Nectorist

Galar Ithelanen, an old elf by a few metrics, responds to the letter in public. His response is not an authored one, but the few who care about what he has to say may acquire it should they wish. "Since the days of my father's rule, a time of my infancy, three-and-one-half of a century ago, the scattered dregs of Elvendom, those of too low standing to face the reckoning of the Elven Union, have had opportunity after opportunity to make something of our people. Save the brief flash-in-the-pan of Vytrek Tundrak and his disciples, none have grasped this ripe opportunity, thus allowing the fruit to rot and fall from the tree of bounty. The great sins of our people, enumerated in the laws of Caurost, made manifest in such an awful way: what could be said of Elvendom save that it was a degenerate, slothful, frail place of those who hid from the world? Galahad knows, as my father knew, that Elvendom is strengthened only by the guidance and friendship of Man. Listen not to these people who talk about 'pride' or 'honor' or 'strength'. They want nothing more than to see our people reduced to weakness, enslaved by our own vices, and reduced in our will to seek self-betterment."

Valentin prepares the arms and armor of the Count of Metz, preparing to accompany him in war. @KBR

The world is ugly and chaotic and unfair… the only guarantor of security is strength…

I agree with what other people here have said. If you bring assets onto LoTC, then you are allowing them to be interacted with in RP. There's also the fact that plenty of builds, skins, posts, etc, are collaborative projects. If I did the interiors for every house in Haelun'or, but then decided to leave one day, should I just be able to take away the interior of every building? What if people have modified the interiors? What gets taken away then? I would consider skins, art, etc, to be different because those are entirely personal property, bought (or created) by one person with the intent of using that skin for themselves. With builds, it's generally expected that they are for communal use, for everyone to RP in, live in, etc, as they like (and if anyone is barred, it's done through RP). Just because someone has bought/made a build doesn't mean that they OOCly bar someone from ever RPing there on every character on the grounds of it being their creative work. It's understood that the build is a common ground of the nation/group that inhabits it, and any rules about players interacting with the build need to be grounded in RP, where OOC ownership of the creative property doesn't hold any weight. I think a better example would be if I purchased a skin with the intent of using it for my nation's military, then distributed it to everyone and told them to give these skins to the new recruits. If I were to get fired IRP three months later, then decide to revoke everyone's permission to use these skins, I'd just get laughed out of the room because I gave the skins away freely to be used by my nation.

they’ll be calling it the greatest of runs

THE ANNALS OF MARDON: Volume I; Introduction & The Courlandic Hegemony Written by Justinian Nafis, Count of Susa and Adolphus Gloriana, Earl of Suffolk, Prince of Sutica Introduction “It was neither strong nor just, neither tactful nor virtuous; we see in Mardonica the human condition at its basest- a degenerate age with no figures of admiration. May the fascination towards its inglory be the kindest memory it is given.” - Frederick de Armas It is a common practice of the successors, or would-be successors, of past Empires to draw, implicit or explicit, connections between their rule and that of their forebears. The Empire of our present day at the time of writing this, ruled by House van Aert, commonly associates itself with the Pertinaxi Empire, its literal and ideological ancestors. The militarism of the Pertinaxi features prominently in the motifs of the present dynasty, who wish to link their own conquests to those of Aurelius. Harkening upon the legacy of one of the greatest military powers the world has seen, Tiberias van Aert and his successors communicate a simple but effective message: at your peril, will you challenge us! The Johannian Empire, famed for its glory, administration, conquests, and culture, sees a greater share of imitators. It is frequently-cited as the aspirational civilization, one that represented the Golden Age of humanity, if not also the entire world. While this perception of the Johannia will be investigated in our final series, the impact of the memory it leaves is undeniable. The patchwork quality of a diverse humanity, yet one united by a single, dominating Emperor, bolstered by a thorough bureaucracy and personally-linked aristocracy, saw attempted replication in nearly every pan-human state that succeeded it. Only the rejection of the concept of an Empire during the Great Interregnum from 1868-2030 saw a delegitimization of the Johannian model in the eyes of most of the monarchs of humanity, though they still vainly aspired to recapture its prestige. The Novellen Empire, though the enemy of nearly every contemporary, saw its political philosophy and institutions replicated by every human state that succeeded it. Its overwhelmingly successful centralization guided the domestic policies of Haense, Petra, Veletz, and Balian, and was only challenged by Aaun. Its literal descendants continued to rule in Balian and Petra, and its aspiration of the limited, constitutional monarch prevailed in the latter. Liberal social attitudes towards race, gender, and self-expression, broadly accepted even by traditionally conservative figures in the Church and the Van Aert Empire, also finds many roots within the Novellens’ laissez-faire principles. Uniquely, the Mardon Empire, also known as the Sixth Empire, has seen its legacy unanimously rejected. While not the shortest-lived Empire (though it comes dangerously close, depending on one’s criteria), the Mardon Empire stands unchallenged in its iniquity. With no great conquests to its name, no cultural figures of note, no high art, no replicable systems of government, few recorded histories, and no mythos or legend, the question “Should there be a positive reassessment of the Mardon Empire?” is easily-countered by “Can there be one?” The place of the Mardon Empire within the historical delineation of ‘Empires’ is also controversial. Is it to be considered an extension, or at least a revival, of the Johannian Empire? Its founder, John V, was the son and heir of Philip I, the Last Johannian Emperor. He began his reign in 1614, a mere nineteen years after his father’s death. Was the brief Courlandic Hegemony a mere delay, or was it the beginning of a new era, one that fundamentally broke humanity from its ability to remake Johannia? Is it to be considered a new dynasty entirely, separate from the Johannians, and thus a separate Empire? Although the term ‘Mardon Empire’ or the less-used ‘House of Mardon’ are retroactive labels applied by historians of the era, they reflect a certain truth in the nature of power and government during the era. The Kingdom of Mardon, and its capital of Auguston, was the central support base from which John V and his successors drew their strength. Its king, Peter II, eventually came to rule the Empire as a whole for longer than his predecessor and his successor combined. It was the character of rulership, and the character of himself, demonstrated throughout his time as King of Mardon, that has come to popularly define the vices of the Sixth Empire in the eyes of many. Is it to not be considered an Empire at all? Some scholars, especially those during the age of Pertinaxi rule, alleged that the ‘Mardonia’ did not follow the patterns set by the recognized Empires of the past. Its rulers were elevated to the position by a collection of smaller kingdoms during a time of crisis, not a time of conquest. Accordingly, when it failed, its control over its subjects rapidly slipped. By the time of John VI, it barely exercised its authority over the Crownlands. Should such a frail, temporal decoration over what was a period shaped by its rivals and constituent states, be thought of as something else entirely? Over the next few volumes (this history shall need no more than a handful), these authors shall investigate these questions among many more. The failures of the Mardon Empire shall be evaluated in light of new, contemporary findings and historical assessments. The stories of the actors who created it, defended it, undermined it, then destroyed it, shall be examined with a critical lens. Lastly, the three most important questions that surround its brief existence shall be answered. What was the Mardon Empire? What can be learned from the example of its failure? Can one find, in a sea of unanimous revulsion, a single tale worth remembering? The Courlandic Hegemony “I have lived through the eras of Olivier de Savoie, John I, and Aurelius. Those names, when uttered, trembled from their foes and brimmed with delight from their allies. Tobias Staunton was feared by all except his own countrymen.” - Kairn Calithil, King of Elvendom Before the final flake of thanhium snow had settled in the ruins of Johannesburg, the great capital of the Johannian Empire, the even greater power of the world, the kings of humanity grasped for the scraps of the realm that had died in an explosion of hell-ice. The Coalition War, fought from 1590-1595, had seen the rapid implosion of the Johannian Empire by an invasion from an alliance the likes of which the world had not, and would never again, see. Led by Tobias Staunton, King of Courland, ‘the Coalition’ (for so monumental a force, no appendage or qualifier has been deemed necessary) boasted the dwarves of Urguan, the snow elves of Fenn, the orcs of Krugmar, the pagans of Norland, and the rebels of Savoy and Lorraine, among their number. Grievances that stretched back centuries before, or just to the actions of Emperor Philip I, were settled over the course of three battles and a final siege of Johannesburg, which saw the strength of the undaunted Empire buckle, then burst. In his final days, as the armies of the Coalition descended upon the Crownlands, Philip I released his faithful vassals from their oaths. The proud Highlanders of Haeseni-Ruska, the stalwart soldiers of the Westerlands, and a collection of smaller duchies, counties, and baronies, were permitted to discover peace on their own accord. On the 16th of Owyn’s Flame, 1595, the Emperor, intent on denying his capital to Tobias Staunton, ignited a cache of thanhium beneath his city. As the pride of the Johannians melted away, their follies were encased in a sudden, violent eruption of burning ice, which desolated much of the Crownlands and turned Johannesburg into a permanent ruin, never again to be inhabited. Thus begins our story, on the 17th of Owyn’s Flame, 1595, when the world, for the first time in four generations, awoke to a humanity governed not by an Empire, but instead by… what? The Kingdom of Courland, led by Tobias ‘the Conqueror’, had its roots in the Empire. At first a meagre barony at the furthest reaches of the realm, its rapid ascent over the course of Duke’s War, and then the Eighteen Years War, had seen House Staunton enfeoffed as the Dukes of Courland. By the time of the reign of John II, House Staunton was counted among the principal vassals of the Empire. Not content with the splendor of their high standing, they sought greater power in the realm, and soon began a feud with the Duke of Carnatia, Jan Kovachev, in 1559. In what would become known as the Riga War, Duke Alexander of Courland’s initial successes were reversed by Jan Kovachev and his allies. Facing defeat, he turned to hiring mercenaries from the enemies of the Empire, a deed that sealed his fate. Defeated in battle, and inciting the Emperor’s wrath upon him, the Duke of Courland was forced to flee his home, bringing his family and what few followers remained. Born in 1559, Tobias Staunton was but a boy when he witnessed the culmination of his father’s failures: the city of Riga, his home, was sacked and burned in 1664. Joining his family in exile, he saw the prestige of the once-mighty House Staunton crumble, as the former duke became little more than a robber baron. It was in this environment- always at the edge of the law, always on the run from the Imperial Legion- that Tobias Staunton acquired his aptitude for war. An inspiring leader of men, and a gifted strategist, he grew his father’s following significantly. In 1580, Tobias Staunton and his followers settled on the island of Asul, far from the reaches of the Empire, and built the town of Aleksandria, named after his late father. Though the histories of House Staunton, and the feats of Tobias ‘the Conqueror’ in his early life shall be explored in a later history, it need be known that by 1590, his reputation was such that he was believed to be the one credible, capable leader who could defeat the weakened Johannian Empire. Beginning his campaign in 1593, it took the King of Courland, as he had been crowned that year, only two years to bring the Empire to its knees, at the Battle of the Gorge, then shatter it at the Battle of Goldfields, only to see its death as Johannesburg was swallowed in a pillar of thanhium. Now, sitting in his camps just outside of Johannesburg in 1595, the thirty-six year old King of Courland sat and wondered what to do next. It had been his life’s purpose to avenge his father and establish a home for the people of Courland, not rule humanity for himself, but it was by his hand that the world was now fragmented, and the weight of reshaping it fell on the shoulders of the one man with the ability to do so. In the months following, he ordered diplomats, not armies, to travel to the capitals of the remaining human polities. It was not his intention to march any further than he had to: his alliance was built off of a mutual anti-Imperial animus, not a desire to expand Courland. He had led it well over the course of the war, but he could not promise stability much further than that. The first to entreat with the King of Courland was the man who sat at his side: John d’Amaury, the Duke of Lorraine and Savoy. Though a latecomer to the war, his rebellion against the Empire had been decisive in securing victory for the Coalition. He was an ambitious man, having taken charge of the Duchy of Savoy when their duke had been executed by Philip I, but he was cautious as well, hence his belated decision to help topple the Empire. House d’Amaury would be a powerful ally, albeit an unreliable one unless their aspirations for grandeur, reflecting the wealth, glory, and chivalric esteem of their country, was sated. After a few days of negotiation, King Tobias agreed to have John d’Amaury raised to royalty himself, merging the realms of Lorraine and Savoy into the Kingdom of Lotharingia (alternatively, the Kingdom of Lorraine-Savoy), in exchange for limited promises of tribute and deference to Courland as the greatest kingdom of humanity. This initial compact between Courland and Lotharingia provided a template for King Tobias’s following agreements with the realms of humanity. Equipped with a poor diplomatic staff and possessing a limited conception of monarchy, the King of Courland was content to make tributaries and protectorates out of the major human states. If they would recognize his (vague) overlordship of humanity, promise to never raise arms against Courland, and offer regular tribute and gifts, he would leave them to their own devices. The Kingdom of Hanseti-Ruska, reigned over by the eleven year old King Marius, and ruled by his regent, Heinrik Kovachev, was eager to accept the offered peace. Although they had been an important vassal of the Empire, the abortive Deep Cold Uprising by Andrew II, Marius I’s father, in 1585 had significantly weakened the realm. The death of Marius I’s uncle and regent, Prince Charles, at the Battle of the Goldfields, had destabilized House Barbanov’s domestic rule even further. Believing that King Tobias had intended to destroy Haense for its role in his father’s downfall, his relatively mild terms came as a welcome surprise. They would not be allowed the same pretense of sovereignty that the King of Lotharingia was (though he answered to Courland all the same), but the Courlandic garrisons were not too large, and the tribute not too taxing. The Kingdom of the Westerlands, a poor realm centered upon the lonely fort of Bastion in the far west of Tahn, was far more a military order than it was a true kingdom. Its king, Leopold Marna, had been Emperor Philip’s Archchancellor, but he now pledged to refrain from interfering in the politics of man. With the forces of Iblees gathering in the far west, it would be the duty of the Westerlands to defend Tahn, if not all of Axios. King Tobias permitted this, though he still demanded mild tribute and, as Haense had done, recognition of him as suzerain of humanity. Other lords and ladies of the Heartlands followed suit, but there was one final realm of note: The Duchy of Mardon, whose ruler was none other than Peter Sigismund Horen, son of Philip I. While Philip I had encased himself in a coffin of thanhium, he had not consigned his family to the same fate. His wife, Empress Adeline, had voluntarily chosen to stay with him, and together they ensured that their children would escape to safety. Three of their four children, including their eldest son, Prince John Frederick, were whisked away into exile. Where exactly they were taken to is still a matter of mystery, which these authors shall investigate in the next volume. However, their second son, the four year old Prince Peter Sigismund, was well-accounted for. Having been granted the lands of Mardon, east of the Crownlands, soon after his birth, the boy was taken to the city of Auguston to be cared for by his great-uncle and regent, the aged Prince Philip Louis. Mardon, located in the depths of swampy, poor land, posed no threat to Courland, even if its duke was the son of the recently-killed Emperor. The visitation by Sir Jacques de Felsen, one of King Tobias’s commanders, to negotiate Mardon’s submission to the Conqueror, revealed the depths of poverty that encompassed the lands. “The roads, oft-flooded, never wide, and rarely cobbled, finally, after three days of travel, led me to the duke’s seat at Auguston. To call it a town would be an undue mercy. Though it had a wall, it had sunk so deep in the mud that in sections a man could see over it, provided he too did not sink. What these walls protected, a collective of thatched hovels not too dissimilar, albeit far cleaner, than those of the sparse villages I had seen in my journey, was no sight for sore eyes. Even the people took to the character of the land: gaunt, sickly, pale, and foul of smell and manner. The keep that the regent resided in was no greater than the hamlet it overlooked. An old fort from the early settlement of the region, it did not need to have been ruined by the war to be rendered unusable. A handful of workers were busy repairing an old wall that had collapsed, apparently on account of its inadequate architecture, though I do not count myself among the engineers of our army for a reason. White-haired soldiers, wearing the threadbare armor they had likely donned at the Goldfields, greeted me with contempt, but beneath that bold face was the reckoning of their own indignity.” Philip Louis was an old, frail man, unwilling and unable to continue the war against Courland. He quickly acquiesced to King Tobias’s demands, which were much the same as the others, but included Duke Peter renouncing his claim to the Empire. Given how the child did not even know what the Empire was, his regent had no difficulty accepting the terms. His submission was to be the last of the principal vassals of the former Empire. Some small holdouts- fervently-loyal barons and Imperial generals out in the field- would continue to resist for a few months longer, but by the end of 1595, all resistance to House Staunton had been quelled, and humanity now found itself with a new master, even if lorded over them by different methods. King Tobias soon returned home to jubilant celebration, marked by a week of festivities hosted by the city government of Aleksandria. Large crowds of his devoted subjects gathered to shower him in praise and acclaim, for he had done what no man of Courland had before. Beneath his banner, he had gathered the armies of six nations under his banner, defeated the assembled legions of the Empire twice in the field of battle, and ended the rule of the golden Johannians. “‘Johannesburg for Riga, Philip for Alexander!’ cheered the people as His Majesty rode through the streets atop his white stallion,” wrote Julian de Castro, a member of the Aleksandrian city council. More than any material gain, Tobias Staunton had righted the humiliations suffered by his people. The world was now beneath King Tobias’s thumb, but it would not in his nature to rule. More comfortable campaigning in the field than administering from the Curonberg Palace, the Conqueror withdrew from public life and the governance of his realm, leaving nearly all matters to his brother and Archchancellor, Prince Svenald. Courland was still a feudal realm, united by personal devotion to House Staunton, and King Tobias himself, rather than any formal bureaucracy, but none would dare challenge the man who had brought the entire world to heel. His reign and hegemony secured, King Tobias allowed himself a period of rest and leisure, which he undoubtedly deserved. It should come as no surprise that within a year, the Courlandic Hegemony was already under stress. In 1597, King John of Lotharingia, just two years removed from his betrayal of the Johannians, and being rewarded with a kingdom for it, died of an illness he had acquired while hunting (some believe he was assassinated, but the evidence for this is sparse). King John’s son, Lothar d’Amaury, ascended to the throne of Lotharingia in his place but being only seven, his mother, Queen Charlotte, assumed her role as regent. A competent if erratic political mind in her own right, Queen Charlotte would have been as much an asset to Courland as her husband was, were it not for the fact that she was the older sister of the late Emperor Philip. Ever-tactful, she would not oppose King Tobias during her regency, nor outwardly pursue a different foreign policy from her husband, but Courlandic agents would frequently note that among her council and court of favorites, most had been ardent supporters of the Empire. Regardless of her personal capability, Queen Charlotte had the misfortune of ruling a kingdom rife with political instability, caused by a culture of court intrigue and factionalism among the vassals of the realm. Forced to fend off challenges to the regency, if not her son’s throne itself, she negotiated a three year pause in tribute payments and a remit of Lotharingia’s obligation to provide Courland with soldiers during times of war, in exchange for double-tribute in five years’ time. Not long after the new terms were signed in the winter of 1597, Courlandic merchants reported an unprecedented amount of money and goods flowing through Mardon, which had integrated the dilapidated region into the wider trade networks throughout the Heartlands. As the breadbasket of the Empire, grain from Lotharingia had fueled wars, conquered winters, and made the region one of the wealthiest in all of Axios. The kingdom’s political instability, beginning in the 1600s, the collapse of House d’Amaury’s power meant that its centralized control over grain production, harvesting, and trade, fell to local lords. Prioritizing their own fortunes over the health of the Heartlands, these local lords started a practice of covertly raiding their own subjects’ farmsteads to both claim damages from the government in Metz (which lacked the capacity to verify these claims) and artificially squeeze the grain supply that they were do, raising its value significantly but in turn causing a shortage throughout Tahn. Two years later, rebellion broke out in Haense. House Brawn, one of King Marius’s more unruly vassals, unfurled the banner of House Staunton beside their own and attempted to seize the realm in the name of King Tobias. The rebellion was put down at the Siege of Houndsden in 1600, and it never attracted so much as a passing interest from Courland (their use of Staunton sigils was most likely an attempt to attract foreign support, rather than a sign of already having it); however, for a Haeseni populace gripped with fear of an inevitable reprisal for the Riga War, it was proof enough that King Tobias had been personally undermining them. Urged on by the insistence of his subjects, the wary King Marius requested that Courland send an envoy to explain its actions. Although King Tobias wished to send an army instead, Prince Svenald convinced him to not act too hastily and risk Haense receiving support from the other subdued human powers. Instead, the Archchancellor sent his son, Prince Meric, to St. Karlsburg to reassure King Marius of Courland’s uninvolvement. The meeting between the two, held on the 10th of Harren’s Folly, 1600, was amicable enough, and the well-mannered Prince Meric proved one of Courland’s few capable diplomats, but it was not the agreeable king he needed to have feared. As he departed that evening for his manor outside the Haeseni capital, successful in his mission, Prince Meric was beset by a mob riled up by a number of anti-Courlandic agitators. Stoned to death by a crowd of hundreds, the prince’s body was dragged through the streets and brought before Ottosgrad Castle, where Marius I was exhorted by his subjects to go to war and end the Courlandic Hegemony. Knowing his realm could not afford to fight the might of King Tobias’s armies, Marius I immediately sought to rectify the situation and sent envoys to Aleksandria along with the body of Prince Meric. Showing a remarkable degree of restraint, Prince Svenald accepted the King of Haense’s apologies, but at King Tobias’s order, he demanded a garrison be installed at Metterden, which guarded the southern pass of the realm. The Haeseni envoys had no choice but to agree, and by the year’s end an army of 2,000 under Abdes de Savin, Duke of Savinia, had occupied Metterden. War had been averted, but as King Marius would soon find, he could not placate his vengeful vassals and the King of Courland at the same time. A mere four months after the first Curonian soldiers entered Metterden, King Marius’s dissident subjects struck again. House Ivanovich, one of the more militant and disobedient of his vassals, attacked the small entourage of Princess Annabel Staunton, daughter of Prince Svenald, on the 4th of Sigismund’s End, 1601, as she was traveling to St. Karlsburg to serve as her father’s permanent ambassador. The princess was taken captive, while her guards were cut down to a man. Just as the mob in St. Karlsburg had done a year before, the Lord Ivanovich called for the kingdom to rise against Courland and win its complete freedom through a great, national war. The virtual revolt of House Ivanovich preceded a general breakdown of King Marius' authority. An army he sent to free her was turned back at Godansk, and several of his more prominent vassals, chief among them House Kovachev, joined the Ivanovich effort to push Haense towards war with Courland. On the 12th of Horen’s Calling, the Duke of Savinia marched on Carnatia to put pressure on the growing anti-Courland faction within Haense, and possibly negotiate Princess Annabel’s return, but he lacked the manpower to take Kovachev’s seat at Turov. Forced to turn back to Metterden, he was met with a closed gate and a Ruthern garrison unwilling to open it. Without anywhere left to be quartered, Duke Abdes and his army withdrew from Haense entirely. While not a wrathful man at heart, King Tobias took the quasi-rebellion in Haense as a personal insult and a challenge to his authority, even if it did not originate from Marius I. It was evident that the King of Haense had lost control of his subjects, and his will alone could not prevent the inevitable. When word came of the death of another envoy at the hands of the Ivanovichs, the king’s mind was made up. He called for an army of 20,000 to be raised from across the realm and contracted the services of the dwarven Frostbeard Clan, eager to cross the Urguani border and raid vulnerable mountain villages. Sir Jacques de Felsen and Sir Rotger von Curon were each given 1,000 soldiers to reinforce the Duke of Savinia and pressure Haense from the south, while the rest of the army would embark to Tahn the next year and operate out of the Crownlands. King Marius tried one more to find peace, but it was too far from his grasp. The Count of Metterden, realizing that his lands would be the first to fall to King Tobias’s armies, offered to go to Aleksandria as the king’s diplomat and parlay with King Tobias. Unfortunately for the Lord Ruthern, his refusal to allow the Duke of Savinia to take refuge in his keep was not forgotten. Shortly after his arrival in Aleksandria on the 20th of Sigismund’s End, 1602, he and his entourage were arrested and executed on the orders of King Tobias. Three days later, the Courlandic army, led from the front by their tall, imposing king, riding atop a golden-haired stallion, marched out from the gates of the capital once again, ready to avenge grievances both old and new. The story of the Great Northern War, covered in more detail by other scholars, was a story of capacity, or the lack thereof, to maintain a united realm. King Tobias, having won the unwavering devotion of his subjects, experienced no difficulties in organizing his army, delegating assignments to his capable, experienced subordinates, and maintaining cohesion as he transported his soldiers across the sea and through the sparsely-inhabited lands of southern Tahn on the way to the Crownlands, where the small towns and lonely keeps, experiencing economic stagnation from the loss of Johannesburg, played host to Courlandic armies once more. From his headquarters at Castle Rhoades, King Tobias and his generals planned the coming offensive into Haense and oversaw a series of sweeping raids into the kingdom, which struggled to effectively combat them. Prince Svenald, eager to avenge his son and rescue his daughter, personally went to Urguan to negotiate for Courland’s access to the Urguani coast, which would allow them to circumvent Haense’s eastern and southern defenses, known to be strong, and open a front from the north. King Marius, on the other hand, did not have a united realm ready to combat the Courlandic invasion. While a number of his strongest vassals were eager to go to war, having successfully agitated the precarious situation enough to spark it, they did not represent the whole of the realm. Franz Kovachev, a cousin of the Duke of Carnatia, had been the leader of a faction that favored greater collaboration with Courland. When news of the Conqueror’s landing in the Crownlands reached Haense, he and his allies defected and traveled south to join the invaders. Others, such as House Ruthern, opted for neutrality, fearing further reprisal from King Tobias. Even prospective allies in the Westerlands, Mardon, and Lotharingia refused to be involved (though all covertly allowed ‘volunteers’ to join). By the spring of 1603, as King Marius and his generals prepared to march south to force King Tobias into an early battle, only 10,000 had mustered in St. Karlsburg, with 3,000 being foreign volunteers. The ensuing Battle of Elba, fought on the 5th of Godfrey’s Triumph, 1603, was the culmination of this disparity in capacity. After a few months of maneuvering, the two armies met in the Elba Forest, in the northwestern Crownlands near the Haeseni border. Possessing a superiority in quality and quantity of soldiers, a more capable officer core, and a more cohesive and disciplined command structure, King Tobias was able to comprehensively defeat the Haeseni within an hour. First he sent forth his knights, putting the Haeseni horse to flight after a brief skirmish, then he used his infantry to overwhelm the wavering Haeseni line, before finally committing his reserves to surround his aimless foe. As his cavalry chased King Marius and his retinue back to St. Karlsburg, and his infantry took thousands of prisoners, Tobias the Conqueror summoned what generals had not committed to the battle and drew up plans for a three-pronged incursion into Haense. Nonetheless, King Tobias was a merciful man at heart, and he offered Haense one last chance to preserve their kingdom. The peace he offered was crippling- the loss of two thirds’ of Haeseni land, significant reparations, and the imprisonment of King Marius, the Duke of Carnatia, and others perceived to be responsible for the war were just some of the terms- but it would keep House Barbanov atop the throne, never mind keeping a throne at all. Whether out of the misguided belief that the war could be won, or the stubborn pride of the Highlanders that guided his rationale, King Marius refused the peace. The war would be fought to the death. Throughout the rest of 1603 and the beginning of 1604, the scattered and broken Haeseni buckled beneath the force of invasion. While King Tobias took the bulk of his army through Urguan, having promised them Haeseni land in exchange for military access, the Duke of Savinia obtained the submission of Metterden to the south, and in the east, Franz Kovachev took charge of bands of rebels and subdued many of the realm’s ‘border barons’. King Marius scrambled to put together another army, but the 5-7,000 at his disposal were not enough to counter the multitude of threats he now faced. By the time that King Tobias emerged from the north and surrounded the key castle of Vasililand on the 2nd of Sigismund’s End, 1604, desertions within the army, riots within the cities, and defections out in the countryside, had rendered King Marius incapable of even keeping his realm from falling apart. The brief Siege of Vasililand spelled the end of the Kingdom of Hanseti-Ruska. Leading an army of 22,000, bolstered by thousands of dwarven mercenaries, King Tobias stormed the seat of House Vanir after nine days, suffering minimal casualties in the process. The Haeseni army, watching from a distance the whole time, was slain not by swords and arrows, but by the hopelessness before their eyes. Day by day, the lifeless Haeseni host melted away with the spring snows, leaving behind their king and countrymen. When Vasililand was finally captured on the 11th of Sigismund’s End, King Marius returned to his capital, gathered his household, treasury, and prized artifacts. By the month’s end, he had fled the realm, joined only by his family and immediate supporters. With the entirety of the north at his mercy, King Tobias moved on to St. Karlsburg. Having provided advance notice of its destruction to its residence, he and his army came upon an abandoned city. After looting it of what little remained, he ordered the city to be burned and its walls to be pulled down. Overlooking the ruins of St. Karlsburg as the rubble that remained of it burned, King Tobias remarked that the city’s destruction was “not a matter of revenge for Riga, as much as it will embed itself in the minds of my soldiers, and those who will write of me later.” If King Tobias’s authority over humanity had appeared weak over the course of the past nine years, his quick and efficient dismantling of Haense had proven that he had not lost his mastery over the world. After formally dissolving the Kingdom of Hanseti-Ruska, Haense was formally integrated into the Kingdom of Courland as the Province of Haense. For his efforts, Franz Kovachev was named Governor of Haense and granted the Duchy of Carnatia. From Turov, he would govern in the name of House Staunton, lording over Haense with an iron fist. The brutal rule of Franz Kovachev caused thousands to flee the realm or turn to rebellion, but he maintained order for his Courlandic overlords (as shaky as it was) and remained a faithful subject of King Tobias. Princess Annabel, who had been freed by the new governor when he led an army into Carnatia, returned to Courland to live a quiet, peaceful life of obscurity. Receiving reports of the progress of the Great Northern War from Auguston was the thirteen year old Duke of Mardon, Peter Horen. Although he was still governed by his regent, the old Prince Philip, who had wisely kept the realm out of the war, the young duke had begun to come into his own. He had urged his great-uncle to join the war on the side of Haense, arguing (if the word of Sir Douglas McNamee is to be trusted) that decisive intervention and victory in the war would lead to the Haeseni crowning him as Emperor. What the duke failed to understand was that, despite the growth that his realm now experienced, he only had 3,000 soldiers at his command, and that was if he stretched the levy to its absolute limit. If Duke Peter could not intervene in the war itself, he was determined to influence its aftermath. When word of King Marius’s flight reached him, he invited him and his court to Auguston. His capital was now a city of stone and timber, rather than thatch, mud, and scrapwood, and his seat at Castle Aanen had become a formidable keep under Prince Philip’s renovations. Duke Peter did not keep a glorious court, nor a prestigious one, but it was more than capable of hosting a large number of Haeseni exiles. Over a ten-year span from 1604-1614, steward records from Auguston record over 5,000 individuals from Haense settling in the capital alone, among them King Marius and his family. Many of these would contribute their wealth, talents, and soldiers to Mardon, strengthening the duchy even more than the early assistance from Lotharingia had. While Duke Peter accepted the Haeseni exiles with open arms (and their money and manpower with a tight embrace), the people of Auguston did not regard their new guests nearly as highly. The Haeseni were perceived to be rude drunkards who looked down upon the poorer people of Auguston, whom they would often annoy with antics in the streets and constant revelry in the newly-built manors of the capital, which loomed over the poor districts that had been around since the city’s founding. These complaints fell on the deaf ears of Duke Peter, who was himself an even more eager reveler. The attraction of so many Haeseni exiles to Mardon caught the attention of King Tobias. Prince Philip could be counted upon to remain docile, but the same could not be said about his young and headstrong grandnephew. The Great Northern War had proven that even a monarch reluctant to fight, as Marius I had been, could not withstand a populace that wished to fight. King Tobias’s hesitation to bring Haense to heel had only emboldened the more radical elements within the realm, which ultimately led to a brief but costly campaign. A laissez-faire approach to handling his subjects had only temporarily stalled rebellion, not prevented it. He would not make the same mistake with Mardon. The war between Courland and Mardon, lasting from 1606-1607, is notoriously poorly-recorded, as are most events during the post-Johannian period. What sparked the war is unclear, but propaganda issued by King Tobias referred to Mardon as the final bastion of House Horen and the last front of the wider rebellion against Courlandic Hegemony. The death of Prince Philip in 1605 gives us some insight as to the possible developments of the realm, as the regent’s steady hand gave way to the aggressive ambitions of Duke Peter. More Haeseni refugees were taken in, the duke personally went into debt to strengthen his army, and two new castles were constructed in his realm. If not yet actively rebelling in 1606, the Duke of Mardon was clearly preparing to do so in the future. Another possible reason for the king’s war against Mardon lay not within the duchy itself but instead its neighbor: Lotharingia. The regency of Queen Charlotte had done enough to keep the realm from eating itself from within over the past decade, and she even contributed 1,000 soldiers to the Courlandic army in the Great Northern War, but intrigue and plotting continued to dominate the atmosphere of the young King Lothar’s court. No fewer than three assassination attempts were made on the king during that time, and the regent herself was barely saved from a dissident’s blade during a ball. The immense strain of ruling this turbulent, dangerous kingdom had (understandably), inflicted a great toll upon the sanity of Queen Charlotte (understandably). Instead of confronting the problems the realm faced- a stagnating economy, a ruined treasury, weakened institutions, and infighting, factional vassals- she hunted for enemies within the shadows of Metz. One such enemy was the Baroness of Ostwick, Anna Pruvia. While she was a relatively minor vassal of the crown, being a cousin of the queen afforded her significant connections in the courts of Metz, and her Pruvian relatives could be found all throughout the Heartlands. A charismatic woman, the Baroness of Ostwick managed to convince a number of the realm’s vassals to support her bid for the throne of Lotharingia, in order to right the realm and prevent it from slipping into chaos. The conspiracy around her grew, and it was not long before Duke Peter heard of the events transpiring just to the east. Unaware that Queen Charlotte was no friend of Courland, the Duke of Mardon believed that he could make a puppet out of the Baroness of Ostwick and thus massively increase his influence over the Heartlands. He wrote to Anna Pruvia, pledging to back her claim to Lotharingia, though he did not condition it. With the support of several powerful Lotharingian aristocrats and the Duke of Mardon, the Baroness of Ostwick, from her seat, gave the order to seize Metz. A group of conspirators entered the capital on the 13th of Sigismund’s End, 1606, slaying King Lothar and his brother, Prince Philip, under unclear circumstances (likely a stabbing within the palace). Queen Charlotte only narrowly escaped with her last surviving son, Prince Hughes. The conspirators then attempted to seize the palace, but were driven out by the garrison of Metz, led by the city bailiff, Sir Bruce Hornigold. Although she had failed to take Metz, Anna Pruvia announced her claim to the throne nonetheless, and called for the vassals of Lotharingia to swear fealty to her at Castle Ostwick. The assassination of King Lothar and the failed coup in Metz sparked a civil war in Lotharingia. ‘Queen Anna’ and her supporters, bolstered by a 500-strong contingent sent by the Duke of Mardon, seized control of the farmlands of the south and began to encroach on the trade towns of the western part of the kingdom. In the north, the Count of Cleves, Robert de Anjou, took up the cause of House d’Amaury, pledging to restore it to the throne of Lotharingia. He made common cause with Sir Bruce Hornigold, and together they asserted control over the northern hills, eastern forests, and capital of the realm. However, the war was locked in an indecisive stalemate, and, at least for the moment, it seemed that it would be that way for some time. Seeing his (supposedly) most stalwart tributary collapse in on itself, spurred on by the Duke of Mardon, is likely what pushed King Tobias into finally deciding to press forward with an invasion. It was not just a rebellious duke that he now needed to quell, but an entire catastrophe within the Heartlands that could easily spiral out of control. The King of Courland hurriedly assembled an army to put down the upstart in Mardon and bring order back to Lotharingia. In what was essentially a preventive war, King Tobias marshaled only a fraction of the resources that he had in the Great Northern War. He and his army, numbering around 10,000, landed in Tahn in the summer of 1606 and were joined by a contingent of 2,000 soldiers from the lords of the Crownlands and began a slow, comprehensive campaign in Mardon, subduing several towns and castles that autumn, thus wrapping a noose around Auguston. The Duke of Mardon, caught unawares and lacking much in the way of guidance and reliable subordinates, merely waited in his capital with his army. As the months dragged on, his vassals departed, one by one, to defend their homes. Only the onset of winter stemmed the bleeding within his army. The campaign resumed the following spring, where King Tobias’s success continued unabated. Another three castles were taken in swift succession, and by the summer, his armies had isolated Auguston and were marching to besiege it. The 5,000 soldiers at Duke Peter’s command was enough to hold the city for some time (his forces fighting in Lotharingia notwithstanding), but with Queen Anna tied down to the east, and no other realistic alternatives for support, he gambled on an ambush thirty leagues from the city. The exact location of the battle remains uncertain, but it is known to have taken place along the banks of Lake Blackwater on the 15th of Godfrey’s Triumph, 1607. The final battle in the storied career of Tobias Staunton was, in truth, no great victory. With 10,000 battle-hardened, encouraged soldiers at his disposal (perhaps more), even a poor general could have easily brushed aside the 5,000 weary, near-broken Mardonic levies that faced him. However, the Conqueror was not a man who allowed himself to underestimate his foe. On the morning of the 15th, he drew up his army in the traditional three-battle structure, with Prince Svenald leading the vanguard, Sir Jacques de Felsen leading the main battle, and Sir Rotger von Curon leading the rearguard. Directing it all from a hill overlooking the marshy field was King Tobias himself. Prince Svenald, leading 3,000 of Courland’s finest knights, wasted little time in urging his men forward, though the terrain made it difficult to advance at more than a trot. As dawn illuminated the field, he and his knights struck into the still-assembling Mardonic right, putting them to flight almost immediately. As he chased them from the field, the main battle under Sir Jacques, about 5,000 strong, engaged with the remainder of the Mardonic army. Overlooking the battle, King Tobias refused to commit his rearguard, for it consisted mostly of the levies of his Crownlands subjects, which he deemed unreliable. Instead, he allowed the melee of the main parts of the armies to continue, shoring up his lines and directing idle units where needed. As the strength of manpower and discipline began to overwhelm the weary soldiers of Mardon, King Tobias finally permitted a small force of knights in the reserve to circle around the enemy line and strike from the rear. Already at a breaking point, this final push sent the rebel army fleeing back to Auguston. The rebuilding and fortification of Auguston overseen by Prince Philip Louis, and later Duke Peter, had transformed the city, well-positioned along Lake Blackwater, into a rather defensible city. However, the Mardonic defeat in open battle had reduced its garrison to just 200 soldiers, and the city populace, weary of a war they had not asked for, threatened to revolt if peace was not made. Despite the core of his failure being the unwise decision to fight the Courlandic army in the open field, Duke Peter (somewhat reasonably) resolved to never allow himself to be put under siege again. At the cost of perhaps 100 men, King Tobias had slain or captured 4,000 of the enemy, while the rest had scattered. Resuming his march three days later, it was only a week before the Courlandic army was beneath the walls of a lightly-defended Auguston, on the brink of revolt, implosion, or both. In the words of Ser Jaskir Zakopane, a knight sworn to one Stephen Barbanov “the Conqueror needed only pass around the city once with his legions, then begin the construction of a single trebuchet, before the Duke of Mardon had ordered surrender. It was with great relief to us all. Though I was prepared to fight, I do not know if I was yet ready to die, as all those who opposed him had.” What Ser Jaskir could not expect, but what had been demonstrated time and time again, was that the King of Courland was an eminently merciful man. It is something of a miracle that Duke Peter kept his head, much less his throne, after his rebellion. Under the terms of the Treaty of Auguston, signed on the 27th of Godfrey’s Triumph, 1607, some lands were surrendered to King Tobias’s subjects in the Crownlands, some hostages were given to the court of Aleksandria, and some additional tribute was required to be paid. Miraculously, Duke Peter’s position was not seriously threatened, nor were his losses so insurmountable that he was crippled in the long-term. Having obtained something of a victory at the negotiating table where he had lost it in the battlefield, the Duke of Mardon was able to head off any discontent from within the ranks of his subjects and Haeseni allies. Historians attribute his survival to a combination of the magnanimity of Tobias Staunton and the duke’s own charisma, though scholars of the period have also considered another factor, which will be discussed momentarily. A peripheral consequence of Duke Peter’s defeat came in the Lotharingian Civil War to his east. Forced to recall the contingent he had sent to support Anna Pruvia, he deprived his ally of a critical component of her army, which otherwise did not have the means of adequately standing against the Count of Cleves. Deprived of the ability to prosecute a war to gain control over Metz, Queen Anna was forced to put her army on the defensive. Over the following weeks, her soldiers lost ground to Robert de Anjou’s forces, until she controlled little beyond her homelands in southern Lotharingia. The coup de grace for her bid to the throne was the coronation of Odo d’Amaury, the forty year old uncle of the late King Philip, in Metz on the 2nd of Tobias’s Bounty. A mature, seasoned politician, King Odo could promise a degree of stability and competent government that came with self-rule, and before long the vassals of the realm aligned themselves behind him in full. On the verge of either surrendering or requesting peace terms, Queen Anna accepted a number of notables into the halls of Ostwick, either as envoys or as those who may pledge to her cause in the final days of the civil war, and thus give her a better bargaining position. One of these courtiers was Sir Bruce Hornigold, the bailiff of Metz, who claimed to despise King Odo and wished to defect to her cause. Too overcome with desperation to notice the improbability of his story, Queen Anna opened her gates to the knight. A day later, on the evening of the 14th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1607, he slew her in the gardens of Ostwick with a blow to the head from his axe. Castle Ostwick surrendered the next day, and the Lotharingian Civil War was over. As he returned home, King Tobias left behind a Heartlands that now sat quiet. The last opposition to his reign had been quashed, and the lords of humanity were now firmly beneath his hegemony. His allies or subjects dotted every island of Axios, and at his home in Tahn, he ruled over a flourishing kingdom with a capital that teemed with life. It had not been without great cost: his own health had begun to fail in his last years, which was not helped by the constant travel and campaigning that occupied most of his time. Years of war would certainly hasten his death, but he hoped that the rest and recuperation he could afford himself would prolong his life as much as possible. Before he stepped upon his flagship, the Queen Philippa, named after his mother, King Tobias was handed a letter. Its contents were enough to cause even the dauntless conqueror to gasp and throw it at his feet. Two months earlier, a group of Norlanders had slain three dwarves in a tavern brawl. Norland and Urguan, his two oldest, most important allies, had since gathered their armies and declared war. Both had requested that their powerful ally intervene on their behalf, or at least mediate, but they would not wait for him. Western Tahn was soon engulfed in bloodshed as preliminary raiding struck the smaller trade towns and farmers that dotted the sparse land. It was merely a precursor to the fighting that was to come, as well as the political changes that were on the horizon. Over the next year, King Tobias tried to refrain from involving himself in the ‘War of Grudges’, as history now knows the conflict, but he nonetheless poured over reports from Tahn, met with diplomats monthly, and tried four times, all in vain, to bring an end to the fighting. The King of Courland hoped that the war could at least be limited to border skirmishing and some small territorial conquests, but in the late months of 1608, a crushing dwarven victory at the Battle of Blodskogr dashed any hopes of a brief war. To make matters worse, Prince Svenald, who had been sent as an observer and hopeful mediator, had been killed by a stray ballista shot. The news of the death of his beloved brother and chancellor, as well as the dwarven march on Norland proper, caused King Tobias to suffer a heart attack. Forced by health to retire where his will could not, the king delegated the affairs of the state to his son, the fourteen year old Prince Joseph, and traveled to his leisure palace at Beauclair. For the final three months of his life, King Tobias removed himself from his duties, allowing himself a measure of peace, even as the first flames rose from across the sea. While his retirement may have been too late to save his life, too brief to treasure, the fifty-three year old king enjoyed the gardens of his coastal estate nonetheless. Filling his days with rowing, small hunts, and dinners with his immediate family, the grey-haired Tobias accepted his failing health with a smile and laugh. In the last few weeks of his life, he was confined to his palace, but he continued to accept visits from old friends, former comrades-in-arms, and distant kin. The last person he met with before his death was the Duke of Savinia, Abdes de Savin, the loyal vassal and able commander who had stood with him through every one of his campaigns. The next morning, on the 12th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1608, the king’s heart, which had struggled to keep him upright, finally stopped beating. A final, quick heart attack took the king an hour after breakfast, as he sat in the sands while overlooking the Tahanian Sea. In a mere fifteen years, he had destroyed the Holy Orenian Empire and brought the entire world beneath the overlordship of Courland. He had fought and won three separate wars, never once losing a battle, and had forged his place in history as Tobias ‘the Conqueror’. The destruction of Riga and exile of the Courlanders half a century earlier had been avenged, and glory for his people had been won time and time again as the armies of Courland became the most vaunted in the world. Lastly, his people had a home in Aleksandria. By all accounts from the end of his life, Tobias Staunton died content, for his legacy would live far beyond him. However, legacy would count for little in the present moment. To succeed him was his young son Joseph, ill-prepared to rule. He had not had the time to learn much about rulership, nor could he have built up his military pedigree. Now, he was immediately confronted with a war between two of his allies, a delicate situation that could explode at any moment. The ‘Courlandic Hegemony’ as had existed was merely the name of a series of treaties and loose arrangements that revolved around King Tobias’s ability to enforce them with his armies. With the central figure now removed from this web, questions about its viability would be at the forefront in the courts of Axios. In the Crownlands, the lords there had shown a degree of loyalty to House Staunton, but they were younger, newer landholders who lacked the deep ties and sensibilities that prized loyalty. They had seen Emperors come and go- what was to say they would rush to Courland’s defense if it meant risking their own holdings? In the Westerlands, King Caius, son of the late King Leopold, had ceased his tribute payments, citing a worsening situation in the west that required his resources to be solely devoted to defending humanity. In Haense, the people had not forgotten their loyalties to House Barbanov. The brutal, violent governorship of Franz Kovachev had only galvanized the growing opposition that now clamored for Stephen Barbanov, the heir to the throne of Hanseti-Ruska, to return. The rebellions that had once been isolated and meek had grown in size and intensity. The Governor’s forces had been stretched thin trying to contain the unrest, which he had downplayed in his reports to King Tobias in order to retain his favor, but the volatility of the pro-Barbanov factions within Haense had become too much for him to handle alone. A second campaign in Haense was a matter of ‘when’, not ‘if’. In Lotharingia, King Odo’s presence as a stabilizing, able hand on the throne was welcomed only insofar as it was needed to keep the realm from falling into civil war again. With the threat of Queen Anna now removed, the courtiers and vassals of Lotharingia began to concoct their schemes once more. Shadows gathered around Metz, and the possibility of another coup, war, assassination, or any other destabilizing event came to the forefront. For a kingdom that had experienced all three- multiple times- over the past two years, they seemed unwilling to learn from the disasters that were brought from petty intrigue. In Mardon, Duke Peter had shown little strategic foresight or martial prowess in his rebellion, but he had ambition in droves. If age could temper his rashness, and time could allow him to rebuild his realm, then he could prove a natural leader in a new rebellion against the hegemony. Even the Courlandic council agreed that he would strike again if he sensed even a hint of weakness. House Horen’s place as the ‘natural’ leaders of humanity was still deeply-ingrained in the minds of most. If the Duke of Mardon unfurled his banners once more, it was guaranteed that he would see even more flock to his cause. In retrospect, the legend of Tobias ‘the Conqueror’- a brutal, ruthless warlord who destroyed kingdoms, butchered his enemies, and then vanished, is not entirely accurate. While he was undeniably the foremost general of his day, and spent much of his life on campaign, his mercy and light hand with his enemies was remarkable for not just the time, but for all of human history. Only Orenia and Haense had been reduced to memories by his armies, but their people, even those in high places, were allowed to live in relative peace unless they challenged him. Although he did not partake in much of the day-to-day management of his kingdom, preferring to delegate duties where possible, he actively attempted to maintain his hegemony until the end of his life. If there was one lesson to be learned from the era of Tobias Staunton, it was that a soft hand was not sufficient in ruling humanity, much less the entire world. No matter how benevolent a master Courland was, it was still a foreign power whose will was imposed on the proud, distinguished families of humanity. The mercy of its king, oft-mistaken for weakness, encouraged discontent and rebellion throughout the human kingdoms on Tahn. While these were suppressed easily enough, they were nonetheless taxing to the royal treasury and led to the deaths of several thousand valuable, experienced soldiers through, if usually not battle, disease and other variables of attrition while on campaign. Rebellions would continue if those who would lead them continued to possess the ability to do so, and the relatively light terms that were usually imposed on King Tobias’s defeated enemies were not enough to keep them on their knees. On a more granular level, the unwillingness of King Tobias to transform the Courlandic Hegemony into the ‘Courlandic Empire’, where he could exercise control more directly, allowed the weak leaders of the time to fall victim to opposing factions within their realm. Lotharingia provides the clearest example of this, where an environment that promoted unchecked ambition, which manifested in clandestine plots, led to a string of assassinations, coups, and wars that thoroughly destabilized what had been a rich, powerful realm within the Empire. The consequences of Lotharingia’s instability showed itself in the Mardon Rebellion, which was only made possible by the early support Duke Peter had received by anti-Courlandic elements within Lotharingia that were allowed to act as they pleased. This would only be the first of four major incidents over the course of twenty years that could be traced back to the collapse of royal authority within Lotharingia. Tobias Staunton had mastered, more than any other man before him save Emperor Godfrey, the methods of bringing humanity to heel. A stronger grip could finally turn the idea of the Courlandic Hegemony into something more substantial, a true configuration of a united humanity that existed beyond just theory. Millions had lived and died witnessing the successes and failures of his reign, but now that the spectre of conquest had been lifted with his death, the most ambitious among them now stood poised to learn from it all. One last, great campaign would be needed to upturn the existing order enough to where authority could be harnessed, then expanded, over the fractured, weakened humanity. The opportunity was ripe for the taking, and it needed only the right person to seize the moment. Would it be King Joseph of Courland, the young, inexperienced, untested son of King Tobias? Would pressure turn coal into diamond and reveal that the father lived through the son? Would it be Duke Peter of Mardon, licking his wounds from his defeat, yet advantaged with a claim and ambition? Would it be Franz Kovachev, the Governor of Haense, determined to crush the final elements of resistance to his rule and reassert House Kovachev’s undisputed dominion over the Highlanders? Would it be Stephen Barbanov, the exile in Mardon, yet a man who would be greeted by thousands ready to join him the moment he stepped foot back in his homeland? Would it be Duke Abdes of Savinia, the proven vassal of King Tobias, whose wealth and armies would be critical to Courland’s future? Would it be King Odo of Lotharingia, whose cunning could allow him to finally wrestle control of the chaotic court of Metz? Or would it be another, someone not yet revealed? Beauclair Palace, the place of King Tobias’s death, c. 1613 O Ágioi Kristoff, Jude kai Pius. Dóste mas gnósi ópos sas ékane o Theós. Poté min afísoume na doúme to skotádi, allá as doúme móno to fos tis sofías kai tis alítheias. O Theós na se evlogeí. The collapse of the Courlandic Hegemony and the return of House Horen shall be covered in the next volume of The Annals of Mardon.

i know, i just think the topic’s a bit beaten to death atp (not blaming you btw- i just think what’s often lost in ooc discourse is the fun of just jumping in and rping on the server) on an ooc level, i like having the ability to play characters with those perspectives. every nation brings something new to do, but the empire brings much more things to do than others

the discourse is kind of nauseating atp so i’ll just say that most of my pro-empire characters base their support off of 3 things: 1. the “will to power” inherent in the creation of an empire, reflective of man’s desire to self-improvement and agency over the world 2. the stability (political, social, economic, etc) that an empire brings 3. the social advancement that their family has achieved under the imperial framework

I don't blame newer players for making these threads or assuming that the Empire will last forever because a lot of them haven't been exposed to the usual cycle on the server. Historically, Empires (or their equivalent) have risen, lasted for like 6-18 months, then fallen apart, just to rise up again after 6-12 more months. The period of 3 irl years without an Empire was basically unprecedented. As for what this Empire brings, I think it's all fine. RP isn't bad, though I think it needs to build up more of its institutions to diversify RP. However, it also doesn't intrude on people's freedoms to RP, so I don't really see how anyone is barred from doing anything that they were doing before. The late interregnum period had gotten extremely stale and was basically just a group of nations that didn't interact outside of war and didn't do anything but host events. The day that the same thing happens with this Empire, I'll agree that it should either be toppled or reformed. A lesson that I think newer players ought to learn is that nothing is permanent. You will have periods where your character is the winner and on top of the world, periods where your character is the loser and just can't catch a break, and a whole lot of in-between. Just enjoy the RP that your characters have in the moment, as well as your own story on the server, and you'll find yourself having fun. Even if you really hate something, it can always change in a moment's notice.

Galar kicks his feet back, happy to once again be under the guardianship of the Empire after a few centuries.

I either think you just let people get gear through kits, or you do a Vanilla+ thing like Aesopian said. Herbs are fine to give nodes, but on an RP server you want people RPing as much as possible, not doing mundane grinding

Valentin fetches more water for Sir Lothar as the desert heat sets in.

I actually think that narrowing the subraces is a good thing. One of the problems with the elves over the past few years is the general lack of cultural depth among each subrace, which has sort of turned the elves into this very banal mush that captures only the broad strokes of 'Elvendom' without going much further. Stepping into the elven world ought to be a surreal experience, as it's literally an alien society. If I'm playing a human, I want to feel disoriented, uncomfortable even, when interacting with elves. Playing different types of elves should mean something, and I think physical appearance is a good place to start.

It's not really my job to be an Empire apologist or whatever, but I do think it's worth at least explaining a few of the points y'all have brought up. I actually agree with a lot of them, and even the ones that I think could use some context are still well thought out. This is one of the more genuine and respectful nation critique posts I've seen, so don't take my response as being hostile or anything- I just want to give my perspective and experience as an older player. I. Culture The thing with the Empire, no matter what iteration you're talking about, is that it is essentially responsible for providing a home for every human RPer imaginable. This means being an open space for people who want to RP cultures that borrow from the French, English, Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Serbian, Turkish, Portuguese, Danish, Russian, etc (not to mention human cultures that are inspired from fictional sources). As the home of human RPers, the tent needs to be wide enough to let everyone try out their favored brand of RP, or else there basically won't be anywhere else to go. This naturally makes establishing a concrete culture outside of being 'Heartlander' extremely difficult, and it makes actually enforcing any kind of culture much harder. I would've liked to have seen this current iteration draw a bit more from its Dutch-inspired roots in House van Aert, but I also understand why it didn't, because you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone outside of the main dynasty practicing it. The only Empire that really had the time and opportunity to try and establish an identifiable culture was the Novellen Empire, and even its very limited attempts were widely-rejected because a bunch of vassals thought it was intruding on their own cultures. People really prize their creative expression, even if it comes at the expense of cultural cohesion IRP. That said, I don't think it's a bad thing at all to encourage the ruling dynasty to establish more of a culture for themselves, I just don't expect that anything like that would filter through to everyone else. Humanity is just too diverse for it. The next best thing might be making cultural regions where vassals of similar cultures reside and interact, so that things feel less theme park-y and more deliberate in where various groups happen to reside. I know there are some efforts at this already, but it should be dialer up to an 11. II. Nobility I actually fully agree with this point here, though I would shift a lot of the blame on the noble houses themselves, as well as the wider server culture. To put it plainly, there's little ambition within the average noble to take risks and build a storyline with their character. Losing titles (even if you're doing nothing with them) is something to be avoided at all costs. The only animating force behind a noble family's will to do anything at all is to get another title. This is a server-culture problem that exists pretty much everywhere else (I'd even say the Empire isn't as bad with it as some of its predecessors, as low of a bar as that it). Players want to take the path of least resistance to obtain a noble title as quickly as possible, then they want to do nothing. I think people should be encouraged to scheme, feud, contribute to a nation, etc, all things that develop interesting narratives and provide RP opportunities. At the same time, the Imperial government shouldn't OOCly intervene every time two houses have beef in order to just handle conflict mediation through non-RP avenues. Again, this is a problem that exists in every nation, but the Empire should be a space for people to be bolder, riskier, and more ambitious than they would be in any other nation. If nothing else, this is probably one of the areas that I think the central government could and should step up in more, because human vassals have been cooked for years. III. Naming This is actually a good bit of worldbuilding. The current dynasty descends from House Pertinaxi, which ruled the 'Empire of Man' many years ago. Using the same name is a deliberate attempt to harken back to the legacy of the Pertinaxi, which mirrors stuff that irl monarchial dynasties would do all the time. IV. Colonization (Cultural Exchange) This one I kind of agree with. I'm not sure if it's just something that hasn't been thought of as much yet or what, but it could make for cool RP, albeit RP that's difficult to execute well. At the same time, I could see players screaming if they feel like their IRP culture is being intruded upon. A lot of people on here take a view of culture, religion, etc, that is extremely insular and static. Whether this is because of OOC attitudes, or the difficulty actually RPing out the idea of how cultural influences change people's behaviors over time, it's still something I'd love to see moving forward. IV. No Fun League I also agree that people should let loose a lil more, not be such sticklers for IRP laws or whatever so long as people are having fun and not being a blatant threat or something. This one's obviously more subjective than the others, but there's a goofiness you need to embrace from time to time when RPing and there could def be more of that.

Galar Ithelanen, from his home in Caurost, receives word of the Emperor’s abdication. With none to speak to, he takes to his own thoughts. He wreathed himself in the mantling of the Pertinaxi, his ancestors. I was raised among them, and I knew each and every one… Men may say that Tiberias is no Aurelius. I would be inclined to agree. He has surpassed him.

THE WINTER CROWS: Volume XVI; Andrik III - The Great (III) Written by Demetrius Barrow Andrik III - The Great (III) “The Empire has no heroes, except for the King of Haense.” - Prince Vladrick of Rubern, c. 1739 The Emperor that Ser Konrad would meet in Helena was far from the egomaniacal warlord that had given him his throne, or the timid boy that had preceded him. Peter III was well-spoken, yet did not appreciate the sound of his own voice. He was well-educated, not a soldier by any means, but frequently solicited the advice of his councilors before responding to the Lord Palatine in an official capacity. He was in favor of centralization, but through pragmatic methods that would not rupture Haeseni society and the privileges that made its political foundation. “Short yet upright, quiet yet commanding, regally distant yet humble in approach, I found a man of contradictions across from me, yet the answer was not difficult to discover. Beside him were the men who had been beside Joseph I, then Alexander II, then Adrian de Sarkozy. He was their last hope, but also their best one, for he was no puppet, nor a wild dog, but a thorough and willing collaborator,” Ser Konrad wrote to his king. The picture appears to have been satisfactory enough from King Andrik, as he wrote back, informing his palatine of his approval. War had been averted, but the Emperor was firm in his demands. Haense, as well as the other vassals, would be allowed to retain the status they had enjoyed previously, but inter-vassal compacts, such as NAFTA, would have to be disbanded. Once again, the Suffonians begged Andrik III to resist, but he rejected their pleas as he had before. His logic was, conveniently, given in his own words: “The Emperor will be a thorn in our side the moment he has amassed enough power to see us as a subject, and not an equal. The Lord Protector would have seen us killed.” In 1738, Ser Konrad was sent to Helena a second time to negotiate the disbandment of NAFTA, but not without extracting what concessions he could. Haense would be compliant, but as the months of debate and argument that followed showed, it would not roll over for Peter III. As successful as 1738 had been for the realm, it ended in personal tragedy for its king. After the death of her husband, Princess Mariya had returned home and reunited with the family she had been partially estranged from. In mourning, though more for the death of her dreams of being Empress than her womanizing husband, the princess was given a small palace near Old Reza to reside. It was there, for the better part of the year, that she wept in solace, attended only by a small household staff, for even her children had been taken from her, to be raised in the Novellen Palace in the Emperor’s court. Queen Milena, the one woman still in the good graces of the widowed princess, visited her friend frequently, but otherwise was the only company that she would accept. On the 6th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1738, while walking through the half-burnt Prikaz Palace during a rare excursion, Princess Mariya was stabbed to death by an unknown assassin. A brief investigation ordered by Queen Milena turned up nothing, and it was assumed that the individual who killed her had been a lone bandit. King Andrik, who had never fully mended his relationship with his sister since her husband’s elevation to the protectorate, wept only briefly for her. In accordance with what he believed she would wish, the princess was given a private burial in the forests of Muldav, the lands where she had been raised and had loved dearly. Prince Vladrick of Rubern, in his first letter to King Andrik since the Toe War, offered his condolences. Touching though it may have been, the correspondence from the Prince of Rubern was disquieting to King Andrik. Despite the order from Peter III for his vassals to end all internal and external compacts, Rubern had flatly refused to break its alliance with the Duchy of Morsgrad. In fact, the lands of Rubern had only seen more envoys flock to it. Norlanders of Morsgrad, orcs of Krugmar, elves of Renelia, Haelun’or, and Irrinor, tribesmen of Suffonia, and diplomats from a hundred other vassals, tribes, cities, and nations, within and without the Empire, could be found within Prince Vladrick’s court. The Emperor had taken note of this, and privately warned King Andrik that war could very well be on the horizon. His spies had uncovered active attempts by Prince Vladrick to justify a legal claim to the rich lands of Muldav, and others among his circle even encouraged him to further investigate his claim on Hanseti-Ruska itself. Unbeknownst to Andrik III, a growing, global coalition had been assembling to respond to the sudden ascension of Peter III. While the principal vassals of the Empire, save Rubern and Suffonia, had come to accept the new Emperor, whether eagerly or reluctantly, others saw weakness, strength, or ambiguity in the new regime. Morsgrad, home to the warlike Norlanders, feared that they would be the next target of a united, cohesive Empire, intent on spreading the borders of Canondom. Godric Ruric had delayed what he deemed inevitable with his participation in the Toe War, but he believed it was only a matter of time before he would have to take up arms against Orenia. A charismatic leader and proven commander, he stood poised to lead any anti-Imperial coalition. Rubern, home to many who had been faithful subjects of the Pertinaxi, had longed to see exact revenge on the former Marnans who had, in their view, cheated them of their Empire. Prince Vladrick was sympathetic to this perspective, but his eyes seemed to lay on his brother’s lands in Muldav, if not Haense as a whole. Krugmar, home of the bloodthirsty orcs, wished revenge for what had been done to their kin in Mokh-Uruk, even if they had refused to join that war on account of the foolishness of the petty rex. Haelun’or, home of the crafty high elves, believed victory over the Empire could confirm their hegemony over the elves, which they saw challenged by human intrusions. The small tribes and independent cities of Suffonia, Arjenia, Zakopane, Renelia, Irrinor, Al-Faiz, Russ, Talon’s Grotto, and Auvergne, desired lands, wealth, glory, revenge, or some combination of them all. The inciting incident of what would become the Rubern War, the longest war that history has seen, occurred on the 14th of Horen’s Calling, 1739, when a poor merchant from Morsgrad went before Duke Godric, claiming that he had been attacked by soldiers from Haense while on the road to Rubern. There were no witnesses to confirm this alleged assault. The man’s person was unharmed. Later that month, he reported no losses from his wares. Nonetheless, the Duke of Morsgrad demanded redress for his subject’s loss of property, to be paid by the King of Haense. To this day, it is debated whether Duke Godric, a proud man, quick to anger, believed the merchant’s story or not. His supporters, when not arguing for the lie’s validity, pointed to the implicit trust that the duke had for his subjects, a trust that had never been broken. Most of his opponents thought the story was too perfect, and the timing too opportune, for it not to have been concocted on the duke’s orders, though some considered that he may have simply taken advantage of a well-timed lie. No matter the case, the enraged Duke of Morsgrad went forward with demanding a weirgild be paid, and for King Andrik to meet him in the field, whether further terms of redress could be discussed. It comes as little surprise that King Andrik wished to meet Duke Godric, though with a closed fist around his sword, rather than an open palm. As he rapidly bounced between bringing an army with him, or trying to settle the dispute with a duel, his rage matching his new foe’s, the Aulic Council scrambled to contain his wroth. No fewer than thirty pleas fell on deaf ears, and it was only the intervention of Ser Konrad, who spoke with the king in private while the latter was personally outfitting his armor, that could dissuade rash, violent action from being taken. Calmed by the advice of his friend, who argued firmly, yet tactfully, against riding headfirst into what could have been a trap, the king acted strategically. He would meet with Duke Godric, but it would not be alone. On the 8th of Godfrey’s Triumph, 1739, Emperor and king sat atop horseback, side-by-side, as they and 8,000 soldiers of the Empire, half from Haense, faced a horde of Norlanders half their number. Peter III, though occasionally at odds with his Haeseni vassal, had made it clear that his subjects would not be abandoned in their hour of need. The negotiations that followed between the two sides were fruitless. Duke Godric did not budge in his demand for heavy compensation, while the Emperor and King Andrik, as had been agreed to by the two men beforehand, did not accede to a single demand. After a day of seesaw bickering, the two parties recognized that further talks would go nowhere. The next morning, the two hosts decamped and rode back to their homes. To open the next year, a formal alliance, called the Alliance of Independent States, between Norland, Rubern, Krugmar, Haelun’or, Suffonia, Arjenia, Zakopane, Renelia, Irrinor, Al-Faiz, Russ, Talon’s Grotto, and Auvergne was announced. Several of these ‘independent states’ were themselves vassals of the Empire, chief among them Rubern and Suffonia. Their challenge was evident, and their intent to revolt was clear: the willingness of the Empire to enforce its authority, both as the liege of these rebellious polities, and as the lawful defender of Haense, which was to be the object of Ruberni and Morsgradian ambitions. As had been the case the year prior, the Emperor affirmed to Haense that they would receive the support of the united realm. The first fighting of the Rubern War occurred on the 5th of Sun’s Smile, 1740. As the forces of the Empire and the AIS had begun to gather, preparing for the eventual, formal declarations of war, a small group of disaffected soldiers of the Brotherhood of St. Karl had fled to the Free City of Auvergne, where they were given quarter by its doge. Prince Otto Alimar, who had returned to military service after a long sojourn, was tasked with bringing the deserters to justice, even if it involved trespassing on Auvergnian soil. The prince did as he was ordered, and on the 5th, he and a band of 800 freeriders swept into the quiet, poorly-guarded city and rounded up several deserters, whom they brought back to Haense. However, in their haste, they had also captured several Auvergnian soldiers, including the doge himself. When word spread of the raid, Godric Ruric again demanded redress. King Andrik, who had been overseeing preparations for conflict, was entirely aware that war was inevitably, and even excited in the prospect, but as the last days of peace waned, and Duke Godric’s outcry for Aurvergne turned to promises to march on New Reza, he tried one last time for peace. Writing to the Prince of Rubern, he implored him to turn on his allies in the AIS and rejoin the Imperial fold. Were he to march with the Duke of Morsgrad, he would be taking up arms against his own brother, his countrymen, and those he had fought beside over the past fifteen years. Were he to renege on his treaties with the AIS, and forgo his claims to Muldav, Andrik III would accept him with open arms, as a kinsman and friend. Prince Vladrick’s response was far shorter: “It all was planned from the beginning.” The short pre-war period also gave some time for the king, when not readying his army, to enjoy his leisurely activities. Given the risks that hunting posed, he took to gambling and games, which he was at least adequate at. He rode frequently, though it was as much to prepare him for campaigning in the saddle as it was for his own enjoyment. He also spent time with his favorite daughter, Princess Aleksandriya. When the first snows reached New Reza, the father and daughter made a snowman modeled after a Brotherhood soldier. Snowball fighting, a game they both enjoyed playing with other soldiers or servants, was also common on the ground of the Ekaterinberg Palace. As the armies of the AIS, led by Duke Godric, marched to Rubern to join the army of Prince Vladrick, Peter III’s generals raced to do battle with the rebellious upstart before he could be reinforced. Joined by their Emperor in person, and bolstered by strong recruitment from the Heartlands, the Imperial army, numbering around 7,000, brimmed with confidence, assured that the war would be brought to a quick end. So convinced were Peter III’s generals of their inevitable victory over the Ruberni that they did not await the armies of Haense, Kaedrin, and Curon. A small cavalry force under the Baron of Koravia had arrived in time to join the Imperials as they made camp a day’s march from Rubern, but it was not large enough to play a critical role in the coming fight. The battle that followed, known as the Three Skirmishes of Rubern, was the single greatest disaster of the war. The Imperial army, though far larger than Prince Vladrick’s army, was poorly-equipped, poorly-organized, and poorly-led. By no means a military man, Peter III had given effective control of the army to his generals, most of whom lacked wartime experience. His soldiers, while plentiful, were similarly green, prone to panicking under the heat of combat, and possessed arms and armor far beneath the quality of the Ruberni heavy infantry. The result, determined by three skirmishes outside of Rubern from the 9th to the 13th of Harren’s Folly, 1740, was an unequivocal victory for Prince Vladrick. Although casualties remained low, due to the Prince of Rubern’s reluctance to commit his cavalry, the Imperial army was soundly beaten every time. To make matters worse, as they fled to Helena, the Emperor and Empress, who had insisted on remaining behind to oversee the withdrawal, were captured. If there was one bright spot from the Three Skirmishes of Rubern, it was that Prince Vladrick, the greatest commander of the AIS, if not the war itself, was wounded during the fighting. The injury, amounting to a deep, but not life-threatening, cut on his neck, soon developed an infection. The weakened prince, on the verge of finally actualizing his claim on his home of Muldav, desperately tried to keep his strength and prepare for a sudden attack on his brother’s lands, but his health failed him. On the 22nd of Harren’s Folly, Prince Vladrick of Rubern, a friend, foe, then scourge of Haense, died from his infected wound. The throne of Rubern passed to his son, the eight year old Prince Marius, and command of his vaunted armies fell to a scattered group of generals, many of them former Pertinaxi officers from the War of Two Emperors. Though oft-forgotten due to the circumstances of the Rubern War, and his overshadowing by the other great lords of the Empire during his time, Prince Vladrick of Rubern’s rise to power had been no less astonishing than that of his neighbors. Cloaking his motivations at every turn (though they ought to have been obvious), he had managed to harness former Pertinaxi officers to build a military core that was the single most competent fighting force in all of Arcas. With the center of the Empire now wide open, Godric of Morsgrad and his army, numbering 8,000 and growing, took command of the leaderless armies of Rubern. He made no secret of his intent to march on New Reza, and within weeks his armies began to marshal along the border. The strategic value of the old Leuven lands was immediately apparent. The eastern and western halves of the Empire, which could each raise some 8-10,000 soldiers, had been severed. The River Roden and the River Rubern, which linked the Crownlands with the rest of the Empire, and Kaedrin and Haense, respectively, could be controlled. Even disregarding the strategic situation, the outlook from the Aulic Council was grim. Would the embarrassed Imperial army, deprived of their Emperor, regroup and continue the fight? Would King Adrian of Kaedrin, a longstanding rival of King Andrik, put aside his personal grievances, or would he allow his fellow vassal to suffer? Would King Pierce of Curonia, spurned from the dissolution of NAFTA, forgive past slights? Although these questions hung in the air, King Andrik did not sit around to let them be answered. Before the AIS offensive into his realm could begin, he and the Baron of Freising had already devised a plan to slow the enemy advance and buy enough time for New Reza to be fortified and Haense’s allies given enough time to rally to its defense. With 7,000 soldiers in total at his disposal, after stretching the Brotherhood and what remained of his vassal levies for all that he could, King Andrik divided his forces wisely. 5,000 were put under the command of the Baron of Freising to prepare New Reza for a coming siege. 500 each were given to Ser Nikolaus Kortrevich and Prince Otto to harass the Morsgradi supply lines and raid the smaller member states of the AIS. Otto Kortrevich, who had abdicated as Baron of Koravia to fully devote himself to the war effort, was given 1,000 to bolster the garrisons of the various castles and fortresses on the road to New Reza. King Andrik, though wishing to join the front personally, reluctantly agreed to remain in the capital and oversee all parts of his army. The AIS offensive began on the 3rd of Sigismund’s End, 1740, as Muldav and Nenzing were put to siege. Both castles had been reinforced by Otto Kortrevich, which delayed the armies of Duke Godric for over a month as they struggled to obtain the submission of the stalwart garrisons. Even when a negotiated surrender was finally reached, Commandant Otto merely bolstered the next castles in the way: Ayr, Kvasz, Grauspin, and Lizat. Forced to divide their armies further, Duke Godric was frustrated in his hopes of a quick advance, and once again settled into prolonged sieges. All the while, their baggage trains were harassed by Prince Otto, while the units of the smaller polities under their command were frequently recalled home, then sent to the front again, as Ser Nikolaus struck the tribes and cities that had allowed themselves to be rendered defenseless. It was during this confused time for the armies of the AIS that Peter III and Empress Lorena were able to be rescued. General Darius Sabari, one of the unsuccessful commanders at the three skirmishes, had been able to regroup and reorganize the army under his oversight. A small force of elite soldiers, made up of Alexander II’s long-disbanded Nauzican Brigade, were able to slip into Rubern undetected, bypass the guards (a group of Arjenians- notoriously unreliable soldiers), and free the Emperor and Empress without being detected. At the same time, the Imperial army was marched far to the north, where it could utilize several of the canals that had already been built under the ‘WTB Plan’ and hopefully reinforce New Reza by the time Duke Godric’s army arrived. The freed Emperor soon joined his army, and sent word to Andrik III that help from the Crownlands was on its way. As Peter III and his army were making their large march around Rubern, the kings of Kaedrin and Curon informed the Haeseni that they would also come to Haense’s aid. King Adrian, understandably, would have to leave a substantial portion of his forces to guard the southern roads, but he would come in person with 2,000 men to assist the coming siege. Both the Kaedreni and Curonian contingents arrived during the month of Horen’s Calling, raising the number of defenders in the Haeseni capital to 8,000. Although the King of Kaedrin preferred to remain with his soldiers, rather than be hosted within the Ekaterinberg Palace, he frequently attended dinners and discussions of strategy hosted by King Andrik. The two men would not become friends- their differences were too great- but in the hour of need, the past rivalry was put aside for the sake of the realm. Despite all that had been done to slow the march of the AIS, its advance could not be stopped. Over the course of two months, Grauspin was stormed by the vengeful Ruberni army, while Duke Godric turned Lizat to rubble. The garrison of Kvasz narrowly escaped under the cover of darkness while under a hail of trebuchet fire, and the soldiers of Ayr negotiated their surrender, though it was one that required their captivity. One of the worst massacres of the war came at Castle Chanik, where 300 defenders, after refusing surrender or retreat, were slain to the last under the orders of a Ruberni general, who then set his armies upon the servants and peasants within the castle. Another 400 innocent souls, children among them, lost their lives in the slaughter. As the AIS army neared, even those who shied from combat did what they could to prepare the city. Princess Sofiya exhorted the rich within New Reza for donations, so that the poor could be fed and housed while the city was under threat. Ser Konrad, who had been left to manage nearly all other domestic affairs, worked with a compliant Duma to raise new war taxes to fully fund necessary expansions to the Brotherhood’s operations. Queen Milena and Prince Andrik, now eleven and leaving the palace for the first time since his youth, visited the sick and wounded from the combat to the south, warming the spirits of the injured men and women as the winter cold approached. By the end of Owyn’s Flame, the city, surrounded by two walls and brimming with defenders, was fully prepared for the AIS, and the arrival of the advance elements of the Emperor’s army only raised morale. The armies under Otto Kortrevich, Ser Nikolaus, and Prince Otto were finally recalled as Peter III’s host came from the north, just days ahead of Duke Godric’s approach. The soldiers of the Brotherhood on the front line, as well as the individual castle garrisons, had suffered dearly, nearly 3,000 lives lost in all, but they had bought months of desperately-needed time. Winter had begun to set in, and Duke Godric would be desperate to force a decisive outcome. Time was on the side of the Empire, though Peter III and Andrik III, in a council of war within the Ekaterinberg, agreed that they would make an initial stand outside the city for the sake of posterity- a show of united defiance to the AIS. Winter snows coated the grounds before New Reza on the 2nd of Tobias’s Harvest, 1740, as the armies of the AIS and the Empire stood against each other. At the head of 12,000 soldiers from a myriad of peoples, nations, and races, Duke Godric observed the battlefield in silence. Morsgradi berserkers and Ruberni heavy infantry had proven themselves time and time again, and any victory would come from their strength, but the other third of his army, comprised of his patchwork quilt of allies, were at best unreliable, and at worst liable to commit treachery if a prospective battle turned against him. Thus, he waited, hoping that the nervous, perhaps overeager, army of the Empire would make the first move. Across the field sat Andrik III atop a destrier, at the side of Emperor Peter. Adorned in the armor he had worn at Guise, then at San’kala, he hungered for the chance to raise his sword in defense of his home, to win glory by the means of victory in battle. Around him were 14,000 soldiers, 6,000 sworn to him, gathered from every corner of the Empire. Banners of House Novellen, Devereux, and Helvets dotted the lightly-wooded plains before New Reza, with the standards of the dozens of smaller families sworn to them in the mix. Elsewhere, a thousand Golden Crows, rising above the sigils of Ruthern, Alimar, Kortrevich, Barclay, Vanir, Baruch, Ludovar, Vyronov, Ruthern, and more, formed ranks at the vanguard. However, the whole of the army, not just his own sworn men-at-arms, was at King Andrik’s disposal: command had been given to him by the Emperor. As was the case throughout his life, Andrik III wanted to fight, but the king knew that he ought not make the first move- a decision his generals seconded. He had numbers on his side, as well as terrain, and time most of all. Thus, past dawn, and into noon, he waited, biding his time for the enemy to strike first. The first move was eventually made, contrary to popular belief, but it was a limited action. A few Haelun’orian archers were sent forth by the Duke of Morsgrad, where they skirmished with a unit of crossbowmen from Rodenburg. A ‘charge’ led by King Adrian (taken at the pace of a trot), sent the Haelun’orians back to their lines. In all, seven bodies lay on the fields of Reza. Andrik III would never have the great battle that he always desired. As the sun set in the distance, and the winter snows only continued to lay thick sheets across the field, Duke Godric elected to withdraw his army and return to his winter quarters in the south. Perhaps he believed that, given his advantageous position, he could simply return the next year. Perhaps he thought that his attention could be turned elsewhere, and he could divide the forces of the Empire by striking different places at once. Whatever so happened to be the case, all that was certain was that New Reza would stand, and the quick end to the war that both sides had believed to be possible would be denied from them both. The reality of the war had become apparent to all within Haense, and even before the last of the Imperial armies had departed New Reza, changes were made within the government. Ser Konrad Stafyr, acknowledging that his skills were unsuited for managing the realm during a long war, resigned his office. Markus Kortrevich, the Baron of Koravia and an experienced officer in the Brotherhood of St. Karl, was named Lord Palatine. Within days of being appointed to the office, the new Lord Palatine outlined a plan to push funding towards the repair of several older forts, which could be used as storage depots and prisons. As a leader among the dominant Centralist faction within the Duma, the Baron of Koravia’s plans were approved overwhelmingly. Although the first year of the war had ended in triumph after the early disaster, 1741 would prove that victory was far from reach. Upon the snow’s melting in the early spring, Duke Godric struck deep into the Crownlands on a lightning raid, burning unwalled towns and manors and seizing undermanned keeps. The culmination of his three-week campaign was the Battle of Helena Fields on the 29th of Sun’s Smile, where he defeated a larger force of the Imperial State Army (the new, central army of the Empire) in open battle. Just a day’s ride from Helena, the Duke of Morsgrad was nonetheless compelled to return to Rubern, as his relatively small host did not have the means to seriously threaten the capital of the Empire. However, his quick campaign had seen him gain a foothold across the River Roden. A far more personal misfortune befell Andrik III just days after news of Godric Ruric’s latest victory reached New Reza. Travel during the Rubern War was always fraught with hazard. Roving bands of enemy patrols, as well as bandits, though the two categories were often blurred, constantly preyed on travelers on the roads. No one, be they innocent, soldier, child, or high-born, was spared the wrath of the brigands, and a brutal slaying often followed robbery, whether they had acquiesced or not. Security could never be guaranteed, not even with an armed entourage, especially during the early stages in the war, where the overland roads that connected the Empire were severed due to the AIS’s control over much of the countryside of the Heartlands. It was during one of these perilous travels that Princess Sofiya, who preferred only a small following, was found by either a band of robbers or a patrol of Ruberni soldiers, though evidence is limited, and individuals that could have been a part of either grouping attested to their involvement in the years after. On the 11th of Harren’s Folly, 1741, the princess and her companions were stripped of their valuables, bludgeoned to death, and left on the bloodied snows on the side of the road. Their bodies, covered by snowfall, were only discovered a week later by a company of miners, and only recognized for a birthmark on the princess’ shoulder, which an old servant of the Prikaz Palace noted. The death of a second sister haunted King Andrik, who was far closer to Sofiya than to Mariya, and he ordered her to be buried in Muldav when it was recaptured. The king maintained his jovial demeanor through the tragedy, both for the sake of his people and for his own, but in private, he fretted constantly over the cost that humanity would have to pay during the war. “Victory is inevitable, I know it to be nearing, if not near, but I despair at the dim light. I want it brighter!” He wrote in his journal, a practice he had begun since the start of the war and would continue until his death. The rest of the year went quietly, with both sides limiting their maneuvers to minor raids and skirmishes. The next year, Andrik III chose to ride out from New Reza and join his army in the field. He longed to see the battlefield, the one place where he truly felt liberated, and there were encouraging developments. The Duke of Morsgrad, encouraged by his successes in the west, diverted more of his forces there in the hopes of obtaining the submission of the Crownlands, and possibly forcing the Emperor’s surrender. Soldiers were pulled from the conquered garrisons in the east to support a large offensive into the heart of the Empire, opening the way for King Andrik, leading his army, to systematically recapture the lands he had lost two years before. Beginning in the spring, he stormed Ayr, displaying his talents as a warrior once more as he was first over the walls, where he proceeded to singlehandedly hold the breach for his men to follow. At Kvasz, Wilheim Barclay sprung a trap for a patrol led by the garrison’s commander, who then ordered the surrender of his men. Ser Nikolaus Kortrevich led a surprise assault on Grauspin, capturing the castle before its defenders even had the opportunity to rise. Within a month, King Andrik’s offensive had recaptured much of the land that Duke Godric had taken in 1740. Sir Daniel de Alence, Duke Godric’s general in the east, recalled the garrisons of Chanik, Nenzing in order to reinforce Muldav, but he had reacted too late. At the head of the Marian Retinue, King Andrik harassed the retreating bands of Ruberni soldiers, fighting no fewer than seven skirmishes on the way to Muldav. Dividing his army again, King Andrik took 3,000 soldiers with him to besiege Muldav, while he sent Prince Otto south with 3,500 to secure Hangman’s Bridge, a vital crossing point over the River Rubern that linked Haense and Kaedrin. Word was also sent to King Adrian, requesting reinforcements be sent to Prince Otto, who King Andrik prophetically predicted would face a concentrated attack from Rubern. Though he was presently harassing Duke Godric’s army in the west, the King of Kaedrin sent Richard de Reden with a force of 1,200 to assist the Haeseni. The timing could not have been more fortunate. Frustrated in the west by a reinvigorated ISA and Kaedreni harassment, leading to a stalled push to Helena, and facing a collapsing front in the east, Duke Godric had gone in person to stem the bleeding. He identified Prince Otto’s army as the most immediate threat, and hastily assembled an army of 3,000 to ride to Hangman’s Bridge. He arrived on the 11th of Sigismund’s End, 1742, to find Prince Otto’s army split between both banks of the River Rubern, guarding each side of the bridge. Taking as little time as needed to form his ranks, Duke Godric ordered an immediate assault on the west end of the bridge. Minutes after contact was made, the soldiers of the Brotherhood began to buckle under the fierce assault. Prince Otto, who was on the other side of the river at the time of the attack, hurried across to shore up his lines and buy enough time for the rest of his army to cross. His personal intervention spared his soldiers from collapsing, but the weight of Duke Godric’s army, made up of some of his best from Morsgrad and Rubern, was too much. Inch by inch, ground was given, and soon the rear of the army was being funneled onto the bridge. As trickled in from the eastern bank, adding to the push against the AIS advance, the slow push turned into a stalemate, but the narrow confines that the Haeseni soldiers found themselves in started to crush those caught in the middle, Prince Otto among them. Refusing to be caught beneath the tide of steel, Prince Otto pushed his way to the front, where he joined his soldiers in the front ranks. For the better part of an hour, he kept the line from breaking, hoping that the numbers he possessed would be enough to push back the duke’s forces. His hopes were made in vain. To break the stalemate, Duke Godric ordered a company of archers forward to fire at the exposed Haeseni on the bridge. Assailed by arrows, the trapped Haeseni died in droves, but they continued to hold their ground. It was at the height of the battle, as the moon began to rise in the distance, and the last lights of day started slipping over the horizon, that Richard de Reden and his army arrived on the field. Having sent scouts ahead, the Kaedreni commander was made aware of the melee at the bridge, and thus he crossed at an earlier point so that he could flank the AIS army. Seeing his enemy over the horizon, Duke Godric attempted to redeploy his forces to counter this new threat, but a surge from Prince Otto’s army kept him pinned. As the Kaedreni forces finally made contact, it was the coalition army’s turn to buckle, then break. Within minutes, Duke Godric’s surrounded force collapsed, and he himself only barely escaped with his life. The AIS’s first significant defeat had shattered the duke’s reputation for invincibility, and cost him 3,000 of his finest soldiers. The Battle of Hangman’s Bridge would be the most decisive engagement of the war. By securing the critical supply line from Haense to Kaedrin, grain shipments from the Heartlands to the north were able to resume. Haense and Curonia, which relied on the southern breadbasket during times of poor harvests, would remain well-fed and well-supplied throughout the war, thus countering Duke Godric’s strategy of splitting east from west. The news of Prince Otto’s victory in the south met King Andrik at the time as yet another tragedy from the capital. On the 14th of Harren’s Folly, 1742, Queen Milena, after a session of arranging several betrothals between the young nobility of the realm, took to the ramparts of the city walls alone on a nighttime stroll, something she particularly enjoyed doing throughout her time as queen.. It was during this stroll that she was attacked by a man thought to either be a Ruberni assassin, or simply a disgruntled Haeseni soldier who was manning the walls that night. The queen could not even cry for help as she was stabbed over thirty times and left to die alone, in the cold, with her estranged husband hundred of miles away, and her young children soundly asleep in the palace. Her mutilated body was found the next morning by a soldier who was patrolling the walls. Milena of Adria was only thirty-two at the time of her death. As was the case with Princess Mariya, King Andrik’s grief for his wife was limited. The marriage between the two had always been frigid, marred by arguments, infidelities, and mutual distrust, but she had been his queen and the mother of his children. Even at their worst, she had remained a political supporter of her husband’s reign, as well as a guiding figure for many of the young women of the realm. Refusing any visitors on the night that he was told of her death, the king wrote a simple set of instructions back to New Reza, ordering that Queen Milena be buried with the honors befitting her station. “I will not be present,” he added, “for my person is demanded with my army.” The king’s indescribable, indiscernible feelings were at least partially resolved through the ablution that bloodshed provided; on the 20th of Sigismund’s End, one day after he had received word of his wife’s murder, the king led an assault against the walls of Muldav. The attack, made hastily and with poor planning, was repulsed without much difficulty, but as the king, always the last to retreat, descended down a scaling ladder, he swung wildly with his sword to ward off any attempts by the enemy to assail him. One of these wild, directionless thrusts happened to bury itself in the neck of Sir Daniel de Alence, who was commanding the castle’s defense. Deprived of their leader, the garrison at Muldav surrendered four days later. A day after Muldav was reconquered, King Andrik oversaw the quiet burial of his sister, attended by only he and her husband, the Red Prince. The king’s sombering mood did not detract from the significant victories of the year, nor did the victories allay his growing depression, which he found resolution to only in battle and brew. All of Duke Godric’s gains from the start of the war had been reversed, and the vital link between Haense and Kaedrin had been restored. The duke returned west again, and there he achieved another victory over a combined ISA-Kaedreni army at the Battle of Doran’s Folly later that year, but he was still denied any substantial gains, as the Imperial army was able to withdraw in good order and garrison Helena once again. After the campaigns of 1742, the war settled into a nine-year period marked by ever-increasing skirmishes and raids, but no substantial engagements between the AIS and the Empire. Duke Godric had gained a strong foothold in the west at the expense of his conquests in the east, but he had seen the defenses of Rubern redoubled since his defeat at Hangman’s Bridge. King Andrik, knowing he did not yet have the might to march on Rubern, returned to leading a small band of Marian knights, always in search of, yet never to find, the one, great battle that would cement his legacy. He refused to return home, unwilling to face a family he had seen whittled by the war, and so he fought. From 1742-1746, he participated in no fewer than fifty engagements, mostly minor clashes between patrols or the defense of villages under attack. On one occasion, in 1744 when the Red Prince of Muldav was captured and killed during a skirmish outside of Ayr, King Andrik cut through fifteen Ruberni soldiers to retrieve his brother-in-law’s body. Fated to be denied of his one great victory, Andrik III’s bitterness clouded him from seeing the legend that had begun to develop around him. His stalwart defense of his people, and his insistence on remaining with his army through the bitter winter colds and the swampy summer heats, endeared him to his subjects, who saw within him their defender. His father had chased glory at all costs, and the heights he reached had cost him the lives of tens of thousands of his own people. King Andrik, in tempering his vainglorious impulses, had saved the lives of tens of thousands. As tales of his prowess with the blade spread, and his personal bravery against the raiding parties of the AIS began to be seen by more of his subjects, these small victories collected themselves into a greater image: that of Andrik III, the warrior-king who had saved the realm. Still, the price of war could never be avoided, nor could King Andrik slay every foe who encroached on his realm. Fate had one last card to play, and it was the cruelest of them all. On the 16th of Godfrey’s Triumph, 1744, Princess Aleksandriya, the king’s youngest and most favored child, had slipped outside the walls of New Reza. An adventurous soul much like her father, the girl hated the restrictions that the war had put upon her, the worst of these being a requirement to stay within the walls of the capital at all times. The headstrong nine year old had finally found an opportunity to slip away from her tutors, and on that fateful, snowy morning, she laughed and played in the snow banks that had built up beneath the walls of the city. She had only been outside for an hour, but an hour was far more than needed for her father’s enemies. A stray band of soldiers from Rubern found the girl beneath New Reza. With a single blow to the head from a mace, Princess Aleksandriya was killed. The death of his beloved child broke what happiness remained inside of King Andrik’s soul. He had refused to attend the funerals of his other family, citing the necessities of war, but in the case of Princess Aleksandriya, he could not bear to see the corpse of his child. Solace could only be found in drinking and warmaking, and with the winter preventing the latter, the king drowned himself in ale. Drunk nearly every day during the winter of 1744-45, King Andrik’s health plummeted, as he grew fat and irascible, complaining constantly of old wounds and phantom fevers. By the time the spring of 1745 came, he had become yellow in the face and sluggish in his movements. King Andrik set foot in New Reza one final time in his life. In the autumn of 1745, near the end of a quiet season of campaigning, he returned to the capital to pay respects to his daughter’s grave, and to receive a review of the realm from his Lord Palatine and from Prince Andrik, who was studying beneath the Baron of Koravia and assisting with the oversight of the government. The reports from the palatine were nothing short of remarkable. The open supply lines to Kaedrin, the breadbasket of the Empire, and King Andrik’s efforts in preventing any serious AIS incursions, had resulted in a realm that had escaped the worst of the war. Excess funds, sourced from captured Morsgradi baggage trains, had been spent to revive the academic sector, leading to the opening of St. Charles University in New Reza. Tax reform, enabled by the surprisingly-healthy economy and a Duma encouraged by the war’s progress, had led to unprecedented relief for the peasants of the realm, which prevented any serious famines from occurring, even during years of poor harvests. The realm, despite its struggles, had continued to grow. King Andrik accepted this news soberly, before launching into a tirade against his son and heir, berating him for not having fought in the war himself, for having stayed in New Reza while his father had fought, and his mother, aunt, and sister had perished. The sudden outburst shocked the Aulic Council, and it was not until Ser Gerard Stafyr, the High Justiciar and a frequent hunting partner of the king, spoke up that the ranting ceased. With only a whispering utterance of apology, the king rose and departed from the Ekaterinberg Palace for the last time in his life. His stay had only lasted three days, but the king’s entourage could see that it was too much for him. Although winter was setting in, he informed his knights that they would be attacking the tribe of Arjenia, situated near the Curonian border, who had been a particular nuisance for King Wilhelm II. The brief Arejenian campaign would be the last of King Andrik’s storied career. Over a period of two months, from the 5th of Tobias’s Bounty to the 20th of Sun’s Smile, he led a host of 1,000, joined by 400 Curonians, against the weakened tribe. Brutal in his methods, for the last of his mercy had died with his daughter, the king thoroughly pillaged the lands of Arjenia, leaving it a desolate waste. Those who had not fallen at the hand of him and his knights were allowed to resettled in Curonia, though under strict terms. For the first time since the beginning of the war, one of the members of the AIS had been removed from the war. To celebrate King Andrik’s victorious campaign, and his approaching birthday, the King of Curon permitted a hunt to be held in the royal forest of House Devereux. Andrik III, exhausted from that year’s campaign, which proved a great exertion on his failing body despite its relative simplicity, eagerly agreed. He intended to hunt only for a few weeks, enough time to relax and regain his strength, before planning a campaign for the summer. On the 1st of Harren’s Folly, 1746, King Andrik entered the royal forests of Curonia, joined only by Ser Gerard Stafyr and Ser Thomas Raleigh, his favored hunting companions. As was the case for many men of the era, hunting was a favored pastime of the king, one that he took seriously. His prized trophy was the skull of a bear that he had slain with only a second. His second-favorite was the full skeleton of a direwolf that he had speared with a splintered wooden shaft. It was only fitting that the king’s last days were spent hunting in the woods. For the first six days, the hunting grounds provided little game, but on the seventh, the day of his thirty-sixth birthday, a great, red boar was sighted. The estimates of Ser Gerard, who had spotted it, confirmed his hopes: the beast would be among the largest he had ever slain. Without a moment’s delay, the king rode with a vigor he had not shown in years, intent on bringing down the boar by himself. “It was as we made through the forest that the strangest sound, alien to me save from when I could recall it from five years prior, left the lips of His Majesty. It was laughing, rich and full,” Ser Thomas would later recall in his memoirs. In his haste, and with a belly full of Carrion Black, the king had rushed into the hunt unprepared. Without spears to skewer the boar, he instead opted for a bow, and when he spotted the creature, in a clearing within the thick woods, he chose to dismount so that he could steady his swaying hands. The first arrow missed, thus alerting the beast, but the second found its mark between its eyes. However, one arrow was not enough to fell the creature, and as King Andrik nocked his third, his stomach was pierced by the tusks of the beasts. Ser Gerard and Ser Thomas rushed forward to save their king, but he ushered them back with a wave of the hand, teeth clenched as he gripped his knife with the other. As the beast tore apart his innards, ripping through him with his tusks, Andrik, though struggling to keep his arm aloft, stabbed the boar repeatedly in the throat, the eyes, and the mouth. For a minute, the two struggled, a bloody pool of their mixed ichors gathering beneath them, but it was the boar that was the first to still, thus ending its struggle. King Andrik had won his last fight, but, gored in the process, it was to cost him his life. Ser Thomas and Ser Gerard rushed the king to a tiny village within the royal forest. Here, the king miraculously clung to life, surviving until the next morning, when the parish priest was able to attend to him. After being given his last rites, the king requested to be left with his two companions, to whom he dictated a number of letters. Those to his family were brief, simple, for his true family were those he had fought and bled with. Throughout the day, fighting to keep his voice audible, the king had his companions write hundreds of letters to his officers, his allies, to soldiers who had saved his life, and soldiers he had fought with once ten years ago, name after name poured from the lips of the king, and the memories of the wars he fought were given freely. When he had spoken all that he could, the king allowed himself to sleep for a final time, and on the evening of the 9th of Harren’s Folly, 1746, King Andrik III of Hanseti-Ruska succumbed to his wounds. The news of King Andrik’s death was met with an outpouring of grief beyond even just his realm. As his body was returned to New Reza in a long procession, crowds from Avalain, including Wilhelm II, guarded the casket of the King of Haense, accompanying it to the Haeseni border. From there, brought in a military parade from town to town by Prince Otto, the body of the king was greeted by wailing crowds, but through grief, the tales of the people he had defended were spoken from the lips of thousands. By the time the casket of Andrik III arrived at New Reza, to be given a funeral in the heart of the city, a crowd of 100,000 was there to mourn him. Through cups of Carrion Black, offered for free at every tavern in the city, toasts to the late king’s memory were made, and songs of his feats were sung. One speech, either given at the king’s funeral, or at a memorial soon after, Otto Kortrevich, the old Lord Marshal and Baron of Koravia, who had retired in 1742, gave a speech. “We must remember, for many here are the children of our harvest, and thus could not, the world that His Majesty inherited. He was a boy, nary-higher than my knee, at the throne of a kingdom on the verge of destruction. There would be no army to save him, no ally to buoy his cause, only the resolve in his heart, and in the hearts of those who counted themselves among his loyal subjects, as few as there were of us. How was Haense not crushed beneath the heel of the Renatian legions? At the war’s end, we emerged alive, but not well. Our spirit broken, our power shattered, we were at the mercy of the connivers, both within the court of the Pertinaxi, and those that surrounded us. While we struggled to get to our feet, the wolves nipped at our heels. As the Empire crumbled to dust, and we were caught within the embers of war, we stayed fleet of foot. Though all did despise us, it was us who emerged intact, not a whisker singed from the flames of intrigue. How was Haense not torn apart by those who wished us dead? And through those after, the boy-Emperor and the mad-Protector, we not only recovered: we thrived! It was the armies of Haense that kept the Empire upright, that crushed the rebellion of Lorraine, that allowed Sarkozy to even sniff the throne. By our steel and by our might, we pushed back the elves and thrashed the orcs. It was us who played kingmaker in a world without kings, not two decades removed from what we thought to be the end. We waded through the Time of Troubles not as survivors, but as the power of humanity. How did Haense soar above the rest, after having sunk so low? Now we fight a war, but think of the war it was, and the war it now is. Do you not remember, you sons and daughters of the harvest, when we stood abreast before the armies of Duke Godric, that fearsome conqueror? Beside us were our old-foes, across us were our new-foes, but did you waver for a moment? I did not, for what danger could there be when a man who has braved it, tamed it, and overcome it time and time and time again is the man we look to? There is none, there was none, for it was King Andrik who led us! Therein, you young, lay your answer. Call it as you shall: luck, fortune, opportunity, yet it was King Andrik who saved our realm, who pulled us through the Time of Troubles, who saw that we were a power in this world once more, and who fought for our dignity, our freedoms, and our people. Treasure the memory you hold of him, for I know he has given you all at least one. It will be the only time in your life that you set eyes on such a man. History does not give us those in his likeness but once. Never again, not in a generation, not ever, shall we be graced with a champion. Do not weep, my countrymen- cherish that you lived to see it all!” Andrik III had left behind a realm that was made whole again, repaired by the hands of he and his advisors through the turbulent years of his reign. His son, Andrik IV, would come to rule a kingdom that did not face imminent death, nor uncertain about its place in the world, and he had his father to thank for it. However, it did not mean that dangers did not exist. Duke Godric of Morsgrad and his armies remained in the field, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Emperor Peter III, despite his promises of respecting the rights of his vassals, and his proven commitment to their defense, had recently finished centralizing the entirety of the Crownlands, stripping away the last of the feudal vestiges. It did not matter for the moment. The Rubern War was to continue for another fourteen years. Dravi, Andrik III ‘the Great’ 8th of Harren’s Folly, 1710-9th of Harren’s Folly, 1746 (r. 12th of Owyn’s Flame, 1719-9th of Harren’s Folly, 1746) O Ágioi Kristoff, Jude kai Pius. Dóste mas gnósi ópos sas ékane o Theós. Poté min afísoume na doúme to skotádi, allá as doúme móno to fos tis sofías kai tis alítheias. O Theós na se evlogeí. The reign of Andrik IV shall be covered in the next volume of The Winter Crows.

THE WINTER CROWS: Volume XV; Andrik III - The Great (II) Written by Demetrius Barrow Andrik III - The Great (II) “A devoted Imperial, a staunch regionalist, a boorish barbarian, and a cunning manipulator walk into a tavern. Everyone bows to the King of Haense.” - A Kaedreni joke about Andrik III, c. 1738 If maturity had not yet reached Andrik III in his relationship with his wife, or the handling of his sister’s marriage, it had come to him in his oversight of the realm. While he would not be the same conscientious administrator of his realm that Robert I had been, by 1728 he had begun to demonstrate an interest in matters beyond the army. The king would rise early, before breakfast, to hear the issues of the day from his secretaries, then, after his morning meal with his family, where he would begin the day’s drinking with a glass of wine, he would meet with the Aulic Council for several hours. Where before he had been content to let the Lord Palatine guide discussions and counsel (i.e., direct) what action to take for matters but those that concerned the Brotherhood of St. Karl, he now set the daily agenda and took an active role in directing his councilors. Wisely, he still fielded open, plainly-stated advice from his experienced officials, and still gave them the liberty to handle the minutiae of government, but he was no longer playing at king. One major initiative that King Andrik took in 1728 was to establish the Office of the Royal Treasury and Bursary of the Crown, better-known as the Royal Treasury. Where before, the matter of state finances had been the purview of the Lord Palatine, and the revenues of the Crown had been the High Seneschal’s prerogative, the new, joined office merged the two and placed them under the oversight of the Lord Treasurer. Haense was a vastly-growing and modernizing realm, and while finances and commerce could be managed by the Lord Palatine’s staff, his duties had only grown since the reign of Robert I. A royal bureaucracy, professionalized army, intricate foreign relations, powerful Duma, and growing burgher class, brought challenges to the feudal system and the methods of government that had driven it previously. Taxes, tariffs, fees, and Royal Crown land incomes needed to be collected and appropriately-spent by seasoned bursars if the state was to function at all. For this task, King Andrik drew from the commerce-oriented burghers and appointed Richard Steinkachel as the inaugural Treasurer of Haense. Another matter that required his intervention was the infamous duel between the Duke of Vidaus, Viktor var Ruthern, and his twin brother, Tuvya. The fortunes of House Ruthern had fallen significantly since the reign of Robert I, surpassed by the likes of House Barclay and House Kortrevich, something that repulsed many of the ‘old nobility’. Fighting over the future of House Ruthern, the two brothers accidentally slew themselves, leaving the future of their family to the duke’s four year old son. The embarrassing incident enraged King Andrik, who, while always a champion of the martial spirit, viewed duels to the death as unnecessarily destabilizing. House Ruthern was stripped of the Duchy of Vidaus, which only furthered their decline. That same year, Prince Otto Alimar resigned as Lord Marshal of the Brotherhood of St. Karl on account of poor health and accepted a more comfortable position in the Office of the Treasury. In the four short years that he had led the army, the prince had successfully rebuilt it into a force that could stand against any other within the Empire. Prince Otto’s replacement, Ser Wilheim Barclay, the Baron of Freising, promised more of the same. His talents as a drillmaster and routine manager of the army perfectly complemented King Andrik’s preference for wartime command, and his many kinsmen made a strong officer core. Ser Wilheim was to be the first of six Lord Marshals from House Barclay, beginning a tradition that would see one family consolidate the military might of the realm into an army that they effectively controlled. It was this army that King Andrik had marched with into the Crownlands in 1729, at a time when the Empire lacked capable guarantors of its own preservation. Emperor Alexander II, though bright and well-meaning, lacked the resources or the conviction to enforce his order. Duke Adrian de Sarkozy of Adria, Duke Leufroy d’Amaury of Lorraine, King Adrian Helvets of Kaedrin, and Prince Vladrick Alimar of Rubern had all advanced their interests, and done so effectively, yet threatened a return to the anarchy of 1724-1725 in the process. The justification of Alexander II’s reign was at dangerous risk of evaporating. “His Imperial Majesty’s dictates cannot enforce a compromise between those without the impulse to heed it,” wrote the growingly-astute Andrik III that year, in a rare letter to his wife, Queen Milena. “If order is not to be maintained, it must be reconstituted.” At first, it appeared that the localized feud would evolve into a wider civil war. In the autumn of 1729, while on the road to Rubern, two of King Andrik’s vassals, Erich Stafyr, Count of Nenzing, and Sigmar Baruch, Count of Ayr, were ambushed by a party of Kaedreni soldiers patrolling the border region. Both men and their companions escaped with their lives, and returned back to Reza to inform their liege of what had occurred. Incensed by the assault upon his vassals, King Andrik ordered the Brotherhood of St. Karl to undertake preparations for war, and requested support from his allies in Adria and Rubern. Duke Adrian and Prince Vladrick heeded his call, and on the 15th of Horen’s Calling, the three men, leading a combined host of around 4,000, marched to Ves, intent on extracting answers from the King of Kaedrin. Upon their arrival three weeks later, King Andrik ordered the Lord Vyronov to parlay with King Adrian, while he made a show of preparing for a siege. Whether he truly intended to besiege Ves is debated, but it is the opinions of the author that he did not. His own forces were insufficient to surround Ves, and the bulk of his army was still in Haense, left there under Prince Otto’s oversight with orders to stay put. The Baron of Freising himself would admit that, with winter approaching and without the proper siege weaponry, any investment of the city would take upwards of half a year. Most importantly, King Andrik viewed the Empire’s stability as paramount - he would not be the one to bring its collapse. The ruse worked as intended. Within days, the King of Kaedrin acquiesced and agreed to hand over those who had attacked the lords Stafyr and Baruch. The ringleaders, a radical cabal of former Caer Bann officers, admitted to having orchestrated the attacks to draw Kaedrin into a war against Haense, Rubern, and Adria, with the hopes of aiding Lorraine and dismantling the Karovic influence within the realm. King Adrian claimed that he had no part in their schemes (an allegation that has been historically verified, despite some suspicions from within the Haeseni camp), and gave his permission to have them executed. Nineteen in all were deemed guilty of assault and attempted insurrection, and were hanged in front of the walls of Ves by King Andrik’s orders. The next morning he withdrew with his army, leaving the Kaedreni chastened by his show of might. As the episode demonstrated, the powers keeping the realm together came not from its core, but those from the periphery. Mere months after King Andrik had acted decisively to prevent a civil war, Alexander II and his clerical advisors’ showed their inability to maintain the compromise between Adria and Lorraine. In 1730, the Emperor attempted to summon Duke Leufroy to stand trial in the capital for his cooperation with the Kaedreni rebels, but the weight of the Imperial command was light enough to be met with silence. Taking advantage of his foe’s disobedience, Duke Adrian, in his capacity as Field Marshal of the Empire, ordered the Imperial Army and the Emperor’s personal guard, the Nauzica Brigade, to supplement his own levied soldiers in a renewed assault against Lorraine. Duke Leufroy, perceiving the participation of the Emperor’s sworn forces to be an indication of the court’s sentiments, rather than the unilateral action of a man acting on his own, declared open rebellion against the Empire. Andrik III’s experience navigating the politics of the Time of Troubles had taught him a valuable lesson in showing discretion where aggressive conduct was involved, but he had the war he wanted. Initially, it seemed that the Lorrainian Revolt would end before the Brotherhood of St. Karl could even muster. With three armies at his command, Duke Adrian swept through Lorraine in a fortnight, bringing it under the banner of the Empire, lofted just slightly higher than his own. Duke Leufroy and his followers were forced to flee before they could give battle, and by the end of Sun’s Smile, it appeared the brief rebellion had been entirely crushed. However, Duke Leufroy and his army, about 1,000 in all, managed to evade Imperial patrols as they retreated eastward, towards (ostensibly) friendlier lands in Kaedrin, where they still remained connected to much of the anti-Karovic nobility. An open alliance was off the table- King Adrian was loyal to the Empire- but, aided by a handful of allies, the Lorrainians were able to storm Castle Guise, the small, poorly-manned keep that stood at the center of the contested Haeseni-Kaedreni border, and raise their banner once again. Now, finally, the twenty year old King Andrik could don his armor, raise his steel, and commit his mind, body, and soul to battle. Emperor Alexander, known to be frail and sickly, was of too poor health to join his armies, so he entrusted the recapture of Guise to Duke Adrian, Prince Vladrick, and King Andrik. The Duke of Adria was preoccupied with the occupation of Lorraine, but he was able to send a strong contingent to join the siege. Overall command was delegated to King Andrik, who was to lead 3,000 soldiers- evenly split among Adria, Rubern, and Haense- and end Duke Leufroy’s rebellion. The Siege of Guise, which would last for six months, was to be the young king’s first true test of his ability at waging war. Beginning on the 7th of Horen’s Calling, Guise was invested by an advance host led by the Baron of Freising. Over the following days, the rest of banners of Haense, Adria, Rubern, and the Empire, found their place within the growing siege camps. At the center of it all was King Andrik’s pavilion, where officers and letter-runners fluttered in and out by the minute. Supply lines from Reza and Kaedrin (King Adrian, sitting atop the breadbasket of the Empire, contributed the bulk of the camp rations, even if he did not send an army himself) constantly brought supplies, letters, and materials. Wood from the Koengswald fed fires and forges, while wool from Koravia and Kvasz kept the tents warm as the winter months approached. The well-oiled war machine that was the Brotherhood of St. Karl was not of King Andrik’s making, but he used it to its fullest potential. With a cadre of well-educated engineers at his disposal, he was able to construct three trebuchets within a month’s time. The next month was spent reducing the walls of the small keep, which buckled beneath the thunderous might of his engines. With a flagon of Carrion Black in hand, King Andrik stood atop the ramparts of his siege camp as he personally directed the artillery to strike the weak points of the crumbling keep. By the time that the army broke into its winter camps, and the constant barrage of the trebuchets slowed, what remained of Guise was, in the assessment of the Lord Marshal “a pile of rubble, beneath which is trapped some eight-hundred souls, led by a man as dead as them.” A depiction of the outer courtyards of Guise, with the walls reduced significantly. King Andrik, though never pious, strictly maintained that the chapel of the castle was not to be touched. A perfectionist in war, he demanded precision from his artillery officers. When one trebuchet struck the base of Guise’s chapel after a misfire, he had the entire crew swim laps in the River Rubern. The next spring, the Duke of Adria arrived with an additional 500 soldiers and tasked King Andrik with storming the ruined castle. Although the king wished to lead the first assault in person, his advisors encouraged him to send a probing force under Ser Nikolaus Kortrevich and a few dozen knights of the Marian Retinue, a plan that he only relented to after a day of bitter argument. The attack was made on the 14th of Harren’s Folly, and though it was repulsed after an hour, the minimal Haeseni casualties and relative success of the Knight-Paramount’s men were encouraging signs. It was determined that one last push, intended to take place the next week, would topple the rebellion. The plans for a final assault were briefly suspended when, during a quiet morning on the 17th, Duke Leufroy sallied out with his beleaguered soldiers and struck the Haeseni camps by surprise, intent on burning its trebuchets. King Andrik, who was either with his mistress at the time (according to popular legend), shaving (according to himself), or reviewing the Lord Marshal’s reports from the previous day (according to his chief-of-staff, the Count of Nenzing), was forced to rally his soldiers and mount a quick, hastily-assembled defense. With sword in hand and only his breeches upon his skin, the King of Haense fought at the head of his army, felling two Lorrainian soldiers on his own. The spirited defense he led kept the surging Lorrainians at bay for half an hour, buying enough time for the Prince of Rubern to arrive with his own contingent and drive the rebel sally back to Guise. Duke Leufroy survived by the skin of his teeth, but his gamble had been costly and achieved little: 300 of his own had died, thrice that of the Haeseni, and only one trebuchet had been lightly singed. On the 23rd of Harren’s Folly, 1730, the final assault against Guise commenced. Three columns, led by the King of Haense, the Duke of Adria, and the Prince of Rubern, respectively, threw themselves into the castle ruins, intent on snuffing out the final flames of resistance. First over the collapsed walls, King Andrik (now armored- much more to his liking) plunged into the mass of huddled Lorrainians, his Marian Retinue racing just behind him. Despite facing certain death, the circumstances of imminent demise did not inspire the rebels to fight with a renewed will to survive, and within an hour most were killed. Duke Leufroy, one of the few to muster a last stand, was killed by King Andrik personally as the siege came to a close. While some accounts depict the encounter between them to be a brilliant duel in the thick of heavy fighting, it is more likely that the king’s blade was the first of five to bury itself into the Duke of Lorraine. The Lorraine Revolt had been the product of petty Adrian and Lorrainian squabbles, but it had been Haeseni steel that ended it. After the final storming of Guise, King Andrik treated his fellow Imperial vassals to a feast in his pavilion, where the bounty of Haense’s springtime hunts were made available, and toasts from cups of Vanir wine were hailed to the Karovic alliance, which had broken the Lorrainians, cowed the Kaedreni, and spared the Crownlanders from the destruction of their Empire. The three great vassals of the Empire returned home as heroes, first among them Andrik III, whose bravery and prowess had been proven, and whose leadership had helped bring a quick end to the rebellion. The alliance between the Karovic dynasties continued through the year. Alexander II and his councilors, in an act of misjudgement as to what the squashing of the revolt truly represented, attempted to issue a series of centralizing reforms that would standardize law and taxation. None within the Empire wishes to heed the command of an Emperor deemed too weak to even defend his own realm, much less advance his interests. The trio issued a strong rebuke of the new laws, and the Imperial Chancellery, without the leverage to enforce them, could only retract them in the face of overwhelming pressure. A few months later, this dynamic was entirely shattered. While Andrik III was content with Haense’s place within the Empire, as a loyal but autonomous vassal, the same could not be said for his allies. Whether it was naivete that allowed his trust to root (he seems to have ignored Queen Milena’s warnings of Adrian de Sarkozy’s ambitions), or whether it was simply a miscalculation about the tenability of a Karovic alliance between three strong personalities, all with different aspirations, King Andrik was left wholly unprepared for the events of 1731. All that he had built over the past five years would be turned over yet again, and the clouds that had just been lifted from the bright future in the Empire’s horizons would settle once more. On the 3rd of Sun’s Smile, Emperor Alexander II, unwed and without a son, died within his chambers. The notice of his death was read aloud to the court of the Anpalais Palace by the Duke of Adria himself, whose speech soon turned from elegy to self-elevation. The brothers of Alexander II were too young, the Empire was too fragile, and it was only reasonable that the Fieldmarshal, father of the soldiers, of which there were two for every courtier in the hall, take charge of the Empire. Duke Adrian did not go so far as to name himself Emperor, only restoring the office of Lord Protector, but it was understood that the decision was only to mollify any rebellious sentiments from within the Empire. For his all of his frailty and timidity, which belied the grand aspirations of a talented administration, Alexander II had been an eminently reasonable man despite his youth, one whom, even at his most powerless, was understood to be a vehicle for the implementation of the liberal policies of Daniel VI, Simon Basrid, and the Cardinal St.-John. In his dealings with his subjects, he had been fair and even-handed, perhaps a condition of their necessity in preserving his rule, but also due to his temperament. Although the two knew each other little, Andrik III held a fondness towards his peaceable liege, and was more than happy to serve him, for he knew that agreements would be honored, his privileges would be maintained, and the Emperor could not possibly hope to violate them. Adrian de Sarkozy, nakedly ambitious, ruthless in his dealings, and foul-mannered, was despised by most outside of the Crownlands. Immediately after his ascension, the Prince of Rubern began gathering his armies, threatening to march on Helena. The King of Kaedrin accused the Lord Protector of having had a hand in Emperor Alexander’s demise and ordered three more fortifications to be built near his western border. The King of Curon concurred with his Kaedreni counterpart and called for an intervention to restore House de Joannes. The King of Haense, the one man everyone turned to at this juncture, remained silent. Andrik III had little love for Adrian de Sarkozy, but he saw in him a ruler who could be amenable to permitting Haense to continue in its unspoken agreement to the Empire. As Duke of Adria, he had supported efforts to curb Imperial influence over its territories outside of the Crownlands. He had been a committed member of the Karovic alliance and benefitted from its assistance in the Lorrainian Revolt. Additionally, Princess Mariya, his wife, was beloved by many within Haense, despite not having stepped foot in the kingdom in years, and was fond of her younger brother, the king. She could stand for Haense’s interests while in Helena and halt any possible overreach of the central government. As the rest of the Aulic Council broadly agreed, King Andrik sent word to his fellow vassals of the Empire, imploring them to stand down. “The Lord Protector may be controlled,” he assured them. He would be proven wrong almost immediately. While Adrian de Sarkozy had been entirely in favor of expanded privileges among the high subjects of the Emperor while he was Duke of Adria, the Lord Protector of the Empire was more than willing to abandon his earlier principles. Inheriting the same Council of State that had advised Alexander II, he immediately subscribed to their centralist ideals, and began to use the resources he had to develop the power of the state. Adria and Rodenburg turned from thriving cultural and economic centers into tax farms to spur Helena’s reconstruction. The Imperial Army, once drained of funds and manpower to fuel the Duke of Adria’s own levies, was reinvigorated when both the Nauzica Brigade and most of Adria’s soldiers were folded into it. The recently-conquered lands of Lorraine were plundered, then brutally taxed, to cushion the Imperial finances. The Time of Troubles took a new face as the gentle, if passive, manner of Alexander II’s rule had been killed (literally, if the King of Kaedrin was to be believed), by a warlord intent on bringing the Empire beneath his heel. Even Princess Mariya seemed enthralled by the opportunities that power could give her. Setting aside her familial loyalties, she became a supporter of her husband’s centralization programme, and often pleaded with her brother to accept them. Haense would have an Empress soon, if the Lord Protector’s base of support could be assured. Was it not enough that Andrik III would be uncle to the future Emperor? What her soft words hid were her husband’s threats of violence. The Count of Nenzing’s spies in the capital frequently reported back that the Lord Protector fantasized marching on Haense, which he deemed to be the only threat to his mastery of humanity. Elsewhere, Haense’s allies had fallen out of its favor, while its enemies remained mostly the same. Prince Vladrick, who just a year earlier had been an erstwhile friend of Haense, and a cooperative member of a Karovic alliance, had begun courting the Norlanders to the far north. Duke Godric Ruric of Morsgrad, an eminently capable ruler who had seen the blossoming of his realm over the past half-decade, remained the most powerful man not yet under the umbrella of the Empire. As the Prince of Rubern shirked his Haeseni kin for an alliance with the Duke of Morsgrad, he returned to a state of cold isolation, taking no audience, attending to no jousts, courts, or feasts, and devoting his treasury to the build-up of his armies. King Adrian of Kaedrin proved to be the most vocal opponent of the Lord Protector, but his bluster did not spare King Andrik from what he deemed to be a critical role in enabling the Duke of Adria’s rise. There would be no mending of relations between the two. In light of the changing political developments across Arcas, Andrik III had to bring new men into his government, those who would help him carefully navigate the tenuous political scene that had seemed to be entirely under his thumb just months before. The first opportunity for change came with the retirement of the loyal Lerald Vyronov, who had guided the realm during King Andrik’s minority, and been a steadfast advisor and friend for his majority. The old Lord Vyronov (though he was called this, he was only fifty one), had been dogged by illness and conspiracies in the final years of his time as Lord Palatine, the latter exacerbating the former. The ‘Vyronov Conspiracy’, peddled by his enemies at court, placed him squarely at the center of the disasters of the end of the War of Two Emperors. Although these accusations were wholly baseless, it is in the interest of these authors to present the finer points of the case here: I) When the regent of Haense, Prince Georg Alimar, and his brother, Prince Godfric, were captured after the Battle of the Koengswald, it was in a tavern in Rytsburg, the lands of House Vyronov. Many believe that Ser Ulfric Vyronov, Lerald’s brother and castellan, had tipped off Renatian patrols to alert them of the regent’s habitation, which would allow his brother to ascend as regent. II) One of the first things that Lerald Vyronov, then the petty Baron of Rytsburg, did after becoming regent was to grant himself the County of Graiswald. To supporters of the conspiracy, this demonstrated his desire to pilfer from the many dead landowners and aristocrats of the realm to enrich himself as the kingdom burned. That he made peace with Renatus soon after is seen by these believers as another strike against his innocence. III) As regent, he had tried to secure his daughter’s betrothal to King Andrik, and though the plan fell through, it proved that he wished to continue his influence over the monarchy, even after his retirement. By being father-in-law of the king, and grandfather to his heir, he could exert control from a distance. IV) In 1728, Count Lerald was granted the Duchy of Carnatia, which contained some of the wealthiest and most fertile lands in all of Haense. Once again, he was shown to prioritize his own advancement within the kingdom over other matters (never mind that this was Andrik III’s own decision). V) He had put one of his allies, Ser Konrad Stafyr, at the head of the Duma, which would ensure that its power grew during Andrik III’s minority, and eventually become an ally to the Lord Palatine and an obstacle in the king’s attempt to rule in his own right (never mind that this did not happen). Despite the conspiracy being thoroughly unconvincing, the Lord Palatine was still struck by the swirling rumors and accusations. However, more importantly, his time in office had come to a natural end. The Haense that he had come to effectively rule during his regency was far removed from the Haense he lived in now. His talents had been used to outfox an Imperial government whose strength lay in its bluffing, but now humanity was a scattered collection of competing power centers, barely held together under the formal apparatus of an Empire. While King Andrik had shown himself to be an adept political maneuverer, it had always come with the tempering of his council, which curbed his most outlandish ideas (most of them involving open war). Someone new would have to rise to the occasion, and in early 1732, the Duke of Carnatia would resign his office, announce his retirement, and hug his king one final time as he left for home. He would die of his illnesses just months later. Most figured that the replacement would be Ser Konrad, Lerald Vyronov’s disciple, a close friend of the king, and the master of the Duma, but the king shocked his court, and the Aulic Council, by instead choosing Terrence May, a commoner, though a particularly well-educated one, who was serving as Auditor-General of Oren at the time. The selection was not entirely baseless- May had served as one of the Lord Palatine’s deputies, and he had sat in the Duma and been privy to its growing factionalist- a new fleche in Haeseni politics that the Lord Palatine would have to navigate. As surprised as the realm was at his appointment, May made no delay in resigning from his post in Helena and racing back to Haense to guide the realm. However, the bright, experienced Terrence May could not survive the growing factionalism within the Duma. As its prominence had expanded over the years, likeminded nobles and their representatives had formed two camps, the Centralists and the Feudalists, mirroring the growing debate within the wider Empire. The first, the Centralists, wished to continue many of the practices that had been initiated under Robert I and continued through Andrik III: expanding the royal bureaucracy, limiting vassal levies in favor of strengthening the Brotherhood of St. Karl, and raising new taxes to support government initiatives and the reconstruction of the capital. The Feudalists wished to uphold the old rights and privileges of the nobility, which meant few taxes, strong levies, and the Royal Treasury to focus on improvements outside of the capital, rather than within it. More aligned with the Feudalists himself, the new Palatine had an ambitious plan to pass the largest spending package in Haeseni history. The ‘WTB Plan’ (what the acronym stands for is lost to time), would invest massively in the Haeseni hinterlands and exterior provinces, improving the old, sometimes primitive, infrastructure, expanding education outside of Reza and the other major cities, and developing a system of canals to connect Haense with the Heartlands, allowing for increased shipping which would accelerate the speed and volume of trade and bring economic benefits for some of the more remote regions within the realm. It was, in the assessment of Rhegal Barclay, the High Seneschal, “a well-devised economic programme, one that would spur revitalization outside of the capital, in long-neglected areas, though in the process limit our rebuilding of the capital, which has been deemed sorely-needed.” In attempting to gather support for his economic plans, Terrence May invested heavily in artistic idealizations of the canals that the ‘WTB Plan’ offered. Although the dimensions of the bodies of water were painted far larger than they were planned to be (or would eventually be), the striking image of a serene, yet economically lucrative Haeseni frontier inspired a generation of artists to travel north to depict scenes of the rustic, but not backwards, countryside. While May’s vision would be politically defeated, he had rooted something powerful in the national conscience. Unfortunately for Palatine May, the Centralist majority that he stood against adamantly opposed his plan, citing its high cost and favoritism towards many of the smaller, poorer vassals of the kingdom. More an intellectual than a political savant, May was unable to navigate the politics of the Duma effectively. Even the support of Ser Konrad was not enough, as the Lord Speaker was reluctant to try and force through the agenda and antagonize the Duma towards any other action, especially as foreign matters were occupying the forefront of the Haeseni conscience more than domestic revitalization. Defeated in his signature legislative proposal, May resigned in early 1733, though his political retirement would not be for long. Ser Konrad Stafyr, the one man who could bend the Duma to his will, was finally named Lord Palatine. The working relationship between King Andrik and Ser Konrad was critical to the success of Haense during the period. A mild-mannered, yet crafty statesman, the diligent and virtuous Lord Palatine was near the mirror-opposite of a king who, while hardworking at times, could be controlled by his vices. Ser Konrad tempered the worst of his liege’s impulses, cautioning against rash action and managing the Aulic Council when the king was away hunting, on campaign, or engaging in any other pursuit that kept him indisposed. In turn, King Andrik provided a strong vision for his palatine, always articulating his desires from his government, and his foreign policy, in clear, direct terms. While favoring delegation of day-to-day matters over personal involvement in the operation of the state, he was always ready to personally intervene when he thought necessary. A critical reason behind the Duma’s unwillingness to fund the WTB Plan was the unexpected resumption of war in the midst of his attempted rural reform. The orcish tribe of Mokh-Uruk had launched a surprise raid against the Duchy of Vintas, a periphery vassal of the Empire, in the waning months of 1732, defeating the Imperial border garrison at the the Battle of the Lowveld, capturing the Duke of Vintas, and sacking his seat. After the battle was over, the Duke of Vintas was forced to suck the toe of the orcish Rex before he was released. The debacle was an embarrassment to the Lord Protector’s government, and, in a fury, he called for a full mobilization of the Empire’s might, intent on excising brutal retaliation against the orcish tribes. The allies of Mokh-Uruk, the Fennic and Irrinorian elven tribes to the east, soon joined against the Empire, expanding the war to two fronts. Caught in the center of this widening war, named the Toe War, Haense would play a critical role in shoring up the Empire’s eastern flank against elven raids, while supporting the larger campaign against Mokh-Uruk in the west. Excited for the prospect of war again, Andrik III threw himself into war preparations during 1733, delegating nearly every other authority to Ser Konrad. Adrian de Sarkozy’s standing within the Empire may not have been popular, and the King of Haense was certainly aware that a victory over the orcs would help to consolidate the power of the protectorate, but the Empire ultimately faced a foreign threat to humanity, and even the wily king was willing to displace politics for the occasion. To the east, the Knight-Paramount, Ser Nikolaus Kortrevich, would, with 2,000 soldiers, defend the Empire’s borders against the elven chiefs and, in a limited capacity, strike when he thought the moment was opportune. King Andrik and the Baron of Freising would go west with 4,000, joining the Imperial banners in a march on San’Strohk, the citadel of the Mokh-Uruk. Given the arid, rugged terrain of the orclands, the Lord Protector would lead an army of only 10,000 during the autumn months. The Baron of Freising, who had proven his logistical capabilities, was put in charge of provisioning the besieging army, protecting the supply lines from orcish raids, and maintaining lines of communication from Helena and the eastern front of the war. Beginning the march to San’Strohk in the month of Horen’s Calling, 1733, King Andrik and his contingent formed the vanguard of the Imperial host. Riding with his Marian knights, the king personally participated in several early skirmishes, brushing aside the orcish resistance with ease and overseeing the surrounding of the barbed fortress within a month’s time. As soldiers from the Crownlands, Kaedrin, Curonia, and Rubern joined them, and the Lord Protector ordered the construction of a thorough array of siege towers, trebuchets, and battering rams, and ladders, the men and women of the Brotherhood of St. Karl diligently guarded the extensive supply lines and warded off raids from the orcs. Ever-willing to experience the brunt of war with the rank-and-file, the king took charge of several patrols himself, even killing a petty orcish chief in one. The Siege of San’Strohk would occupy the better part of 1734, as the orcish tribe, better-accustomed and better-prepared for siege warfare than the Lorrainians had been, provided a stiff resistance. The impatient Lord Protector constantly flitted between ordering a full assault- which would come with dire cost- or seeking a negotiated settlement. In a war council held on the 11th of Sigismund’s End, 1734, King Andrik implored his liege to hold firm in the siege. News from the east was only positive. The Duke of Morsgrad and the Sohaer of Haelun’or had both joined the war on the side of the Empire and had bottled up the Fennites and Irrinorians within their cities. Ser Nikolaus Kortrevich had slain a wood elven general during an attack on their forests. With no pressure from the other front of the war, the Imperial army had all the time it needed to wipe out the Mokh-Uruk. On the 10th of Horen’s Calling, 1734, after a year of artillery barrages, probing attacks, and sapping the walls, the Lord Protector deemed the citadel weakened enough for an assault, which was planned for the 15th. As he had done at Guise, King Andrik was entrusted with leading his Haeseni soldiers first over the walls, where a bridgehead would be established for the rest of the Imperial army. The night before the final attack, King Andrik sought prayerful communion with icons of Petyr I and his namesake, Andrik II. Although he was not a particularly religious man, his confessor, Father Janusz Kus, reported that “given to history, he noted thrice to me the parallels of a King of Haense being the first over the walls against an orcish scourge.” Unfortunately for Andrik III, he was only second over the walls on the morning of the 15th. The Baron of Koravia and former Lord Marshal, Otto Kortrevich, is recorded as having taken the first step into the breach of the citadel’s walls from atop the royal siege tower. According to his brother-in-law, Kazimar Alimar, the Red Prince of Muldav, the king fought no less brilliantly than he had at Guise: “Although he was repulsed at the first charge, then the second, just a cry of ‘WE SHALL NOT FALTER’, roaring above the sound of battle- that clash of steel, that scrape of cutting skin, any waver within the hearts of the Brotherhood abated, and all scrambled forward to aid their king.” Within two hours of beginning his assault, King Andrik and his host had penetrated deep within the keep, buying plenty of space for the rest of the Imperial army. By the time the Lord Protector and the bulk of his host had entered San’Strohk, the battle was nearing its conclusion. The chieftain of the Mokh-Uruk, trapped within his bedroom with just his personal guard, was eventually cut down by a spearman under the command of Ser Gerard Stafyr. The bloodlust of the orcs, which caused them to fight on until the last, was not lessened by the death of their leader, but it broke cohesion among their ranks. Until noon, small groups of orcs made individualized final stands, of which Andrik III is said to have personally ended two, but as the sun reached its peak, the sound of battle came to an end. Once again, King Andrik and his soldiers had demonstrated bravery and skill to the highest degree, but there would be no time to allow this victory to linger. After a week of rest, the Lord Protector and the bulk of the army rode east, to strike against the elven alliance there. The king, who wished to see home again, left the Baron of Freising with a small garrison to oversee mop-up operations, while he and most of the Brotherhood rode back to Reza. Only there, back in the capital, did they finally have their heroic acclaim, and the king and his army rode through the streets in triumph. Three days of feasting, arranged and prepared by Princess Sofiya, was held to celebrate the successful campaign, which saw only 400 Haeseni perish of the 3,000 that went. The report that the Lord Palatine and the Aulic Council gave Andrik III was similarly positive. The development of a new capital, spurred by difficulties in renovating Reza, which still showed the scars of the damage it had suffered during the War of Two Emperors, was progressing well. In addition, an unexpectedly bountiful harvest, along with booty earned from plundering the lands of the elves and the Mokh-Uruk, had brought a surge of revenue to the Royal Treasury. The Lord Treasurer, Richard Steinkachel, had worked with the Lord Speaker, Count Sigmar of Ayr, to amend Terrence May’s ‘WTB Plan’ to fit the budget surplus. With a Duma more amenable to spending, and critical support from the well-regarded Martin Kortrevich, the spending package had narrowly passed. The much-needed relief to the Haeseni countryside would come alongside the development of a new capital. Good news abound, King Andrik took the next year to rest and tend to the duties of his family, which had been long-neglected during this tumultuous time. He had seemingly wanted to ride east to join the Lord Protector and Ser Nikolaus Kortrevich in the second phase of the war, but he was convinced against it by his wife. Queen Milena, though rarely one to intrude on politics, had plenty of contacts within the court in Helena. She was aware that as the Lord Protector was out of the capital, making war against the enemies of the Empire, his advisors, led by Simon Basrid and John d’Arkent, the Duke of Sunholdt, had begun to implement more centralizing reforms, though ones far more subtle than what their liege aspired to force through. “The Duke of Adria is a wild beast,” Queen Milena allegedly said to Ser Konrad Stafyr, “but he is no threat when put against the craft of his council, who clean the breakage he leaves, and reforges it in their image.” Despite her willingness to dispense some insights, Queen Milena’s place within her husband’s circle of confidence, which extended to a few of his ministers, had not changed. The pair’s relationship was marred by a string of infidelities on both sides (though the king’s were more frequent by far) as well as bitter, screaming arguments. The queen found solace in her management of the courts and her care for the downtrodden. Some of her personal estates, which she had received after her wedding, were reorganized as plantations, rather than palaces, with shelter and food given freely to the wandering poor. The Tuvyic wealth that she had inherited, when not spent on her own luxurious household, was also spent on charitable causes. Even though the relationship between king and queen was frigid, they had sired a number of children. The first was Andrik Petyr, born in 1729. Although the king had been overjoyed when he received a son and heir, he was disappointed to find that his child was not made in his image, nor that of his grandfather. While tall, he was sickly and frail, and dealt with several bouts of illnesses in his childhood. One accident in 1731 nearly claimed his life, which caused such fear in the heart of the queen that she rarely allowed him to leave the palace walls. Thus the heir to Haense developed to become a quiet, timid boy, raised in the shadow of his father by tutors, not parents. King Andrik commissioned few paintings of himself throughout his life, generally disregarding art, but when he did, he preferred scenes from mythology, with himself depicted in the garb of a Pertinaxi legionary. The warlike associations that his fictional outfit provided bolstered his self-image as a soldier first, and the mythological figures surrounding him were taken from a collection of Haeseni folk tales, religious apocrypha, and stories from his childhood, all of which he sought to preserve. Antonia Frederika (1731), Otto Rupert (1738), and Aleksandriya Cecilya (1738), were similarly born and raised in quiet obscurity within the royal household. Of his children, the youngest, Princess Aleksandriya, was by far the king’s favorite. A bright, happy, healthy girl, even at a young age, was said to be the spitting image of her father, both in appearance and in mannerisms. For a man who rarely saw his children, King Andrik took particular care to visit his daughter when able, and delighted in playing with her throughout the halls of the Ekaterinberg Palace. “Family is little joy to His Majesty,” wrote Father Janusz Kus, “save for his daughter.” The lack of time that King Andrik had had to pursue his interests meant that when he finally had a moment to indulge in them, he did so with a zeal thought impossible. Each week he hunted, each day he drank, and each night he wenched. The king’s frame, tall and muscular, began to give way to fat and bloat as a diet of mead and red meat took its toll. Only his physical activity kept his weight from tipping into obesity. It was around this time where he also allowed himself to grow a long, thick beard, where before he had preferred to be clean-shaven. The king took well to the more leisurely life, but it would only be a handful of months before the ever-changing Empire called his name once again. In the late months of 1734, the Lord Palatine held an audience with envoys from Curonia and the tribes of Suffonia, a confederation of nomads who had gathered to the north and sworn under the Empire. The Lord Protector’s leadership during the Toe War had proven to be decisive, as shown in his ability to rally the forces of the realm, which was no sure thing from the outside. With the campaign against the elves in the east losing its early intensity, it was only a matter of time before Adrian de Sarkozy returned to Helena as not just a war hero but an Emperor. Any potential opposition to his consolidation of power could not be divided, these envoys reasoned, making cooperation immediately necessary. Ser Konrad Stafyr agreed, though cautioned against any overt measure against the protectorate. King Andrik, from his summer palace in the south of the kingdom, delegated the handling of this matter to his palatine. Over the next five months, Ser Konrad worked hand-in-hand with his kinsman, the Count of Nenzing, to develop a comprehensive agreement between the three polities in order to ensure comprehensive security against the schemes of the Lord Protector, and lay the groundwork for what could be a wider, regionalist organization throughout the Empire, intent on stopping any centralization. The alliance was formalized on the 3rd of Horen’s Calling, 1735, though its name- The Northern Association for Free Trade and Administration- implied a more benign purpose. The Lord Protector and his council were not fooled, but, needing to finalize peace negotiations in the east, he could not afford to retaliate. The next year saw the completion of the new capital of New Reza, twenty leagues east of Old Reza, as well as the Ekaterinberg Palace. A destructive fire in the former capital had prompted the premature conclusion of the construction, as well as the sudden relocation of the court, but the move was inevitable. Old Reza was simply ill-fit for the new era of Haense, and while its husk would continue to be inhabited, the center of government, culture, and commerce in Haense joined their king in the new capital. Queen Milena despaired at the hastily-built capital, calling it a “grey waste, fit to be an outhouse,” but it proved well-located, in the center of Haense, still near the vital road links to the Heartlands, and well-suited to be the seat of Haeseni government and House Barbanov. At the end of 1736, it seemed that Andrik III had become accustomed to the world as it was, a world that demanded he be the bulwark against Imperial overreach, yet also a guardian of the collective humanity. It was a world that would soon see the Lord Protector, Adrian de Sarkozy, culminate his meteoric rise by having the Imperial crown placed atop his head. It was a world with tensions, where Rubern was an enigma, Kaedrin a rival, and Morsgrad an old enemy, but none that would boil over into civil war. It was a world that King Andrik had played an active role in shaping, and would, for the rest of his life, ensure that it remained as he had made it. Haense would be a cautious, autonomous, yet reliable cornerstone of a united humanity. On the 16th of Harren’s Folly, 1737, a lone courier from the east arrived at the Ekaterinberg Palace, catching the king and the Lord Palatine just as they were preparing to depart for a hunt. For four days he had ridden, sleeping only twice, but it was nothing short of necessary. Four days prior, while encamped with his soldiers outside of Irrinor, the Lord Protector had succumbed to a sudden fever that had afflicted him just that morning. In the aftermath of his unexpected death, the Imperial camps had fallen into chaos. Only Ser Nikolaus Kortrevich’s intervention had prevented a brawl, or possibly a play by an ambitious general to claim the protectorate for themselves. Duke Godric of Morsgrad departed with his men the next morning, and his Haelun’orian allies soon followed. After a brief deliberation, the Lord Protector’s subordinates agreed to march the army back to the Crownlands, so that order could be maintained as the most pressing question that faced the Empire was being answered: just who would succeed Adrian de Sarkozy? For the first and only time in his life, King Andrik wavered. Some, especially his allies in NAFTA, wished for him to march on Helena and seat himself as the next Lord Protector, for he was indisputably the most powerful man in the Empire. The king himself balked at the idea, believing that it would put him in the sights of others who aspired to the station, and thus complicate Haense’s political position. Others, mostly Adrians and other Crownlands houses, wished to see the infant, Joseph Clement, son of Adrian de Sarkozy, crowned as Emperor. Over a dozen possible alternatives, be they claimants, candidates for the protectorate, or various councils, were proposed in the courts around the Empire, but only one faction acted decisively. As sudden as the death of the Lord Protector was, it could not be said that he, or at least, the Council of State, were unprepared. As soon as word reached Helena of the Duke of Adria’s demise, his premier councilors, chief among them Simon Basrid, procured a will, devised as an instrument of succession, authored by their late liege. Within it lay the keys to the Empire, given to a man from Ves, as they had been just twelve years before. Peter Sigismund Helane, perhaps better-known as the eldest son of Emperor Antonius, was to be named Holy Orenian Emperor. Hastily brought to Helena with an entourage of Kaedreni soldiers, the son and heir of the Pertinaxi, raised in the most liberal city the world had seen, was crowned within the Basilica of Final Revelation on the 2nd of Sigismund’s End, 1737. The very name ‘Peter Helane’, more for his parentage than anything, greatly concerned those outside of the Heartlands, though none more than the constituent members of NAFTA. No matter how one looked at this obscure figure, even with the most generous interpretation, he would be no friend of those who wished to devolve the powers of the Imperial Crown. By nature, he was the son of the most tyrannical Emperor the world had seen, one who had plunged his realm, and his dynasty, into a ruinous civil war in a vain attempt to tighten his loosening grip over his subjects. By nurture, he had, much like Alexander II, been raised in an environment cultivated by men such as the High Pontiff Daniel VI, Simon Basrid, and the Cardinal St.-John. However, unlike Alexander II, Emperor Peter III was thirty three, well of age to have his own convictions and rule as he saw fit. Almost immediately, Haense’s allies in Curonia and Suffonia pressed Andrik III to rise in rebellion. In their assessment, Peter III would be no friend of theirs, and if he could operate with more tact than the Lord Protector had- no difficult task- his control and influence would soon come to dominate the great vassals of the Empire. For two weeks, envoys from NAFTA lingered in the courts of the Ekaterinburg, urging the Lord Palatine to advise his liege to rise against the new Emperor. Gifts were presented, favorable trade rights were offered, and even the Imperial Throne was suggested as a prize for the King of Haense. However, by the fortnight’s end, the envoys would return home empty-handed. Andrik III would be no petty rebel. Even if safeguarding his rights and privileges had been the animus of his foreign policy, many, be they allies or foes, mistook him for a secessionist. In a sling of curses thrown at the Curonian and Suffonian diplomats, the king said, in no uncertain terms, that he would not tear the Empire apart. He had lived through the destruction of one in his youth; subjecting his people to another was out of the question. Instead, he would send Ser Konrad to Helena to meet with the Emperor and his council, in an attempt to understand their own guiding policy moving forward, and where an autonomous Haense might be preserved within that vision. The Curonians accepted the rejection soberly, and departed for Avalain without a word. The Suffonians, far prouder, and stupider, tossed a knife at the boots of the king before leaving in kind. Though his guards rose in anger, ready to strike down the envoys, whose insult warranted death under Haeseni law, King Andrik merely laughed and permitted them to leave with their lives. While the king was a merciful man, he was not one to take a threat lightly. His guards, confused, and comfortable enough to question their liege, asked him why he had not responded in anger, or at least cold authority. The king laughed again for a time, before rising from his chair. Covered from above the heel by the base of his desk, his boots did not move. “I’ve had my shoes off this whole time!” O Ágioi Kristoff, Jude kai Pius. Dóste mas gnósi ópos sas ékane o Theós. Poté min afísoume na doúme to skotádi, allá as doúme móno to fos tis sofías kai tis alítheias. O Theós na se evlogeí. The final chapter of the reign of Andrik III shall be covered in the next volume of The Winter Crows.

"Few will think much of this in the moment, I believe, for this is much of what it appears to be: another vassal among the great sea of banners,," the Prince of Myrine remarks to his wife, "but for the first time since the reign of Aurelius, humanity stands wholly united." @kuerbis

We already ran the experiment of very loose nation enforcement with a server environment where wars were basically impossible for an entire year last map, and the end result was a dead period where rigid status quo enforcement guided every nation's policies and they all became insular and just spammed court events. I don't think warring brand new nations right off the bat is healthy, but a dynamic political environment is the best driver of RP. I think there's a way to split the difference between having one nation dominate everyone's affairs and having a group of nations that just sit on their hands and don't try to influence the RP environment at all. If there were 10 nation apps right now from groups that had proven their success in sustaining their RP, then I would be all for it, but the only wandering group rn that I think has that sauce is Haelun'or (despite the other multitude of issues it has). I also think a lot of people's views on vassalage presume that the Empire will not change at all, nor will it collapse or decline or anything like that. As server history has shown, that isn't the case, and I can definitely see where using history of vassalage as a strong criterion for nationhood would be beneficial in a future era where things are more fragmented than they are right now. I do agree tho that settlements is a good in-between, maybe use it as sort of a trial stage for nationhood.

i am thankful for... :) @kuerbis my oldest friends on here @rigorous@JoanOfArc@Unwillingly@SplitTheG @Dymase@libertyybelle the jnc, of which many are also some of my oldest friends @Asutto@MRCHENN@Braehn Elendil An'Hiraeth@SortedJarhead@KosherZombie@AndrewTech@Beamon4@forwhatpvrpose@John Ivory the friends i have made over the past year @jqsmlne@hopey@Hiccup392@trinn@Songwitch@Wyrvun@__Hergh@Cheeseycereal@alien_mc and some of the people who have been ooc friends, irp allies, or both, over the past 10 years and have given me wonderful memories during my time on here @Malta@Tide1@Halt@Phersades@Cobbler@TaraJess@JoshBright@Eryane@bickando@tilly@Nooblius@Demonica@Frisket@KBR@Axelu@queenmother@HeyitsNano@Lhindir_@Esterlen@growingivy@HenryCore@Holyland@M1919 and many more

This isn't really an exclusionary sentiment from Fishy. The least successful nations are those made by a group of friends who thought up a quirky idea at 2pm one day, banded together to write up a cool culture, made a $150 build, then got 25 people to log on for day 1 of the launch of their new nation. I just can't think of a single successful nation that has arisen without already existing in RP. The two freshest and most culturally unique nations atm, Numendil and Koyo-Kuni, both had months of RP behind their existence before they became nations. Make people try out their ideas within the current nation system first, just as a test of their viability, before launching them off into nationhood. Sometimes people might need a few months with their concept before it really takes hold (as was the case with Petra), and throwing them the challenges of being a nation prematurely can just kill any RP momentum that they could've made.

It's a bit difficult to talk about the nation system without also touching on war, the economy, etc, but I'll do my best to stay on-topic here and just address the questions as they are. The money requirement is too high, while the player count is honestly irrelevant. I think a 'nation fee' is just too gamey for my liking. I understand that this RPly reflects the process of settling new land, but why not instead go a more RP-intensive route and have the 'fee' be them actually roleplaying establishing this colony and new government. Planning out where to settle IRP through scouting, establishing small camps (presumably while the build is being made), developing their governing principles through whatever RP method (if it's a republic, some kind of town hall convention. if it's a monarchy, obtaining a pontifical dispensation and gathering prospective vassals. stuff like that). The monetary fee can be paid through LC cost. I'd very much like to see new nations have to go through the effort to legitimize themselves and actually have a story about their founding, which I think will also benefit the nation's RP in the long run. It's a harder standard to assess, but it's a much more rewarding one. Player signatures don't matter, people just get their friends to do it. Gauge interest by seeing how many people show up when Johnny Horen calls for new settlers to his colony. I think it should be modified. Uniqueness on this server tends to be a bit overrated. Solid and immersive execution of a well thought-out concept (as generic as it might be) is actually a far better driver of RP success and storytelling. I think a better way to look at this requirement is: has this concept shown to be viable in the past? This might mean prior success as a nation, or current success as some sort of smaller vassal group or organization. You can come up with the most unique niche in the world, but if you cannot make it a successful and active source of RP within the server as some sort of subgroup, then you're just not going to succeed as a nation. Very little of what gets written down in culture posts, government posts, etc, actually matters compared to what players want to RP on the server. New nations should form out of groups that have a track record of RP presence and have a reason to exist that can be RP'd out. Two good examples of this are Balian and Caurost. In Balian's case, it was founded by Imperial exiles from the Brother's War, who had fled to this foreign desert land. Their initial culture was literally no different from Oren's at the time, and even when they tried to branch out months later, it was a bit muddled. However, it was a group that reflected a real RP constituency, and most of its founders had a clear story of who they were, how they came to be, and why they needed to exist. They had shown prior success within the Empire as vassals and knew how to make RP that could attract people. It fit seamlessly within the wider narrative of the server and ongoing RP currents, which allowed it to develop a coherent RP identity over time, even if it wasn't all that unique from the start, and for years remained an active part of human RP. For Caurost, it was intentionally founded by elves who had grievances with the Vale, Haelun'or, and Celian'or, despite previously trying to hash it out in those nations. Unwillingly hosted countless RP meetings with elves to try and gauge interest for a new elven nation. Our characters discussed the problems within Elvendom, what was the best way to address these problems, and how to structure a new society that was built around the principles we thought were lacking among the elves. While we all had some very simple ideas at the start, Caurost's identity was forged over time, through fighting as mercenaries alongside the orcs, serving as their vassals for a time, and eventually involving ourselves within elven politics and seeing how we were positioned compared to other elven nations. Over the course of months, we proved that the basic concept for Caurost had plenty of interest from the community, proved that Caurost could survive as a subgroup, and proved that Caurost could occupy a position in elven RP that helped develop the wider narrative. I think what I've written above should mostly suffice. I just want to see new nations be justified in RP and show viability as an RP concept before they're given nation status, but if there is a real desire for what a new nation might bring, then it shouldn't be hindered by fees, but instead have to prove its worth as a body of storytelling.

Ruther Barrow prepares to defend the rights of the Grand Duke.

The young Menelaus, child of the deposed archduke, babbles in ignorance to his certainly-worried mother. His fate lay at the mercy of his parents’ wits and the will of a council that had seized power from House Basileus… He turns to his brother, playing with the infant toys they were given. His small hand pushes down one of a similar size. The toys would have to be given up this evening. @Halt