Aloria Story Progression Shuffles Of The Generals And The Troops

The war with the Avanthar may have just ended in a stalemate, but the war against the Elven Federation was still very much ongoing. Shuffles in military politics resulted in a very peculiar turnaround of the fortunes on the front however. Wulfram Kehlen, Garth Viduggla, Edmund Kahrter and Dietrich Drache suddenly found themselves without troops, retreating without armies back to Regalia or not being able to leave from there. Vulmar Ravenstad, Hamelin d'Vaud and Ardige Viduggla's troops had meanwhile been reduced to a grand total of 55.000, which the Elves immediately made use of. When Ulric Typhonus's 80.000 troops was reduced to 70.000 troops to fuel the death-stack of the Sancella, he moved his army down into the Elven Moors. Being more accustomed to the urban and field like positions of the Elven Cities, the Typhonus led army waged a bogged down offensive against various southern Elven Cities and made no major victories or defeats of noteworthy value. Various battles were fought which nearly all ended in stalemate.

The situation in the Elven cities was more dire however. The sudden drop of 170.000 troops down to 55.000 used to occupy the region had a twofold effect: Not only did the locals rise up in revolt en-masse, armies that were sent into the Ullaren Wastes now returned in full force as the Avanthar collapsed into chaos and the Elves could not find supply lines in their civil war torn lands. The sudden return left the Regalians outnumbered two to one against Elven troops, not even including the locals that started sabotaging Regalian supply lines. Virtually every city and fort in the Northern Cities were re-taken by the Elves with little to no effort, and the Regalian armies were badly pressed up against the coastline. Ardige Viduggla and Hamelin d'Vaud were able to retreat in an orderly fashion, but Vulmar's inexperience in the field resulted in heavy losses for the troops that the other generals frequently used as a vanguard escape.

Similarly, budget cuts among the Navies resulted in unfortunate engagements. The d'Ortonnaise fleet stayed behind in the Hadar Seas, while the Black and Ravenstad fleets launched a coordinated chase into the Far Western Seas. The 20 measily ships these fleets were powered with however, were unable to actually press, in fact, as much as they fought a makeshift foe, the size of their fleet was insufficient to penetrate that deep into enemy territory. The Far Western Sea was large and the Elves still controlled the entire coastline, denying Regalian forces ease of re-supply, and several captains in the fleet suffered mutiny as a result. The fleets were forced to retreat to the Hadarian Sea where d'Ortonnaise ships were able to re-supply the battered fleets who suffered losses.

In some better news however, the Sancella's Army had finally assembled its 150.000 troops and was ready to march out in Regalia.

Back in Regalia, the tale of the Old Gods worshipers who fled Harhold's lands still had a tell to tale. When they arrived properly in Drache's lands and sought refuge from violence there, Drache's personal army showed up and forcibly broke down their makeshift tents and camps, even using intimidation and threats of violence to push the refugees out of his lands. Luckily, as if sent by their gods, Viduggla and Sorenvik civilian ships arrived to offer safe passage to their lands. It took some time, but eventually all Old Gods worshipers who fled Harhold's lands (including a large portion of those living in Drache's lands) fled on the ships to the north. Once arriving there, they found their lot in life crude and harsh, the northlands not comparing to the fertility of the Anglian heartland or the urban Dragenthal, but at least they were safe. This small event had bigger concequences however. All the major land owners in Dragenthal (except for Drache) experienced numerous Old Gods worshiper riots. As small as these populations were, they suddenly felt threatened and wanted to make the nobility hear they still existed and should not be trampled upon.

It was also in this moment that Wulfram Kehlen inspired the locals and nearby barons to offer stronger resistance against the strong-arming of the bigger families in the area: Ravenstad, Black and Drache. Drache's forceful attitude against refugees fleeing the supposed cruelty of their overlord inspired the newly appointed Viscounts to revive the idea of the Baron's Alliance. The Viscounts that rules instead of all the Barons that the Emperor had personally executed were fervently pro-Emperor, but just as aggressive in their self-determination and preservation politics. A loose alliance of Viscounts formed around Kehlen's Viscounty, which while not uniting formally, took great indications from Kehlen's external diplomacy due to his close history with the Emperor, and his being a Knight and first appointed to the region as Viscount.

These regions were not the only regions with local troubles. The lands of Typhonus, von Duerr, Reinard and Peirgarten faced rebellions and strikes in various sectors of their local economy. These were largely craftsman protests, though it was very clear these did not just randomly occur and were in fact organized by a greater hand behind them due to their simultaneous occurrence. Regardless of the circumstances, the continued emptiness of the financial coffers of these families due to their heavy taxation paid to the state resulted in backed up wage payments. As such, the locals were revolting because of the deteriorating financial situation in the lands, even if they had been incited to do so by someone else.

The Scholar Minister Reinard meanwhile was able to extract a few of the Elven Cannons from the seas near Naserna. Research into the devices had confirmed what was suspected by many before: The Elves had developed some mechanism to harness the power of Soul Essence and weaponize it in a different manner than the Qadir. As opposed to extracting the Essence from the hair through Clockwork devices and Magic, the Elves had developed some sort of artifact called an Essence Warp Shard. These central devices seemed to constantly siphon Soul Essence from the area around it. More curiously, the scholars discovered that the devices received more power the more casualties were inflicted on the field. That's to say, the more people died in a battle where these cannons would be used, the stronger they would become as time went by, harvesting the Soul Essence of dying soldiers on the field.

Finally, the Crimson Pact gang itself used various methods of infiltration and espionage to try and uncover more about the Arken Vessels. While crude sketches had been procured from earlier Imperial expositions, the actual inner mechanisms had always eluded the crime syndicate. A string of abductions from the Imperial Arcanists's desk clerks and the Scholar Ministry helped them understand the machine's inner workings to realize that it was actually not a machine at all, but part machine and part magic. They were unable to actually create a schematic for it, but a few of their gang members theorized they were able to produce something similar if they procured some Conduit stone from Seraph Ruins, and constructed a much larger vessel. The only suitable place this was said to be possible, was the tower next to the Crimson Pact base, as the machine would likely take up half the tower's interior space. The gang's subterfuge was not flawless however. The obvious indicator of abductions in a specific pattern and coordination with schedules made one thing very clear to the government of Regalia: There was a mole somewhere in either the Scholar Ministry or the Imperial Administration that was assisting in the disappearance of state officials, even if the state was completely oblivious to what the Circle was actually doing.