Chapter 1: She’s a Demon, She’s a Devil, She’s a Doll
Blood is alive.
The Frostman taught me that. After the Tuathak crusaders killed my parents. When I was alone and the tears froze to my cheeks.
Exposed to the cold, blood
flinches away in pain. It retreats up your arms and legs, hiding in your heart. You can coax it back with promises of warmth. But sometimes, a more reliable way is to force it back home, like sucking venom out through a wound.
You’re freezing to death. You sit down and die. If you stand and move, the blood has to go to your extremities out of brutal necessity. You need to take the next step forwards, swinging your arms for momentum. Everything heats up inside like friction in your veins.
The Frostman told me to stand up. He told me to take that next step. Told me to follow him. He led me to the priestesses and druids of the Taigan Order, where I once again found the simple warmth of a fire and survived.
That was nineteen years ago.
My blood is alive.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s the only part of me that is anymore.
Gemradcurt. Home. Or what’s left of it.
In this land of motherless boys and fatherless girls, I still wonder why the Frostman would appear only to me. Time after time as I grew up with the women of the Taigan Order. I can’t even say if he came first or my talent with magic. I barely understood the significance at the time. I just knew he was there when I threw a tantrum and created a blizzard, giving me harsh advice and stern criticism in the same breath.
He was my only constant, in some ways. I came to realize the Frostman was no mere elf. He wasn’t even alive in the traditional sense.
The Frostman was something more, and I was the one he’d chosen.
It was up to me to
do something with these circumstances.
I’m naturally talented in evocation war magic and have secretly dabbled in needful necromancy. I’ve worked hard to get here, and I know it’s still not nearly enough.
[Immarel is a powerful mage, a unique feature of Anbennar. As our ruler, she can study, master, and cast ferocious spells that can turn the tide of any war.]
I watched the Tuathak continue their brutal crusade. I grew up in the shadow of bloodletting and the Fey spirits of the land that picked their bodies over. I learned to wield winter as our people’s only true weapon against the invaders.
I rose through the ranks. It’s hard to say no to a girl who can freeze your blood. Not when she has a creature like the Frostman pushing her forwards.
We didn’t win that war.
We just clung on to the parts of Eordand that nobody else could be bothered to conquer.
The borders, faiths, and peoples of Eordand. Centered around the ancient Fey forests of the Domandrod. It’s the whole world, for what it matters. The Tuathak came from our southwest and spread across our homeland, establishing Slegcal and Jhorgashirr as hostile crusader states.
[Eordand is, in typical Anbennar fashion, a thunderdome. Full of different peoples and religions who all hate each other, the only way to survive is to be hyper aggressive and dominate your region before you can expand into the wider world.]
It wasn’t magical power or valiant hearts that defeated the crusaders.
It was politics.
The Autumn Court is just one group in Eordand. When it looked like they would finally defeat us, the Peitar people intervened. Not because they wanted to save us, not because they cared about anything like that.
They did it because they didn’t want the Autumn Court to become too powerful. They wanted to maintain a balance of power, politically and among the Fey courts.
We survived because our deaths would have been spiritually inconvenient to another people, and that’s it.
The crusade is supposed to be over.
But I didn’t get this far by trusting my lying eyes alone.
“Lady Immarel, a moment?”
Captain Talaran shakes his black hair from his helmet and frees his long ears. He is, like me, an ethnic Snecboth, a snow elf. He's tall and lean with battle scarred forearms. Skin pale like snow. Due to the Ironhunger, the rarity of iron in Eordand, he wears sturdy armor of silvery bronze and animal furs and carries an officer’s flute on his hip. Were it not for the Crusade, I wonder what this man might have been. Probably another wanderer, moving with his family as the seasons changed.
In this world, he’s a warrior. One of my best lieutenants and head of my personal guard. After I expanded the Taigan Order to allow men in, he’d joined and fought by my side ever since. He hands me the reports.
“You were right. Still got Tuathak remnants looting and marauding the north. The Peitar don’t seem to mind so long as the war is officially over, and our own scattered forces exist mostly on paper. It’s about ten pounds of shit in a five pound sack,” he says with a slight drawl. He pauses before adding, “Ma’am.”
The juxtaposition makes me snort. “You’ve always had a way with words, Talaran.”
He shrugs. “Why sugar coat a rotting corpse? You get sick if you eat it either way.”
I make a warding gesture with my fingers, to metaphorically throw off the evil eye. “What do we have at our disposal at the moment, captain?”
Talaran inclines his head, thinking. He doesn’t use his fingers to accentuate his thoughts or feelings. He’s almost impiously rigid. “Some six thousand soldiers trying to hold down what’s left of the region. And some guy tied some logs together and claims it’s legally a navy for tax purposes, so I guess we have that, too.”
“Will it be enough?”
“No. But it’s not like that’s ever stopped you before. Whatever happens, I promised to see this through with you till the end.”
I gesture for good luck. “I’ll draft the orders, captain. Be ready to receive and execute them.”
“Executing is my favorite part of the job. I love making work for the Rat Catcher.” He makes no gesture of respect before leaving.
And I find myself alone with my thoughts. With nothing but this old desk in a little town that’s halfway between organized refugees and a war camp. Here in a room that’s little more than a fortified hut with a stone hearth to keep my hands from freezing in the cold. The Snecboth didn’t used to live in towns like this. We didn’t have desks and quills and paperwork. The Tuathak and their invasion forced us back, concentrating us. We had to settle and bunker down for once in our existence as the crusaders ravaged our homes and trails.
Now, a generation of children will grow up never knowing the old ways. The existence I fought my life to defend is almost a myth.
All I can do is…
The Frostman. Or, in reality, the Everfrost Prince. An Archfey. Almost the closest thing I have to family anymore.
Once, in the aftermath of my first battle, I saw a man wandering through the field of corpses. Some were our people, pale skinned Snecboth. Others were Tuathak elves, skin midway through their season change in color. Most of the bodies had frozen to some degree, standing in place with shattered limbs.
I was just a kid, another orphan girl in the druidic Taigan Order. But age didn't stop me from watching people die. Killing them, even. I was too strong, too useful, to be allowed a childhood.
I sat there, bundled up next to a fire. And just watched the man walk through the battlefield. Casually strolling among the dead. Occasionally exhaling smoke through a pipe through his mask.
This huge, hunched over figure in a dark cloak and mask picked through the bodies. Until eventually he found a young boy who had been a mage like me. He reached out a six-fingered hand from beneath his cloak, and I saw the jerkied eyeballs hanging from his wrist. He noticed me looking, and then went back to taking the mage's eyes.
I tried to get up, thinking maybe I would stop him. Until one of the older women stopped and held me back.
“The Fey are stronger here in the aftermath of magic. Look away!” a woman said. “Don't watch the Rat Catcher work!”
“Why is he doing that?” I asked.
The woman shook her head. “He is the Rat Catcher, taker of dead mages. He is of the Fey. The Fairfolk simply do and are. Let him be lest you draw his attention. Who knows what he might demand of you.”
She taught me the warding gestures, ways to move my hands and figures to appease or ward off the Fey, be they Seelie or Unseelie. Gestures for pardon. Gestures for them to ignore me. I’m not sure the Fey take any real mind to what we do like that. But the purpose is half for them, and half as much to make sure that, when Fey are around, they can’t use magic to twist your words. They do that kind of thing.
The Everfrost Prince was like that. One of the Fey. Not a God, not a person, but something in between from outside the material plane. Drawn here for his own inscrutable purposes. Stronger than most of his unknowable kin.
I had made the mistake of thinking him a friend when I was a little girl. Because he was all I had when the Tuathak killed my parents and left me to die. I don't think the Fey have our mortal conception of emotions and relationships. I don't understand a lot of things when it comes to him and why he dotes on me.
I just know that with his help, we can finally beat back the Autumn Court. We struck a bargain ages ago. Not a true
pact, but something more informal. Help and patronage, his knowledge and support so long as our goals align.
With his help, his patronage, I can save my people.
No matter the cost.
[And here we see the real twist and story of Immarel. Her quest is to follow her Archfey patron to the path of immortality and eternal power.]
But until I complete my end of the bargain with the Everfrost Prince, I must focus on the task at hand. I need to find sources from the Fey and those who came before me on how to master the magic I was naturally gifted with.
I took control of the Taigan Order and all of Gemradcurt when I was just eleven because I was stronger than everyone else. Our old leader was a coward who just retreated. I struck him down with winter’s fury, and assumed my position as leader by right of might.
In the legends, however? Of the fair Fey, of old druids, compared to them I am still nothing.
There’s so much left to learn and master if I am to save my people and complete the Everfrost Prince’s grisly task.
And in the end, I shall be found faultless for what I’ve done.
[And here we start Immarel’s true journey. She is but one Ruinborn elf. She is still mortal. But mages can study and master schools of magic, any school. I’ll need to master Evocation to destroy my foes, and Necromancy to attain eternal life and power.]
But the quest for old texts is an expensive process. I have to send members of the Taigan Order on expeditions to old ruins to find information. All the while, I need to be mindful of just how few resources we truly have.
I could bankrupt Gemradcurt if I pursue this task too madly.
So I can either focus on fulfilling my end of the deal wholeheartedly mastering sorcery, or I could prioritize resources to practical efforts like the military, our fortifications, and the other innumerable costs associated with any standing nation.
It’s funny, really. Before the Hiberal Crusade, when we were nomadic, we lived off the land and that was it. To survive, we needed to replicate the state structures of the Tuathak peoples. To play by their rules.
And our attempts at replicating civilization did not paint a pretty picture.
Far to the south, in the lands of the Spring Court of Arakeprun, there are lone cities as rich and populous as the entirety of the Snecboth Winter Court. I should probably get rid of our fake navy and get rid of that tax loophole.
[Like I said, Gemradcurt is an icy wasteland with little in the way of valuable goods and few people. We make .4 of a money a month. Meaning the economy is IN SHAMBLES, WOO!]
It’s readily apparent to me, from all the reports from scouts and diplomats, that Gemradcurt can’t survive alone. We were just one of the organized Snecboth peoples when the crusade ended.
The others? At least ones who survived the Crusade? Reotcrab
[Frozen Tree] and Gelcolle
[White Forest] are just as isolated as us. Even then, Reotcrab are mostly pirates and raiders with no love for their brothers. And if my spies are to be believed, behind the smiles of Gelcolle lie people who claim to be “forward thinking” and trying to commune and work with the Tuathak people, as if rolling over and playing nice will finally make our ancient enemy consider us people.
They’re fools and idiots.
No one in history has ever won their freedom by appealing to the better angels of those keeping them in irons.
If the Snecboth are to survive at all, we
need to form a united front and stand against the other Seasonal Courts. And I won’t take no for an answer, no matter how much palm greasing, enchantment magic, and even murder it requires to make our fellow elves see reason.
These are the first steps we must take.
And so, I have Captain Talaran and my friend, Captain Ishera, oversee the build-up of our forces, plying both diplomatic overtures of unity and maneuvering my army near their borders to demonstrate we have the might needed to protect Winter.
[The long Gemradcurt mission tree begins in earnest. In EU4, mission trees represent concrete goals for your nation, broadly guiding you down a historical path, and giving you bonuses or new mechanics as you progress. Anbennar takes these up to 11, and you will see how big and insane this mission tree really gets.]
It’s been nearly 1445 years exactly since the Day of Ashen Skies, when Elven Civilization died in a blaze of horror. We survived due to the great mountains to our west, and within the Feywilds of the great Domandrod forest.
In practice, that means that it’s near the end of the year, start of the next. It’s the dead of winter, where the Fey of Winter Court are at their strongest. When I am most in tune with my magic. And most alone. Just me, the weather, and whatever scraps of literature I can find about old necromancy.
Someone knocks on the door to my office as I’m staring out the window into the snowstorm. Before I can say anything, Ishera Fasacminn walks in with a bottle of something. I quickly roll up my scroll before she can get closer and read what I’m doing.
“Hey, Immie,” Ishera says with a smile. She pretty much stopped getting taller when we were still young women in the Taigan Order, and they don’t really make armor in her size. What she lacks in physique she made up for in spellcraft and literacy. Ishera looks at the bottle in her hand and hides it behind her back. “You didn’t see that, by the way.”
“Captain Ishera, what are you—”
She holds a finger up, then curls them into a gesture of pardon. “No ranks here. It’s a new year, and you’re all alone.”
I creep towards my desk to hide my scroll. “I was looking over reports.”
Ishera gives me a dry look. “Workaholic.”
I force a laugh. “Yeah, that’s me. Just working.”
Ishera looks at the scroll and I suddenly feel hot. She scowls. “Put that away. I have a gift for you. Well, two, but one for the moment.”
I scramble to put the necromantic writing away and try to look casual. I can’t figure out how to stand or where to put my arms to actually look like I wasn’t studying forbidden magics in the name of an Archfey. Like a normal person does. “What is it, Ishera?”
“Guess!” she says, stepping up to my desk. Gestures for hope. Technically, the way she flicks her wrist and fingers is asking for a good harvest or abundant foraging, or a gift of food from the Fey, but the meaning is the same.
I lean to look past her, and she waves her arms at me.
“No cheating, Immie!” she says with a pout.
I stand there, still unsure where my hands belong. “Alcohol?”
Ishera grins, holding up the bottle. “Old-fashioned Snecboth mead like my mom used to make. C’mon, sit with me by the fire. If I drink it with a friend it’s socially acceptable. You wouldn’t force me to drink it by myself, would you?”
She pours us cups and we spend the evening just… talking. Like normal people. As the snow comes down, a snow that will eventually blow over, Ishera and I just talk. It’s nice. She was one of the first people I met in the Taigan Order, another fatherless daughter like myself. The Taigan Order used to be all women, and in the days of the Crusade we were all orphans in some way or another.
The only difference between us was I was far stronger with magic. But that never stopped her from taking up the sword and fighting for our people with me. She was the closest thing I had to whatever I had with the Everfrost Prince.
At some point, as I’m seeing double, lost in giggling fits about the stupid things we used to do as kids, or some strange tricks of the Fey we’ve both seen, she gets serious.
“The other gift. I got a letter!” she says chipperly. Then frowns. “Well, two letters. Shit, I
cannot count.”
“What…” I blink, trying to focus. And nearly stumble in the fireplace. Ishera grabs me and pulls me back into a chair. “What about?”
“My work in Gelcolle and Reotcrab,” she says, fishing around her trousers for the paperwork.
One agreed. One rejects us. Fuuuck I am too drunk for this shit right now. Ishera, you… wait… no, how do I use my mouth again to make words? Ah, I remember!
“Ishera, you’re supposed to
lead with this stuff!” I say, pushing her away from me and trying to make the letters on paper stop blurring.
She frowns. “I was going to. I was going to celebrate. But you looked so grim and serious I figured you needed to relax first.”
“Celebrate?” I scoff, rubbing my forehead. And gesture for good luck, though I feel I lack any right now.
“Yeah. Gelcolle agreed to join us in a defensive pact. That’s great!”
I hold my face, pressing my fingers in my eyes. “Ishera, this is terrible. Reotcrab is happy to just let us all die. To raid the coasts and stick to themselves.”
She shrugs. “So? Most of the Snecboth people are together.”
“No, you… you…” I shake my head and reach for some water. “We
need to work together. If we move to push out the invaders, what if Reotcrab attacks us? They’re predatory, vultures if we can’t contain them. They’re a dagger pointed at the heart of the Winter Court.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. Nervously running fingers through her nearly white hair. “Ishera, you don’t need to think of it that far. You don’t need to be paranoid. They’ll sit back; I know people from Reotcrab. Gelcolle and us together are enough.”
I stand up sharply. “You’re wrong, Ishera. You’re dead wrong.”
What? Go away, I’m busy!
It takes a day to sober up. And another for the hangover to cease. Stupid Ishera. Why did I ever let my guard down? I do it for one moment, and this happens.
I had made such a show of reaching out to our fellow Snecboth. I’d raised and moved armies for it. And
only Gelcolle had agreed. Reotcrab stood in defiance, spitting in my face, in the face of everything we’ve worked for.
Already, the nobles and merchants whom I’d cajoled into helping fund these projects are wondering if I’ve made a mess of things. Wasted resources on playing nice with people we had no business treating with.
It’s like when I was a little girl. After I killed the old leader of Gemradcurt and took over with the help of the militarists. They’d tried to use me. And at the urging of the Everfrost Prince, I rid myself of them and assumed full control.
This was no different.
I looked over my shoulder, as if I’d see the Everfrost Prince again. Like he’d know what to do and push me towards it.
But he’s not there.
And I have to do what’s right myself. What I should have done this entire time.
If they won’t cooperate peacefully, I’ll have no choice but to make them!
[Ah, war. The meat and potatoes of EU4. My neverending unhinged wars of naked aggression begin now!]
Ishera protests. But I force her away and tell her to take her post like a good little captain. Talaran, for his part, already seems ready.
He just smiles when I march into the military headquarters. I nearly blind him with a frostbolt then and there.
“I’ve already got Ewandil sal Einn leading the troops on the border,” he says. “Five thousand regulars, and four thousand adventurers who’ve signed up on temporary contracts.”
I stop. Blink. “You’re already prepared to invade Reotcrab?”
Talaran shrugs, leaning forwards slightly. Now grinning. Still never making any gestures for the Fey, as if he doesn’t care if they’re ever watching him or not “Lady Immarel, I ain’t known you all this time
not to be able to figure out what you’d do if those northern kings spat in our face.”
I take a breath and try to straighten my hair, slowly gesturing for thankfulness. “Very good, Captain. I commend your initiative. How soon can we march to secure the north?”
“How soon do you need to join the men?”
“Not long,” I say. “We’ll show them the best Winter can muster. And then we’ll swing down south and drive out the invaders.”
“I’ll get it done in two shakes of the fairy’s wing, Lady Immarel,” he says evenly.
The adventurers would normally be fighting monsters and appeasing minor Fey, but they can serve the Winter Court in a pinch for the right price. We’re the best elvenkind has to offer.
[But, despite what they think, we are NOT actually elves. Actual pureblooded elves are in Fantasy Europe and still live centuries. We are Ruinborn, the mutant elves who survived the apocalypse, a different race. Every race in Anbennar has a unique government administration and racial military, like diggy dwarves, magitek gnomes, savage ogres, elite true elves, and generic humans. Ruinborn elves are basically the Native Americans of this world, but they run the gamut from knightly feudal peoples, to Greek-like city-states, to hive-minded swarm organisms.]
I arrive on the border to inspect the soldiers. We have a distinct lack of cavalry. Horses are expensive to house and care for, so what we have are all infantry. Spearmen, archers, and the occasional mage for support from whatever Order I could cajole into supplying them. Plus a token of support from our theoretical allies in Gelcolle, not that they count for much so early into our partnership.
Then there’s the adventurers. They’re not regular troops. Little more than sellswords we’re corralled into the service to act as warm bodies.
It’s all the Winter Court truly has.
I feel the winds of magic and breathe Winter into my lungs, and order the armies march for the city of Marathmas, capital of Reotcrab.
And find…
“You’re shitting me,” I say exasperated
“Language, my lady!” Ishera says, gesturing for forgiveness, but I wave her off.
Captain Talaran looks over the walls of Marathmas, shaking his head. “No shit, Lady Immarel. You remember those random logs that one guy put together for tax evasion purposes?”
“Yes, the one I was meaning to get rid off until
Ishera distracted me on New Year’s.”
Ishera just looks embarrassed
He points over his shoulder towards the frozen sea. “The entire army of Reotcrab was on their island up north, getting ready for a raid. Turns out, if you tie enough logs together and put sails on them, you can pretend to have a navy large enough to convince an entire army they wouldn’t make it across the sea.”
“You are. Shitting.
Me.”
Ishera frowns at me. “Look, if they don’t have an army that can fight back, maybe we can resolve this peacefully. It’s like pretending to steal a child’s nose. ‘Haha, we got your capital city, now let’s all get along and focus on the Autumn Court.’ Y’know?”
I look towards the walls of Marathmas. “Wait them out?”
She nods. “They’ll have to surrender eventually. No one has to die.”
“Except that the longer we’re here, the more time our enemies have to realize we’re not at our southern stations,” Captain Talaran says, and spits into the snow. “I don’t see what your problem is.”
“My Lady, please, just think about it,” Ishera says.
But already, I am feeling out the Fey winds of magic. Sensing the cold coursing through my veins in raw, unadulterated force.
“You’re right, Captain,” I say. “The sooner we take that city and end this war, the sooner we can secure ourselves against the Tuathak.”
“Good. Always wanted to bloody highborn noses,” he says. “See what colors come out if you stab a blueblood.”
I shake my head. “You won’t have to do anything. I’ll tear those walls down myself.”
Ishera bites her lips, but I’m already preparing for what I must do.
And I tear apart the very earth itself to break the walls, and let our soldiers into the city to take its leaders hostage and plunder it of all resistance.
[This is the power of a Powerful Mage as leader. Immarel can just summon powerful war and siege magic, making our soldiers into killing machines, or tearing down the walls of entire cities. Why wait a siege out when you can magically nuke everything?]
The walls come down, in a chorus of crumbling earth and screams that the howling blizzard soon overpowers.
Captain Talaran orders the soldiers into the wasteland as soon as they have their feet solidly beneath them.
Winter will not be denied. You can join us, or you can die.
And the city is taken, its garrison put to the sword, and all who survived made to kneel.
It’s as close to bloodless for our side as possible. Minimal losses and record pace, ensuring we can move south.
The representative from the noble family of Gelcolle stares, eyes wide, at the scene. Her hands shake.
“Glad you made the correct choice?” I ask her, arms behind my back.
She glances towards me, making some half-formed emotional gesture. “To cast our lot with you?”
I nod. “Imagine if it wasn’t us. If it was Tuathak. You should feel overjoyed that your leaders were more forward thinking.”
“So, what, this is an object lesson?” she asks.
I tilt my head. “A lesson implies there’s something to learn. This is more like disciplining an unruly child.”
The diplomat just nods, saying nothing. Her long ears twitch uncomfortably.
I feel oddly warm inside.
The Reotcrab Snecboth aren’t happy to be forced to cooperate, to cease raiding and instead focus on serving the common cause. Their still-living aristocrats bicker and moan, but I don’t care.
Because finally,
finally, everyone was working together.
And the long march south begins.
Autumn is a season of rot. You can see it every year when the leaves fall from the trees. They land on the ground and remain there until they stink of decay. Until the cold winter covers up the stench under a cleansing snow.
The Tuathak applied the same principle to us. We march south from Marathmas through forested Gelcolle, seeing the furthest extent of the Hibernal Crusade. We pass old battlefields where snow elves were left to fester, stripped naked of all belongings. Trees where the nooses are covered in corpse wax from their Snecboth victims. Once, in the forests, we find an old domcolle, rare longhouses where Snecboth clans would share fire and hunt the land. The Crusaders destroyed these too, even the women and children.
“We should burn the bodies,” Ishera says quietly. “Funeral honors.”
“Ain’t worth the pause,” Talaran says. “Longer we’re up here, the longer the border ain’t defended.”
“It’s the least we could do for the victims.” Ishera tightens her hood. “Someday when I die, I hope we’re safe enough that I can be burned the same way. Peacefully with honor.”
I allow Ishera to take the mages and tend to the dead.
Everywhere we go, the land is scarred. No matter how many years after the end of the war, we never stop finding new ways the Tuathak tried to drive us to extinction.
We winter just outside Gelcolle itself, less of a village and more persistent fire hazard with ramshackle defenses and imitation domcolles. The matriarch of their king’s clan promises us food and soldiers for our campaign, but they’re slow-coming.
“There’s only so much we can hunt and gather from the forests in a season,” the old woman tells Ishera and me.
I have no choice but to accept whatever help she offers. Snow elves are not farmers by nature, even if the cold north was easily arable. The fact I even have a single, coherent army that’s held together this long is a testament to Ishera and Talaran’s organization abilities.
When the campaign season begins, I’m in the war camp with my lieutenants.
Arms folded, Talaran says, “We can’t stay here any longer. Gelcolle is acting like we kicked in their door and slept with their wife. Don’t care none for us foraging their lands. Claim if we remain any longer, we’re going to cause a famine.”
I rub the side of my face. “Is that true?”
He scoffs. “No. They just don’t like us so close to their capital after what we did to Marathmas. They’re getting antsy, like we’ll discover they’ve done something and attack them.”
“You mean rumors they married into the Tuathak realm of Eighard?”
Talaran shrugs. “I think they’re playing for time. Reckoning they can be regional peacemaker.”
“Idiots,” I say, gesturing for scorn.
“Ain’t nobody able to suck that many dicks at once and survive,” Talaran says. “Eventually you suffocate.”
“Talaran!” Ishera snaps. “That’s vulgar.”
He stares at her blankly. “Okay, and?”
Ishera sighs, putting a map she’d drawn by hand onto the table. “Look, whatever. Here’s where we are. And here are the crusader states. We know Tuathak marauders are coming up through these borders. Some of our foraging parties have skirmished with some of them, even. They’ve been getting more common as the seasons change.”
I examine the map and all the notes Ishera helpfully added. “We don’t have a choice, do we? We can’t stay here and build up our forces any longer. And the Tuathak are getting bolder by the day, thinking we won’t do anything.”
She nods. “The longer we do nothing, the more innocent people will die. Even if we’re not ready yet, we
have to act, or we’ll lose all credibility with our supposed allies. Then everything we’ve done to get this far will be for naught.”
“How soon can we march south?” I ask.
Talaran almost looks offended. “What kind of milksop do you take me for, my Lady? I’ve had them ready since the moment I walked inside this tent.”
[The yellow slashes means we have claims on those provinces, so we have a war goal. The Thunderdome begins in earnest. May God save us all, for no one else can.]
So here it is. We break camp. We march together south.
We prepare to make war against the people who tried to exterminate us. Who colonize our rightful land and put snow elves in chains.
All my life I’ve prepared for this moment. To cross the rivers and forests to emerge like an avenging wraith from a blizzard.
My heart beats irregularly. I hold a hand to my breast and just try to breathe. To stay calm. To present an iron face for those I lead. The Everfrost Prince wouldn’t forgive me if I got cold feet now of all times.
I united Winter for the first time in its history, and now I must make use of it to destroy armies, raze cities, and bring the icy cold upon countless foreigners. A maelstrom of death from the heart of winter itself. To kill, kill, and
kill again to the future of my people. To feel no doubt or regrets for these needful things.
And then everything will finally be okay.
