Monthly Progression The First Arrow Was Shot, The First Stone Has Fallen

The Ostmark Army maintained its previous movements, changing essentially nothing in the Eastern Theatre. While commands were given to maintain, the Songaskia appeared to be tentatively trying to avoid an actual conflict, which made pressing them difficult. It was notably surprising to the Admiralty that the Songaskia turned their rhetoric around and now seemed to be trying to avoid a fight, assuming this was an indicator of their weakness. The Emperor traveled east to personally oversee and participate in the military training and maneuvering of the soldiers, while the Crown prince traveled west to join up with the Westmark army for the same activities. This left Regalia under direct control of the Undercrown, the Ex-Emperor Alexander Kade and the Consul Reichsrat, though with the Ministries formed, it was expected that the government would essentially run itself in the absence of the Crown. A 2 week regency was announced, meaning all Imperial Audiences were suspended until further notice.

Trouble was brewing in the Obermark Theatre however, and not in the most conventional of ways. The new Lieutenant-General, recently appointed to the position by the Emperor before his departure, decided to leave his troops in Nordskag, and instead personally venture north to Ellador to intercede with the Isldar. In a controversial move, overstepping his legal boundaries Count Jannik Sinclair proposed a military alliance with the Dwarves against the Isldar, in exchange for suzerain status. The Dwarves tentatively accepted, though put in the requirement that Jannik Sinclair should prove successful in ejecting the Isldar from their territories. This move proved controversial to the government back home, Jannik Sinclair usurped the authority of the State Reichsrat to unilaterally declare treaties with a foreign entity, and then moved to make deals with another. How the individual government institutions would react, especially considering a State Reichsrat Minister had not even been appointed yet, was going to be curious.

Count Jannik Sinclair’s next move was to personally attend a meeting with the Isldar leaders on the urging of the local Ailor settlers, with 20 guards and a whole shipment of musical instruments from the wide corners of the Empire. What exactly occurred in the few hours after the Count left to meet with the Isldar is entirely unclear and likely known to him, though it was safe to say the Isldar utterly rejected what Jannik Sinclair wanted from them, killed all his guards and then decided to make a fool out of him. Of the people that left, only Jannik Sinclair returned, stripped of his armor and clothes and purely in his underwear trudging through the snow suffering from the cold and shivering. The guards never returned, nor did the shipment of musical instruments. The next day immediately, the Isldar launched an assault on the Dwarven Hold of Aldruin, Wyverns soaring the sky carrying large rock boulders which they dropped on the Dwarven defences. While Aldruin was not yet breached, the Isldar would continue to hammer at the gates to try and gain entry. Panic already started setting in with the Dwarves in Grebor, and with the lack of Ailor support in this situation, since the Lieutenant-General had left both his fleet and army in the Three Skags, the entire arrangement agreed upon by the Dwarves was utterly ignored.

Globally, events moved more against the Crown Alliance than anticipated. In an unprecedented move, the Songaskia managed to sign a pact with the Ch’ien-ji and Guo-ji of Yang-Tzu. Scholarly exchange was the supposed reason, though Regalian spies noticed a lot of exchange of military hardware and magical hardware between the two peoples, concerningly enough for the Qadir to be driven into the wide and open arms of Regalia. Threatened by a potential resurgent Songaskian Empire, now backed by both Elven and Chi Magic, the Qadir feared for the safety of their hidden Esrah Alwattah, and appealed directly to the Emperor through intermediaries. The Emperor acquiesced to their requests, and created an all-Qadir government institution called the Institution of Progress, where Qadir could use the wide finances of the Regalian Empire to support their lust for knowledge and inventions, in exchange for the tentative military support of the Qadir in the event of Songaskian aggression. Large numbers of Qadir Hadritya’s moved their libraries to Regalia, where a formal old Council Estate was converted to the new Institute headquarters, creating the largest gathered collection of Qadir literature in the world.

In the West, Avanthar finally and permanently rejected Regalian attempts to woo them into an alliance, and formed together with the Cielothar in a construct called “The Wild Union” at the Regalian court. The Avanthar then surprised all sides by immediately declaring a “Hrönta” and invaded the southern Altalar cities in massive numbers. This invasion was not formally an occupation, rather the Avanthar made it clear that the Altalar were not the true target, yet should assist and support their occupants in whatever way they could for their own self interests. The Saivalthar immediately started mobilizing their magicar host and constructing warships, while large numbers of Shendar crossed the narrow west seas to land in Daendroc, where the absence of the Orc tribes of the west allowed them to gain a relatively solid foothold.

In the north, the sad news of the death of King Krumme had finally come. Heralded as the last true Northern King of the North, Krumme had been King of Nordskag for 60 years, weathering the storms of both the Novilyud, the Hvitskaggers, as well as facing Regalian invasion and finally subjection. He was succeeded by his son Osvald Krumme, a half-Ithanian half-Northern who would be the first non-full blood Northern to sit on the throne of the Skaggers. Trained also as a Viridian Knight and abhorring the Skagger style, yet being of true Northern temperament, Osvald Krumme quickly replaced many of the Royal Skagger Guard with Viridian Knights, and brought in military instructors and tacticians from the Empire at large. With the support of the local tribesmen waning due to his modern tendencies, Osvald decided to cement his ascension by invading Hvitskag immediately, without the approval of the Regalian State or the Obermark Lieutenant-General.

Citing a clause in the Nordskag war council that the war with Hvitskag had never ended, merely resulted in a cease fire, Osvald sent his armies across the straits to invade Hvitskag itself. In fact, he threw the largest part of his army across the strait, knowing that Regalian fortifications and fleets were present to provide a solid defence line in case they needed to retreat. A retreat would not come however. The impoverished Hvitskag, both smaller and more rugged than Nordskag, suffered a string of defeats at the hand of Osvald and his superior Regalian tacticians, pressing further north to try and eliminate the Hvitskagger threat once and for all.

Among the Northern people however, the world seemed to change not in their favor. With fallen Northerners, once great noble houses like Santorski and Norrvakt pledging to the Imperial culture and forsaking their wild roots, the nagging feeling of Northern culture being a dying breed became all the more apparent. Mass numbers of tribesmen in Holzskagger decided to simply civilize, realizing that the times of raiding were far over, and that the majority of the Skaggers simply existed in a time warp of denying the new reality of the globalizing world. Others in Drixagh yet rebelled against the local Barons who barely had any authority over the tribes anyway, believing their cultural treason and corruption had made them unfit to rule. The local barons called upon the Kaisermark to assist in quelling the unrest, as the local Northerners didn’t only just stop responding to orders from the Barons, they outright attacked the castles they had once built, claiming them as their own.

With internal instability in the Regalian Empire and a global theatre seemingly crashing towards global conflict, the unity and cohesion that followed after the initial waves of Bone Horrors attacking had seemingly evaporated. It was as if the world suddenly lost a common foe to fight, and returned to the usual struggles that marked the three centuries before. In Regalia itself, all these conflicts seemed woefully far away, but with the Emperor and the Crown Prince both in opposite sides of the world, yet not anywhere further away from danger, the situation became more tense. The Crown had left a clear inheritance behind, but the people feared another chaotic inheritance sequence in the event that the unthinkable should happen, while fears also rose of nobility potentially trying to abuse the situation to garner more power to themselves.


After all, the only one manning the Royal Fort right now was the tired and aging ex-Emperor. How formidable could he really be after his physically weak display on his abdication.