no longer see those around him anymore - the weeping faces of Sergei, Klara, and all the others had vanished into a white-gold haze, as if the sunset-tinted snow had consumed everything. He stood alone, embracing his Knight. N-no ... that's wrong. I ... am never alone. I never have been. As he felt his eyes grow leaden, like drifting off to sleep, his breath - his last breath - carried one final word. "Kru ... sae ..." He felt ... something change. As his vision faded, he heard distant chants, as if from under water. Roars. Bellows. " ... Sigismund?" Suddenly, his eyes shot open with a gasp. Where ...? He could hear birds cawing overhead, and insects cricketing in heat. Vaguely, he was aware that the body of King Sigismund III was in the arms of his Knights, who held him reverantly as those teary chants rang. But ... he - Sigismund Karl - was somewhere else. Somewhere far away. Someone still held him, too. Slowly, very slowly, he looked up into the fact of the person that now held him. " ... You took your time, little brother," said Petra. "LONG LIVE KING SIGISMUND!" "KRUSAE ZWY KONGZEM!" The roars, their voices raw with emotion, rolled over Karosgrad like a continuous thunderclap. The lifeless body of King Sigismund III, the eyes peaceful and glazed, was lifted by the King's companions of the Knight's Table. Between them, Dame Mariya, Dame Emelya, Ser Walton, Ser Reinhardt, and Ser August held the body of their departed liege, the sunlight flashing against their own tear-stained faces. They exchanged determined nods, and together, began to move the body through the crowd, and towards the Palace. The chants followed them all the way. For his name had been Sigismund. He had been the Prince of Bihar, Dules, Lahy, Muldav, Solvesborg, Slesvik and Ulgaard. He had been the son of Henrik and Annika. The husband of Emma. The father of Edvard, Klara, Karl, Sergei, Josef, and Maya. The Margrave of Korstadt, Rothswald, and Vasiland. The brother of Petra, Marus, Anastasya, and Andrik. The Count of Alban, Alimar, Graiswald, Karikhov, Kaunas, Kavat, Kovachgrad, Kvasz, Markev, Nenzing, Torun, and Toruv. He had been the nephew of Nikolas and Katerina. He had been the uncle of Elizaveta, Nikolai, Vladrik, Theodosya, Sigmar, and Matyas. He had been the Baron of Essentadt, Kraken's Watch, Kralta, Krepost, Lorentz, Rytsburg, Thurant, Venzia, and Astfield. He had been the student of Feodor. The pupil of Ailred. He had been the friend of Kaustantin, Eirik, Adrian, Reinhardt, August, Emil, Emelya, the two Johanns, Rhys, Abraham, Flemius, Walton, Tavisha, Mariya, Bakir, Molia, Elimar, Klaus, Sorina, Barley, Lucien, Viktor, Grigory, Little Whale, John, Viktor, Iulius, Lhoris, Dimitri, Harald, Adrianna, Godfric, Matyas, Yvo, Kronk, Otto, Hickory, Sanja, Isabella, Johanna, Aloise, Ulfric, Dracomir, Loarmir, Eirika, Erwin, Alexander, Lynette, Qard, and countless others. He had been the Lord of the Westfolk. Protector of the Highlanders. Fidei Defensor. He had been the King of Hanseti and Ruska. He had been Sigismund III of Haense.