[right]collab with [@Oraculum][/right]
[center][h2]UNIFICATION OF TRANSTULANIA[/h2]
[b]Soiryndia: Miranid eastern frontier - February, 4907 YDC
Fourth Cycle of the Fararual Calendar - Season of the Scion[/b][/center]
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For many years the borderlands between the Miranid Satrapy of Ümre and the Unbroken Host ebbed to-and-fro the city of Kand since the Luminescent’s dynasty passed from the coil of V’landriel. For long the Miranids relied on local human Tzücoman command to stem the tide of the Unbroken Host’s expansion into deeper Transtulania, while Miran’s army advanced against the Monurchen dynasts in Outer Keychuria.

As the battle against the Unbroken Host was a personal vendetta for the Gurkani, Miran deliberately saved them for last, when he was at the peak of his nascent power… The Miranid men and beasts were hardened from a lifetime of warfare. With skill and courage they had fought at Miran’s side through these long years in the face of much adversity, and against some of the fiercest warriors native to Soiryndia. From the Gnolls to the various races of Men, to the Üarim and even the simian Monurchen -- each was now accounted a Miranid, a subject of Miran, and adept warlords all. 

It was time to bring the last defiant regions of Transtulania into Miran’s fold, and thereby end this bloody reunification for good and all. The Son-in-law and avenger of the Luminescent bloodline insisted on leading the charge against the Apostate Prophet - this pretender ‘Godseer’ - in person... Even after a decade, his foot is still rendered lame from his fight against the Godseer’s champion; the long dead Husayim the Grey. A man of particular guile and aptitude, the Unbroken Host had surely not seen his likeness again. And with their greatest heroes succumbed, their forces stretched thin, and their armies exhausted, the Godseer’s Unbroken Host is now more vulnerable than ever.
In a grand spectacle of slaughter, the Miranids will now scatter his forces and reveal to them the weakness of their false God. The time to strike was now!

The Miranids had carved their way through Unbroken territory to advance directly to the seat of the Seer’s power. Their black and red double headed eagle standards -- a mockery of Yllendyr’s banner in Miran’s own bid for Empire -- protruded to the very gates of the capital of Letyeh. They had broken the Unbreakable, and cut a swathe through the dire ranks of the south. The screaming mobs of the despoiled that heralded the approach of the false god’s hosts had been felled; the braying savage hordes the Seer had led out of their untamed pastures were routed; even the terrible sworn legions of the Sijrdomen, the zealous warriors clothed in black and gold, had been beaten aside. 
In truth, the advance had been most hard-fought at the frontier in the lands of Kand, where uncounted servants of the God-Seer still rampaged, and had become more and more easy as they pushed further into the domain of the Host. 
The lands around them had been almost eerily desolate. Even under the ancient walls of the city of Letyeh, which had become infamous as the Throne of the Unbroken, only a small force had come forth to meet them, clamouring and bellowing fanatically, and what many had expected to be the apex of the war had ended in a short, if bloody struggle. Ultimately the Miranid Oliphaunts and their scores of cannons carried the day.
However not even the mightiest cannon in the Miranid arsenal was equipped against the city’s most redoubtable defense. It was not one that could be routed on the battlefield. Perhaps foreseeing the defeat of its guards, the master of Letyeh had cast a great enchantment over his capital. Flames coursed over the surface of its walls like skin lay over flesh, barring the way to all the gates with a blistering halo and towering over the citadel in a crackling dome. Though the stone below them appeared unharmed, no one could pass through that fiery barrier without being reduced to cinders. Not even the Miranid gryphons could soar through overhead.

This God-Seer was a mighty sorcerer indeed… But he is a deceiver, a false-god and apostate prophet. He stands no chance against the power of a true god, which the warriors of the old Luminescence will soon demonstrate.
When the Miranids came upon the burning barrier safeguarding Letyeh against the Miranid claw,  they understood a specialist would be required to dispel the Seer’s blistering hex. As such Miran promptly called upon the new Arch Magus Antaxaxes to be brought over to the frontier.
However, curse that Deceiver Prophet! His little tricks and games had stalled the Miranid war effort by at least a few days, while they idly had to wait for Antaxaxes’ arrival. Even in the Unbroken Host’s obvious defeat, the seer denies Miran his rightful victory!

And so a few days did pass, till at last the Fararual Arch Magus dawned in the company of many Luminescent Magi. With his golden skin, arcane scepter and flaming hair, the Fararual wizard is surely a rare and imposing sight, not least when he in great spectacle smote his rod into the dome’s fiery surface. And with much chanting, prayer, twirling and a generous use of ritual incense, the inferno shielding Letyeh began to lose potency…

The gates of Letyeh were bared and deserted. And seeing this, a choir of deafening and trembling Üarim war trumpets resound as hellish braying from atop the Oliphaunts. The leading Tzücoman Warchief in his red dotted black cloak of Miranid heraldry, issues prompt command:
[i]‘’Western clans! Clear the Letyehan walls!’’[/i]
The Üarim General follows with his own command.
[i]‘’Satrap retainers! Clear the Letyehan streets!’’[/i]
The Fararual Arch Magus ends the series of commands by barking an order of his own.
[i]‘’All Luminescentines! Clear the Letyehan skies!’’[/i]

Under flaming hail, dust of hooves, smoke from gunnery, the screaming and snorting of men and beasts, barrages of arrows and the clinking of steel from warbands of men, the Miranids stormed the Unbroken Host’s capital.

The city had once been the richest and most magnificent in Umar-Jahan, and though not as ancient as the monolithic abodes of the first Fararuals, the spectacle within its walls was venerable as well as opulent. Its sharp-angled buildings of red desert stone rose proudly in simple, yet imposing shapes. After the custom of southerners, its arches were few and rounded, and reliefs decorated the doorways of the greatest structures. Though many of them were defaced, no doubt to remove old symbols of faith, some temples and pillars, palaces and barracks bore fresh carvings of suns inlaid with the Host’s triangular sign, surprisingly well-crafted and elaborate for having been left by an army of furious zealots.

But, these houses, towers and any stations of office all lay deserted, as though they had been ransacked by savages before any subject of Miran ever could lay a finger on Letyehan property. And furthermore, not a single soul was to be sighted. Did the Unbroken Host pillage their own city? Once more the Miranids were left confounded. Though they were repeatedly supreme in the field, at every turn the conniving Seer and his Host manages to be ahead of them in guile.
[i]‘’The city has been evacuated. The fiery dome was but mere diversion put in place by great sorcerery.’’[/i] The Magus must regretfully state to the lines of fighting men.

[i]‘’Axbak-Camen damn those goat fondlers to inferno! Where is our rightful booty?’’[/i] The first of the Miranid warbands lament indignantly, seeing their prizes being denied to them.
[i]‘’We had to wait three days [b]FOR THIS?[/b]’’[/i]
[i]‘’Pick through the rubble you lot! They might’ve missed a trinket or three!’’[/i] The Tzücoman general screams, who had just whipped his Griffon over the gate to commandeer his men.

While bands of Tzücomen and Gnolls were tearing apart remnants to the buildings lining the interior streets, Miran’s personal Üarim cohorts advanced to the plaza and palace where the Hosts’ governing body was presumed to be seated.
Their eyes were naturally directed towards a great citadel at the centre of the city.
This citadel, once the dwelling of the illustrious Satraps of the south, loomed with the air of an impregnable stronghold. Though its windows were richly decorated to resemble so many watchful eyes, they were tall and narrow rather than broad. Its walls were smooth and polished, but thick and sturdy, and its roof peculiarly slanted to resist the strikes of catapults from more archaic times. The olden rulers of the city had evidently thought well to be twice safe within their walls, and it was clear that whoever held the palace could have withstood a siege. Yet its mighty iron doors were ajar, and silence hung within its drowsy halls.

Some of the Miranid hosts’ foremost and senior officials gathered in the boulevard before the citadel. Making sure no gnoll or another of the many savages in the army would desecrate the search for clues therein, the Üarim Satrap sent some of his own cohorts to scour the building in orderly fashion. Those men, carrying arquebuses and torches to light the way, trod through the iron doors, and through many dark winding stone hallways until they came upon the nethermost hall, the lair of the Godseer. Unsurprisingly; the entire way throughout the citadel it was devoid of life.
 
Indeed, even in that innermost sanctuum, only the dead awaited them. Strewn across a gilded table, whose surface glimmered in the light of four braziers, was a veneer of ash, fine and macabre. For a moment, the party stood hesitantly upon the threshold, peering into the shadows between the flickering flames; for each of the men thought he had glimpsed, for the briefest moment, a pale, fleeting vision in that uneven darkness - a distant and distorted simulacrum of a familiar face. Kindred, lovers, brothers in arms twisted and faded in the illusory penumbra like tortured spirits, and though the ephemeral nature of these sights betrayed their unreality, born of the solemn tension and eerie sorcery that alone dwelt in the deserted palace, they were troubling none the less.

And as the vanguard hovered uncertainly by the entrance to the deep chamber, awed by the larval visages they thought they saw, a new, still ghastlier emanation began to gather in the unhallowed sanctuary. The braziers’ light twisted strangely over the ash-covered table, and an impalpable wind seemed to disturb the cremated remains, though the air was ever as heavy and silent. Motes of strangely drifting dust and sparks refracted from thin air wove themselves into a dimly glowing cloud, which steadily took shape. It was in some ways akin to the fabled Efreets the Transtulanians had sometimes heard of in tales, just as ethereal and otherworldly, but its form was a hideous mockery of such noble beings of myth. Pale and stunted, it had many gnarly arms, most of which hung deadly along its sides, and seven heads of uncertain smoky features eyelessly gazed from its hunched shoulders.

[i]“[b]He[/b] consigned us to doom and torment,”[/i] the spectre whispered in a congeries of faint, broken voices, “Beware, lest he condemn all you know to the same.” And with those few ominous words, the tortured echoes of the last rulers of Umar-Jahan finally passed from the world, and the evil presences in the chamber were dispelled.

The Üarim vanguard leave the citadel to report their findings. Even for all their discipline, it was nevertheless evident they had been unnerved by their findings. But they carried themselves manfully all the same.
Hearing the report, the Satrap looks to the Arch Magus.
[i]‘’We have searched the building, and it should come not as surprise that naught was recovered.’’[/i]

[i]‘’Those spirits -- Doubtless say I, it is the Sinner Seer’s attempt to recreate the efreet. A reminder not to tinker lightly with ghosts of the dead, as they carry an unspoken will that overshadows the conjurer.’’[/i]
Antaxaxes exclaims with a sonorous lament. 
[i]‘’The Gurkani had best been brought awares of the foe’s elusion -  though pleased he won’t be! For now the breath of the Gods hangs unbroken. From their high thrones, their star orbs shall seem only a burning and a fever. Until the hunt for the Apostate Seer, who has so brazenly profaned the cosmic order -- first against the Luminescent dynasty, now against the dead --  is resolved to final completion.’’[/i]

Though it was an empty and largely ceremonial victory, the Miranids hoist their banners in the fashion of conquerors, over the walls and citadel of Letyeh. The battle is won, but the war continues on.