War Progression Story A House Of Cards

Power in the Empire had been bombastic, grandiose, constantly evolving, but above all and shown as of later, rather fragile if certain links were removed from the chain. Political turmoil started when the Synod declared itself the legal successor of the Regalian Empire, but quickly found itself outplayed by the nobility who not only sided against them, but even made active attempts to drive them further out of the picture by excluding them from the state's sensitive political discussion, and this didn't go unnoticed by the people at large. Originally it was the Iron Duke Lampero who warned the Howlester family that it seemed as if the Synod was about to use a pretended coup by them as a pretext to legitimize their government seizure, which led to a standoff. Yet mere hours later, it was the civil government that turned on the Synod and seemingly used them as a scapegoat to legitimize their own sentiments. Conflicting messages were sent around, between Harhold's men taking a stand together with the Synod members, and then seemingly having to take a stand against them as Harhold signed with the Council, which in itself wasn't fully membered. Before long, the new government (which styled itself as the old government) announced that in place of the Chancellor who was now gone, two regent chancellors were appointed, Jared Kade and Hengest Harhold, choices which like any choices, would have consequences. This house of cards seemed faultily stacked, and it didn't take long before the winds of change toppled the first few.

The first to respond were the Cair Kingdoms, the Hedryll Kingdom and the entire region of Drixagh, except for House Sorenvik's lands. Drixagh was led by Duke Vladimir Zastorzy, who proclaimed to the Regalian Empire:

"The Skagger Horde, our ancestors, were fairly beaten in battle and proven to be the lesser party in the Great Skagger Wars. For decades and centuries, we have merged with the Empire, fought for the Empire, and died for the Empire. Even when previous Chancellors marched a mad crusade to purge our land of imagined traitors, there were those of us who took up axe and spear against our own kin to protect the people of Regalia and do our law giving duty. However.

There exists in Anglia a madman, a vile odorous terrorist who uses religion as a pretext to commit mass-murder and genocide all while the government itself takes a step back and ignores the faults in the stars and all that is right. It is now this government that has declares this terrorist its supreme leader. We, the Skaggers and Velheimers of Drixagh, were loyal to an Empire that we felt a part of and respected by. This Empire is dead now that the government has chosen to act entirely against any of our even most reasonable of interest. Hengest Harhold declared war on us, and since Hengest Harhold is now the leader of the Empire, we conclude the Empire has declared war on us. Drixagh thus did not secede, but was forced out by the Empire, to defend itself against Hengest Harhold who will use the Empire as a tool to utterly destroy us and hundreds of years of our culture to satiate his demonic blood lust. We will fight this sham Republic's incursions to the last man as this is our last stand against utter annihilation, until we recognize a respectable return of the government which fairly and lawfully inherited itself from the strong and powerful men we subjected ourselves to, not the rats that pretend to represent them."
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The Kingdom of Nordskag made a similar stance to Drixagh. King Krumme did not make an official statement, but alluded to the idea that the agreement between the Kingdom of Nordskag and the Empire were based on the wills of the Emperor succeeding the agreement between the Kingdom and the Empire. Nordskag was willing to fight under what they saw as the legal successor of the Empire. They now found themselves led by a man who declared war on their kin and people in Drixagh, and an Isldarrin, who despite proclaimed Human by the Emperor, was still very ancestrally connected to the Isldar the Nordskaggers frequently skirmished with. Nordskag did not formally secede from the Empire, but essentially nullified the treaties that required Nordskag troops to support the Empire in its wars, pulling back all of its men and stationing many of them in Drixagh, using the confusion to slip past the Kade patrolled waters which were now empty, and ceasing all tribute shipments, yet still proclaiming their lands as "essentially within the Empire".

Next to respond was the Iron Duke Lampero who had been present in the capital of Regalia during the political intrigue, but left for Vultaro on the first break of light. He too, like Drixagh, (technically) seceded from the Empire, referring to the lands he controlled as the Vultarin-Montanian Hegemony, and proclaiming it the last remnant of the "true Empire", though it alluded more to the idea that he felt that the rest of the Empire had betrayed the Empire and that he was the last true loyal remnant to the Empire. He announced further to the people far and wide:

"House Lampero does not consider the current government to be with the consent of the Spirit or by the virtue of House Kade. House Lampero records the following grievances against the civil government, resigning from its position on the State Council and announcing the end of Vultarin and Montanian loyalty to this fake Empire:

Grievance One: House Lampero respects the rule of House Kade as a fair and just mediator, and a righteous force of the Empire. House Kade is currently led by a weasel who does not represent it. This fake Kade, the Isldar, is not the legal successor of the family patriarchy. This title belongs to the oldest son of Maximillian Kade who is still with us, not an outsider who does not have a drop of Kade blood, or even a noble title. We reject the illegal seizure of Kade patriarchate by this impostor, and refuse to acknowledge their authority. House Lampero also refuses to respect the authority of House Harhold, who declared war on perfectly peaceful people and has shown the will to exterminate anything that does not think like him, someone to whom death is a mere trinket or a tool to dispense and deal in whatever quantity to gain an advantage.

Grievance Two: The State Council, henceforth known in Vultaro is as the shadow council, acted with cloak and dagger and showed personal weakness most grievous. When invited to call for the State Council in the neutral grounds of the chancellery without the presence of the Synod, my invite was spurred as cowardice and snivel and rejected most utterly. Yet the State Council then proceeded to do exactly that, to avoid coming to a neutral meeting ground, to avoid accepting the Synod's invitation in the Cathedral and make use of Holy Sanctuary, and to take effort to deny entry to their government meeting. This slimy weak government met in secret inside a Noble Estate, and even when we on the outside sent an envoy to make my stance clear and re-iterate the need for a common neutral ground, the guards pretended no-one was present, refused the envoy entry and took whatever means they could to prevent my legally given right to represent my people and my army in the state Council. This state Council is so dearly desperate to be given the full stamp of unanimous approval that they went through loops and machinations to prevent a State Councilman from taking place, and to hide the proceedings from the rest of the people of Regalia with lies and deceit. This government is weak, and in Vultaro where we respect strength above all, we cannot be subject to cowards who use cloak and dagger. I can only imagine what pressures were levied onto the Digmaan of the South before his voice too was snuffed out of the assembly.

Grievance Three: The Shadow Council and the Synod alike showed their true colors, their thirst for power and control that the first words that left their lips were about the need for power to be centralized and restored, for a central authority to exist and to rule, instead of calling upon the need to find the people who were lost. The Kade Family stood for everything that was good in the Empire, they found me in the pit recesses of Ithania, they gave me a home and raised me, and allowed for me to reclaim my family name and restore honor to this broken south. Yet everyone is so busy to decide and help out where to grow potatoes or where to till the soil and who should rule, to ignore the obvious fact that our first bloody priority should be to drive this darkness from Anglia and liberate the people and nobles that have been taken from us, not manage how to live without them the moment they disappeared. No matter is so urgent in the world that within a day's time, a man can honorably decide how to live without the situation instead of driving off the evil that has brought him to that place.

I make my stance clear, I am not making demands of this fake government. I am not setting out a list of demands to the people, because I do not recognize this government as legally succeeding the previous, and to afford them the legitimacy of being negotiated with, would show my own acceptance of weakness. House Lampero henceforth continues the Empire within its own lands, seeking efforts to cleanse Anglia of the darkness and cure whatever took our rightful rulers from us. We refuse to pay taxes, send troops, or give homage to a government which in our eyes is usurping the Empire and destroying it with selfish needs. The Empire will be protected within the Vultarin-Montanian Hegemony, and when the rightful Emperor or successor of the Kades is restored, we shall submit ourselves to them for a glorious and strong Empire, not one led by cowards who when responsibility comes knocking on their front door, pretend not to be home and hide under desks and tables when truth peers through the windows looking for them like frightened kitchen maids."​

The Vultarin-Montanian secession wasn't a hard-break like the Drixagh region which was obviously being militarized and gearing up for rebellion, but it was clear that the Iron Duke did not intend to be part of the current Empire's structure. Tax payments ceased, and while trade continued and people still freely crossed the borders, there was an obvious increased presence of soldiers everywhere on the borderlands of the mountainous Montania. How the Iron Duke was intending on feeding his people when food ran out was unclear, after all Vultaro and Montania were two of the most infertile regions of the Regalian Archipelago with mostly volcanous rock and cliffsides. Yet two things were clear. House Lampero stayed true to his word, sending out numerous Orc led parties to the border of Anglia to set up outposts and stations which started experimenting with basic principles, whether they could launch objects into the mist, timing the survival rate, and even hiring some mage scholars to blast magic at it. Similarly, there was some discomfort among the Admirals at the naval college, who expressed themselves to House Black. Vultaro sat on the only massive coal supplies in the Empire and was almost solely responsible for producing the black powder required to fire the cannons in the Black fleet. For as large as it was, Black's fleet would have naught but sticks and arrows to fire if Vultaro's mines would stop working for whatever reason.

In the far west, the Elven Princes were somehow aware of the situation in Regalia and made quick overtures towards the few generals and occupation forces that were left. The generals there were caught in a terrible predicament. Only Kehlen's army in the south remained, but it was now outnumbered three to one, since Nordskag, Lampero and Kade's armies all had disappeared for a variety of reasons. The northern and occupation generals struck a deal with the Elves, thinking the Empire was about to descend into a civil war over the power vacuum to call for a truce with the Elves, bringing an end to the Second-Regalian Elven war, though not with the consent of the government. The stipulations of the treaty seemed rather straightforward and friendly to the Ailor. The Ailor Generals and what occupation forces were left would for the sake-of-the-now unify with the Elven Princes and form the Western Sovereign. No real leader was appointed to this sovereignty, but it seemed that the Elven Princes and the Regalian Generals were unifying to continue the war against the Kathar without the Empire's official support. It wasn't a formal secession in any way, because these generals were not ceasing to be Regalian citizens. They just chose to negotiate without having the right to do so, to end the war in a ceasefire, and to continue aiding the Elves in their war against the Kathar. All parties agreed that, should they hold off the Kathar invasion, that they would open the discussions on how to formally end the war beyond the truce and join the Empire, as soon as it was clear what Empire that would be, or whether there would be any Empire at all.

The final two parties to respond were the Synod's loyalists and the de Gosselin Family in Basta. Duke Florent de Gosselin saw his moment, perhaps the only true selfish actor in this whole debacle (since the other seceding forces all cited selfless reasons). As soon as the Ivrae family was without leadership, his forces checkmated the other Basta nobles, and rapidly re-deployed his armed forces to Ithania. A short march from the coastal settlements to the capital saw the entire Ithanian Sovereignty fold within a matter of days as the Ithanian Sovereign did not fight the invasion, pacifist as they were. Duke Florent seized the emerald-gold palace of Bijoux-plus-vert-rême, dethroning the Ithanian Sovereign but allowing her to live within house arrest confines in a lower level of the palace. He then proceeded to proclaim the liberation d'Homme Vertu, and disbanded all the Hivres of Ithania in favor of home-rule from the capital. He then proceeded to proclaim himself Ithanian Sovereign, and went about replacing the aging matriarchy-led society with the soldiers he had brought along, easily bringing under sway the pacifist population. It helped that the invaders were in essence Ithanian, though this didn't stop the matriarchs of the Hivres to cry out injustice and call for the Empire to restore their rule. Duke Florent however immediately burned the treaty agreement that was once made with the Ithanian Sovereign and Vladimir Kade, the Chancellor of Regalia during the reclamation period, and announced to the Regalian Empire that while he still considered himself part of the Empire and loyal to the government, that the treaty between Vladimir and the Sovereign was no longer in effect and that all obligations were thus null and void. He announced that he intended to make Ithania a strong western realm with its own standing army, going about recruiting hordes of the repressed male knight population into his army, and proclaiming that the unequal tax treaties between Regalia and Ithania were no longer reasonable, since he now needed to pay soldier wages, and Regalian garrisons were no longer necessary. He invited the government to send emissaries to re-negotiated the Emerald-Concord, the treaty which governed the relation between the Empire and Ithania, but made no efforts to move from his new throne to do so.

The final actor to respond wasn't necessarily an actor by itself but rather a large collective, namely the Regalian zealots. While many of the nobles were obviously making a stance against the Synod, and were versed in the complexities of legal law and unionist practice far beyond that of a normal person, the intense political ongoing of in Regalia escaped the understanding of the lower classes. The large homogeneous zealous population of the Empire saw a few events succeed in rapid sequence, and understood this: The Synod tried to preserve peace, but violated a state law in doing so, which they saw as righteous intention. When the new Kade Council made their proclamation of stating that the (all new) Kade Council perceived the Synod as false agents of Unionism, essentially proclaiming the holy men that the people had heard sermons of for decades as false prohpets, the anger boiled over.

It was these zealots that took to the streets and started rioting against the perceived attacks against the Synod. There were no Reverends or curates encouraging the violence, in fact, many of the local curates tried to stop it but were shepherded away as poor victims in need of protection by the angry mob. Where the anger exactly came from was unclear, but it was very obviously directed at the newly proclaimed Kade Council, specifically with phrases such as "No Mas" and "No Mas Kade" graffiti on the walls. The zealots violently protested against the Kade council essentially being comprised of a Kade who was a Lo son, a Kade who wasn't even a Kade but a naturalized non-Ailor, a Kade they'd barely ever heard of, a Kade who was one year ago a demon, a Kade who seemed not all there, A Kade who had never been near to a fringe of authority, and a Kade who wasn't even a Kade anymore because he was divorced from the Kade he was married to, but retained the name out of sentimentality. The zealots saw the hand of the government, perhaps in turn encouraged by de Gosselin who abhorred the complete vindication of the Synod, as being responsible for this puppet Kade Council which had none of the seasoned veteran rulers of old in it, as a tool to get rid of the Synod and proclaim sole rule. The riots seemed mostly contained in the Regalian capital itself, not spilling over in other lands yet.

Some minor parties also made their stances known. For now, Calemberg, Hinter Calem & Opper Calem and the Hinterlands remained loyal and quiet. The Riverlands, The Loiree Basin and The Hinterlands also remained loyal to the government for now. Dragenthal was uneasy given their close proximity to the darkness that befell Anglia, and made desperate pleas to the government to deal with the tendril mist, or to find some assurances that it would not grow and swallow more of their land, but remained loyal. Following the Digmaan's proclamations to the State Council, the Svetlost and Essalonia nobles filed complaints to the government which essentially amounted to guaranteeing that they would secede from the Empire and fight the Digmaan with tooth and nail to prevent good unionist lands from falling in the hands of a lizard who they fought eighteen years ago. They further cited that they even stayed loyal to the Empire when the government rejected the Synod, and that their loyalty should not be awarded by subjecting them to an outsider. The Hadarian realms remained loyal to the Empire, and the Yervonth Kingdom and Zenithian lands remained loyal as long as the government would continue to send forces.

Surprisingly, Daendroc also remained loyal, everyone assuming Daenshore would be the first to jump to secession, but they chose to remain part of everything and acknowledge the new government as the legal one, while the eastern realms continued their support also, and the colonies stayed largely peaceful, though observers would note some itinerant preachers voiced their discontent against the government, brewing trouble in the fiercely unionist local population who considered the Kade Council denouncing the Synod as false prophets an utter betrayal. Finally, the only foreign state to make an official change in policy were the collective of Qadir Hadrityas. The Qadir Hadrityas announced that they felt the Regalian Empire was sinking into societal regression where fear mongering seemed to become the main tool of political intrigue by both the government and those who now wished to distance themselves from the government. They could no longer morally support such a state who sought to use antiquated tactics to rule and saw the innovative element of the Empire disintegrate, therefor they halted the exchange of ideas and technology with the Empire, but remained part of the Corontium military alliance.