“Those who plot in the dark are the amateurs. The true masters of the craft plots right in the open, often making the act of plotting itself a part of their plot as a whole.” - Liang Shi-Zu, famed strategist from the Huan Confederation.

“The Coalition is crumbling apart,” coldly stated a middle-aged woman as she read from a sheet of paper in her hand. “Most of it due to their own faults, as far as I can tell. Even before Levain and Caroma decided to screw them over, they were already facing a sharp increase in insurrections and uprisings amongst their so-called second and third class populace. Who would’ve thought that acting like an asshole to your own people would get them mad at you?”

“Heh. I do appreciate the sarcasm, but do keep in mind that these idiots are technically going to be our allies, Ilona, at least for a while anyway,” replied High Regent Lukas Worsted of Anduille to his military chief of staff. The High Regent was a young man, barely in his thirties, which was not a surprise as he only recently rose to his position as High Regent after the previous High Regent – his father – and his elder sister who was heir perished in fighting against the Caromans just four years ago.

“Noted, Sire,” replied the woman, who had been his father’s most trusted general. She was the only reason Anduille’s defeat against Caroma back then wasn’t even worse, as she successfully organized a fighting retreat and brought a large portion of the army back to the Regency instead of allowing them to get killed in some futile attempt to avenge their liege lord.

That was something Lukas approved of, as he knew all too well that his father was a hothead whose habit of aggressive attacks worked well against the goblin incursions their then-March had to face most often, but worked less effectively against other people. Chances were that his sister likely got herself killed trying to save their father, and if it were not for cooler heads like Ilona, the other generals from his father’s generations would have wasted most of Anduille’s military elite in that battle.

Something he ensured wouldn’t happen again by demoting some of those generals for their failure, as they did allow his father to get killed after all. He promoted some smarter people amongst the younger officers to take their place, and had spent the past few years rebuilding the state he inherited. The drought that happened last year didn’t help one bit with that, though.

Curiously, Lukas himself didn’t feel too much animosity against the Caromans that killed his father and sister. He wouldn’t have been the High Regent if it weren’t for them doing just that, after all. If anything, he was somewhat thankful, even. His father was a brave general who was ideal for his role of guarding the former empire’s northern border from the goblin tribes, but he was a poor administrator.

He was most decidedly not suitable to rule an independent state.

In fact, if not for his sister’s vehement arguments that helped cut down on many of the excesses his father had wanted, Lukas doubted that the Regency could have survived long enough for him to inherit it.

As for the current incursion faced by the Southern Coalition, he couldn’t care less, truly. Unlike his neighbors to the east, or those in the south, Lukas really didn’t put too much into the idea of nobility rule, even if he openly espoused it, because far too many of the officials in the Regency were of that school of thought. In private, however, with so many horrible examples for him to pick and choose from, he had long doubted the veracity of said rule.

At the moment he was faced with a minor quandary, as he recently received urgent letters – delivered by rare and expensive messenger birds that could travel the width of the empire in a single day – from both the Southern Coalition and the Podovniy March. The letter from the Coalition asked for their aid, with a blatant warning that if the “peasants” were to further grow in power from devouring them, then the Regency and the March would be next.

The letter from the March on the other hand opened with an admittance that the Coalition’s warning was indeed a potentially worrisome one, and an invitation for the three states to work together to put the “upstarts” in their place. While Lukas didn’t particularly care for the argument they presented, as the High Regent of Anduille he needed to consider the benefits to his state first and foremost.

He couldn’t deny that having his two southern neighbors grow stronger would indeed threaten the Regency quite a bit.

As such, he replied to the letters in the affirmative, and further asked them what they had in mind. One thing Lukas was certain of was that both he and Marquis Podovniy should pressure the Southern Coalition into committing what they have left in this temporary cooperation. After all, why should they bleed for others when the one in need was the Coalition in the first place.

That said, the potential benefits if they could devour parts of Levain or Caroma was quite sizable, though that would also have to be weighed against the risks involved. From the reports his intelligence team received, Caroma had devoted at least forty thousand of their soldiers to this offensive, which meant that their homeland would be rather poorly defended.

Of course, the Caromans likely know it, and they had a strong network of fortifications that guarded their northern border, leftovers from when the Empire had to deal with retaliatory raids from the orcish clans after the crusades. As such, it would be difficult to break through those defenses, but keeping them in place wouldn’t be too difficult. Simply sending part of Anduille’s army to make empty threats would likely be enough to do the trick.

That in turn would leave Levain open for attack from both the Regency and the March, so the question that remained was how much they should invest in this plan…