Aloria Story Progression A War Of Faiths

The Coalition Wars
The battle against the Elven Empire continues after Consul Vulmar Ravenstad launches an attack on Fort Tond together with Hamelin d’Vaud and Erwald Ravenstad, the naval Admiral. After coastal bombardment and a short siege, the armies successfully capture the fort, though suffer disproportional losses in Vulmar’s army, because of his leadership ineptitude and inability to issue commands correctly to follow the formations of Hamelin d’Vaud. Regardless, the battle is counted as a victory.

Ardige Viduggla attempts to negotiate or find the Avanthar near Fort Mal, but finds them nowhere in the massive area covering the landmass between Mal and Rië. He chooses not to venture into the unknown and unmapped forest as such, and his orders eventually result in nothing. Alexander d’Ortonnais meanwhile also fails to locate the Elven fleet, though does find traces to allude to the idea that the Elven fleet is hopping ports quickly and being loaded up to prepare for a major naval battle. Dangerously so, this alludes to the possibility that the Elves are gathering their fleets to wipe out the main Regalian battlefleet, cause for caution towards the Admirals not to split up the fleets and stay together.

Ombre, much like Ardige Viduggla attempts to negotiate with the Avanthar tribesmen in the north of l’Elvellen and Lusits, stumbling onto one of their armies with her horribly outnumbered private army. Attempts to open a dialogue with them fail horribly, and they are quickly surrounded and shot at from all sides with arrows. Finally, the mage present in Ombre’s army uses a Serena spell to stop the fighting and harming of the Ombre troops, but all it ends up doing, is delaying the inevitable. As soon as the Avanthar notice that their arrows simply bounced off their intended targets, they waited and waited, until the spell broke after 10 minutes and the hail of arrows continued. Eventually when the end drew, the attacks ceased, and the officers were able to retreat. The Avanthar looted the remains of the army, though Ombre’s private army was all but annihilated. They jeered and mocked as Ombre’s general staff retreated to Ithania, making it abundantly clear that they didn’t even consider this an actual combat engagement but more of a mock target practice.

Christoper Black instructed his scholars to scour through records on Dragons and the appearance of a strange lady at the assembly shortly after a Dragon sighting. The scholars eventually bring forward bedside tales from Anglia about Dragons turning into people, fitting the descriptions, though quickly (and prematurely) being dismissed as midwife tales. Sigurna’s Safeguard organization spends a royal sum of Regals meanwhile to buy bread bonds, pushing down the price of bread, though providing Anglia with a large influx of cash that is immediately used locally to drain the swamped downs and villages. Given that the bonds were bought instead of donated, the Anglian people seem a lot more open to the concept of local aid, being able to solve some of the immediate flooding problems themselves. Perhaps entirely coincidentally, the downpour of rain in Anglia simply ceased and the weather returned to normal, making place for snow instead. Perhaps also entirely coincidentally, or perhaps not, the day after the bond purchase, a number of masked riders charge up to the Wodenstaff Estate in the middle of the night. Before the ground wardens and guards retrieved their lanterns to investigate, the riders seemingly threw burning torches into the trees, setting a ring of trees around the Wodenstaff house on fire before disappearing in the night. By loud bell and alarm, the guards then mobilized the douse the fire, stopping any major damage from being done to the surrounding woodlands, though leaving some trees as burnt out husks.

Audrey d’Ortonnais’s performance of intrigue in Ithania meanwhile has a lacklustre response from the locals. All eyes and ears were seemingly aimed at House Ombre, the first contact nobles since the ascension of Cedromar to the throne. It seemed, given what the Ambassadors of Regalia indicated, that the Ithanian Courts were using the performance of Ombre to measure how much stock to put in the word and reliability of Regalian based nobility in Ithania, though they also indicated that their trial runs had not quite ended, explaining the lack of interest in d’Ortonnais movements.

Ulric Typhonus’s army meanwhile assaults the city of Iël with overbearing numbers, 80,000 almost, while being supported by Christopher Black’s fleet. The overbearing numbers utterly crush the defenders of Iël, occupying the city and losing barely 3,000 troops in the process.

Regalian Front
The war front saw some successes, but the situation in Regalia was about to take a turn for the worse. The Feathered Dragon that had destroyed Fort Loyalty was being sighted with increasing frequency in the skies above the city, until the 18th of December on a chilly evening, when the Dragon descended on the Square of the Martyrs in front of the Heron Villia church on the east side of the city. There, while transitioning to the ground, the Dragon was seen rapidly shapeshifting into a humanoid form, resembling a woman with short black hair, blue eyes with a purple ring on the iris, and a solemn and stoic expression on her face, wrapped in purple and blue robes.

Her descent caused an increased panic in the people present, though guards were emboldened by the now mortal and human form that the Dragon had seemingly taken, charging at her with sword and shield before she cast some spell any would be mage in the crowd would fail to recognize as anything known to Alorian mages, Dragon Magic. The guards that charged at her simply disintegrated in mid air, their bodies turning to ash and singing flakes that slowly danced in the air while their armors dropped to the ground untouched and unburnt. The crowd was about to burst into a complete panicked frenzy until the woman cast another such spell, though less brutal, this time forcing everyone to kneel in her direction and to face her.

The woman proclaimed:

“My name is Rikkira, and I have come to reclaim what has been stolen from me a long long time ago. You pitiful creatures have stolen the mantle of the world’s power from us, the Dragons, hunted us, used us as trinkets, and stood by as your worship of us dwindled in the eyes of false prophets and God Emperors. I say to you now, your Emperor has already fallen by my hand and lies chained in the beyond. His protectors were mere puppets in a dance they could not even comprehend, and dance this city will, dance it will, to the tune of my will.”

She whipped up her hand once more, casting another strange spell, which targeted specific people in the crowd. When struck, a strange symbol formed on their forehead, almost like a tattoo, and their whole demeanor seemed to change. The ones who were marked stood up, walked around the crowd, grabbing both visible and concealed weapons from people in the crowd who could still not move, before simultaneously all using them to cut the throats of a select number of people in the crowd, while leaving the vast majority alive. While this occurred, four individuals stepped onto the stage next to the woman, before she spoke again:

“See before you, the minds of simple creatures as these bend to my will. I am not here to crush or destroy this city and to rule the ashes, but rather to dominate and control, and to remind the world that once, Dragon worship, worship of us, was the only right belief to follow. I will bring back the age of the Dragons and reduce the pitiful mortal races to the status of followers where they belong. Those who do not willingly submit themselves to the rule of Dragons will be coerced into servitude as you have witnessed with the branded here today.”

“The creatures which you have feared for centuries, the Arken, bend to my will too”, she added, as she gestured to the four individuals that had stepped onto the stage with her. One was a violently twitching man who looked like he had not been washed for weeks, teeth clattering as he opened his mouth to smile, a familiar for those Silven who were there when one of them was violently murdered by him. Another was a woman, dressed in fine silks though with a strange composure to her and a vile look on her face. Another was an aged looking gentleman who resembled a Regalian general in every sense of the way were it not for the facial markings and tattoos that covered his skin. The last one appeared like an ordinary man, save for his bright golden eyes.

“These Arken are my generals, first of my servants and creatures that perform my will in this city. Consider this a first introduction to our intentions, and fear the discord that will follow in the weeks to come. Do not resist the inevitable, you will all fall to ruin if you attempt to resist the return of the Dragons. Your Emperor is a mortal fool, his Human body lies broken, while I, while I am immortal and truly divine. Submit to my divinity, usher in the new age of Dragons, or become a slave. Whatever you do, you cannot escape the inevitable".

With her speech completed, the woman shifted back into a Dragon and took off from the ground, while the Arken on the stage performed a series of spells that created portals through which the mind controlled Ailor stepped to some place elsewhere. The Arken then each bowed to the crowd, before disappearing through the portals themselves and closing them as they went through. This disturbing event had certainly caused cause for major concern. It appeared as if the Dragon who assaulted Fort Loyalty was indeed the same witch woman who had presented herself before the Assembly, and worse yet, she was now claiming that she had defeated the Emperor. There had been no word of when the Emperor was returning to the front, and indeed, the court remained very silent about the whereabouts of the Emperor, going so far as to not make any public statements at all.

Furthermore, as the hours and days would follow, more and more people around the city would randomly have their minds dominated, some willingly, some randomly and some by personal intervention of the Arken or the Dragon herself. They disappeared through portals or into the night, never seeking direct confrontation and always slipping away before authorities could act. The intention behind it all was certainly obvious: The Dragon was building a support base, an army. While this foe was unlike any of the previous occupation forces that had assaulted Regalia, and while Regalia remained sovereign, it was as if a hostile element from within had suddenly started acting with impunity, making the city a dangerous place indeed. It would remain to be seen how the people of Regalia or even the central government would respond to this rising threat.

Isldar, no matter whether they were Hold loyal or not, all simultaneously received the same vision after all of this occured no matter where they were. They vividly saw an image of the Emperor, leaning on the floor wounded and covered in blood and gashes on his body, seemingly struggling to stop himself from collapsing. After that vision passed, it transitioned to a black fog with two bright blue dragon eyes appearing, announcing themselves as Frostwing, the Isldar Dragon, loudly proclaiming to all Isldar to save the Emperor and resist the vile female Dragon in Regalia.

OOC Recap:

• The war in Daendroc continues.
• We are at the beginning stages of another “occupation event”, though this one is going to be hosted passively as opposed to actively. That means the city will remain in control of the government.
• The Dragon will start appearing randomly IC, mind dominating individuals and giving them missions to achieve against the central authority of the city to either cause chaos, or to further the goals of bringing Dragons back into the world.
• You may roleplay in this post as if you were present at the events on the Square of Martyrs, but you cannot be one of the mind dominated people, yet.