Kain sat down on his throne and gazed out upon the throne room. The scars of the battle over fifteen centuries ago were still visible even after the repairs that had been done. It was an unfortunately high possibility that the damages would not be fully repaired until the city of Necrograd had been restored to the peak of its power, and so he would have to endure the painful reminders of the past for just a while longer. He would make sure that the damnable ‘Forces of Light’ were paid their just due for every bit of damage and destruction, for every life and Unlife lost in their self-righteous pursuit of total order.

No longer would Darksol represent pure chaos to contrast the Luminas Confederacy’s pure order. No, the new Darksol Empire would be far more balanced and disciplined than the horde of undead and maniacs that had made it up previously. Pure chaos was not the answer, neither was pure order, and so a stable balance had to be struck. Rather than relying on hordes of undisciplined and swarming undead like in ages past, there would be a fusion of the chaos of a massive swarm of undead beings and the order of a cohesive military formation.

Skeletons, which once wielded a wide assortment of weapons and swung them like madmen without using them to their fullest would be restricted into certain units. There would be archers, spearmen, and swordsmen, but they would not be alone. Zombies would be used in a mix of the horde that was the norm and a ‘disciplined’ formation that would act as a literal meat shield and serve to slow down and tire out a foe. Dire Wolves which once were easy to lose track of as they acted and fought far more independently than other undead would function as a deterrent to light cavalry and as harassment to skirmishers and even as light cavalry in and of themselves.

Fel Bats would fly as groups, bound to the will of a single being, and would swoop down in great black clouds of teeth and force to strike targets of opportunity before taking to the skies once again. The two buildings that would make the first wars of reconquest possible were just waiting to be made, and it would be a tough call to decide which one would be made first. To start with infantry would be the safe bet, but the temptation of early cavalry was great.

The real meat of the question came in the unknown that was how the current forces of the Luminas Confederacy operated. Based on Alistaira’s testimony it was clear that technology had not only stagnated in the past fifteen centuries, it had slowly begun to move backward. Gone were the days of knights in full plate riding barded warhorses into battle in mass formations and gone were the days of ‘well equipped’ levies of commoners all wearing similar, state regulated equipment. No longer were the longbowmen of Albion feared as expert killers and no longer were the massed assaults of millions of Ruskian men to be something worth losing sleep over.

The vaunted knights of Teutonia were shadows of their former selves and the well-oiled military machine that was the 100 Legions of Ititlis were now less well-oiled and more well-rusted. The world of Mortis had undergone a technological and cultural catastrophe, with a society from around the year 1500 CE in the terms of Europe becoming one more akin to that of 1100 CE Europe. The Confederacy still stood despite this, but was weaker by far and far more divided, with numerous referendums by each and every member roughly once every decade only failing in separating themselves from the greater whole by very narrow margins that could be easily construed as poorly disguised voter fraud.

With his enemies in disarray, this was the perfect opportunity to give them a fright they would not soon forget. To make his impact felt, he would need lightning fast assaults on small and relatively undefended positions to make a point that no one was safe. He would make sure that those he attacked did not have the ability to flee or call for help, and his strikes would be as swift as lightning and hit as hard as possible.

An Undead Blitzkrieg would need quick and maneuverable beings to push far and fast. With his teacher having taught him the finer points of raising the dead, Kain was certain he could expand his territory by a decent amount and still have the numbers to hold his new acquisitions. In the month since Alistaira’s arrival, she had sent word to those who would serve the risen Emperor of Darkness and the population had of Necrograd was slowly growing larger. Too large, in fact, which was one of the reasons why an immediate seizure of more territory was needed.

There were a surprisingly large number of people who had abandoned the teachings of the Light and had decided to live as outlaws by practicing beliefs and customs that were deemed heretical, which made living anywhere else outside of Darksol hard. With the return of the only place that let you believe in who you wanted and express your identity and sexuality in almost any way, it was not hard to see why those the ultra-conservative Church of Luminas viewed as evil fled in droves to the resurrected capital of the former Darksol Empire. Even if the city was not as great as they were led to believe, the city offered freedom from many, if not all the restrictions and shackles that had chained them into roles they did not want or approve of.

With these things in his mind, Kain made the Bleeding Grove and felt another pulse emanate from the heart of the city and out towards the barrier where it collided with it and left it shuddering for a time. The cries of panicked people could be heard as the Dire Wolves and Fel Bats materialized from nowhere and began to patrol around the city. When the fear of being attacked by the newly manifested undead vanished, in its place was a sigh of relief that there was finally a decent security system outside of the ragtag group of concerned citizens who patrolled the streets as makeshift guards. The Grove was open to him, and so he set foot in the pocket dimension that it was based in. The sight of towering trees that seemed to occasionally bleed a blood-red sap from small cracks that would randomly appear and disappear in them was a view to be astounded by.

The leaves that were black and rotting that still clung to their mother trees and the carpet of rotting twigs, sap and leaves gave off a vibe of some horror film director’s masterwork. These things and the haunting wind that carried through the Grove that sounded like a long, raspy breath combined with the fact that ethereal eyes gazed out from the darkness deep within the grove was enough to deter anyone who thought of setting foot inside.

Utilizing the massive well of mana he had built up, Kain called out to any being that resided in this dark and twisted wood, and his calls were answered. Five units of Fel Bats swarmed through the trees and eight units of Dire Wolves let out bone-chilling howls as they rushed towards their master like a massive pack of attention-starved puppies that were unfortunately made of bone and rotting meat. As the mass of undead hounds and massive bats swirled around him, Kain realized just how royally screwed his foes were going to be.

They had never faced a force of undead that had the discipline and control that he was enforcing on them, and as the hurricane of fangs and claws swirled with himself as its eye, Kain let out a laugh that would surely make the number one spot on a top ten list of evil villain laughs. Unfortunately, the amount that he was capable of calling was less than he needed, and so the Abominable King would have to wait a little bit longer before his intended target for his first military campaign, Albion, would face Darksol's revived fury.