[b][i]Joint-Kingdom of Belmorn[/i][/b] [hider=Nation Status] [b]Current Leader/Government:[/b] Council of the 9 (Elven), Lord Teor Ferren (Human) [b]Settlements Owned:[/b] 1 [b]Provinces Owned:[/b] 2 [b]Population:[/b] 61,400 humans/44,000 Elves/11,000 Half-Elves [b]Population Happiness:[/b] 25% [b]Imports:[/b] Cattle (Erimir), Iron (Elslen) [b]Exports:[/b] Lumber (Erimir) [b]Wealth:[/b] Poor [b]Alliances:[/b] [b]Trade Pacts:[/b]Erimir [b]Cease Fires:[/b] [/hider] Army Status Cards [hider=The Sorrowsong Host] [b][i]The Sorrowsong Host [/i][/b] [b]Current General:[/b] The Council of the Nine [b]Location:[/b] Hadelmere-Fengarde Bridleway. [b]Morale:[/b] 100% [b]Strength/Unit Breakdown:[/b] [indent] - /// -/<5,000>/ - /<5,000>/ - /<1,000>/< Superior archers, well trained, will not break > - /<5,000>/[/indent] [b]Current Action:[/b] Marching to Fengarde. [/hider] [hider= Maraver’s Trenchguard] [b][i]Maraver’s Trenchguard[/i][/b] [b]Current General:[/b] General Maraver, of Surgo House Stoneheart [b]Location:[/b] Outside of Fengarde (West) [b]Morale:[/b] 100% [b]Strength/Unit Breakdown:[/b] [indent] - /// -/<300>/ - /<100>/ [/indent] [b]Current Action:[/b] Manning Maraver’s Trench, ten miles west of Fengarde. [/hider] [center][u][b]The Last of the Great, Finally Laid to Rest[/b][/u][/center] [center][i]Hadelmere Square[/i][/center] The city square of Hadelmere was a beautiful place to behold. Giant marble slabs, crafted by ancient hands many thousands of years ago, lined the floor in criss-crossing patterns. Dozens of tall obsidian pillars lined the square, and between each one stood a structure of pure architectural beauty dedicated to one purpose or another. At the northern end of the square, was the three tiered Hadelmere Palace. Its mighty spires of crimson rock twirled towards the blackening skies. The flags of Belmorn that so often fluttered proudly from its ramparts now hung glumly at half-mast. The Royal Guards, dedicated to its defence, knelt before the main gate in two perfectly spaced rows of twenty. Their decorated helms of burnished steel rested carefully under their shoulders, and they hung their heads low so that the starting wind tossed and turned their golden hair. Carefully tended gardens broke up the monotony of marble slabs, roughly forming several rectangles that gradually grew smaller the closer they came to the city square’s centre. Through the middle of them, passed a roadway of obsidian blocks, that met with the palace’s gate and the square’s southern entrance. This road was often the scene of parades, and thousands of Elves would gather here to greet their victorious King, time and time again, since Belmorn’s founding those many, many years ago. Today, thousands of Elves gathered at the edge of this road to accept the passing of their King. The procession was a depressing sight. The Council of Nine, led by Anya Meadowsong, passed through the palace’s gate. Behind them were an honour guard of Glade Watchers; their bows unstrung, and their eyes gazing towards the setting sun. Their march thundered with each choreographed step. The King’s golden coffin, draped in the flags of his peoples, and a varying adornment of flower displays, came soon after. As if on cue, the Elves, thousands of them, put their angelic voices together to sing a final farewell to their beloved king. [i][center]Marhorn! Marhorn! Emperor’s Count, Belmorn’s King The last of his line, the last of his name, The Jourian beasts were his hideous bane, Though he tended them with love, Into his chest did a spear they shove, No more of Talia’s sacred blood, For it has drained into the mud, Of this cursed world he fought to save, Marhorn! Marhorn! [/center][/i] It was a bitterly short song, and lacking the expertise of the Elves’ greatest word smiths. Not many were in the mood for song writing, and even fewer were in the mood to sing with any real enthusiasm. To many this was a formality, and one that did not demand merriment as was usually expressed when celebrating the life of one so terribly lost. Emperor Sar’Nassa had taken the Belmorn King, using black arts that even the Elves, ancient in their wisdom, did not understand. He had slaughtered him, as he stood in the safest place in all of Belmorn. He had mocked him. Though none present could verify that the mysterious assassin was indeed the Lizard whose name they cursed, it was definitely on his order that such a cowardly act was carried out. Dryadson’s coffin was lowered into a hole. It had been specially prepared during the night, and it took several hundreds of Elves with levers and pulleys to hoist the large marble slabs out of the ground. They had then done what they could to craft the soil underfoot into a hospitable crypt. Dryadson had always requested he be interred in the city, so that he could watch over his peoples from whatever life waiting for him beyond the mortal world. As the first of the slabs was lowered over the coffin, concealing it from view, both men and womenfolk broke down in uncontrollable sobbing. Each one of them owed that man a debt they would now never repay. He had saved them, when the Empire fractured, and the Lizards came baying for Elven blood. He had led the 7th Legion to war to defend Belmorn, and he had broken the Jourians there and then. After, he had disassembled his force and renounced his allegiance to the Empire, in order to safeguard his peoples. From then on he worked to bring peace to the region, and always he was thwarted. Now he had paid for his mercy, and for his weakness. [center][u][b]The Countess[/b][/u][/center] Anya Meadowsong stood looking into the pane of polished iron. Her naked reflection looked back at her, eyes welling with tears. She saw her breasts jolting forcibly with each heavy beat of her heart, and her throat worked its way up and down as she fought against the sickening dread building up inside of her. She knew that now was not the time for emotions. War could ill afford a clouded mind, especially if one sought to achieve aims so grand. Her jittering right hand snaked its way across the flat of her stomach, and trembling pale fingers traced the scar that lined it from north to south. She had supressed things for so long, as was the way of her kindred, but now with the death of her King, and a deadly adversary on the horizon, she let her mind wander. She saw Thendel, with his youthful smile full of lusting want – a trait so seldom amongst a race of refrainers. He was a young princeling when she first met him properly, and though two centuries separated them, she allowed herself to bathe in the energy of his almost-human excitement at matters. He was charming, and warm, but more than that, he was full of a passion so lacking in other Elven men when it came to life’s finer things. He doted after her, though his father forbid it, and eventually one night after too much fruit wine, she gave him what he desired. Her pregnancy was not an easy one. Being over two hundred and fifty years old at the time, she had left her fertility window long behind – or so she had thought. The Elves of Belmorn, though blessed with long life, were given a very limited time to populate. No one knew why exactly, as other Elven peoples seemed to be able to match the human rate of procreation and indeed surpass it. However, it had always been so for the Elves of Belmorn, for as long as any old historic scroll could remember. To get with child beyond fifty years of age was a dangerous affair, and Anya was not spared. She became terribly ill into her fifth month, and unable to name the child’s father in fear of King Dryadson’s scorn, she was denied the compassion of her peers. Thinking her a whore, who had lost control of herself one stupid night, even her father thought ill of her. He expelled her from his estate, and sent her to live with the Sisterhood. The Sisterhood was a place for all of Elfkind’s unwanted women. Though Thendel had tried to work the strings behind the scenes to secure her release, he was unsuccessful, and she became stuck there. Every day she toiled with needle and thread or with quill and paper for the benefit of others. It was not a happy life, but it had it was not without care. Into her seven month, Anya collapsed one night as she washed the clothes of her fellow ‘inmates’. Mother Tender Geliane found her, and promptly whisked her away to the resident physician. To cut an awful and heart breaking story short, the child had to be ended before it came to full term. It had grown abnormally, and the physician had told Anya that the birthing process would take her life. She consented, if only so she could leave the Sisterhood, and be with her beloved Thendel. It was many weeks before she could leave the delicate comfort of a bed, following the operation. The child had been dead the moment it was cut from her womb; a blessing she was glad to have received. Imagining herself cradling a badly deformed and dying infant in her bloodied arms was a picture she had trouble scrubbing from her mind. Thendel had changed in the short period of her incarceration, however. Whether because Dryadson expected that Thendel was the son of Anya’s child, or perhaps because it was simply his time to up and take duties, the young Elven prince was no longer accessible to her. Whether he was in Erimir, Elslen, Jouria or Surgo, Thendel was always far beyond her reach. Even when she wrote him letters, and paying a heavy price for them to be delivered, she never received a reply. It was some years until she finally realised that she and Thendel had been nothing. It was a fling, and nothing more – a foolish merging of flesh, to create an ill-fated abomination. She cursed herself a thousand times for her stupidity. Denied the love of a father who saw her as a whore, and the love of a mother who had died giving her life, the future Countess sought a future in the Glade Watchers. She would live on the fringes of her peoples. The Glade Watchers were in many ways similar to the Sisterhood. They were all undesirables. Some were Elves with a strong adherence to violence, and could only sate their blood lust by serving with the world’s greatest forest fighters. Some were just simply unwanted, like Anya, and had joined as a way of stifling their grief. From ambushing Jourian bandits to slaughtering Elslen slaving parties, Anya developed her skills in war and was found to be naturally adept to them. This allowed her to quickly climb the ranks of the Glade Watchers, and when the Empire crumbled, she cemented herself in the tomes of her peoples during the Battle of Meria’s Rest. King Dryadson I, seeming to forget Anya’s forbidden past love with his son, had named her the ninth Count of his new kingdom as a reward. From her forest stronghold, buried deep in that ancient wood, she had served the Kingdom with tenacity. Her enemies, especially the Jourians, came to fear her brutality and they actively sent warbands and assassins to track her down. For that reason, she always wore a scarf to conceal her face on the battlefield, to prevent the enemy from diverting their entire attention against her and claiming a head as a trophy. “Countess, it is time,” said Watcher Halan. He was cold and indifferent to her nudity. Broken from her reverie, she nodded and held up her arms to be level with her shoulders. Four more Watchers descended upon her with leather and mail. They wrapped and fastened; tapped and pulled. Piece by piece, the armour of her father, dead since the early days of Belmorn’s independence, covered her. It was a beautiful blend of reddened leather, and burnished steel chains. The helmet crested into a hawk, and though it was heavy on her slender neck, she would wear it with pride and strength. “I forgive you, father,” she sighed. “And you Thendel.” She was to march at the head of the greatest Elven host Orysson had seen in over a century, and she would not be waiting for the morrow. They were to leave tonight, under the cover of the darkness and the rain. The Jourians, no doubt, had grown fat on their plunder and were busy biding their time. If the Elves force marched, they would clear half the distance by sunrise and any Jourian scouts would be hard pressed to report their findings in time for the Sorrowsong Host’s arrival.