Blackhearth's Rebellion

[tropic]

Blackhearth’s Rebellion
  Caliphar Delisse Iltazyara
  Of the Transcendant Conclave
  Flamerule 1, 1377 DR
   
  On the auspicious evening of Kythorn 7, in 1377 Dalereckoning, a herald clad in blackened armor, flanked by men at arms, and accompanied by the cloying Mists, arrived at the gates of the colony of Nebedzzos to deliver the following address.
   
 

"On this day of Kythorn the seventh, in the Year of the Haunting, Lord Roderick De Velen, Lord Commander of the Order, hereby sheds his former name and takes upon his true title of Lord Agravain Blackhearth, Lord of Castle Blackhearth, and Lord of Old Port.

“Furthermore, he declares Castle Blackhearth and the lands surrounding it to be an independent fief, not beholden to the corrupt laws of the Dominion. The Lord's own code will be posted and enforced upon his lands, from this day forth."

Due to some coincidence or perhaps to the influence of the ever-present Mists, this same evening marked the beginning of the peasant revolt in Old Port which would see the Old  City burn, as rioters clashed with the Count’s own Rubies and guard.
   
  The Numinous Order were subsequently declared traitors under the Trenadan Code, and so began Blackhearth’s Rebellion.
   
  On the evening of Kythorn 10, those who would listen were invited and escorted â€" by the Stygian Armada â€" to the Tanglewood, wherein lies Castle Blackhearth. There, Lord Blackhearth addressed those who would listen. His words:
   
 

You have come so early in the morn to hear me speak. For this I thank you.

The night has been long, and filled with sorrows. The smallfolk of the Old City have risen in anger. Many are their grievances. They have labored long, and fought many wars for this Count of theirs.

The Queen Sabuth was turned at their gates by their blood and suffering, and now there is no food.
Wells grow fetid and corpses rot untended in the streets.
The rule of this young Senuspur, whose grandfather I remember well.

There have been many wrongs wrought, many ills overlooked, many injustices visited on the poor in the name of the rule of this Count.

Your Duke - your Trenada, is the creature of Zarono in all things. He assents to his edicts, and enforces his peace with steel.

There was once a time when matters were different. When three Great Houses sat upon counsel with the elder Senuspur - Prince, he was named then.

Angelo Senuspur was murdered by thin-blooded Amnian dogs. Our houses rose in support of his heirs, and were driven to ruin for our labors.

These walls - were where they butchered my cousins and my sister. The forests yonder were where my uncle was felled and dragged away in chains. All of these heartaches we endured for the Old  City, for the Senuspur, and for our people.

And now we return to gaze upon ill-rule and neglect. And so I have claimed these lands, which are mine by deed and right. Thus do I offer this Count of yours not supplication, or slobbering adoration, but instead prudent counsel, and wisdom from the Old  City which once gleamed upon the Sea That Shines.

We are loyal men, true men.

If the right of our claim is not recognized by your Duke, if we cannot be friends, then we shall hold him to be nothing other than a base traitor, with no regard for law or the station of nobility itself.

I know this man. His wars have been short, bloody affairs. It was we who bled at the Fortress Senuspur while he rode unchallenged across Ymph. It was the Numinous Order who broke the back of the Orcish hosts, so that Trenada could sweep them into the seas.

He knows nothing of siegecraft, nothing of the campaign. We will endure beyond these walls, and we will triumph. In the name of the Old City, and of the Unbroken Three that guide our action.

The first major skirmish of the war took place on Kythorn 12, when militia and civilians of the colony left its gates with intent to defect. Led by knights of the Order and some of its militia, they were nonetheless thwarted by Stygian infantry under the command of Infantryman Belalcazar. Although Castle Blackhearth was warned of the Stygian advance, their reinforcements would not turn the tide. Reports that the Stygian troops turned their blades upon civilians among the defectors (presumably for the crime of treason) have been confirmed. The Stygians claimed victory over the corpses of their foes.
   
  The Order struck the flank of the Armada on the eve of Kythorn 15, when, led by Templar Iodmyr York, Ordersmen and sympathizers to their cause attacked a Stygian arms shipment arrived from Old  Port. Defeating its conscripted guards, the Ordersmen claimed barrels of Alchemist’s Fire intended for the Stygian siege. This would be the last significant violence between the Armada and Order before the decisive end to the war.
   
  The siege of Castle Blackhearth began on Kythorn 21. Duke Antoine Trenada of the Stygian Armada marched with the strength of the Armada and a host of conscripted militia to the Tanglewood, there to seek to finally end his foe. The particulars of the battle are irrelevant, save for the heavy losses of the Armada’s conscripted militia and the challenge that would bring its end: the Grandmaster of the Numinous Order stepped forth from the Mist to serve as Blackhearth’s champion in a challenge of single combat against Duke Trenada. Having removed his mask, he was identified as Grimfael Corval, the presumed-dead former leader of the Disciples of the Pallid Mask. (At the risk of interrupting the narrative, the author reminds the reader that at Corval’s funeral, during which his corpse was present, the Duke ousted the Pallid Mask from their traditional base in the colony mortuary, and awarded its stewardship to the necromancer-Lord Harvix.)
   
  It was nearing the end of this would-be decisive duel that emissary of Count Zarono Senuspur and Master Ruby Vjasa Sumuri arrived to proclaim that the Count had recognized Lord Blackhearth’s claim to the castle and surrounding lands. Furthermore, Lord Blackhearth was declared to be a vassal of the Count himself, bypassing the Duke’s claim to the whole of Ymph. In return, Blackhearth agreed to export his produce to Old Port to staunch the famine that gripped it in its unrest (said to have finally been quelled that night).
   
  In the final measure, Lord Blackhearth and his Numinous Order can be said to have succeeded in the rebellion against Count Zarono Senuspur in that Blackhearth’s ancestral lands are his sovereign territory. But for all of the Lord’s charges against the Protector of Old Port, he and his men serve him still.