The War of the Southern Wastes: A History

[Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi]

[This book is publicly available and easily found. It appears at the Sandstone College, the libraries of the Krak des Roses, the bookshop of Rashid al-Rashid, and anywhere else that tomes can be purchased. It is also included half-page print, terribly compressed, in the compilation of the author's works. The printing isn't of the finest quality but it bears an assortment of maps and errata in the appendices to aid the reader's understanding of the events.]

The War of the Southern Wastes:
A History

Sister Amélie of the Sisterhood of the Sibylline Vine

With verse in the Style of the Kulamet
First edition serialized from Tesrin Hray 25, IY 7787 to Nisah 16, IY 7788


Foreword

Here is recorded, for the benefit of the generations to come, a record of the War of the Wastes. These events shook Ephia's Well, forcing our little power to exert itself as it never had before, and shall doubtless be the focal point upon which the early histories of our Well shall turn.

Whether we shall call it as I have, the "War of the Southern Wastes", or "Marcellus' War", or the "Battle of the Red Hill", all shall know it from Kardesler onward as the turning point of IY 7787. For in this Age of Ash we shall speak of that which came before the War, and that which came after, so great and terrible was its influence.

Kula reminds us that all that Lives shall one day pass from the world as the Martyrs' dirge carries the soul to rest. Yet Life would not be lived well if we let the works of those passed be forgotten, if Gamil did not guard the living with the words of the dead, and those who float the Edutu did not reach the arm of Kalim. And in in this spirit, my work is penned.
 

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Comprised of:

I. The Convocation at Kardesler
II. The Preparations
III. The March
IV. The Tonsure
V. Treachery
VI. The Battle of the Dead Forest
VII. The Battle of the Ruined Field
VIII. The First Battle of the Red Hill
IX. The Battle Above the Mountains
X. The Second Battle of the Red Hill
XI. Victory and Lament

Appendix A: The Survivors
Appendix B: The Fallen
Appendix C: Maps and Errata

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I. The Convocation at Kardesler

It began at Kardesler.

In the Imperial Year of 7787, on Illul 1, the Sultan Osman VI of Baz'eel called a great council of the powers of the desert to be held in the ancient canyon of Kardelser. There, in ages long past, the Caliphs gave dispensations to their satrapies and vassals and commanded all the Great Ring of the desert. The site was kept in good condition by worthy caretakers through the Age of the Caliphs, the Age of Warring States, and now our Age of Ash, as Rashid al-Rashid has named them.

Upon a dais surrounded on all sides but one by stoic columns, with two stairways ascending in unison the great approach, the seat of the Caliph lay empty. But all the others would that day be filled:

For Baz'eel came Princess Hasheema, second-born daughter of Osman VI, possessed of piety and charity, favored in the blessings of Kula and B'aara.
For Kha'esh came Azarmidokht the Golden, Vizier of that city, of terrible arcane powers.
For Qadira upon the Sea came came Maharaja Rivindra Namahedu with his Raja Guard.
For Ephia's Well came Legate Marcellus Saenus and Interim-Legate Rashid al-Rashid.
And for Qa'im came a strange and terrible delegation of metal men, stone-voices, and wretched artifice; blasphemous and unnamed.

There these powers addressed the great question of the day: Upon the wastes was a caravan of thousands of refugees, led by a creature of monstrous character called the "Tonsure," who was advised by a court of malevolent mystics. The Tonsure claimed that his purpose was to deliver nothing less than the Chalice, which they claimed to bear, unto the dead Queen Ibthial. Who as all know was cast down in ruin by the Grandmaster of the Cinquefoil Rose, Elizabetha d'Auvergne in the year of the Ringfall, IY 7777. The presence of so many thousands of people, misled as they were by the Tonsure, and the potential for the realization of the Chalice drew all eyes across the desert to his wayward flock.

It was at Kardesler that their fate was negotiated. And amid terrible bluster and rank suggestion that the innocents of this caravan ought be murdered or left to the sibilant, it was Ephia's Well rose to the test. Ephia's Well would not "give them to Qa'im." Instead, Legate Marcellus raised his voice, alongside the Lyrist Lynneth Llywarch of the Balladeers and Sephidra of the Torchbearers, to support a course that would save those weary souls.

With the support of Baz'eel, Ephia's Well would prepare for them place of welcome. Kha'esh joined this compact, promising battlemages, and Qadira also, promising ships, while the Well would supply the army. And so it was decided: The powers of the desert so-aligned would marshal their armies to battle.

Even as Qa'im sharpened its knives in hunger.
 

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II. The Preparations

From Illul 1 to Illul 29 the Well made its preparations. The Cinquefoil Rose rallied its courtiers, raised their voice in song, and sharpened their swords. The Fourth Legion prepared to muster to the work in their armory. The Astronomers receded to their Tower, to prepare a great and terrible work of magic, that they would bring upon the world. All were given to prepare for the task: An army was marshaled under Legate Marcellus, with the Lyrist Lynneth Lywarch named to command, alongside Janissaries. And so the Well prepared for war.

And among those songs was sung:

The Foeman's yonder drumbeat calls; It echoes, sounding, ancient halls;
And reaches Wellspring, light of life; Upon us bringing war and strife.

The sib'lant menace marches through; A storm of ash, not to eschew;
To vile sight, magnificent; Their purpose here: the innocent.

And other reaches of the sands; Afeared now shirk from war's demands;
But none shall stand as we do here; We've come afar and rally near.

So now does Wyld's fierce decree; Command us all alike to be;
Adherent to our glorious cause; For sounding cry, our foe takes pause.

So up thy sword and riven shield; The gathered foe's upon the field!
To answer well in errantry; And write thy name to history.

That Life, preserved, in all the Well.

In the midst of these preparations came much debate, as is the Asterabadian custom of Ephia's Well, among the Voiced on how these many peoples would be handled by the Well. To safeguard these people and ensure victory upon the field, three great undertakings were made by the powers of the Well.

To the first, the Cinquefoil Rose, under the leadership of the Lyrist Llywarch, stole a march upon vile pirates and brigands in the sands and procured some month's provisions for the thousands yet to come, such that the people would not starve even in the face of ashstorms. To the second, largely in secret, the Astronomers contrived a plan by which to draw near to the disc some celestial object, and then by strange artifice hurl it upon the enemy. To the third, the Legate Marcellus accepted entreaties from the Thousand Clans, who opposed the great horde of sibilants that marched with Diakos, and who offered alliance if the Well would give over naught more than a scroll of domination and carry a Groknak's skull into battle.

Ephia's Well, in its many parts, came together to attend the day.

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III. The March

Attend we now the grand campaign that stands before us true;
Sound we out the path hereon to glim'ring, golden hue;
Warad shall guard us as we go unto the world remade anew.

On Illul 30, they marched. Some sixty in their number, a vast host, and more in the rearguard. From the Well they cut south along the Giant's Road to the very gates of the Rampart Nusrum, and then beyond, into the depths of the Ash. What may be written of such places in the future ought be glorious, Bel-Ishun remade, but the soldiers of Ephia's Well witnessed those lands mired in the depths of ruin. Broad sheets of endless ash, poisonous to the touch, gave way to craggy canyons that descended into interminable depths; wounds upon the world that would not heal. Through these the great host marched, past the bones of none less than a great dragon, past the laments of one Doorkeeper clinging to the service of an abdicated King, past such a vista of ruin as none could see and remain unmoved.

Indeed, lands beyond the Rampart Nusrum, in that southerly Ring, were once said to have been a desert like to that of the Great Ring that was centered upon Baz'eel. Yet its splendors were choked beneath the foulest of ash. Nothing grew, nothing moved, nothing made a sound, save for the quiet hiss of ash and sand blowing upon the wind, and the movement of armored men and women through that waste.

Eventually the series of narrow canyons gave way to a broad expanse. A ruined citadel atop a hill that was surrounded by the tents of the weary and the destitute. Barely visible, to the south of that, another great hill of ash overlooking the ruin. To the south and west, the remnants of a battlefield, interspersed with trenches. To the south and east, the weeping remnant of a forest, long slain by the Ash. Mountains, otherwise, upon all sides but the north.

And so the soldiers of Ephia's Well came at last to the broken monastery, the fortress citadel, where the Tonsure had made his camp. There to decide the fate of thousands as distant sibilant drums echoed in the foothills.

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IV. The Tonsure

And what shall keep us from the fate ordained for us to be;
Resplendent in our martial arms but for the treachery;
Of foemen great, whose artifice, revealed for all to see.

The soldiers of Ephia's Well there passed through the object of Kardesler's charity: A camp of many hundreds of refugees, faces scoured by sand and ash, in meager tents and meager clothes. Poorly provisioned and poorly watered, their faces hungry for peace and safety, the Well looked upon them with pity and with resolve. A few spoke of the terrible flight through the ashen desert. They had followed the Tonsure and his prophecy, believing in his statement that the Chalice he bore was the Chalice in truth, through all the winding canyons of that ashscape. They spoke of the lizardfolk army that had hounded them, of dozens to hundreds lost in an impossible march, and of their unceasing fear of what would come in the next few days.

And yet, when the Well saw the Tonsure's inner guard and Captain, they found these men hale and healthy. Well-fed, well-watered, and well-provisioned to make war. The Tonsure's men at the sight of the Well's army made to bar its passage, challenging them in an Orentid fashion to a duel. A champion of the Cinquefoil in Gianluca swiftly stepped forth to meet their Captain Asylaion in single combat, and recognizing this, the Tonsure called for parley. And at this, his Captain yielded, and the doors were opened.

Into the ruins of a Wheel-house chapel strode the army of Ephia's Well, to meet at last the one who had led so many into the Wastes. He who had proclaimed for the Orentid, sought to restore the slain Ibthial's house of Orentes to the Well, and beguiled the desperate would face his people's saviors. A giant of a man, twice the height of a human, the Tonsure sat enthroned before a great wagon wheel. One woman was by his side, an aged elf with a gnarled staff of ruined oak. This Enelyë proclaimed the Tonsure master over the Chalice, and the Tonsure himself said much of his divine mandate to it. And between equivocation and regret he came at last to his purpose, prompted by the words of the men and women of the Well: He surrendered, and the Chalice would be theirs, if and only if, they would protect the peoples that he would soon abandon.

It was swiftly agreed. The people, these refugees, would be saved and given succor at Ephia's Well. And the device the Tonsure bore, whether Chalice or a falsehood, would be given over. If only the Enemy could be undone.

[Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi]

V. Folly and Treachery

But for the Sibyl sight that looked upon the battlefield;
Those counted on to meet the host and be our wayward shield;
But one of two would come anon, lament, but do not yield.

All preparations were made, and yet before the battle began in earnest, there were to be three great acts shook the ruins of the camp. And all of the plans of the mighty were to come crashing down amid error and indecision.

To the first. There was a great crack of thunder, lightning crashing upon one of the ruined towers, and all the host of the Well stood in shock. Hundreds of eyes looked swift, arms were raised in a clamor, yet there before them stood not a foe, but Azarmidokht the Golden and a half-score of Kha'eshi battlemages. Fear turned to jubilation among the people of the Well, for the first of our allies had come. But the portents were ill. For the Vizier did not meet us in kindness. With disdain Kha'esh treated the Legate and the preparations the Well had made, proclaiming that Kha'esh would hold the skies and keep the enemy from sweeping down with their dragons and their wyverns. The eastern pass through the mountains would be held against the foe, where they had perceived the aeries of the foe. And with these words spoken, they set out.

To the second. Long awaited were the legions of the Thousand Clans, which had demanded a groknak skull and a scroll of domination. In answer to this our Legate bore with us a banner bearing the image of a groknak skull and the scroll. But to the Thousand Clans, warlike, this was not not what they had asked. And in predictable result, upon the horizon was no grand legion, no storied war-host to meet the sibilant, but a single rider. Bearing a banner of orcs, and lizards, in mocking laughter. This he threw at the ground before the Legate's feet and chanted a derisive song. And suddenly, the hundreds of orcs that we had expected as allies, the best of their champions, were lost to the Well.

Rather than hold two fronts upon the field of battle, the Well would have to hold three, lengthening the lines and reducing their strength considerably. For the Legate's choices, the Well and Kha'esh would be all that stood between the enemy and the refugees.

To the third. One last bitter portent was laid at the feet of the people of the Well. For one of their own came upon horseback, a white flag to signal parley, and Constantine Diakos rode upon the lines. He was imperious, demanding, and commanding from the saddle. He said for all to hear that the sibilant host would overcome the peoples of the Well, but that terms could be reached: If the Well would lay down their arms and surrender the refugees to the lizards, all could depart the wastes. And the reckoning between the Well and the sibilant host would be delayed until a later, fatal day.

And to this, the people of the Well, from the Rose and the Legion, to the Tower and the Torchbearer, cried "no."

The Well would have its contest presently. The fateful date would be Illul 30, not one postponed. And with all the Well's plans cut asunder, it would fall to the courage and strength of arms of its soldiery, and the aid of some multitudes of the First Legion. And so its soldiers departed in three columns, to three positions on a great battlefield, where the day was to be won or lost.

[Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi]

VI. The Battle of the Dead Forest

Yet still our gleaming comrade stood to keep the worthy line;
Her blade aloft, her cuirass set, in Truth example fine;
Our purpose then to keep her hero's course of iron spine!

A wide long-dead forest, caked in ash, that narrowed to a choke-point of fortifications, trenches, and a steep cliffside scalable only by the most tenacious lizards. The left, eastern flank of the Army of the Well. It is here that the Cinquefoil Rose planted its banner. Balladeer, Banda Rossa, and Sibylline alike would stand as iron to keep it from the Enemy.

It is here that the Rose would face one of its greatest tests. And the Rose together would look fast upon the enemy and meet the challenge set to them. For the foe came in waves upon the left flank, first with great hordes of kobold and melek and lesser creatures, that were stymied by the cunning preparations of one of the Balestrieres, Bruno, who with two great barricades had funneled the foolish foe into a killing-ground upon the leeward side of a small rise. Their bodies choked that position as vines wrought of Kula's wrath rent the enemy and slowed their charges. A coordinated, careful, and tenacious defense that gave no ground. But one man was slain in the openings of that battle, called Slimey, he had come newly-minted from the wastes into war on behalf of a people he barely knew. And yet before the terrible foe, this new citizen of Ephia's Well gave his life beside the Rose, that others might live.

It would not be the last. A reprieve was had as it was upon all the fronts. Time to take stock, to prepare anew, and to go forth to meet the rising hordes again. No reinforcements were given to the Rose. Their lines had held the best by the midpoint of the first stage of the battle. And so into the fray the selfsame comrades trudged again.

Traps found the Rose this time, set to the very choke points they had used to such marvelous effect against the enemy. A fierce combat was waged that took back those old positions, but now the Rose was pressed by a great and terrible enemy, that the sibilant chanted upon the wind. Accompanying the champions, the fourth-scale, the third-scale, the second-scale, was General Shr the Glorious, a sorcerer of redoubtable power. Acid fell upon the lines of the Rose, deathclaws ascended in dozens from the leftmost flank, freeclimbing up from the cliff, and the battle was pitched. It waged forward, back, forward, back, and again, and again, as the Rose clawed in ferocity to hold the bastion that would keep the enemy from overwhelming their flanks.

Horns sounded over the battlefield, echoing from the east, from the Janissaries of the Fourth Legion in retreat. And thus it was not long thereafter that Another foe arrived, for here was General Sllyssyr the Gaoler, commandant of the force of deathclaws, fresh from the eastern flank now storming into the Rose with his best beside him.

An orderly retreat was sounded, and the line held, long enough to make it so. Here fell brave Elle, and a rout was feared. To save them all, a man of the Rose, Gianluca Buonaventura, raised up his sword against three lizardfolk champions and both Generals, laying havoc into them, until his voice was seen no more. And at last, in good order, the Rose withdrew.

[Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi]

VII. The Battle of the Ruined Field

Upon the day you go anon to to greet the mighty Wheel;
The Martyrs shall engrave thy works upon the hallowed stele;
And Kula sing a vibrant song to echo fierce ideal.

A wide ashen plain that was intersected by great trenches, deep enough for a man to walk within and wide enough for two, that both sides would have to funnel into or stand behind to take the field. The right, western flank of the Army of the Well. It is here that the green of the Fourth Legion held the ground for as long as they could, into the trenches where the Thousand Clans were expected to fight, and where many would die to stem the tide in place of the Well's absent ally.

In contrast to the Dead Forest, the lizards made a dire push into those trenches that nearly overwhelmed the beleaguered Fourth Legion from the start. Gas was employed by the great enemy, in suicidal charges by fanatical lizardfolk, filling the trenches with noxious fumes. Droves simply melted amid the clash of swords, as the foe pressed their advantage. And in this first phase, it was disaster. Janissary Dorvant Kinney raised up his head to stand the line and was cut down by axe and spear from fourth-scale legionaries. Janissary Joachim Saathul was struck by an axe in the neck and fell as if dead, but rose to a great cheer and gout of pride from the people of the Well, ripping the axe from his gorget and tossing it aside. With his heroism that flank did not become a rout.

In a brief pause in the battle, the first tranche of reinforcements, the few reserves the Well had in the Fourth Legion, were deployed to stem this onslaught. And the soldiers stormed back into the trenches they had lost and retook them from the enemy. It would be hours before they were lost again.

But those hours were not kind to the Fourth Legion. With all of the reserves deployed there was little left to respond to other fronts, and as signal-flares from the Torchbearers rose into the sky, the forces of the Well could do little but struggle on in their chosen positions. Spread too thin by the loss of their ally, the Fourth Legion was badly mauled by suicidal lizards that plowed on and into the trenches in some of the most desperate fighting seen in the battle. Heroism, enacted as Salvatore di Ravioci of B'aara died in honor, standing fast against multitudes before he was overwhelmed, as Samantha fell pierced through by a great spear, and many others of the Well were martyred. Then came the horrors of the Deathclaws and the terrible shadow, General Sllyssyr the Gaoler. And overextended, at last, the right flank was the first to break. Not a rout, but not the orderly retreat elsewhere seen, some were lost in the withdrawal as the survivors retreated to the keep.

[Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi]

VIII. The First Battle of the Red Hill

And where the battle gives reprieve to look upon the day;
Recount thy task and thank the Wheel that Life survives the fray;
For work is good and holy done that foeman's sword shall stay.

A great hill standing tall amid the ash, open on all sides, with a great pillar at the center where the Astronomers had prepared their red-star calling. The center of the Army of the Well. It is here that the Astronomers had set their great and terrible artifice in motion, to call down the Red Star, and it is the single point of the battlefield that must hold at all costs. But the defenders were largely not the Astronomers, no; they were citizens of the Well unaligned with the Accord, and Torchbearers.

There was no choke point to be had upon the hill. Hemmed in by ravines and walls, the hill itself was a wide killing ground, one that would be kept by a line as the foe beset it from three sides. Its defenders faltered almost instantly, for they were pressed all around them, but they rallied. And they faltered, and they rallied. And they faltered, and they rallied. And in one of the greatest displays of heroism upon the battlefield, they would fight upon the sloping rise of that cursed hill, slick with blood, standing over the mountains of their own dead: The people of the Well did not break.

The Legate bowed to the urging of his advisors early on that the mixed forces on this front needed to be reinforced. At the time, reports from the Torchbearers suggested that the Rose was holding firm and the Janissaries had not yet lost the trenches; only two casualties at the Dead Forest and a five at the trenches were compared against dozens that had died in the mass onslaughts of lizards climbing that hill in rank and file. The Astronomers and their Red-ritual were dearly pressed. And so,the great ogres of the First Legion, upon flying carpets, were sent by the Legate that it did not fall apart. They joined upon the flanks and at the center of the hill in great numbers, for Baz'eel would not be absent from this struggle, and where they went the lizards died, though the cost was dear.

This was the state of affairs for the defenders of the Hill for the first parts of the day. The Apothars chanting to the heavens, which looked balefully down in red, and the peoples around them fighting to hold fast. A push nearly to the summit, then rallying cries that the work would not be halted, that the center would not fail, and the lizards driven back. Then from the left, to the east, the horn of the Janissaries in withdrawal. The ragged remnants of that flank staggering to the center to join the fight anew, bowed but not beaten. The center would face the whole tide of that flank before long. And then, tens of minutes later, a horn from the west. The Rose in withdrawal. And swiftly enough the Cinquefoil cloaks to join the center also.

And all the weight of the Sibilant reserves looking fast upon that single hill.

[Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi]

IX. The Battle Above the Mountains

Look fast you weary soldier firm, and hearken to the sky;
Thy ally fights a bitter fight that winged foe should die;
And know that not alone you stand, so up with hew and cry!

In this maelstrom Kha'esh looked to the eastern mountains. With spellfire that set the whole horizon aglow, they made war upon the wyverns and the dragons of the enemy that would have crashed upon the lines of those who trod the earth if undeterred. And though they were closest to the lines of the Cinquefoil Rose and the dead forest, their war was waged far higher, in the skies and upon the mountaintops overlooking the ruined keep.

Much can be said of the power of Azarmidokht, but it was he and a dozen battlemages that kept the skies free of the enemy, and allowed the war to proceed unimpeded below. And at the end of it, as their foes ran before their flames and the chaos of the war drew toward it final, terrible conclusion they descended from the heights to join the last and desperate struggle at the hill.

[Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi]

X. The Second Battle of the Red Hill

O courage, Rose, upon the hill that takes your measure, all;
She gave all that she to give to keep you from the fall;
Until thy last and final breath, thy hand shall foeman stall.

Remember they who fell.

The Fourth Legion, the First Legion, the Cinquefoil Rose, the Astronomers, the Torchbearers, all took stock from the great hill in the center of the Well's ruined lines. They had lost their flanks, and would be beset on all sides now save their rear. And before long, they would be encircled completely. What may have gone differently had the Clans not held their line was irrelevant then, desperation stalked the air, and the newcomers to the hill found it strewn about with the bodies of friends and comrades alike. Those who had died in dozens to hold the center.

They were rallied by the Rose, intact and with the will to fight, and Lynneth Llywarch raised her staff and spoke stirring words. And by Joachim for the Fourth Legion, his gorget ruined but his neck intact. The Astronomers continued in their ritual. Preparations were made for the coming onslaught. For while the Army of the Well was much reduced, what remained was strong, and it was concentrated now. The sibilants brought up the last of their reserves, their lines thinning, but among them were still fresh creatures. And among them was a horror yet to be revealed.

For as the Army of the Well drew up in their ranks to face them, there was a shudder of the earth, and then another, and then another. As a great titan of scale and bile stepped through the sibilant. Taller than an ogre, it was a giant, a great blade in its hand and the evil of malignant brooking upon its soul. General Sha-Tról, of the Profane Union, had arrived.

Bedlam followed. For the cries to rally by the leadership were heeded by some, but not all, as the lizards charged in one final great and terrible motion. And then, there was Sllyssyr the Gaoler, deathclaws slain but still a shadow with a terrible bite. And then, there was Shr the Glorious, weaving spell after murderous spell unending. Kha'esh arrived in the skies and looming there set the very clouds ablaze and rained fire and death upon the Sibilant. And the lines dissolved.

A great melee, back and forth strove the people of the Well against their enemy, in disorganized clusters fighting back to back against a dozen or more lizards the hardy survivors faced their mortal foe. Here the Cinquefoil Rose was bloodied at last, for with a great hew and cry fell Lynneth, with the name of the Chalice upon her lips, and then five others with her. But they sold their lives dearly, as did those others who fell that day, and the lizards buckled.

And in that fateful hour, the world would change, for the Astronomers' ritual was complete. Prepared as it had been in secret, with details known to scant few but the Legate and those who enacted it, and now a great and terrible star was drawn near to the disc. With fell power, in ritual, a great gravitic tool was employed to bind it closer, ever closer. For the purpose of the ritual was to draw it in upon a single point, to smash the sibilant, but it was not to be. For the star was not a thing of this world, made of light, but was wrought of blood and hate. It fell upon the world and coated it entire in red. Blood fell upon the desert, upon the towns, upon the cities, and great chunks of ichor and rot and rock smashed into the shade and shattered over Ephia's Well. A corruption festering, even now, and a blight upon the Wyld's Garden.

It fell over the Red Hill foremost of all. Coating everyone who fought there. Smashing the lizardfolk lines also. And ere long it was not a haggard few against a wounded sibilant army, but against the sibilant monstrosities that remained. Sllyssyr was cut down by spellfire and the blade of a valiant soul after running through a Cinquefoil man; Shr burned alive as he combusted with his wards shattered by the Kha'eshi. And the power of the brooking faded as the great horror Sha-Tról was blighted by another, darker power wrought of the Bloodstar, and he could at last be wounded.

He fell, at last, and the sibilant hordes shuddered. Their ranks thinned to the point where great gaps were seen. And despite the whips of their masters, they would not move to charge again.

The battle was over.

[Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi]

X. The Victory and Lament

When all the dead are counted, and their names to each raised up in mourning upon the stele; when the wounds are bound by needle and thread and holy waters, though the bleeding is still not done; the great many who have lived and fought, lived and lost, must cast their eyes to the purpose they have struggled for.

The enemy was defeated, but not destroyed, and Constantine Diakos fled the field with his force a ruin, but alive, to fight another day.
The Tonsure was fled, his graven idol with him, to never again be seen among the sands.
The refugees in their hundreds marched back with a weary and battle-scarred few, to find a new home, for most of them not in the Well but in its environs.
The Well itself, buried in ash, and saved by the heroism of the Third Legion's cavalry, which lost a great fortress to Qa'im to keep the Well from falling when the Shade was brought low by the Bloodstar.

And where was the victory so-sought?
And where was the deceiver brought to justice?
And where was the Well's storied mercy, as the ash beats still upon those who dwell without?

Gone for the hubris of mortal man. Gone in a world turned red and poisoned by a blighted star.

It is for the dead that we now serve, those who have gone before us, those who have laid down their lives. It is to them that we owe our allegiance, our service, that we toast in song, and mourn with tears.

And for them, that we lift our eyes to meet the coming days.

And for them, in spite of all our struggles, that we keep faith that this Age of Ash shall not be the last.

We are Chalice-bound.

Uplift thy waking eyes and see;
The gleaming star that now dost shine;
As clear as day, her light to be;
A rad'ant beacon there enshrined.

No artifice malignant mars;
The sacrifice in righteous course;
Of she who took up Cinquefoil bars;
And broke the enemy in force.

The first of newly knighted flow'r!
Her rose-borne cloak, her standard bright;
A crook to mark the Wand'rer's power;
She left us unto Chalice's sight.

For crimson standard there did lay;
Anointed in her holy blood;
A val'ant life did pass away;
As foemen took to rout in flood.

Her light now lives by Wheel's command;
For Kula bids us sing her song;
And Martyrs put out all our fear.

Forever shall we Cinquefoil stand;
Attending words of one who gave;
Her life and love to cause so dear.

For,

"We the swift remember to ye the dead,
all the red blood that beats in our hearts."

[Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi]

Appendix A: Those Who Served and Lived

Prepared with the assistance of Scribe Bashir Khatara.


Aaisha al-Samar (non-combatant)
Of the Scribes

Amélie Terrois
Of the Sibylline

Amenya Graen

Arevan Leaflicker

Atticus Naros

Aubrey Domergue
Of the Balladeers

Bashir Khatara
Of the Scribes

Cosine Mevura
Of the Astronomers

Fergus Greaseglop

Galen Castor

Genady Toporov

Joachim Sathuul
Of the Fourth Legion

Karim yn Tarek

Katriona Belaske

Leander Nifkil

Mae Stern
Of the Astronomers

Marcellus Saenus
Legate

Marriet Fineweather

Naelin Karstwen
Of the Torchbearers

Narwen Alendiel
Then of the Balladeers

Nathyra Everdance

Sephidra Niridhe
Of the Torchbearers

Shahin Asayesh

Vultu

Zoresh Soldane

[Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi]

Appendix B: Those Who Served and Fell

Prepared with the assistance of Acolyte Narwen.


The Cinquefoil Rose: Balladeers

Lyrist Lynneth Lywarch, Knight of the Road
Student Elle


The Cinquefoil Rose: Banda Rossa

Balestriere Gianluca Buonaventura
Balestriere Kragg Stonefury
Balestriere Bruno Oarback
Recluta Benedict "The Nose" Gummo
Recluta Isidoros Bathas
Recluta Bernadette Valentini


First Legion

Many also, unknown.


Fourth Legion

Soldier Dorvant Kinney
Many also, unknown.


Torchbearers

Snorri, Aegis of Ephia
Mote von Nachtschatten, Arrow Witch


The People of the Well

Ahmad Al-Hattab
Balthasar
Dagr Hringboti
Dyzmas
Echemmon
Ghundabar Krohan
Ibrahim Salazar
Maxwell Leonsbane
Montford Benthel
Ozias Hasapis
Raudra Raaghavam
Rollo
Salvatore di Ravioci
Samantha Cunningham
'Slimey'
Teresa Chapel
Thondoir Runebraid
Tedrick Volk
Zyaeed