Qwixalted/Sunrise of the River Kingdoms

Dramatis Personae

(TBA)

Prologue

The Sunrise Prince has just suffered a military defeat at the hands of an Outcaste Dragon-Blooded king, Johr Seftarian -- although unrivalled on the battlefield, Mithric was unable to match the Earth Aspect king's stratagems, and he has been forced to retreat to his inner keep.

The Seftarian rulers are old rivals and enemies of the kings of Aelysia. The Seftarians have generally had the ascendency in the local region, having a touch of the Dragons in their bloodline; as a result, approximately every generation or so, they produces a Dragon-Blooded, who then rises to the kingship (usually over the corpses of his or her more ambitious cousins).

The current Seftarian king, Johr, has ruled Seftaria for the last hundred years or so. He is an old man, by Dragon-Blooded standards, his Second Breath having come late in life, but he is still vital and active, cunning and intelligence, and he is all the more dangerous and ruthless for his experience. Under his rule, Seftaria has grown to swallow several minor neighboring kingdoms, and bully a number of others into vassalhood.

Aelysia was the strongest kingdom in the region to oppose him -- Mithric's predecessor established a strong alliance of other concerned kingdoms to hold Seftaria in check. This alliance survived Mithric's predessor's death, but was shattered when the young ruler took the Second Breath as a Sun-Chosen -- suddenly, Aelysia found itself alone as cultural wariness and Immaculate propaganda played their role in isolating the Anathema.

Johr is not a man who has risen to where he is by missing such opportunities.

Using Immaculate propaganda as a pre-text to form a casus belli, he declared war, framing the conflict as a "liberation" of the people of Aelysia from the oppression of the demonic Anathema. Assembling a mighty host of his personal army and his allies, he invaded.

Alone, the army of Aelysia was outnumbered by twenty to one. But still the Sunrise Prince might have triumphed, were it not for two factors.

First, let it be admitted, Johr Seftarian is a better general than the younger, less experienced Sunrise Prince is (at least, for now...): where a fool may have used his greater strength without subtlety, Johr has not wasted finesse, and has not merely outpowered Mithric, but outwitted and outflanked him.

Secondly, the Seftarian forces were reinforced by a number of Realm Dynasts. Although the Realm could not send any forces to help the Seftarians directly -- at least, not without risking war with Lookshy -- a number of "volunteers" have bolstered the Seftarian ranks, providing not only greater quantity, but also a qualitative edge that no army in the Hundred Kingdoms yet possesses.

Thus, the Sunrise Prince was overwhelmed: his army defended a bridge over one of the great tributaries that eventually lead into the Yellow River, the main gateway into his kingdom. The fighting was tough and bloody, the Sunrise Prince accounting for himself a hundredfold, but eventually he was exhausted and his army smashed, brushed aside, routed. The Sunrise Prince has been forced to retreat to his citadel as the Seftarian forces sweep into his lands, already proclaiming victory as they begin to build the siege engines that will overwhelm the citadel's walls.

The times are desperate. Defeat would spell the destruction of Aelysia and death for the Sunrise Prince, but fleeing is unthinkable.

The one, ironic, source of solace is the news that matters could have been worse: Lookshy's stance towards the conflict remains neutral, hostile to the Realm's involvement with the Seftarians. As such, their soldiers have remained at home and their warmachines in storage. Had the Seftarians been given access to those, they would have made short work of the citadel walls indeed...

Chapter 1: Enemy at the Gates

The defeated troops filed through the drawbridge, bloodied, defeated, heads bowed in shame.