LAKE KINGDOM

[Squeaks]

Since there's not really any stuff about the Lake Kingdom, it's time to put some in here. It's a complex thing and will have to use two factions to do it properly...something I didn't think about well enough really, as they're not the most important in many ways; they're so shut away and involved in their troubles that much of the world ignores them utterly.

After the Ghaurchlai Wars, there were two religious groups that had aided the Empire massively. The Church of the Eye of the Only, and the Tsibi Cult (the Lady of Death). The Tsibites had guarded the Warden of the West and kept her alive many times when she may have died. The High Priestess was deeply involved in the War COuncil and threw all temple resources into the war effort. She was also involved in the war in the Realms of the Dead, as the only god the Ghaurchlai could not capture.

The Only united after the Eight Eyes were exposed and hunted down; the man they called Priest was the Ninth Eye - the most 'important' of the Only Priests, and he destroyed the Eight corrupted Eyes and gathered what he could of the Temple forces. However, his main role was to hold Nemeth and then free the Imperial COurt of it's problems, releasing Valerian to bring the East into the Ghaurchlai war in the West.

After the war, Priest was given great temporal power as a reward, having a temple built in Kadasandra and given certain small areas as Temple holdings.

Tsibi was given similar treatment, but her distaste for assassins led her to conflict with the emergent Sythys CUlt in Ashapur, and the EMperor glady gave her holdings in exchange for suppression of this force, including temples and monasteries for her warrior monks along the Ashapur border. Ashapur factions also supported her, and she established a netwrok there, mostly working underground against Sythys, but slowly becoming important to the people of the country.

Through the next centries, The Onl;y fell to corruption once more, and they organised their own rise, alongside the suppression of Tsibite power. During the period of corruption that led to the sale of Imperial lands to the Merchants who formed the Federal COuncil, they gained the 'rights' to the Lake Kingdom, a sleepy colony that had little to offer in military terms, so beleagured emperors saw less and less value in it.

Over the time between it's containment and now the Lake Kingdom has fallen into a bitter struggle. The Only decided that the Lake Kingdom needed purging of it's 'impurities', which simply meant that the wild parts of the Kingdom were to be forced into a war of extermination. Little resistance was given at first, and the denizens simply retreated. Now there is a last bitter struggle for their survival.

The people of the Lake Kingdom are tied strongly to the waters, both of the lakes and the sea around it's coast. Ildiri live there, as do many water spirits and avatars. They simply let the Only advance into territories they had held, viewing their advance as a form of peace, as there were vague promises of a finite measure to these advances.

In the last ten years, however, things have changed. The last territories of the LIAN ELUNE ('Starlit Lakes') lie in a final defensive psoition in the small area known simply as Lune. The Only CHurch has broken, as a Ninth Eye has been found again. She has gathered three of the Eyes to her, and they have brought some of the Church's strength with them. Together they have travelled to Lune and now sit within it's borders, as they have been for the last year, fending off the corrupt Church forces.

The situation now is that the Ninth Eye, Anna Sanda (sister of the Warden of the Imperial West, Lian Sanda) leads the people of Lune, the creatures and spirits of the land's waters and the Ildiri populace in a united front against the mass gathering of the Church's forces. Her loyal Only troops stand beside her, mostly made of Militant Monastic orders (meriotic in nature) and some of the personal troops of the three loyal Eyes. No CHurch Levies stand with her, but hers is still a army with deep rooted strength. All that remains is the struggle for survival.

The corrupt Only forces are strong and great in number; the Church's great wealth lends them power beyond the folk of Lian Elune, but they fight for a lesser purpose in some ways - there are those amongst them who lose belief in what they are doing, and the emergence of the Ninth Eye has many worried - those who do not believe assurances to the contrary.

SO, you have two factions about to slaughter each other - the forces of Anna Sanda in Lune, and the forces of The CHurch of the Eye of the Only. The Only must win a swift victory, and they will push hard for this.

It is said that some of the Elohim, the prognitors of the Celesti, stand with Anna Sanda, recently come to her side...the Elohim are waking, and they do so only in the direst circumstance. SOme stand with Ilien, the Rose of War, in the West, and now some stand with Anna Sanda in the Lake Kingdom. Even in the Ghaur Wars they did not come in large numbers, barely having anything approaching involvement, but now they are forming battle lines with seemingly minor causes. The significance of this cannot be underestimated.

[Willowran]

BOOYAH

[Squeaks]

The camp was in the narrow twist of land before the 'last lakes', the Maerlemord, and the recent skirmish had left them bloodied and dejected. Anna Sanda had faced two Eyes of the Only alone, her loyal Archpriests to the east in the main camp. She had found several thousand Temple forces and had hit them at pace, barely allowing herself room to breathe. Her forces were a poor mix of units, but they were fighting for the right thing, and she was surrounded by her personal guard units...the Ordersd Mendicant and Meriotic were hers, for their nature was based on prophecy and dreams, and they had dreampt of her coming and found and protected her, at great risk to themselves. They had known little saze her frailty; not from where the threat came, save that it was from within their own Temple.

As the memories of battle faded, and she returned to the mud, blood and cries of the wounded, maimed and the dying, she held to her decision to allow fires that night. Her men were battered and were in a mire, and she could not forbade fires, even should the Eyes that had fled the field return with greater force. Her own men had been sent to the forces that ranged to the west and east. Morning was bound to bring their return and that of surgeons and fresher forces. Her life was now a nightmare of blood and ruin, but she fought for something that she held in faith before her own existance; the people of the lakes did not deserve the fate the False Eyes of the Only CHurch held for them in their vile plans, and she was all that stood between them. Maybe that was arrogance itself, for the Lian Elune had their own forces left to them, weak though they seemed, and she was lucky not to have been executed, let alone welcomed as she was. She remembered the eyes of the pale Ildiri, the ill-armed Mistiriel of the Lake People, and the few that remained of 'better' troops. At this point they held little of anything, and her aid had turned some things on their head; the Only forces had been routed from the field in several swift battles; hellish nightmares she barely remembered. They had not expected her arrival, and she had been as surprised when others of the Temple came to her aid. The three orders she had taken with her numbered mere hundreds, but they were like demons. Now she had thyree Eyes and their entire retinues, but no Temple Levies would follow them. Now they were excommunicated, but through her they were never before as close to their god.

She was startled from her thoughts by the shouts of sentries. She rose swiftly, her aches forgotten, as she saw a train of lights wavering along the boundaries of the camp. They were not the lights of torches, nor were like anything she had seen before. Almost running, she was strapping her helm on as she reached the picket lines. The lights were moving closer, but only so close. She could make out forms amongst them, but little more - they certainly weren't attacking, that was certain, but the Only taught harsh tales of this place; at the edge of the Maerlemorde, she was the safest she could be from the superstitious fools that formed the Temple forces, but she had forgotten what lived within those tales - teeth and claws in the dark, things rising from the waters to snatch those that wandered too far or children from their cribs. Swearing at her own stupidity, she lef the lines, and walked slowly towards the floating lights. They blazed as she stepped into the ebbing waters, and she lost her sight, staggering, only to find herself in a canopy of flowers, dream-like plants and webbing of vines and posies weaving around her.

In front of her stood the folk of the maerlemorde; the denizens of the deep lakes. In numbers, they were facing her and she could see pleading eyes, light issuing from them in a plaintiff, soundless, cry. She could feel the intensity of their pleas. One walked from the waters, a woman of bluish skin, her arms delicately etched into scales like those of a fish. Her eyes were wide and overlarge and her fingers ended in claws, webbing between them; she smelt of fresh waters and moved with terrible grace. 'Will you save us, Lady of the Waters? We fade, we see ourselves die, yet always there is a faintest of hopes. We dream of you as the men in metal armour poison our waters, as they cut down our people on the land. YOU are the one we see, and yet this is the slightest of hopes, and each day that fades. Will you take us as your own, march with us and die with us if that is what must be? It is your choice, lady, and we give ourselves to you with the asking. Will you save us?'

Anna awoke with a start. She lay in her quarters, rough as they were, her armour torn from her, her body soaking wet and very cold. Faces looked upon her, and relief was burgeoning. 'Yes', she had said, before the floating lights faded to the dark.

An hour later, Soaseir shook her, his face lit by wonder. 'My Lady,' he whispered, 'we have new friends, and they are quite the sight indeed. It appears we were sought last night by one of the False, but our new, uhm, friends, have brought me his head - it is the Eye of the North-East. He's less pretty than before, but I know him well enough.'

[Kaiser Leonidas]

Will both parts of the Lake Kingdom be playable in the end? If so, then fight the corrupt church and reclaim the lakes!!!