State Sanction 6: Ends Meet

[fantuinn]

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ARLORA​

• On the morning of April 9th, the combined effort of the Union's Wrath, the Roca Company, the New Sihndar of Arlora, and a newly formed civilian militia descend on the ruins of the Ferian Hold and carve a path inside. Disorganized Glenbeasts are without their usual Bone Horror backing, leading to vulnerabilities which are exploited to finally overtake the Hold.
• The Hold is given new life over the course of the next few days, and new Sihndar are settled in. Arlora ends up taking most of the magically inclined back with them, as the Sihndar start to restore old traditions; being more mindful of their magic use without Roca and desperation acting as the devils on their shoulders.
• Roca, to note, begins to set up to take his leave. The ports of Arlora are loaded with his men and the riches they've pilfered from the Vanquished Kingdoms, more still being hoisted in over the coming weeks. Many expect he intends to take them home and live a lavish life in retirement, having recouped any losses from his failed invasion of Amontaar several times over.
• Sihn-Xeren, too, is more than keen to return to the Holds. This leaves Countess Marina Auvray in charge of Arlora, accompanied by her Arcanist Allies. Arlora itself is rapidly becoming a pro-magic state with a large Estellian minority and a populist underpinning that Marina herself doesn't quite like.
• The frontier of Arlora remains entirely under the control of its Union's Wrath garrison and the wider military, who retract from the Ferian Hold as quickly as they arrive. They are kept as secretive as possible, and as far as the Arcanists tend to go with magic law, they have no real intention of bothering the military.
• Arlora becomes a secretive, high-magic state, in good relations with the Sihndar. The Arcanists' Guild, now free of Aelrrigan & Lothar involvement, continues to raise the bar of magical acceptance.

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TORSE​

• The Arcanists leave in droves, exiled outright. Some remain in quiet splinters, but the combined effort of the Aelrrigans and Lothar do not allow these splinters to last for long.
• The Aelrrigans and Lothar essentially cancel each other out, as neither wants to leave the blossoming state to the other. This leaves space for the majority Anglian population to return to what they were doing.
• Positive trade relations established with Arlora end up drying up relatively quickly, as the Anglians begin poaching Artisans away from Arlora to assist them in trying to catch up to more industrial Regalian states. The Artisans themselves are disappointed at how quickly they were muscled out by a rise in magical industry in Arlora.
• Torse becomes a widely Anglian, Imperialist, nascently industrial & urban state in safe relations with Arlora & the Sihndar. Talks continue about renaming the capital to New Axford, as well as changing the state's name to something more Anglian altogether.

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RUTTGHER​

• Two fleets come for the Oscithar of Ruttgher. Those with Regalian banners collect the Oscithar that are still state loyal, and carry them far and wide across Imperial territories. Most pick highly urban areas like Rosendale & Regalia itself, but some choose the quieter Mavaal Assaleïa and Eïsella. They are spread thin enough that by now they don't end up making serious cultural impacts anywhere.
• The Oscithar who have had their trust in the Empire drained by this whole ordeal refuse the help altogether, and come with the Roca Company. The Roca Company would ship all of them to Mineria, but most are too angry or too disloyal to consider staying with the Regalian Empire, and are instead recruited en masse into the Company itself, giving Roca another group of disenfranchised elves for his soldiers of fortune, much to his pleasure.
• Nordskagger mercenaries are shipped in by Roca Company money shortly after both ships leave, joining up with Synnove Vik and the Sori Velheim. They are initially distrustful of these far-off travelers of only vague religious similarity, but they are united in their willingness to crush the Vampire population. When the Vampires are forced underground (Properly, this time), they turn their attentions to the Wirtem, who are denied their desired place as undisputed leaders and largely disenfranchised, though they retain a large minority in many urban settlements.
• Ruttgher has returned to Velheim leadership, obeying State orders in the interest of avoiding another invasion. There is now a significant Wirtem urban class, which feels a deep resentment toward the Assembly for promising them support and then rapidly pulling the rug out from under them and abandoning them in a hostile, far-flung protectorate. Ruttgher will likely make efforts to re-stabilize under Velheim rule and repair its pre-invasion prosperity.

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[fantuinn]

TORSE
It had been a long day in the fields for Johann, watching and guarding well past sundown. The Anglians had been given a fair few animals out here, and not all of them were so polite to the crops they'd been rearing. He appreciated the work, kept his mind off politics, and the pay was better than what he'd had for the past decade. On his long path home, he finds smoke, rising up into the skyline, past a thick clot of fir trees. He thinks back to the last time he'd seen smoke on the horizon.
Before long, Johann is rushing toward the source of the smoke like his - or more likely, someone else's - life depends on it. He fled the fires last time, and refused to make that same mistake twice. The sounds he heard past the trees didn't help his worries. The wild cackling sounded all too familiar, as Glenbeasts do. He only pauses when he's rushed through a sharp thicket and tumbled out into a clearing, straight onto his hands.

There were five of them, surrounding a fire, with roasts stuck onto sticks and bottles littered about the gathering. The warm orange glow of burning tinder led to Johann's terror steadily fading. The looks those Anglians gave him filled the hole with embarrassment. He must've looked horrible there, pushing through ivy and brush with his eyes wide and fearful. One of the Anglians grant a hand down to him, which he accepts to stand up. Before they can say anything, he's quick to apologize.
They dismiss this, quick, and the one who'd lifted him knocks their hand onto Johann's shoulder and urges him to sit. He takes a stick, and then a seat, and punctures a chunk of meat with the pointed end.
It had been eleven years since the crisis. Johann was a boy then, no older than thirteen. He watched the fires rise in the north, and lived long enough to see the walls rise after. They were hulking and sturdy, and black like the night. He was thankful when the soldiers saved them. As he grew older, he was petrified to see that the soldiers might never leave. The walls which were meant to strike fear into their fearless adversary had become a prison in their own right; a message that the Torse he knew as a child would never exist again.
But as he sat there, swapping stories with these people from the other side of the world, Johann found some strange idea, stirred up from good booze and good food. The old Torse he knew would never return. But maybe the new one wasn't so bad.
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RUTTGHER
Alvte takes a chomp out of her crispbread. Aedán's blessings had been great this year; for a while there, she never thought she'd taste herring again. She's on her break between shifts. She was lucky enough to have gotten a spot in the mayor's office, for "exemplary service in the Vampiric Crisis" - in truth, most of what she did was ferrying letters from mercenaries to the army proper. She wasn't about to undermine that work, though, since the job it got her was exactly the sort of cushy life she'd been looking for. Nevermind the life it got her son, freshly twenty and apprenticed to one of those newly arrived Bloodcasts.
On her wrap-around, to return to her office (Yes, she has an office!) someone reaches out to her. A black-haired man, somewhere close to her son's age. He extends a hand, mumbling that he required a mere pittance to go on, out of crowns for his own food. For a moment, Alvte looked down at this man, shaggy-haired and grimy. Her blue eyes meet his green. The look of them reminds her. The searing sting of quicksilver to skin. The screams of her kinsmen between lit fires and musket-shots. The generals, green-eyed, sharp-eared, and blackhearted, directed for her parents, and nearly her son, to die.
Just a few months ago, these people, the cousins and children of those who had sought to wipe them out, came back and had the audacity to try again. Thought they could dare to claim her ancestor's land again. Thought they could finish the job of wiping her out.

She doesn't even bother snipping a word at him, simply walking faster on her path to work.
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ARLORA
It is the night of April 8th. Sihn-Parzi took to the flank, as is her usual. She had been here the longest, so the Elves and men which once called her "Parzi" now called her "Captain". There was an aqueduct Xeren had sent her detachment down. If they followed it right, they could use it to sneak back into the Hold and open the western gates from within. They were in a time crunch, though. Too long, and the large siege party would be at risk of being picked off.
Of course, they had followed it right, as Parzi had gotten very good at working underhanded. The cover of darkness had filled the void of her missing comrades. They had used Alosso's magic to speed-dry the lot of them, so the sound of dripping water didn't alert their heartless foes. She occasionally glances downward to her right arm, or what had now replaced it. Electrum circles silently around dull violet, Arctech glyphs modified to prevent the biotic from glowing in the dark.
Eyra latches to the wall of the dusty old clinic. She's got better ears than Parzi, which certainly helped, as her choice to hide alerted the rest of them to slot beneath cots or move out of view of the entrance. Soon the sounds of the glen beasts; shifting leaves, cackling bones, and wheezy laughter, arrived and passed by. Parzi shifts out from one of the supply closets, and beckons two electrum fingers toward the door before shuffling to spy past.
Damnit. Their quarry, the gate's winch, was in a locked chamber guarded by one glen beast. Usually glen beasts weren't smart enough to guard doors or take positions, but this one was being fed the corpse of another one; keeping its interest in one spot. Getting past the lock would be no issue - Alicia had practiced Alteration Magic in Daenshore - but the beast was another thing. There were no good angles to get a surprise shot on it, and if they weren't fast about taking it down then its screams would alert the rest of the sprawling Hold.
They didn't have enough time to wait for it to get hungry and move. Parzi's pensive expression must've been seen in the low candlelight, since Eyda had another one of her ideas again. She skulked up to the door, then tapped at the door frame, faint.
A light, gentle violet lit up a corner to the monster's right. The beast glances upward, confused, and Parzi capitalizes - lunging from the door to the monster. She swipes with the bladed edge of her khoptar, carving off the head, then bashes with the inward curve, shattering the skull. She's fast enough that the beast doesn't even get to scream.
They still hear it, despite this. Rustling leaves and violent screams. Though the Demons didn't yet know where, they'd felt the team's presence; the hiss of magic in the air. Parzi shepherds her allies up to the door, and demands Alicia start on the lock. Spiked shadows curl up from the torchlight across the hall. Parzi preps her sword and positions herself tactically by the corner, cramped in a way that makes it hard for the beasts to overwhelm her.
"Captain?" Eyda asks, back to Sihn-Parzi.
"Keep going," She demands. "finish the mission and get out. Do not look back." Her captain said the same words to her, before the crisis even started. Maybe she hoped repeating the pattern would let them escape as she once had.

The portcullis screams as it lifts. If the glen beasts didn't know where they were before, they do now. Parzi smiles at their successes, dreaming of the Hold she longed for, and of the home she'd never see again.
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