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

(Part A): Enemy at the Gates

The defeated troops filed through the drawbridge, bloodied, heads bowed in shame: the last of the outriders, light horsemen, hooves clopping unevenly across the wooden drawbridge. Maybe a dozen horsemen left out of a proud colmun of a hundred.

Standing in his citadel's tallest observation tower, Mithric surveyed his foe's troops, determined gaze staring into the distance as he watched the Seftarian army start to establish siegeworks in heavy artillery range. The cries of foremen leading sappers and engineers mixed with the hammering of mallets on wood and other sounds of an industry aimed at one sole purpose: to overthrow the walls that defended the last of free Aelysia.

He contemplated the reverse he had just suffered gloomily. He barely had enough of an army to hold his walls now, and he faced a horde the size of which hadn't been seen in the River Kingdoms since the last war against the Realm. His citadel had been well-built, in an oxbow that made the rushing river a natural moat on three sides of the castle; a canal had been dug in front of the fourth side, and the wall was thickest here. When the time came to storm the walls, if that time came, the main attack would surely fall here...

Turning to his council, the young Solar knew they needed options. They needed time. They needed troops. They needed supplies. They would need luck. They would need everything...

"Well, my friends..." said Mithric, opening the discussion. "What now?"

(Part B): Riders on the Hill

Word had reached the riders of the Aelysian army's defeat earlier that morning, after they had come ashore from the ferry across the Yellow River. They could only hope it wasn't too late and that the Sunrise Prince hadn't yet been slain: contradicting rumours flew like a disturbed hornet's nest on the subject, flying in the wake of gossip and hearsay, all the more enflamed by frightened refugees.

But the wise heads amongst them had decided that only one course of action was reasonably open: to ride to the Sunrise Prince's citadel and see for themselves. If Mithric was dead, well, at least they would know so for themselves. If he lived, he would have retreated there to be besieged; he would be all the more in dire need of their aid.

Thus they crested the summit of a hill that oversaw the Sunrise Prince's Citadel, and saw for themselves the massive army stretched out across the plain, crawling like colourful ants across the once-green and fertile plain, facing off the citadel's walls. It seemed they were perhaps too late. Then again, perhaps not... surely the citadel would have surrendered had Mithric been slain. He must still be alive...

Chapter 1 (United)

(TBA)