Interlude IX – What Remains of Consequence

Carrion Vultures

It took over a week before news of what had really happened to the capital arrived.

A week for refugees to flee north and south. A week of quiet, uneasy silence as everyone knew something had happened, but could not be sure of what.

Countess Ava had been a vassal of the Stonesmith King for nearly a year now. After throwing dignity and pride to the wind and surrendering to him immediately, he’d left her in charge of his southern border, her cities left to hold the line against any southern aggression.

It was a humiliating defeat, especially for someone who’d already defeated and taken the cities of two other God-Kings. But that was the way of the world—sometimes you had to take a temporary loss in order to claim a greater victory later on.

And if this wasn’t that moment, she didn’t know what was.

For news had arrived that the King was dead, kidnapped by the western tribes, his army lost with him.

She’d learned as much from one of his own generals, who’d fled south after losing an eye to the savages, declaring his loyalty to her as his successor. From his own words, from behind his blood-soaked brow he’d seen with his remaining eye the King get taken by a giant with hair of blood and skin pale as bone.

She took this description with a grain of salt.

That brought up a new issue, however. There had always been a danger of raids from less ‘civilized’ tribes further west. Even the God-Kings, who were newcomers to this land, had learned this fact quickly. No matter what happened in the east, one must keep a weary eye on the west, lest your obliviousness come back to bite you.

However, no matter how dangerous those tribes had been, they’d never done this.

A whole city, wiped off the map. The capital city of the most powerful nation in the region—if not the world—gone in an instant. The King missing and presumed dead, and his army shattered beyond repair.

It was horrible. It was terrifying.

It was an opportunity.

One Ava jumped on quickly, knowing her fellow Counts would be swift to follow.

The King was dead—or at least far enough gone to no longer be a threat. His capital in ruins and his army destroyed. The Kingdom was headless.

But the crown remained.

So why shouldn’t she step up to take the crown?

Of course, her fellow Counts did the same. So they fought, bringing to bear their own armies, bolstered by the remains of the King’s army, following whichever lord they felt most worthy.

Count Owen took the title of King of Stone, huddling down in his fortress capital, its primitive stone walls unassailable even before one took into account the moat surrounding it. His lands were the smallest, but near invincible.

Count Daksh took the title of the Smithing King. He brought to bear an army nearly as large as the late King’s, armed to the teeth with the best weapons available. Within days he had already begun his march south to take the rest of the Kingdom.

And Countess Ava herself reclaimed her old title of the Velvet Queen. She claimed the southern cities for herself, glut and prosperous from trade from the south, first in line for goods from the Southern Sea. She claimed the river itself, bearing down on all her foes with a navy that could hit them from anywhere at any time.

The three Counts fought, each bringing their own claim to the throne, each wanting their own turn as head of the most powerful Kingdom in the land.

None of them won.

Perhaps it was inevitable, really. Daksh’s army was strong, but his heartlands were far to the north, and without the river there was no way to supply any true conquest. Owen’s city was impenetrable, but lacked the ability to turn that defense into offense. And Ava was rich and held the river, but her army was weak and small and could not push into the more northern lands.

And so, within a few weeks of battle, the whole campaign just… fizzled out.

There would be no new Stonesmith Kingdom. No new Stonesmith King. A peace treaty was signed between the three of them come the start of Autumn, declaring peace between their lands. They would never again fight each other—their quarrel had ended.

(Well, at least not any time soon.)

Instead, they each turned to their own lands. Daksh turned northward, defending his borders from the eager Kings and Queens who smelled blood. Owen continued fortifying his own lands, digging moats and building walls, until none could ever hope to defeat him. And Ava turned south, spinning new trade deals and keeping a wary eye on any southern lord who’d think her new Kingdom weak.

It was the end of an Era. A short era, lasting only two years, but an Era nonetheless. A King had died; a Kingdom crumbled; and new ones rose in its place.

In the end, the world moved on.

The Shifting City

But even when the world moves on, that does not mean it remains unchanged.

The citizens of Stenstad were not gone. Hurt, traumatized, and broken, yes, but they still lived. In fact, all things considered, the sacking of the city left very few of them dead. Many were injured, and many more vanished into forest—willingly or not—but the people of Stenstad were still here.

Their city? Not so much.

Stenstad had burned. The wooden homes and wooden walls and wooden tools that had all been built with no regard for fire safety laws burned down as one. Some buildings still remained—charred husks that they were—and two of the watchtowers were even in (arguably) decent condition!

But those remaining buildings were few and far between. Mostly, all that was left was char and ash.

Perhaps, if the King still lived, they might have rebuilt. Perhaps, if their other lords were not so busy warring over who would be the next King, they might have rebuilt.

But with no direction from above and fear from within, they did not.

Instead they fled to other cities, perhaps naively hoping that those cities would be better protected than the capital had been. Some fled north, some fled south, and some even fled the Kingdom altogether. Within a day, the most populous city in the region had shrunk by a factor of three.

Some, though, were stubborn. Or maybe just desperate. Their roots had already grown too deep, their lives too entrenched. It was these people who would stay.

They would not rebuild Stenstad, though. Not when the enemy was still near—not when the memory of the sack was still so fresh in their minds. Instead they crossed the river, ferrying what remained of their supplies across with them. Safe on the eastern side of the river they set up a village of crude huts and mud. They built a rickety wall around the village and gave the rest of their boats to the fishermen.

Thus, the city of Stenstad was no more, and the village of Sten took its place.

It became a point of contention for the Counts vying for control of the Kingdom. A belief, perhaps, that he who controlled the capital—what was left of it at least—controlled the Kingdom. Over the course of the war it changed hands constantly, falling under each Count’s rule at least once, before eventually falling permanently into the hands of Owen the Stone King.

Under his rule it would be nothing special. It was not his southernmost city, and so did not get special attention to its fortifications. It was not his most prosperous city, as most traders tended to focus on larger, well-built cities. It was not even his capital—for why would he abandon his own perfectly defensible heartland for a village in the sticks?

And so the city waned. Eventually proper houses would be built. Eventually the roads would not be made from muck, and farms would sprawl out around it. But it would never return to its original glory.

All that would remain of the old Stonesmith Capital would be a little village, old and rundown along the river’s edge.

A Living Legend

But what of the invaders? The Nomads? Those men and women who followed the words of the Scarlet Tree? What happened to them, now that their first crusade had succeeded?

They split up.

Not forever, of course not. The five tribes who destroyed the Stonesmith Kingdom were still collaborating, their fight not yet over. But they were not serfs, bound by petty lords to their land. By their own ideology they were free to travel wherever. They were not one people, and they would not pretend they were.

They would return to their roots, their ancestral trails they were so used to following. Some back to the plains of the prairie, some to the freezing north and some to the arid south. They licked their wounds and mourned their dead and those still living went back to living as they always had.

Their lives continued, just the same as those they’d fought.

But something had changed. Something small, almost invisible.

The men and women of those tribes had, for a moment, been a part of something, something far greater than themselves. They’d fought, not for their own petty grievances, but for their family, their friends, and even strangers who lived just as they did. They fought for an idea.

And they were proud of it.

So they told their friends about it. Their family, cousins living in other tribes, daughters who had married foreign sons and fathers whose children came home to visit. When two tribes met the warriors would sit around the campfire, telling stories of daring exploits and immortal champions. Tales that grew bolder and more fantastical with each telling.

At first, it was merely the five tribes who’d launched a preemptive strike against their dangerous, settled neighbors.

Then it became ten tribes, then a hundred. And the preemptive strike became a defensive battle, a war fought by hundreds of tribes and millions of glorious warriors defending the lives of all the nomadic peoples from the greedy, tyrannical, murderous Kings of the settled east.

Each person who heard the tale spread it to another, and they to another. Soon, all in the west knew the tale of the Rainbow war, heralded by the Scarlet Tree and his immortal brothers in arms. A tale told around the campfire, by revelers and warriors. By mothers to children as they put them down for bed.

A living legend, spread to every corner of the land.

The people who heard it would laugh, and smile, and perhaps even jest, but few could deny its existence. Not when you could take a trip east, and join the Scarlet Tree in his war against the world. Not when you could travel south, and fight alongside the Golden Eagle’s survivors in liberating the downtrodden and enslaved. Not when you could travel west, and watch the White Mammoth ride atop his Tusk-Beast like a legend of old.

And so the people told the story. As an arrogant boast. As a call to arms. As a warning, for what could happen if they let the settled men continue as they did. And while they told the story, they asked themselves;

‘What would I do, if I could join them?’

Quietly, an ideology spread. And an invisible nation grew ever stronger.

‘End’ of an Era

And so it was that the world changed.

Or at least, a small corner of the world.

The nomadic tribes of the West retained their old ways, while the cities and nations of the East looked their way more warily than ever. They—perhaps arrogantly—did not fear the warriors of the west. They believed themselves far stronger, far larger, and far more competent than the savages who still lived in tents.

One might say they thought themselves, even subconsciously, more ‘civilized’ then them.

But it would not matter either way. For while the East built up its civilizations, discovered new technologies, and trained larger and larger armies:

The nomads of the West fell further and further under the sway of an ideology poised to destroy them.