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[h2]The Concilio Union[/h2]
The occupied fortress of Norsal
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To the far north of the Concilio Union, in territory only recently taken from the collapsed empire of Zul, a single horse drawn carriage moves at a leisurely pace up a dirt rode, accompanied by a guard escort of wolf riders. The road itself brings the carriages occupant, D’ave, the Koa-toa Council member who was chosen to represents the sunken home of his people by lottery, to the fortress of Norsal. This most northern of the Union’s current holdings consisted of the captured Principality of Evernyx fortress called the Triskelion and the abandoned dwarven hold that the Yuwanists had accidentally discovered beneath it.

On the surface the fortress had once been a model example of the Principality’s architectural designs with it’s shining white stone walls, resplendent archways and the occasional domed roof. After its occupation by the Minotaurs after the battle over the artifact found within the fortress was left in a sorry state, and the Union’s subsequent capture of the fort had done little to improve matters. Damaged walls had been repaired with mismatching stone, domes had been removed and converted into rickety artillery platforms, marble staircases demolished and replaced with ones more comfortable to the Union’s member’s short statures. The inevitable shanty town like sprawl of homes, businesses and warehouses that accompanied the Union everywhere had grown over the previous buildings like a moss, tarnishing the once noble bastion with the the Union’s shortsighted planning practices and lack of interest in aesthetics.

As far as the union were concerned however, the true heart of the fortress lay beneath the fortress in the expertly carved tunnels of the long dead dwarfs. Some joked that the dwarfs dug so deep they fell out the bottom of the world, while those who had seen the horrors attacking the southern city of Barby where certain they had met the horrid swarms of things that creeped down there and had subsequently been consumed. The tunnels had seen less damage than the surface, the principality had only recently discovered the city when they lost the place, and the low ceilings had spared the place most of the minotaurs destruction, barring the odd horn scrapings on doorways. Here too the union’s urban sprawl had grown downwards from the surface till it reached the entrances to the dwarf’s old mines, where they abruptly stopped for fear of meeting the things below.

The fortress and city where both host primarily to Supplies for the planned eastward invasion: guns, gunpowder, magical and mundane weapons and even a few dismantled ships all sat in warehouses waiting to bring destruction upon Justinian’s foes. Most important of all however was the food, dried and preserved, ready to feed the army as it pushed into Yawanist territory and towards for the eastern sea. The north was not the kind of place that could sustain an army the size of the one the Union would need to gain any headway, which was exactly the reason that why army that was going to fight in the summer’s invasion was not here, and where instead south on the coast, where the ocean and western aid fed the warriors of the northern Justinian front. The fortress itself still had a considerable garrison and population, but not one so large that they would be eating the majority of the food brought to supply the later invasion. It was the progress of the supply deliveries that D’ave had come north to examine at the behest of the council member Krawnk Kensu, who was also the head of the coastal merchants who were supplying and shipping most of the supplies for the invasion.

After entering through the heavy oak gate, carriage rode up the streets of the fortress, past ramshackled warehouses storing the vital supplies, past barracks, bars and temples where the off duty soldiers guarding the supplies mingled, onwards to the keep at the center of it all. After entering through a second smaller set of gates the carriage came to a halt in a courtyard. There D’ave found Randeir Nast, council member and overseer of the northern military efforts, pacing to and fro impatiently. The general, currently sporting a bearskin Ushanka and thick overcoat to protect her against the cold, handed the documents she had been examining in her passing to a goblin aid and turned to greet the new arrival.    

“A welcoming, unexpected from someone as busy as our Bulwark” The Deth-thu, completely unperturbed by the frigid environment, as it compared not to the abyss cold of his homewaters, stepped down from his carriage and met Nast halfway, grasping her paw with a webbed hand and shaking it. The two weren't exactly friends, but saw each other regularly enough that they were on good terms, a rarity within the council.

“Sadly it wasn’t for you I was waiting, but rather scouts sent tout earlier today that have yet to return.”

“That doesn’t seem worthy marching to and fro in the cold, it can’t be good for your health. What has you worried?”

“It’s perhaps best I show you, and your right. I shouldn’t be out here at my age. So tell me, did I miss anything important from the last meeting?”

Together the two entered the keep and ascended, heading for its battlements. By the time they reached the top of the keep D’ave had divulged most of the details of the most recent meeting to the general, including the absence of his requested bolt throwers.

“To think my kin would forsake his kin like this” the general spat in disgust “I pray to Justinian his folly will not cost us”  

The two entered a small watchtower perched atop the keep, within its single glass walled and roofed room sat a Corvant militia-woman, her eye pressed to a telescope looking up and to the north.

“Still got sight of it?”

The woman stood, saluted and then noodded. After being prompted, D’ave took her place and placed his own eye to it saw far in the distance the sea of green curving upwards towards the edge of the world where it thinned out and then ended abruptly. The tower was built specifically to take advantage of the world's bowled nature, tall enough that, apart from where the odd mountain and the Turquoise lord’s eyesore blocked the view, all places in the world could be seen. Though the telescope all D’ave saw however was a small patch of green above which tiny dark shapes fluttering as the trees shook and swayed ever so slightly.

“What exactly am I looking at here?”

“If we are lucky, a migrating head of deer. If I’m right however, then it’s the thundering march of an army shaking the forest with their hooffalls, above which the carrion birds flock, all ready for war.”

“The minotaurs have been quite and scattered for 5 years now what makes you think that they have suddenly come together?”

The two were interrupted as the door to the tower was flung open and an exhausted goblin dressed in white furs rushed in, one of Nast’s scouts.

“Mam! Their coming!” he shouted hoarsely, the scout left breathless from both fear and exhaustion.

“Who is? How many?”

“All of them!”

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It was an hour later and several other scouts had confirmed the sheer magnitude of the horde approaching. Plans had been made and preparations were well underway for the defence, despite the garrison being hopelessly outmatched by the minotaurs in both number and as individuals. From the gates of the fortress D’ave’s carriage rushed, barreling back down the dirt roads it had so recently traveled, heading south to Insmaw. But it was not cowardice that drove his flight, but duty. He was of little use in battle, so to spare the fort every warrior it could he had been sent in their messengers’ place, southwards to rous the camped armies, to bring them northwards before the fortress and it’s vital supplies fell to the northern horde. From the keep Nast watched her fellow councilmember leave, praying that he would return with a relief force before they were all dead.

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Several hours later the carriage rolled in past the walls of the coastal fortress city of Insmaw, from which messengers were imedietly sent up and down the coast to the many army camps housing soldiers as they overwintered till the summer campaign season started again. Both those belonging to the Union itself and those hosting foreign forces were called upon, though D’ave knew that the their messages to the foreign armies were more requests than commands. Messengers also went out into the sea to the subnautica city of mother’s rest to rouse D’ave’s Koa-toa kin, to the jungles and forests to call the many tribes within to the nation's borders, to the port city of Roc port to bring the navy’s marines up the coast, and finally south to the capital itself to bring word of the invasion to the heart and south of the Union, lest the northern forces fail to bring the Winter War to a quick end.

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The time had come, the enemy was here. The defenders crouched behind the battlements of the fortress walls, fully aware that those same walls had failed to hold the Minotaurs at bay once before. Nast knew this. Nast had plans for this and they would be revealed in time. For now she hid like her soldiers, now dressed in platemail, the helmet of which was adorned with a pair of minotaur horns she had scalped from the previous holder of this fortress. They listened, as the warhost emerged from the treeline, the thunderous marching and chanting soon joined by the real thing as lightning first blasted apart the watchtower atop the keep and one of the lightning cannons revealed it was flawed as it drew a bolt straight to it, vaporising the crew in an instant. The rest however struck a series of lightning rods. The union had long since learned that if there is one thing you don’t want to happen during a siege, it is to have your enemy’s’ god smite your gunpowder stores.

As the blood rain began to pour down the troops did the best they could to keep their powder dry as they cowered, prayed or tried to focus on the calm words of priests who were stationed there to help with morral. The more stupid or daring opened their mouths wide to the rain to drink of the iron tasting icor. At last the being whose name the horde had been chanting revealed himself onto them.

[quote]"Your puny fortress is nothing against the bloodied war host! It is simple, give me all the loot and food in the fortress, and you live. Or we take it and sacrifice you all... to ME!" [/quote]

There was relative silence from the battlements as orders were communicated among the Union’s ranks through whispered words or a series of flag signals, the effectiveness of which was hampered by the bloody rain. What that order was soon became immaculately clear, as the diminutive Goblins, Rodant, Deth-thu, Kobolds, Corvant, Gnolls, Ranians and Chiropia s all rose from behind their battlements in a wave and a massed volley of lead shot, arrows, stones, cannonballs and chaotic magics were launched towards the horde, focused primarily on the area from which the booming voice of Kraam had come from.

“Tear out their Heart!” and the bloodied will cease to flow.