Noble Progression Story Butter To Grease The Wheels Of Fear

Following negotiations with von Rahm and von Brühl

• House von Drachenburg uses their troops to properly annex the von Brühl lands ceded to the Calemberg Union and house von Drachenburg.
• House Ravenstad sends its troops north to reinforce Typhonus against the Northern Pact.

In the Colonies

• Rote mobilizes a medium number of its troops, disinterested in his rhetoric, but supportive of the religious element, to invade Sterke-Enn lands.
• Sterke-Enn lands, even with Drixagh reinforcements have trouble holding out until Blackjaw Dwarven forces intervene on behalf of Sterke-Enn and push Rote back to the border forts that he managed to capture.
• House van der Veer puts its army on the Viduggla border proclaiming they want to end the fighting, but do not cross.
• House Rote sends bards into Viduggla lands proclaiming his glory and victories, much to the annoyance of the locals.

In the Hadar lands

• Sorenvik mobilizes the occupation force in her land and the civilian allar population to prepare defences for a Yaotl, Brilonde and Harhold invasion that never arrives, much to the annoyance of the allar. The disruption of the peace there leads to Allar riots in the Sorenvik occupation zone against the looming threat of the Northern Pact war affecting Hadaria as well.

On the von Rahm border of Hadrian’s Wall

• Northern Pact forces capture the abandoned wall segment and destroy the gatehouse so it can no longer be closed. The section is captured without issues and they start building defences and horse cavalry spikes.
• Typhonus soldiers continue to taunt the Northern Pact troops from the edge of the darkwald forest, blowing their war horn and drinking Delmotte wines while the Northern Pact soldiers eat rations from empty foraging.
• Soldiers sent to deliver the von Rahm dead on carts ride into the darkwald beyond the von Rahm side of the wall, but never return. Scouts can't even find a trace of them in the dark pinewald forest.
• Northern Pact forces are split up a couple of times with a large force moving to Sorenvik lands to proclaim a defensive attempt against Brilonde and Harhold troops landing. This landing never arrives, and the soldiers are becoming utterly exhausted at being sped-marched around Drixagh to no avail, building defences that never see battle, and being prepped for a large battlefield that never shows up.
• Locals remain loyal to Sorenvik, but barons are starting to believe the Duchess is losing her marbles, jumping at invasions that never arrive and working the soldiers to the brink of utter exhaustion on pointless attempts to anticipate the enemy. The war is slowly being lost out of exhaustion only while the Typhonus troops kick back well supplied and unaffected.
• Attempts of Sorenvik to use superstition against Harhold peasants backfire when there are in fact no Harhold peasants landing on the coasts. Firewood is starting to run low in Sorenvik lands on account of all of the wood being cut down to turn into pikes and poles, which results in villagers taking down the dessicated animal corpses. Some coastal settlements suffer disease outbreaks from the unhygienic practice of leaving animal corpses to rot in the open air, potholes around civilian centers annoy the locals with restricted paths to avoid them, and massive flocks of crows and ravens and other scavenger birds descend on the animal corpses, which ironically is being read by the equally superstitious old gods worshipers as a sign from the gods that the end-times are coming.
• The locals especially start losing hear when Sorenvik keeps proclaiming an impending Brilonde-Harhold invasion, despite the fact that Brilonde mobilized its entire army and moved it 1500 miles away to the Kathar front, indicating that without a stain of a doubt, the Brilonde forces aren’t even remotely considering invading Drixagh.
• Norrvakt mobilizes its troops proclaiming the Northern Pact as incompetent and offering a safe haven to any and all locals from Sorenvik and Viduggla who want to move to Norrvakt lands. Some locals from both take him up on the offer and leave those lands of Drixagh into the relative security of Norrvakt lands.
• Krupp, Sterke-Enn, Viduggla and Sorenvik send few hundred man sized raiding parties south into Calemberg, particularly east and the north coast raiding farmlands, isolated homesteads and financial centers with few defenses. They strictly avoid any neutral shipping, religious and state structures, but their caution is irrelevant, regardless of how careful they are. Merchants are the most cowardly sort who flee like rats from water to the south and the whole Kintyr strait is abandoned in fear of the sighting of longboats.
• In response, the merchants request House Black to send a punitive fleet to destroy the longboats of the Drixagh houses to protect the interests of the Merchant Guild. There are no attacks on merchant shipping, but Calemberg barons put oil on the fire by spreading rumors that there are, which become hard to believe when illustrious tales of burnt out villages and farmsteads start spreading through word of mouth. House Typhonus doesn’t even act to secure their coastline, knowing full well that the extent of the civilian damage causes a huge PR stain on the Northern Pact.
• This becomes all the more clear when the next point of propaganda is expressed, that the Northern Pact is essentially the Third Skagger War and one big plot of Skagger revenge. Previous Skagger wars had the Skaggers on the offensive raiding and attacking the south, but this ended with the last war, with no Longboats having been sighted south of the Holzskagger border for over a hundred years. With those Longboats being sighted once more, the Kintyr and Gallovia people immediately riled up for war.
• House Conntyr of Kintyr immediately mobilized its host declaring the Northern Pact the root of all evil in Regalia, and took in vast numbers of Gallovian volunteers. House Howlester remained neutral and urged its people not to get involved, but did not overtly attempt to stop a large flux of warriors from the highlands to join the Conntyr banner, citing the suffering of the Gallovians in cultural memory at the hands of the Skaggers as their reason.
• The coastal raids against House Typhonus achieved their objective, as Typhonus finances started dropping after the raids with all the shipping ceasing and fur pelts becoming a scarcity in Regalia. That being said, it could be argued that the PR loss of these raids was tremendous, far more than the money stolen from the south could bring back, and that the Northern Pact is suffering equal civilian damage with their whole armies mobilized and away from the civilian population, which in itself was also particularly used by House Sorenvik in a total war doctrine that utterly decimated the production value of their industries as weak as they were even before the war. With firewood becoming a scarcity even, motivation to dedicate to the Duchess’s cause remains high, but morale is starting to dwindle, especially because their leaders keep promising invasions from all sides which never happen and work their soldiers to the bone who have yet to actually see a proper battle at all.
• Attempts to woo the independent barons and other Drixagh states into the Northern Pact are rebuffed hard after they sent out those raids, the freehold barons in particular calling Krupp a colossal idiot and mobilizing their troops, stating their intention clear that they will attack even Northern Pact soldiers who cross into their borders and that they will not join this suicidal venture.
• Attempts to woo the Zastorzy Duchy for their support in the conflict are somewhat successful, but only in moderate measure. The Zastorzy Dukes reiterates that he thinks the Northern Pact is reprehensible for allying with Imperial dogs like Krupp, and southern snakes like von Rahm and von Brühl, but that he will commit troops to defend Sorenvik’s lands only and if Sorenvik’s own sovereign territory is invaded by a foreign host.

On the Veer

• Jason van der Veer and Theodore von Brühl try some research who of the Veer Pagans would least resist conversion. Unfortunately von Moritz already tried to do this a few months ago and came to the same conclusion that the Veer Pagans are in fact the die-hard zealots of their faith who would never ever convert, and that the only ones who would even consider converting are buried in Vlissinghelm. They did however discover that the Veer Pagans might actually consider leaving the Veer behind if their kinsmen living in Sorenvik and Viduggla lands are under direct risk of a Harhold attack (the ones who were refugees from Vlissinghelm originally, they don't care about native Drixagghers)
• Some van der Veer fishers are being instructed to act as scouts on the ocean, abandoning their fish trawling business to look out for any Harhold invasion that never arrives. This eventually results in grumbling noises from the locals who turned a loss of income for no good reason.
• Military theorists are now speculating whether Hengest Harhold is the biggest undiscovered military genius in the world, or whether everyone else is just fundamentally stupidly paranoid and wrecking their civilian economies in fear of a Harhold invasion that never comes.