When ten thousand enemy soldiers march against a settlement, a feudal lord prays to his gods and prepares for a glorious death on the castle walls.
An engineer looks at the terrain contour map, calculates the ground pressure of the enemy’s siege engines, and adjusts the drainage water gate gates.
Inside the high strategic war room of the Citadel Keep, the massive dark wood planning table was covered in topographic height charts, railway spreading diagrams, and spark single-line schematics.
Giles Croft stood at the head of the table. He held his wooden ruler and a pair of brass drafting dividers.
Around him gathered Haven-Hold’s high council: Captain Kenneth Drake, Duchess Rowena Wintermere, Lady Millicent Croft, Lady Penelope Haze, Master Borin Bronze-Lung, and Aldous Swift-Current.
Through the tall glass windows, the eastern sky was already turning a dull, bruised charcoal gray—not from storm clouds, but from the dense, sulfuric coal smoke of thirty massive heavy-duty boilers advancing across the eastern horizon.
“High Director Lucian Harrowgate has deployed the entire private military strength of the Grand Aether-Coal Trade ring,” Kenneth Drake reported. His pacing rod tapped the eastern boundary of the map.
“The Ironfang Mercenary Legion. Ten thousand heavy shock-troopers clad in blackened plate armor.
