**Three Weeks Later**
In the span of three weeks, the tumultuous Veth situation had reached an unexpected resolution, the Aldeach alliance had formalized, the Steam Engine Assembly Hall had officially come online in year forty-seven, and John found himself grappling with what he now recognized as the most significant strategic error of his entire Federation playthrough: he had moved too swiftly, driven by ambition.
The decision to forge an alliance with Aldeach had, in essence, been the correct response to the threat posed by Veth. John stood firm in his belief that the deterrent strategy had been effective—Aldric III had retreated from Varenk without a single shot being fired. The intelligence reports had proven accurate, leading to a successful bluff being called and folded within just eleven game days. As a result, nationalist satisfaction within the Federation had climbed to an encouraging 61%. The long-anticipated industrial transition had resumed without a hitch. For four consecutive sessions following Veth's withdrawal, everything had been progressing smoothly— the Steam Engine Assembly Hall successfully producing its inaugural components, the railway survey team completing the comprehensive assessment of the northeastern route, and the parliamentary majority maintaining support for the ambitious Labor Reform Act.
However, John soon realized that his misstep lay not in the alliance itself, but rather in how overtly he had publicized it. He had used the announcement of the Aldeach alliance as a strategic domestic press event, intending to bolster nationalist satisfaction among his constituents. Unfortunately, this decision meant that the alliance was splashed across the headlines of every newspaper in every province of the Federation and in neighboring nations. Veth quickly noticed the announcement, interpreting it as a direct act of encirclement. More alarmingly, Skarrath—the formidable eastern power he had deliberately spent five years cultivating to avoid provoking alarm—had also caught wind of the announcement. They saw the announcement as evidence that the Federation and Aldeach, now allied to the northwest, were forming a power axis that could ultimately threaten Skarrath's own ambitions for coastal expansion. Skarrath correctly deduced that the Federation's aspirations extended far beyond its current territorial limits and began to forge its own alliance arrangements.
In game year fifty-one, the notification had arrived, signaling a new phase in the conflict: the Coalition of Eastern Powers had formed, comprised of the Kingdom of Skarrath, the Principality of Urven, and the Free City of Celd. The Coalition formally declared a grievance against the United Ardan Federation, citing "Territorial Ambition" as the source of their discontent.
By game year fifty-two, the Coalition had launched a full-scale invasion, crossing the eastern border with overwhelming military force.
That moment had occurred seventeen in-game years ago. Now, the Federation found itself entrenched in year sixty-eight, embroiled in a war that had stretched into its seventeenth year. The Coalition armies—having navigated a arduous campaign through the challenging northeastern hill province that had cost John control of vital iron ore deposits for an agonizing six years—had finally breached the gates of the home province and were now advancing on Ironhold from three simultaneous directions.
The siege of Ironhold had been underway for a grueling four game months. John, seated at his desk on Crestwood Avenue on a Thursday evening in late November, his headphones securely in place and the apartment dimly illuminated, was managing the siege with an unwavering precision. He had spent sixty game years meticulously preparing for this pivotal moment in his strategy, honing his skills with each session.
As he settled into the familiar rhythm of his strategy, he acknowledged to himself that he was operating at the peak of his analytical prowess.
On the kitchen counter, he noticed his mother's note scrawled in her familiar handwriting: "Double shift. Home Friday morning. Pasta in the fridge. Love, Mom." She had underlined the word "pasta" twice, a subtle hint urging him—without outright saying it—to make sure he actually ate it. He had read the note earlier that day, taken the time to heat up the pasta, and consumed about half of it while engrossed in reviewing his siege supply calculations in a well-worn composition notebook. The remaining portion had been returned to the fridge, destined to either be forgotten, consumed later, or left untouched until she returned Friday morning, when neither of them would acknowledge its presence.
The apartment was cloaked in quietude at nine o'clock that evening. The HVAC system hummed softly, cycling through its low-mode routine. A car occasionally passed by on Crestwood Avenue, its headlights casting fleeting patterns across the living room ceiling—patterns he had observed for nearly two years without consciously registering their significance. The white noise machine lay silent in his mother's bedroom; she only turned it on when she was home and sleeping. The stillness from her room created an absence-quiet, a distinct atmosphere indicative of a space unoccupied.
His father had sent yet another text four days prior: "Hey bud. Thanksgiving is coming up—do you and your mom have any plans? I might be able to make some arrangements if you want to come down to Dayton." John had crafted three different responses, only to delete each one. He felt incapable of providing an answer that was both honest and succinct; the prospect of fabricating a response required a kind of sustained energy he simply lacked. The text remained unread in the notification shade, waiting for a moment when he would muster the courage to address it. But not tonight.
Tonight, the siege took precedence.
John settled back into his chair, adjusted his headphones, and opened the save file.
The view of Ironhold in year sixty-eight revealed a bustling city with a population of 143,000. The river valley had undergone a remarkable transformation over two decades of sustained industrial development. What once appeared as a mere settlement had been meticulously developed into a vibrant Victorian-era city, now aiming for a robust early twentieth-century aesthetic. The foundry district along the western riverbank operated at an impressive 97% efficiency, thanks to the successful integration of the ore processing chain from the recaptured northeastern province. This had been accomplished after overcoming a six-year interruption. Additionally, the eastern industrial district had undergone substantial growth, having expanded twice since he first laid its foundations in the year forty.
The Federation's field army, a formidable force consisting of 12,400 men, represented his largest assembly since the outbreak of hostilities three years prior. This army had been meticulously organized and held in reserve, precisely for this critical moment. Currently, it was stationed in the southern river province, positioned strategically sixty kilometers from Ironhold along the rail line. At full readiness, they would require four game-days to reach their destination. For the past eight days, he had maintained this reserve, carefully analyzing and confirming all three Coalition approach axes. His resolve was to determine the most effective deployment of the field army.
After thorough analysis two sessions ago, he had identified the weakest link in the Coalition: Celd.
Celd was particularly vulnerable. Its mercenary contingent was the smallest in comparison to the other factions — significantly less fortified, and, most importantly, the most distant from potential reinforcements. The forces from Skarrath and Urven had set up their logistics along established routes on their respective approaches. In stark contrast, the Celd unit had arrived late to the conflict. Their supply line ran through a pass in the eastern hills, an area that John's light cavalry had been actively harassing for the better part of five game-days. The Celd mercenaries were operating with dwindling supplies, lacking critical siege equipment, and they faced the arduous task of assaulting the most fortified sector of the walls. Furthermore, intelligence gathered by the diplomatic espionage network indicated that the Celd was operating under a fixed-term contract, which was set to expire in fourteen game-days. If they failed to achieve a breach in that timeframe, their commander could legally withdraw his forces.
The field army's arrival at the southern gate, when combined with a coordinated sortie by the garrison's cavalry against the Celd supply line in the eastern pass, would yield one of two potential outcomes. Either the Celd force would withdraw to maintain their unbeaten status, thereby enhancing their future contract negotiating position, or they would press ahead with their assault and find themselves caught between the cavalry raid and the advancing field army, effectively crushed in a pincer movement. Such an outcome would render them ineffective for the remainder of the campaign season.
Either scenario would disrupt the Coalition's three-axis coordination, a necessity for a successful siege. When one axis was removed, the other two could be managed separately and more easily.
With this in mind, he commanded the field army to advance. They were now four game-days from their objective. He meticulously noted the timing in his composition notebook, added the order for the cavalry sortie along with its synchronization window, and conducted a brief check on his ammunition reserves. He felt confident that the counter-battery fire would hold for the next four days. He had the strength and the numbers to execute his plan effectively.
He advanced the turn.
As the field army commenced its march, the Skarrath artillery unleashed two bombardment rounds aimed at the northeastern wall. However, both shots fell short, indicating that his previous turn's counter-battery fire had successfully suppressed the artillery observers for the enemy. This was a positive development. He quickly assessed the wall's damage: it had sustained 12% structural degradation on the northeast tower, still within the limits of repair. Acting decisively, he queued an emergency engineering crew to stabilize the damaged section.
He advanced another turn.
The forces from Celd probed the southern gate, testing for weaknesses. He instructed the garrison company stationed on the southern wall to be on high alert but not to engage unless they were under serious attack. He wanted to conserve their ammunition reserves for a more critical moment. The probing attack was routine; they were only searching for vulnerabilities that he had carefully concealed.
He advanced a third turn.
The field army was now just two days away from their target. The cavalry sortie initiated its incursion into the eastern pass. He opened the tactical layer to take command of the engagement directly—400 cavalrymen set against a supply convoy of twelve wagons, accompanied by a small Celd escort company. This operation was designed as a raid rather than a full-scale battle; the goal was to set the wagons ablaze and scatter the escort rather than annihilate their forces. He orchestrated the raid with swift precision, leveraging the cavalry's superior mobility to evade the escort's pike-and-shot formation. With a calculated attack, they unleashed fire arrows on the wagons, igniting several of them, and efficiently withdrew before the escort could mount a counterattack. The engagement lasted only three minutes, resulting in two cavalry casualties and an impressive eleven wagons engulfed in flames.
He meticulously noted that supply interdiction was a far more cost-effective strategy than a direct assault and yielded a disproportionate impact on the morale of the contractor forces. The Celd commander now faced a grim situation: with ten days left on his contract, seven days of dwindling supplies, and a field army just two days from his position, a critical decision point was approaching faster than anticipated.
He minimized the tactical layer, returning his focus to the overarching campaign map.
He advanced the turn again.
Suddenly, the power flickered.
The flicker was brief—it lasted no more than half a second, with the monitor dimming momentarily, the desk lamp wavering, and the HVAC system cycling down before returning to normal operation. He made a mental note of this anomaly without diverting his gaze from the screen. The apartment's wiring was outdated; the building's electrical panel dated back to the 1970s, and his mother had requested inspections from the landlord at least twice, but to no avail. Fluctuations like this were not uncommon. He silently hoped the autosave feature had not been interrupted; it had completed a save just two turns earlier, meaning that if the power had caused a crash, the maximum he could potentially lose was two turns of progress. That was a risk he could accept.
Fortunately, the power did not falter completely. The screen stabilized. He quickly noted the field army's current position—now just one day away from Ironhold—and queued the garrison sortie's timing to perfectly synchronize with their impending arrival.
Then, without warning, a low hum began to fill the room.
At first, the sound was so subtle it teetered on the edge of unrecognizability, reminiscent of a very low bass note that you could feel more than hear. He turned his attention toward the source, intrigued yet cautious, uncertain of what might come next.
Not as if the sound stopped abruptly—rather, it was as if the very concept of sound had ceased to hold meaning, much like a word that loses its significance when repeated too many times in quick succession. The humming noise didn't simply vanish into silence; instead, it faded into a profound state that felt primordial, almost like an absence of sound that existed before silence itself came into being. In this unsettling tranquility, he became acutely aware of the rhythmic thumping of his own heartbeat, something he typically overlooked until all other sensory channels were muted. He was conscious of his own breathing, each inhalation and exhalation becoming suddenly significant. He became aware of the light, which encompassed everything around him—the room, the apartment, Crestwood Avenue, and all of Columbus, Ohio—these were the sole remnants of reality that existed in that moment.
He was falling.
Not downward in the usual sense. There was no clearly defined direction to his descent. Instead, he felt himself plummeting in every direction simultaneously, giving an illusion that he was standing perfectly still. The sensation of movement was all-consuming, an overwhelming force that absorbed him completely, while the solidness of the ground beneath him was inexplicably absent. His body reacted to the physical logic of a fall—the inner ear's vestibular alarm triggered, and his muscles instinctively contracted in preparation for impact. Yet the anticipated impact never occurred. The alarm continued blaring in his mind, unresolved; the brilliant light persisted, and the oppressive silence—though it wasn't silence at all—wrapped around him.
With the flicker of analytical thought still present amidst the chaos, he mused: This is not due to the apartment's faulty wiring.
Then came the impact.
Sudden. Intense. Cold. His face struck first—the forehead and left cheekbone colliding with something unyielding. It gave just a fraction of a centimeter before suddenly halting, a rigid resistance that sent shockwaves through his skull, rattling his back teeth and generating a sharp, penetrating ache that reverberated in his sinuses. His hands, an instinctual reflex, had shot out in front of him during the fall. The anticipatory muscle contraction he expected arrived a fraction of a second too late, registering after the striking force. His palms made contact next, skidding across a surface that felt rough and granular, damp against his skin—as cold as the ground outdoors in late November.
His knees impacted last. He now found himself lying face down on the ground.
He remained there for what he estimated to be thirty seconds, conducting an internal assessment of his injuries with the precision of a seasoned medic. Head: impact, a dull ache, but no apparent signs of concussion—his thoughts rolled forward sequentially, and when he eventually opened his eyes, his vision was singular and stable, focused amidst the surrounding chaos. Face: a scrape along the left cheekbone, minor and not bleeding excessively. Palms: noticeably abraded with the sensation of friction burns. Knees: bruised, sore, but intact. He concluded there was no structural damage. Slowly, he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, pausing momentarily to allow the lingering vertigo from the fall to dissipate before glancing at the earth beneath his hands.
Dark soil. Almost black, with a coarse texture reminiscent of volcanic ash mingled with decomposed organic material. This was not the Ohio topsoil, which he only knew as a rich medium brown, exhibiting a sandy quality when dry. No, this soil was darker, denser, and retained a dampness that suggested it had not seen rain recently yet was still moist, perhaps from some unseen source of moisture. He pressed his palm firmly against it, feeling the cold seep into his hand like a shiver traveling up his arm.
He detected a sharp, invigorating scent of pine resin, clean and refreshing. Beneath that crisp scent lurked something metallic, reminiscent of the air infused with electricity before a storm, but devoid of the humidity that normally accompanied such weather. He found it fascinating—two distinct scents originating from separate meteorological phenomena coexisting side by side.
He rose to his feet.
The forest loomed large around him.
Having spent considerable time examining forest hexes in Kaiserfront, he thought he had a decent visual reference for forests. Yet the reality surrounding him was so astonishingly real that it rendered all simulation meaningless. The trees stood like towering giants, their immense trunks so wide that he could not even conceive of wrapping his arms around them. The bark was a deep gray-brown, craggy and rippled, the patterns defying any algorithmic generation. The lowest branches hung thirty feet overhead, creating a green-and-brown tapestry above him. The canopy, where the branches intertwined and formed a nearly complete ceiling, soared to a height of sixty or seventy feet. Between him and that lofty canopy stood columns of trunks spaced so regularly that it felt deliberate, yet their irregular growth lent a wildness to the scene.
But the leaves—those were unmistakably wrong.
The realization struck him as simply incorrect even before he could mentally articulate why. His brain registered "leaves," instinctively anticipated various shades of green from yellow-green to deep forest green, yet what he saw instead were leaves of a striking, deep blue-green, reminiscent of the hues found in deep ocean photographs. This was not the ordinary blue-green found in any terrestrial plant he had encountered, not even the vibrant colors found in exotic tropical species. This was unmistakably, categorically not green. It was an entirely different color that mirrored green's anatomical features in a way that teal mirrors blue, but it existed in an entirely different sphere.
He looked upward.
The sky.
Through the intricate lattice of branches and the gaps in the canopy overhead, he could discern the sky, yet it was nothing like the familiar expanse he had always known. In an instant, he grasped this dissimilarity—not through logic, but through an instinctual recognition; his visual system detected a striking categorical incongruity that arose before any conscious thought could take hold. The sky…
At least, not in the way John had anticipated.
He awakens to find that the ground beneath him has turned excruciatingly cold, sending a shiver through his body. For several long, agonizing seconds, he keeps his eyes shut, wrestling with the disorientation of waking in an unknown place. He focuses his attention on the sounds around him.
Silence.
No birds darting through the trees, singing their morning songs.
No distant hum of traffic to signify civilization.
No airplanes soaring overhead, disrupting the tranquility.
No whisper of wind rustling through the leaves.
Only the steady rhythm of his own breathing, deep and deliberate. That singular sound, more than anything else, anchors him to the reality that the events of the previous night were not merely a figment of his imagination.
Finally, he opens his eyes, and the violet horizon has transformed, now more illuminated as dawn breaks. A soft mist lingers in the air, weaving between the colossal trunks of ancient trees that tower over him. His notebook, a cherished companion, rests against his chest where he had drifted off to sleep, its pages slightly damp from the night's dew. He glances at his phone, which has drained yet another three percent of its battery; the screen stubbornly displays the following:
No Service.
John eases himself into a sitting position, feeling the cold seep through his clothes. His first response is not panic but the urgent quest for information. He turns slowly in a deliberate circle, surveying the campsite—if such a term applies to sleeping against a tree. Everything appears as he left it.
No footprints mar the ground.
No branches lie broken or disturbed.
No signs indicate that anything had approached during the dark hours of the night.
However, the absence of evidence does not equate to assurance; it merely means he lacks proof of what might have transpired.
With a resolute breath, he opens the notebook, eager for clarity. The first page now boldly states:
Day 1
Rule One: Don't assume Earth rules apply.
As he stares at the words, a sense of foreboding settles into the pit of his stomach—an acknowledgment that he is far from the familiar world he once knew.