Your steady, unnerving march continues through the academy grounds. The silent tears, a testament to the storm within, still trace their path down your cheeks. With every step, you project the future into the mind of Louie de Braisechant. It is not a gentle telling. It is a psychic deluge, a torrent of names, dates, and cataclysms that floods the shattered remnants of his consciousness.
[Day 1-15] The Bourgogne Gambit
Duke Charles "the Bold" of Bourgogne, citing "instability" on his eastern border, begins a massive military buildup along the frontier with the Holy Reich. He publicly calls this a defensive fortification project, but spies from Paris and Augsburg report the construction of siege camps and forward supply depots. This is a clear power play against both the Kaiser and his own sovereign, King Philippe IV of Francia.
[Day 20-30] The Imperial Response
Enraged by the provocation, Kaiser Heinrich IV condemns Duke Charles's actions. Unable to commit his main forces due to the ongoing wars in the Greenskin March and against the Saurian Hegemony, he is forced to call upon his vassals. Imperial legions from the heartlands begin to move towards the Francian border, and a formal diplomatic protest is lodged. Tensions between Francia and the Holy Reich reach a boiling point.
[Day 35-50] The Asranid Opportunity: Seeing the northern powers distracted by their internal squabbles. A great Corsair fleet, led by an infamous Gold-Tier Corsair Lord, Tariq "the Scourge," launches a series of brutal, large-scale raids along the southern coast of Aquitania. Entire villages are burned and their populations carried off to the slave markets of Cordoba.
[Day 55-65] The Iron Rose's Defiance
Duchess Eléonore of Aquitania finds her requests for aid from the Crownlands ignored, as King Philippe is focused on containing Duke Charles. Acting with autonomy, she declares a state of war, musters her ducal army, and issues a "Blood Bounty" across the northern kingdoms—offering immense fortunes and land grants to any mercenary companies or champions who will help her repel the Asranid invasion.
[Day 70-85] The Crimson King's War
The Sanguine Sovereignty, under the ambitious Crimson King Malachi, exploits the continental chaos. He launches a massive surprise offensive against the Woad Commandment, seeking to finally shatter their defenses. A legion of vampire knights and thrall soldiers, led by one of the King's Gold-Tier Dukes, lays siege to the strategic fortress of Blackwater Keep, a lynchpin in the Commandment's defensive line.
[Day 90-100] The Argentum Arms Exposition
The neutral Mageocracy of the Silver Marches sees conflict as commerce. They announce a grand "Arms Exposition" in Amsterdam. This high-profile auction of newly forged Silver and Gold-tier magical weapons and artifacts draws powerful emissaries, spies, and buyers from every faction, turning the neutral city into a cold war battleground of intrigue and espionage.
[Day 105-115] The Spark at the Border
The standoff between Bourgogne and the Holy Reich breaks. A "border incident"—a patrol clash that leaves a minor Reich noble dead—ignites the conflict. Duke Charles the Bold uses this as a pretext to launch a limited, punitive invasion into the Reich's frontier territories, seizing several key fortresses. He declares this an act of "defensive aggression" to secure Bourgogne's borders.
[Day 120-130] The King's Intervention
King Philippe IV of Francia, furious at Duke Charles's unsanctioned war, is forced to act. He cannot appear weak or allow a vassal to dictate foreign policy. He nationalizes the conflict, declaring it a "Just War to secure Francian interests" and marches the Royal Army east, not to reinforce Charles, but to assume supreme command of the campaign. The relationship between the King and his most powerful Duke becomes dangerously frayed.
[Day 135-150] The Siege of Bordeaux
In the south, the Asranid corsair lord Tariq "the Scourge" consolidates his forces. Having tested Aquitania's defenses, he launches his true objective: a massive naval and land assault on the ducal capital of Bordeaux. The city is besieged. The influx of mercenaries from the Blood Bounty has turned the city into a powder keg, but they now form the core of its desperate defense under the personal command of Duchess Eléonore. The fate of Aquitania hangs in the balance.
[Day 155-165] The Fall of Blackwater Keep
In the north, the relentless assault of the Sanguine Sovereignty finally bears fruit. Blackwater Keep falls. The vampire victory is costly but strategically decisive, punching a hole in the Woad Commandment's defensive line. Vampire legions begin to pour into the Commandment's heartlands. Lord-Commander Murchadh Dòmhnallach is forced into a fighting retreat, ceding territory to buy time and bleed the invaders.
[Day 170-180] The Kraken's Wrath
Far from the wars of men, the Famine Queen Vorlag makes her move. Seeking to weaken her Dwarven rivals, she unleashes the colossal Kraken she controls. The beast attacks and obliterates several key coastal strongholds of the Khaz'gar Dominion's Iron-Bastion Accord, disrupting their trade routes and forcing the Dwarves to divert forces from their front with the Greenskins.
[Day 185-200] The Pontiff's Decree
News of the fall of Blackwater Keep and the severity of the Asranid invasion reaches the Pontifical States. Recognizing the existential threat on two fronts, High Pontiff Clement VII issues a "Crusader's Bull." He calls upon the faithful warriors of all northern nations to travel to either Aquitania or the Woad Commandment's lands, offering plenary indulgences and immense spiritual rewards for those who fight against the "southern infidel and the northern unholy." This decree electrifies the continent, setting thousands of devout warriors, glory-seekers, and entire knightly orders in motion.
[Day 205-220] The First Wave of the Faithful
The Pontiff's decree bears fruit. Thousands of crusaders, from landless knights seeking fortune to zealous peasant militias and entire chapters of minor knightly orders, begin arriving in the south. They pour into Aquitania, bolstering the beleaguered defenders of Bordeaux. While their fervor is unmatched, their lack of discipline and coordination creates a logistical nightmare for Duchess Eléonore's commanders. The Corsair Lord, Tariq, is forced to abandon his attempts at a direct assault and fortify his siege lines, preparing for a long, grinding war of attrition.
[Day 225-240] The Battle of the Bloody Fields
On the eastern front, the Francian and Imperial armies meet in the first truly catastrophic engagement of the war. Tens of thousands of Copper and Bronze-Tier soldiers are slain in a massive, indecisive battle that turns the verdant fields of the borderlands into a charnel house. The sheer scale of the slaughter triggers a "Resonance Cascade". The ambient mana in the region becomes thick, volatile, and dangerously potent. The battlefield becomes a forbidden zone, attracting scavengers, necromancers, and powerful individuals seeking a breakthrough, while both armies are forced to regroup, terrified of the magical storms now wracking the area.
[Day 245-260] Murchadh's Counterstroke
In the north, Lord-Commander Murchadh Dòmhnallach expertly integrates the more disciplined crusader orders into his forces. With his lines stabilized and his army reinforced by these elite holy warriors, he launches a daring counter-offensive. He successfully ambushes and annihilates a significant portion of the Sanguine Sovereignty's vanguard, recapturing the vital crossroads at Glenhaven. The victory is a massive morale boost, but the Crimson King, enraged by the defeat, begins mobilizing his personal Gold-Tier household guards, signaling a terrifying escalation.
[Day 265-280] The Spider's Web Breaks
Margravine Hedwig of Silesia, "the Spider," finds her domain under siege from the shadows. The Matron of Scars, Lilith, leader of the Drow, uses the Reich's distraction to its west to launch a brutal shadow war. Drow assassins and saboteurs strike deep within Silesian territory, crippling supply lines and assassinating key officials. Hedwig's intricate network of spies is overwhelmed, and she is forced to pull her forces back to her major strongholds, effectively ceding the haunted forests of her domain to the Drow.
[Day 285-300] The Humiliation of an Emir & The Northern Panic
The news of the stalemate at Bordeaux arrives in Cordoba not as a military report to the Sultan, but as hushed, mocking whispers in the opulent courts of the Emirs. For Emir Rashid al-Farsi, the lavish patron who sponsored Tariq the Scourge's expedition, the failure is not a strategic loss but a catastrophic social and political disaster. His rivals in the Great Game openly deride the botched performance, and his standing in the Celestial Court plummets. Facing ruin and ridicule, and with the debacle still carefully concealed from the Sultan's official notice, Emir Rashid makes a gamble to salvage his honor. Calling in debts and liquidating a portion of his personal fortune, he finances a second, far more powerful expedition himself.
This "Blade of Cordoba" is not a state-sanctioned army, but the high-stakes wager of one man trying to erase his own shame. He dispatches it with a single, brutal order to Corsair Lord Sajila: succeed where Tariq failed, or do not return. The northern kingdoms, however, cannot perceive these internal politics. They see only a second, larger Asranid armada appearing on the horizon and make the only logical assumption: their defiance has angered the Sultan himself, and this is the fist of his empire sent to crush them. Gripped by this existential terror, the Luminous Council of Itheria formalizes a military alliance with Duchess Eléonore. A legion of their finest Elven archers and battle-mages is dispatched to Bordeaux, transforming the war. What began as one Emir's sporting venture has, through his failure and the North's misunderstanding, spiraled into a catastrophic international conflict.
[About 10:05 AM on Day 1]
Your steady, unnerving march continues through the academy grounds. The silent tears, a testament to the storm within, still trace their path down your cheeks. With every step, you project the future into the mind of Louie de Braisechant. It is not a gentle telling. It is a psychic deluge, a torrent of names, dates, and cataclysms that floods the shattered remnants of his consciousness.
You force him to see it all. The arrogant Duke Charles igniting a war, the relentless advance of the Asranid slavers, the fall of a holy fortress to a vampire legion, the clash of kings and the wrath of monsters. You show him the timeline not as a history lesson, but as a prophecy written in blood. The boy's soul, which had been thrashing with rage and grief, goes utterly still. The scale of the vision is too immense, too horrifying for his mind to process. His personal humiliation in the dueling ring, the defining trauma of his young life, is rendered insignificant, a grain of sand in a world-spanning inferno. The psychic screaming stops. The panicked struggling ceases.
All you can feel from him now is a vast, empty, catatonic silence. He is a ghost stunned into oblivion. You finally reach the student dormitories.
Not the grand halls reserved for the scions of great houses, but the neglected, barracks-like building for the scholarship students and the disgraced. You walk down a dim, narrow hallway that smells of damp stone and stale sweat until you arrive at a simple wooden door, scarred with the carved insults of other students.
Pushing it open, you step inside. The room is little more than a cell: a narrow cot with a threadbare blanket, a small wooden desk, and a single, grime-streaked window overlooking a muddy courtyard. This is the sum total of what remains of House Braisechant's legacy.
This is your base of operations. You close the door behind you, the sound echoing in the small space. The mocking voices of the academy are gone, replaced by the oppressive silence of your new life.
You stand in the oppressive silence of the tiny room. The door is shut, sealing you in with the dust motes dancing in the single beam of light from the grimy window. The tears on your face have begun to dry, leaving salty tracks on your skin. You turn your focus inward, to the silent, shattered soul of the boy. You don't speak, you project the thought, a calm and simple query into the void where his consciousness now resides.
"If you were me, what would you do?"
For a long moment, there is nothing. Only the vast, stunned emptiness that your prophecy created. Then, a flicker. A tremor. A psychic signature, faint and ragged, stirs from its catatonia. It is less a voice and more of a feeling, a thought stained with disbelief and pain.
"...Me? You... ask... me?"
The mental whisper is hoarse, broken. It is the first coherent thought he has formed since you seized control. There is a pause, a psychic static as he struggles to reconcile his powerlessness with your question. He sifts through the horrific timeline you showed him, searching for a single point of reference in the storm. His focus latches onto the one piece that resonates with the core of his being: his home.
"Aquitania... Duchess Eléonore... She issued a Blood Bounty?"
The thought is stronger now, colored by a deep, familiar bitterness.
"To fight the Asranids... the slavers..."
Another pause, this one heavy with the weight of his family's ruin and his own raw, youthful patriotism. The whisper returns, no longer questioning, but with the ghost of a desperate, fiery conviction.
"If I were you... I would answer the call. Go south. To Bordeaux. Take the Duchess's gold and use it to kill her enemies."
The last part comes with a surge of his old, impotent fury.
"Not for her. Never for the Iron Rose who broke our house. But for our people. For the honor of the name de Braisechant. To wash away the dishonor in the blood of our enemies... That... that is what I would do."
The psychic connection fades, the effort having seemingly exhausted him. But the answer hangs in your shared mind, clear and absolute. He has given you a mission, the very one he would have undertaken himself, had he the power. A path to redemption, forged in the heart of the coming war.