After securing the third and final stone fortress of the northern highlands, Jiedushi Shen took a moment to appreciate the silence of his new domain.
While the engineers dismantled the primitive gates of the captured keep to make way for proper defensive earthworks, Shen methodically reviewed the logistical reports laid out on the table before him.
The conquest had been almost insultingly swift. In a mere fourteen days, his expeditionary force had swept across the jagged, rain-swept landscape, seizing thirty percent of the territory the local barbarians referred to as Alba. Dozens of squalid mud-and-thatch villages had been brought to heel, and the region's three most prominent castles now flew the crimson and gold banners of his rogue dynasty.
