A Song of Ice And Dust: No one is quite sure what exactly happened, and those that have survived do not speak much of it at the moment. But there are as of yet some things still known. Two separate parties of both Bohka and Romanov colors were sighted practically sprinting out of the Eastern Oblast towards the mountains to the east, with the latter party smaller and just barely in the lead of their counterparts. Both ascended into the frozen peaks, and were not seen for several weeks. Then, a series of avalanches were felt for many miles around, both within the mountains themselves and unto the plains as well. At one point, hunters report hearing the horrifying and bowels-emptying noise of some great beast scream out through the valleys and ring along the mountainsides. Then, striding out of the mountains, came some sort of creature of utter destruction and frozen might that battered its way down into the eastern forest to fall upon a goblin warband that was flanking the Grand Army. It was the one atop it, however, who was truly shocking. Alexandra von Hohenzollern, a known agent of the Tzarina, rode atop the beast, letting loose great blasts of ice shards and crafting cutting sheets of ice to funnel the greenskins directly into the mouth of her erstwhile mount. Only once the battle at the time was done and the beast had feasted on simply egregious amounts of meat from the fallen did it turn away, and trundled back into the mountains in an obscuring cloud of snow and dust. Later, in the coming weeks, did three more come back down from the mountains, a small party of Romanov mercenaries –
a dwarf Slayer, a wandering Ulrican priest, and of all things an elf of Laurelorn - who had been thought dead along with the rest of their archaeological excursion of whom Alexandra von Hohenzollern was part. Regardless of what occurred in those mountains, the truth is known. Battered, bloodied, but unbroken, did her servant present to Kattarin the Bloody – who had been commanding the battle – a great artifact of the past yet returned to the hands of Kislev: Shoika's Sapphire, a great talisman of power and symbol of authority crafted in the days of the first Khan-Queens, whose deeds are carved into the very foundation of the nation itself. The gleaming jewel of purest eternal ice and malice was made by the daughter of the Slaughterer herself, who sought to eclipse the accomplishments of her mother in doing so. Now, what was held in the hands of the first Tzarina of all Kislev has fallen into the hands of the Romanovs, returned from history to the present. A second expedition is already being readied to return to the rediscovered Tomb of Shoika, where it had been constructed such that the ancient ruler could forever gaze out upon the land which she had ruled.
