The Concord has found itself embroiled in many years long conflicts where it holds ground against a determined foe season after season. Windholme and Weiland have become warzones for years and Bolsterlee’s constant conflict became a source of boredom for Concordian commanders relegated to its stormy warfront. It appears that the hunger for expansion held by The Trade Principality of Aprivano means to turn Mukarrem into a new forever warfront, with the grasses of the Priado Expanse becoming bloodslick from the lives of soldiers and mercenaries alike. This conflict shows no signs of stopping, and will grow to consume the land and its people.
The Map Was Always the Weapon
The wind never stops blowing across the Priado Expanse. For the Greenwealders, it’s insufferable.
Out here, where the grass grows tall and yellow under a pale winter sun, and the land rolls smooth like a well-forged blade, the Legion of the Blackheart Bear makes its camp. Their fires are low, their tents are orderly, and their boots are caked in mud and dried blood both. Their standard flies higher than it has in a year, the sable bear rampant against the forest-green of the Baronies, and for the first time since Mandrianos, their commander, General Thanshaw, allows himself the smallest measure of pride.
This is not the cursed city, and these are not the Drowned. This is a proper war.
What came before was slaughter beneath rotted waves and pale skies. What came now was steel and command and maneuver. It is the dance of generals, not butchers. Across the wide plains of Mukarrem, a new kind of conflict took hold, less brutal than what the Blackheart Bear had known, but no less exacting. The foe: Questor Vikandius, a self-styled liberator of Aprivano and free citizen of Artebazzan. His troops are Legionnaires, mercenaries, and nomads wearing a borrowed cause like cloaks. They moved well, fought clean, and carried themselves with cold discipline. Not monsters, these. Not beasts. But something far more dangerous - soldiers.
For weeks, the two armies circled one another across hundreds of leagues. Oasis camps, scrubby ridgelines, half-dug strongpoints; all marked a chessboard that changed with every sunrise. Skirmishes sparked and faded in hours. Campfires were spotted, counted, and gone before nightfall. Water wagons became more valuable than gold. Neither general yielded ground easily, neither sought to overextend.
But even a perfect game has its end.
The balance was broken not by blade nor banner, but by the sails on the horizon. Liberty’s Fist, Admiral Pierre Capulet’s ramshackle fleet of revolutionaries and privateers, hung like a threat just off the Guardian Strait; dozens of captured warships flying the colours of Lerona Mere. They never made landfall, launched a raid into the grasslands, but their presence reshaped the war. Their reach gave Thanshaw options. Their speed forced Vikandius to second-guess every flank. Like unseen pieces on a board, they let the Legion strike boldly and fall back without fear. In the end, it was not their blades that won ground — it was the possibility of them.
And The Concord took the field.
Questor Vikandius, bloodied but not broken, withdrew to Nazafeza with fewer men and fewer options. He left no grand speech, no challenge thrown behind him, only the bitter calm of a retreat made in good order. His legal fiction, that he was a lone citizen among other free warriors, still holds. For now. But even fiction frays with enough heat.
As for the Legion, they ready themselves for a new season of war. The grass crunches beneath their boots now, no longer hiding foes. Their wounds are bandaged, their dead buried beneath cairns of stone. Their general says little, as always, but those under his command know well what this was: a victory, not total, not clean, but hard-earned and honourable.
And out at sea, beneath sails stitched with rebellion and salt, Liberty’s Fist drifts easy in winter winds. For once, they are content.
It will not last.
Game Information
Following a season of warfare in the Priado Expanse, The Concord has emerged victorious, defeating the forces of Questor Vikandius and holding onto Mukarrem for another six months.
The fighting is less bloody than other warfronts and while casualties are felt, they are not as disastrous as elsewhere. The Legion of the Blackheart Bear will have a starting strength of 3400 and inflicted just shy of 500 casualties on the Aprivanoan army. Liberty’s Fist suffered no casualties, but a season spent supporting manoeuvre and resupply was not one of rest and they have recovered no casualties. The Liberty’s Fist will have a starting strength of 5900.
Find Your Strength, You’ll Need It
The Principality of Aprivano is a human enemy, fighting in the ways one would expect. Tactics, strategy, guile, cruelty and yet more traits that can only be associated with sentient minds. Even in defeat, their noses bloodied, the rotating wheel of power keeps spinning under the golden hand of Majiid and his Western Imperial Empire.
It comes as no surprise to many when the forces of Al’Shakti and Luis the Warjackal appear with blades in hand and blood in mind beyond The Salt Road.
The Priado Expanse, so desperately defended this last Season, faces another offensive by The Principality. The brutality and fury of Al’Shakti joined in military matrimony with the cruelty and schemes of The Warjackal, both hungry for war. Where alone Questor Vikandius and his army failed, pushed from the field, it seems Majiid expects that these two together may succeed. His dream of conquering The West now not so distant as it was so many years ago.
Were it not for the words and actions of the Senator of Mukarrem, Daud El’Priado Del’Anarch Al’Sabre, perhaps there would be more tragedy at hand than their presence of force. While few refugees of Nazafeza or the land itself remained in The Priado Expanse, there would be even fewer thanks to the spreading of Senator Daud’s words. Refugees of Mukarrem, at his own encouragement, were to travel to Abqala to rest and remain safe until the land was once again held by those who truly cared for it. Such a decision would save the lives of many.
Instead of fleeing civilians, the foe would find naught but saw-leaved grasslands to hinder their progress, and the result of war a Season past. Even still, they would not be deterred. Barbaric actions would be nothing but a simple treat for these all too human enemies; without it their task remained simple. Fight the war, and win it for the Imperial Prince Majiid. Earn his favour, conquer his enemies, and share in the wealth that he showers on those he keeps close.
Bareeva Al’Shakti, in all her intensity, would aim to be the first and fastest to gain this favour. Her reasons her own, forward scouts would skirmish with the Legion of the Blackheart Bear, harassing them and forcing them to take defensive positions near the border of Tanebar South and the Mitricasa Rise. Never did these skirmishes devolve to true scale conflict, but for a short moment there would be genuine fear throughout the Wealders’ ranks that they would have to fight yet again, before the Season was up.
Such fears would pass, as emplacements were made, watches were organised, and not a single soul was lost on either side of the short yet sharp forays by Al’Shakti. Injuries and some strange instances of lost equipment were the greatest of concerns of the soldiers, while the enemy’s mere presence and intent to conquer would be the concern of the strategists. Let alone the position and actions of Luis El’Covarrias, who had not been seen since his force had begun to ready itself along The Salt Road in preparation for the coming Season of war.
The Concord will need to respond once more to the actions of their enemies. The Warjackal will ensure they must.
Game Information
The Trade Principality of Aprivano prepares to launch yet another offensive into The Priado Expanse, this time utilising the armies of Al’Shakti and Luis The Warjackal. Skirmishes and military harassment by Bareeva’s force become a common occurrence for those in The Legion, but thankfully no souls are lost, and a large-scale secondary conflict is avoided.
The Concord can expect offensive actions into Mukarrem this coming Season, though the nature of these actions may not be known at the start of Summit.
Fragments of Fractured Light
The sun, not quite ready to dip below the horizon, cast shadows about the shrine, their smoky tendrils reaching out. They grasped, tangling with the wreaths that almost touched the ground, despite the woman’s height. Darkness contested with light, the latter glinting off the number of metal rings at the end of many of the yellow wreaths, while the former ensconced itself in the many dried rocks, cracked shells, and small animal skulls that danced about in shades of blue on her person.
She went to take a heavy sigh, thought better of it, and covered her eyes for a moment - if any watching thought it to be a moment of respite from rays of the sinking sun, she would not say otherwise. Her other hand reached for one of her most frayed wreaths, the cord replaced more than once, but so often bearing the brunt of her falters.
Fingers not quite trembling, she looked down from the view in front of her to the stones below that she knew so well as she traced along the cord that faded from yellow into blue. They met sandstone, worn smooth with time and attention, along with a scrap of tent canvas carefully hemmed, and a small piece of jade, carved into a skull.
Then, moving along, her calloused hands caressed the dried remnant of a thorn bush and a small wooden sword, followed by a chess piece made of marble. Next, a salt-dried stone, the cord fading from yellow to blue, before a face carved of bone and an arrow pointing down, the two bordered on their right by carvings of olive and laurel.
Finally, the cord finished with another skull, this one larger than the first, carved from onyx. It was cold, clutched in her hand, and felt heavier than it had in some time.
She moved to clasp her hands together and brought her closed eyes up to the ceiling, not yet ready to see what she already knew was there.
In her mind, she saw the domed ceiling of the Night Shrine, still the same as it had been on her initial journey there so many years ago. She saw the jade, onyx, and topaz reflecting the sun’s dwindling light, the refracted rays warm and kind on her cheeks. She saw the pattern shift and change as over her life the stones remained the same, the perspective through which she viewed them shifting - what once felt like an ocean of jade grew to glimmer with more topaz than she had seen in her youth. She saw the same ceiling that her ancestors in Grand Andash would have looked upon and found truth and contemplation, themselves changed beneath it by life and death even as its jewels remained the same.
She opened her eyes, and in spite of all of her preparation, could not shake the weight of despair that sunk low in her gut, aching with the absence that was as clear as the crumbling mortar left behind on the dome above her. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend that they were all still there - that this place of quiet thought and reflection remained as had since her great-grandmother had walked here as a young pilgrim.That the stone above and below remained untouched, cold but never cruel, and free of blood even in a region so torn by war. That this place was still one of reflection for the future, corrections for wrongdoings, and honouring the dead.
But as she lowered her eyes, the scene before her silhouetted by the sun now slinking below La Callidez, she could not imagine a way in which this wrong could ever be righted.
Taking steps tempered by fear, dread, or trepidation - she could not say which held most sway in that moment - she looked down at the pilgrims her wreath had guided from Abqala, arrayed with clear care beneath the centre of the dome.
She stared down at the body of the young man, once so full of Vibranza, now stuffed to the brim with the jewels from above. She refused to let her stomach turn as it wanted to, as she looked upon where his eyes had been, orbs plucked and sockets cracked to make way for two glittering topazes. He did not have any lids to close, to let him rest in his final repose.
She turned then to his sibling, their ribcage torn open, innards mangled and crushed under the weight of the jade that replaced them. She wretched as she saw their stomach, bulging at sharp angles beneath the rope belt around their waist as what must have been the edges of the mosaic pressed against their flesh from the inside. A shard of onyx was lodged in their throat amongst shards of their teeth, their head resting gently against their brother’s.
How could she honour them when they lay like this, their bodies used as a crude calling card, their entrails laid end to end in sweeping letters? How could she possibly think of the future when their bodies were still warm - when the delegation had waited for her to cross the horizon before finally killing the pilgrims, mocking them and her in the same breath?
How could this wrong ever be righted when the Shrine of Maloza would be forever tainted by the name “Luis,” spelt in blood and viscera that would never truly be washed away?
Game Information:
Luis The Warjackal, backed by the gold and supplies of The Trade Principality of Aprivano, has made clear his intentions for The Priado Expanse. Where Bareeva Al’Shakti, filled with reckless abandon, looks to strike hard and fast, The Warjackal understands the art of wars such as these - it is not the large-scale spilling of blood that wins them, but the oppressive breaking of spirit. Having sent his message, he now rallies his troops of bandits, murderers, and thieves at The Salt Road, ready for the next foray.
The Concord can expect offensive actions into Mukarrem this coming Season, though the nature of these actions may not be known at the start of Summit. Al’Shakti will be striking with a strength of 5000 nomad raiders, acting in support of The Warjackal, who attacks with a mixed force of 6000 bandits, corsairs, and worse.