Winning Vote: [x] Mnemon Vana
To travel from the heart of the Confederation in Jiara takes three days, at least aboard your own vessel travelling ahead of the larger armada. The ship you stand aboard is a sleek vessel, dubbed a Caulrunner, for their first service amongst Immaculate forces was seen during House Cathak's campaign to fully capture the Caul some years ago. Fast and heavily armed for its size, it is a common sight in the Inland Sea these days. As are the bloody-handed reavers of Saikal and Lintha so often seen in service of the Usurper that they are tasked to hunt down.
Recent months have seen the sea swept of such pirates however, in preparation for what is coming, and you have made good time.
The winds of the Inland Sea whipped against your face as you stared out at the coast of the Blessed Isles. Even now, only after two days of sailing, you could see the shores of the Immaculate Coast begin to break through the haze in the distance. It is the first time in years you have seen the shores of the land you once called home, though it is your home no longer, and it is a hollow pang in your heart as you consider that almost everyone you knew there is dead. Never again will you be able to walk amongst the cliff-side trails of Dejis, or the see the bustling market streets of the Imperial City. They are gone now, little must than faded memories and ash on the pyre of a dead age. Your fists tighten at the thought in memory of what you have heard of the Anathema's reign on the Isles, and what you have seen of their work up close.
When you were in the Order you thought you had known evil. That as you wandered the world with bare feet and bare fists that you had seen all the wickedness that the world could provide. You had been wrong. You are not in the Order now, though you keep and orange sash across your breast and your hair cut short to the shoulder to remind you of that time, you are a general and you have seen the blood of war first-hand. War is one thing to learn about distant missives from the Threshold, and another to see with your own eyes. To say the last five years had tried your faith would have been an understatement. To see the Realm tested as it was, and to see if fail so utterly. To see the cruelty and rot lurking under the surface burst forth into the light of day. To see the evils that still lurked in the shadows of the world break free. It struck you to your very core.
You have always believed to lead one's life in service to the poor and downtrodden was more than a virtue, it was an ironclad duty of those with dragon blood to those below them in the celestial cycle. Now it shared your heart with another belief, for you had seen it first hand, that all that wickedness required to triumph was the inaction of the righteous. The slow creeping rot that had spread into the heart of the Realm, unseen and undiagnosed, until it had damned each and every one of the Dynasts to the world they now inhabited.
But above all else there is still hope. While the righteous still draw breath, there is still hope for a better world, and now more than ever there is need of ideals.
So, your thoughts turn to Taira, and the campaign you have left behind.
It is said that Taira had been a beautiful country once. It had not been one for many years when you came. Decades of war had left its scars on the land and populace themselves, let alone the reign of one declared Anathema on its throne. Taira had long stood as a thorn in the side and an insult on the lips of Sesus' smiling operatives. For it was their words and deeds that allowed the situation to fester as it had. Allowed the anathemic ruler named Sabah to amass what power she had.
The forces you lead were vast and varied. Imperial legions marched with mercenary auxiliaries and Lookshyan commandoes. A veritable coalition of the willing, intent on liberating the war-torn lands. In this you were joined by the Dragon Caste of Prasad, who brought with them their own soldiers and most critically a claimant to the Tairan throne, and though it galled you to fight beside such heretics and give credence to their own territorial claims in the region their support proved invaluable especially as you witnessed what was to come.
The first inkling came at the siege of Zamash when as her citadel was about to fall the Anathema detonated some ancient abomination of dark wonder torn from the mausoleums of the Dragon Kings, condemning the entire city and all within it to a cursed unlife of flesh and crystal woven together as one. The Anathema would disappear after that atrocity, fleeing from Taira with her most hardened band of killers, but it would be far from the last atrocity committed in her name in Taira.
Her cataphracts and hoplites, led by the warlord Tahir of Red Waters, would fight you until their last drop of blood. Five years of brutal sieges and grueling guerilla warfare as they sought to make you fight for every scrap of territory. They unleashed every fouler sorcery on both your armies and the populace, burning through them to fuel their own defiance, intent on turning the very land itself into a poisoned chalice. But you prevailed. Through blood and sacrifice you restored the rightful order to the region, and in doing so built innumerably ties to the emissaries of the Twin Houses and 7th Legion both.
So, you turn your eyes to look again at the Isles in the hazy distance. For here is a story your grandmother had imparted to you before you left. The world is full of ancient horrors, of evils born before the dawn of time that shun creation and all its laws. For centuries they lurked in the shadows. This is because they were scared. They were scared of the gods who cast them down, of the world that fought against them, of the heroes who bound them in their chains. Now, they think the last vestiges of those heroes are dead and gone, and there is nothing left but stories. And so, your grandmother sent your fourth with one command.
Remind them of why they were scared.
You do not know what horrors you will encounter on the Blessed Isles. But you know in your heart that you and your companions will triumph, come what may.
The Campaign in Taira brokered bonds in blood and fire that would last a lifetime. Now those compatriots travel with you to help you in this campaign, so who are they? [Pick 2]
[ ] Mnemon Sana: A former officer in the Imperial Legions and your younger sister. A proven leader, with a knack for inspiring those soldiers underneath her command, she has served as your second for the length of the Tairan Campaign. Helping you with learning the intricacies of military tactics throughout the length of the war. Now you serve together again in the hopes of liberating your own homeland.
[ ] Palas of Long Nights: Born the day the Shah died, Palas has never known a homeland that unscarred by war. Born the daughter of a minor Naib, her parents brutally killed by the Infant Shahbanu, she has served a dozen masters as a cataphract. Each more desperate than the last in their rebellion against the brutal tyrant. She has fought brutal killers and the shambling corpses of dead friends alike to live to see the end of the war. Now, she joins you to help bring down those that helped destroy her homeland.
[ ] Karal Hamas: The Gens of Lookshy are one of the Confederations most valuable allies. Old rivalries forgotten in the face of the threat the Anathema pose. Hamas is a battle-scarred veteran of wars with the Realm and Anathema both, having been present in the War of Thorns and the war to retake Gloam from the Mask of Winter. He led the contingents of lookshyan commandos during the Tairan Campaign in his own brutal and uncompromising fashion, and he is a difficult man to like, but his support proved invaluable and he has saved your life more than once over the years.
[ ] Ledaal Veroka: House Ledaal was one of the first victims of the Anathema in the Realm, House Sesus launching a brutal sabotage campaign against the Shadow Crusade in the years leading up to the coup, and culminating in the scattering of the House after the warlord Saloy Hin conquered the southern Isles. Veroka escaped the fate of many in her house, for she was abroad in the South-Western satrapies when the Realm fell, and like many of the surviving Ledaal sought refuge with Mnemon.
