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May you live in interesting times. It's a common saying in the East. Seemingly well-wishing, except it's commonly agreed among those in the know that this is a curse really, expressed in the understated manner people from beyond the Tianshan Divide are famous for.
Since the 1st of July 1178, North Ambria has certainly been living in very interesting times.
The Salt Pale Incident, more commonly known as the North Ambrian Disaster, was a catalyst that resulted in significant geopolitical shifts which continue to reverberate in the present. It resulted in the formation of the largest jaeger corps in existence, the second emergence of a democratically elected government since the Calvardian Revolution, the slow economical demise of Jurai and most of all a major turning point in the Septian Church's continental influence.
But equally miraculous as the appearance of the Salt Pale is the concerted effort, no, the sheer titanic endeavor of nations and institutions to simply ignore North Ambria, leaving it a stain on the collective conscience of Zemuria everybody pretends doesn't exist...
Which is, in kind terms, shameful. The genesis of the North Ambrian State is if anything highly instructive in how contemporary realpolitik works. It serves as a fascinating and sickening blueprint to the kind of low-intensity measures Zemuria's resident two superpowers would employ thereafter, shaping much of the contours of the intelligence wars still waged in Crossbell.
We know the numbers, we know the hard facts. Three out of five administrative districts destroyed, half the country salinified, a third of the population killed, a formerly thriving maritime economy becoming landlocked. But there's an insidious lie hidden in-between these so-called facts. A lie propagated by most scholars, historians and the leaders of the very church I serve.
The catastrophe was so overwhelming, so total, that humanitarian aid could only ever be a mitigation. But never a cure. Never a solution.
‘There was no way to save North Ambria.’
Such a sweet and seductive falsehood, but so easily latched on, and so easily believed. What it omits though were the sheer material resources and manpower mobilized by the Holy Seat. The fleets of transports, armies of brothers, sisters, and believers pouring into North Ambria to save it. It was not the first operation of its kind in the church's long history and in the early days of the relief efforts, there was every reason to hope that, though diminished, the functionality of the country and its people could be preserved.
Were it not for the failing of one single man: Prince Balmund.
It wasn't so much his ability as a ruler and the subsequent absence which caused everything to go wrong. Heroes are after all just legends. A mere mirage to attribute the accomplishments of the many to the few. No, it was the political chain reaction following Balmund's shameful escape that threw a wrench into the church's calculations.
Calvard offered economic aid and help in setting up a democratic government, which the North Ambrian revolutionists were eager to take. Something Erebonia didn't like one bit. With the emergence of a functioning state running on the same system as their long time rival on the horizon, the Imperial nobility chose political expediency instead of humanitarian concerns and put punishing tariffs and sanctions on North Ambria, slowing and ultimately sabotaging economic recovery as Arteria's relief efforts ran out of steam.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that this bit of history is something everybody would rather forget.
The following is an unabridged historical account of North Ambria and her people, covering, for the most part, July 1st S. 1178 to the present. This project was originally started by my dearest friend and mentor, the late Father Gunther Barkhorn, in reaction to what he witnessed in the direct aftermath of the appearance of the Salt Pale. His greatest fear was that the continent would turn a blind eye to the near unfathomable horror that North Ambria would undoubtedly suffer, and in that he was nearly correct.
That miraculous asterisk—nearly—is the only reason this text exists.
I, Father Thomas Lysander, have taken it upon myself to complete his work so that these stories, these people, are not ignored, forgotten, or lost to time. With some luck, and a bit of assistance from Aidios, perhaps the continent will listen to the agony they ignored, and all of those who perished as a result.
There is a common enough saying in academic circles, as well as much more casual ones, all across Zemuria. It has thousands of variations that all communicate an identical message. It is a phrase Father Barkhorn despised more than nearly anything else, and I share that sentiment quite fervently.
No one cares about North Ambria.
This is the story of those who did, and those who suffered as a result of those who did not.
I deliver this unto you, dear reader, with as minimal editing and censoring as I am able. There are uncomfortable, and at times abhorrent, truths that are revealed and explored within this account. It is simply the nature of how history unfolded.
There is hope, as well. All through this era, there was hope. Much of it was false, but as you’ll soon see, that rarely matters.
For without it, North Ambria would have merely died instead of nearly bleeding to death.
“We were greeted with silence that morning, and it was only upon reflection that we could hear screams carried on that tainted wind. If such a sin even exists that truly deserves that kind of cruelty, that kind of death, then it is not one even an entire nation can commit.”
— Admiral Rosalind Thorne of the Oredian Royal Navy, c. S. 1181
The summer of S. 1178 was among the most bountiful for the fishing hamlets and companies across the northern coast of the continent. The price of seafood had plummeted, which had only recently been recognized as a delicacy for the wealthy as opposed to ‘commoner food’, and the average Zemurian basked in their good fortune. Somewhere in Leman, a young chef would soon create the first stuffed lobster roll sandwich, forever altering the course of culinary development.
Oceanographers funded by the still burgeoning Lakelord Company had been racing to collect as much data as possible to discern a possible cause, as there were concerns of detrimental overfishing that if such fervor were to continue into future summers. All across the beaches, from Jurai to the loosely associated city-states of the far east, sea life and their natural habitats were studied with intense united scrutiny.
It was the single most comprehensive and organized collaborative scientific effort in recorded history. You can find nearly every single piece of data from that period in almost every library on the continent. Hundreds of theses and case studies have been derived from this most integral of primary sources. Entire careers have been funded and reinvigorated thanks to its profound success.
Put simply, it put Lakelord on the map roughly the same time that North Ambria was nearly wiped off the very same one.
We have extremely detailed and curated data regarding the exact color, size, breed, and location of nearly every single fish on any given day of the summer of S. 1178. If you wanted to know how many king crabs were caught off the southern coast of Liberl on June 30th, the answer is exactly seven-hundred and two.
To this day, we still do not know exactly how many perished after the Salt Pale appeared the very next morning.
On July 1st, S. 1178, at approximately oh-five-hundred hours, the Second Patrol Fleet of the Oredian Royal Navy had moved into position forty-five selge north-north-west off of the coast of North Ambria’s northernmost province. An unusual wind had caused a delay of roughly twelve minutes from the agreed upon rendezvous with the First Fleet of the North Ambrian Royal Navy.
They had informed the Admiral in charge of the war game to be conducted that morning of their tardiness, but were surprised to discover that, despite forecasts projecting a cloudless morning, that a massive wall of fog had limited visibility nearly completely. Efforts in contacting the North Ambrian navy, be it individual ships or the naval bases on the coast, were met with static and silence.
As the ship captains and navigators debated on how to proceed, the Torrid, a modest fishing vessel, broke through the fog, its bell ringing in a panic, and nearly collided with the scout ship Resolute before beginning to sink, the stern of the boat visibly crumbling. Attempts to contact the captain, or anyone aboard, via radio, semaphore, and verbally were unsuccessful.
“We must have blared our signal horn a hundred times in just as many seconds; the rest of the fleet had thought we’d gone insane and had said as much over the radio. Court martials were threatened, among other things,” recounts Captain Aaron Franks, the commanding officer of the Resolute at the time. “Nobody else was close enough to see what was happening. We could all feel something was wrong in the air. With the very air itself. I was about to leap aboard the Torrid—we were close enough, and I was young enough—before Claussell stopped me. Every time I look my children and grandchildren in the eye, I thank Aidios that he did.”
After less than two minutes from visual contact, to the shock of the sailors aboard the Resolute, the boat had fully disintegrated into a haze of white. Any evidence of its existence had dissolved into the ocean. It is one of the very few first-hand accounts of salinification that exists.
“It could’ve been the mist, the fog, whatever the hell that all was, but I swear, hand to Aidios, I saw people aboard that ship,” recounts Seaman Rutger Claussell. “Some of ‘em must’ve been screaming. The ones that were closest to the bow. Saw what happened to their crew before it happened to them. They weren’t movin’. Not a rege. Their shapes, though, I saw those. Like frozen solid outlines or the kinda statue you’d see carved outside of a courthouse. Fracturing marble. And then they were gone—they were already gone, I know, but—then they were really gone. Just like watching a sugar cube in coffee.”
According to radio transcriptions that have long since been declassified, the rest of the Second Patrol Fleet believed that the crew of the Resolute were playing a practical joke. Admiral Rosalind Thorne was so infuriated that the scout ship would choose that particular moment, during great confusion as to where the North Ambrian navy even was, that she moved from ship to ship towards the front of the formation to admonish them in person.
She did not arrive before the second fishing vessel breached the fog, and the entire sequence of events played out much the same all over again, though from the other end of the fleet’s formation. A third ship. A fourth. Two at once. Four. Each ship crumbled into white dust faster than the last. Not every name was legible on the hull, and many were already salinified.
There seemed to be no end to the phenomenon.
Miraculously, there was one undamaged and fully crewed vessel that breached the fog. The Golden Ring, a Liberlian cargo ship that had been swept out to sea in the chaos, drifted into nearly perfect formation with the Oredian navy. Radio contact attempts were confirmed, but the captain and crew were all but catatonic save for one young man—who wishes to remain anonymous—who, against all odds, had retained enough mental acuity to warn his potential saviors.
“It’s gone. They’re gone. Everything’s gone.”
“We had all but jammed our own radios after the tenth or so ship—I can’t recall the name—when we heard that stammering whimper from the Golden Ring.” Admiral Thorne was walking between the Daggerstar, a battleship, and the Forager, a destroyer, when she first saw the madness that had terrified her sailors. “Before that voice cut through, it had become little more than static to me, to all of us. A glimmer of hope that remained with us. I stayed focused on moving, staying mobile. A fleet admiral can’t shake with fear, no matter the circumstances. Of course, I…did. We all did when we found the navy.”
At precisely oh-five-fifty-two hours on July 1st, S. 1178, roughly forty-selge north-north-west off the coast of North Ambria’s northernmost province, the Oredian Royal Navy made visual contact with the First Fleet of the North Ambrian Royal Navy.
At precisely oh-five-fifty-five hours, the Oredian Royal Navy had lost visual contact with the First Fleet of the North Ambrian Royal Navy.
In the span of three minutes, forty-five military naval vessels had emerged from the mist in shambles, nearly bone white already or in rapidly growing patches, and crumbled into melting hulks of salt. Photography of the planned war game had been prohibited due to security concerns by both nations, but in the light of the nightmare unfolding in front of her, 2nd Lieutenant Sasha Allers, a hobbyist of the craft, managed to set up her camera and capture a single photograph.
“I’ve never been able to set up my equipment that fast. Not before or since. I don’t know how I did it. Only that I knew I needed to.” Allers recalls running down to her bunk below deck to gather her disassembled camera, but has no recollection of how she made it to the bow in less than thirty seconds. “I imagine most would say that Aidios guided them. I likely would if what I was watching didn’t make me question quite nearly everything.”
[Grainy black and white photo of ships crumbling into salt as they emerged from a wall of fog; can probably use some sort of noise filter on ships from the Spanish-American war]
An estimated three-thousand sailors died without possible burial in those three minutes, while tens of thousands more were already dead further inland. As the last of the navy dissolved into the sea, the fog, slowly, began to dissipate, revealing a sight that, even now, defies all known physical laws and understanding.
At precisely oh-six-hundred hours on July 1st, S. 1178, roughly forty-selge north-north-west off the coast of North Ambria’s northernmost province, the Oredian Royal Navy made visual contact with a then unidentified hurricane of ‘snow’ reaching beyond the horizon. Differing accounts corroborate that this was not a hallucination, but rather the dissemination of the Salt Pale itself.
The distance from the Salt Pale was much too vast for the navy to see with the naked eye, or even with the strongest telescope in existence at the time; the curvature of the planet does not allow you to ‘see’ beyond the horizon. Yet, in spite of that, thousands of eye-witness reports all claimed nearly identical descriptions of the singularity that would become known as the Salt Pale.
“I bestow upon you, my adoring citizens, the gifts of eternal light and music until the end of time! Never again shall you be afraid of the dark on the street you call home, and never again shall you be alone, in silence, with your thoughts!”
— Crown Prince Balmund Lorian of the Principality of North Ambria, October 20th, S. 1154
The Principality of North Ambria had historically been somewhat of an enigma in terms of climate. While not entirely literal, to say that it was a land of evergreens was not exactly inaccurate. Winters were short, and autumns even shorter. There were some recorded years when the harvest season ended on a Friday, and Spring began anew on a Monday. It was not uncommon for the area around Haliask itself to skip the winter entirely.
“It was nearly a yearly tradition for my wife and I, and really so many other families, to debate for entire evenings on where we should vacation for the summer. Jurai or North Ambria,” recalls Count Egret of Lamare, a well-respected noble from Erebonia’s northwestern province. “Jurai had endless idyllic vistas, and North Ambria had no shortage of those, but, back then, they were very well known for the arts.”
Trade and diplomatic relations had rarely been a problem for the Principality. For centuries, access to the sea as well as sharing a border with Jurai, her strongest economic partner, Erebonia, and Remiferia offered North Ambria access to trade routes that nearly rivaled even those of Crossbell’s. As the continent trudged through the Middle Ages and beyond, this growing excess of mira flooded into the royal family’s pockets, as it often did with monarchies, but not even the Crown Prince and Princesses, generation after generation, were immune to the call of societal and cultural reinvestment.
“Jurai and North Ambria, long ago, were on roughly equal footing.” Reid Armbrust, the last Mayor of Jurai prior to its annexation by the Erebonian Empire, was an historian himself by trade before being elected into the highest office of the autonomous state. “Erebonia poked at our borders almost in tandem, as to them we weren’t all that different. Two modest countries simply trying to co-exist. There was always an unspoken alliance, of sorts, between us.”
According to Armbrust, he’d never been able to find the original document outlining such a non-binding agreement, as even the earliest records of correspondence between the nation’s leaders referred to the friendship as ‘old as the ground on which we share’. The Septian Church has since been able to confirm that no known original instance exists. It is entirely possible that there was no original—only a verbal agreement that became as solid as stone.
“It wasn’t until S. 890, not too long after the War of the Lions, that we formalized our pact. At heart, it was essentially a stronger trade agreement—reduced tariffs and greater incentives for more business between both nations, that kind of thing—but the message it sent to Erebonia was clear. We are stronger together, and we do not need you.” Armbrust laughed after his dour face cracked. “Dreichels the Lionheart was still Emperor at the time; that period of renaissance within Erebonia was the only real opportunity we’d ever had to make such a bold diplomatic move.”
The Erebonian Renaissance may have ended with the Orbal Revolution, but it was roughly then that North Ambria managed to take the reins, so to speak, due in part to its far quicker adoption of Epstein’s miraculous rediscovery of orbments. The sprawling mountain range that traveled north towards the ocean was packed to the gills with untapped septium, which had been discovered a century prior during a land dispute with Erebonia due to an Imperial mining operation accidentally expanding too far north past the Aragon Iron Mine and into North Ambria.
“We all read in the newspapers about those magical orbs created in Leman, though no one I knew at the time took it seriously. Every news service on the continent carried the same story of infinite energy—the first thing he’d made was some sort of heater,” recalls [Somebody old in North Ambria]. “I still didn’t believe they were real until Prince Balmund—damn him to Gehenna—unveiled what he’d done to Halisak.”
Crown Prince Balmund had, in a rather impulsive decision according to recovered records of his advisors, outfitted the central district of Haliask, the capital of the at the time Principality, with orbal lamps and rudimentary audio speakers. He announced this over said speakers, and then proceeded to play a series of symphonies for the enjoyment of the citizens. The plan was, allegedly, to introduce orbments to the populace to test the waters.
“The speech? Even for him, it wasn’t his best. The music, however, was wonderful.”
Over the next twenty years, Crown Prince Balmund began building greater and greater orbal infrastructure within Haliask, as well as promising to expand these efforts to other cities and villages across the country. The latter never came to pass, and from what few documents historians have been able to preserve and uncover, there had never been any real intention to deliver on such a promise.
In truth, his ultimate goal was to relocate nearly the entire population of North Ambria to an ever-expanding Haliask from which he could rule far more leisurely. There was some merit to this plan, as it would offer the most orbal amenities possible to his citizens. However, this would leave many small farming communities and towns almost entirely abandoned, limiting the amount of food that North Ambria could produce domestically.
“It wasn’t a good plan. None of his ideas were good, of course, but that one was about as close to decent as it got with him. It certainly attracted more tourism and artists, though.”
If you were to ask someone on the street today which part of the continent you should travel to in order to experience the widest breadth and greatest quality of fine art, they would likely tell you to head to Crossbell or Calvard as soon as possible. Prior to S. 1178, their answer would be a roughly even split between Crossbell, Cavlard, and North Ambria.
Haliask housed twenty-four different museums at its peak, each displaying hundreds of unique paintings and sculptures crafted by artists from all corners of the continent. The city center possessed a live theater district that rivaled even Edith’s of the era. The North Ambrian National Orchestra traveled from venue to venue just as often as Liberl’s. The surge of fine arts academies sprouting and filling their halls year after year, as the population surged in tandem with the Orbal Revolution, only spelled providence and fortune for the modestly sized principality.
Quite nearly on the cusp of a cultural renaissance.
It took less than three days to eradicate nearly all traces of culture from North Ambria.
There are some who claim that the Salt Pale was a show of Aidios’s power. Of divine judgment cast down upon the North Ambrian citizenry for their gluttony of wealth or obsession with sacrilegious forms of expression and art. Fostering apocrypha and writing hundreds upon hundreds of books that were quickly banned by the church.
It is the opinion of the editor, both original and current, that the Septian Church’s knee jerk reaction to experimental genres of literature was unwarranted and unwise. It should be known to the reader that the books that survived the pale have since been unbanned.
No country is pure or free of sin, and no nation’s people are inherently more righteous than any other’s. The appearance of the Salt Pale remains, and possibly always will, an unexplained and impossible occurrence.
There was no forethought. This was not some devil ritual gone wrong. The mistakes humanity has made were not tantamount to anything remotely similar to the destruction and hell brought upon by the Salt Pale. Not even in a cumulative sense, accounting for the most vile monsters in history, could any number of sins equal that of the pain inflicted upon North Ambria.
“I never stopped looking north after that day. Everything I saw was due north. If I turned around, if I did not keep holding vigil, it could happen again. Even as I passed from home to home, grew older, and eventually found my calling, I refused to turn away as the continent did. One day, I prayed, I still pray, they will understand what I still see, peeking over the horizon of every corner.”
— Father Jerome Walden, survivor of the Salt Pale Incident, circa S. 1187
The chaos and panic that followed the Salt Pale’s emergence is likely rivaled only by the Great Collapse. Nearly every line of communication had been severed, save for a single remaining telephone line from the Kilva Bracer Guild and a spattering of still functional radio towers across the southern half of the Principality.
A third of the population was gone. Half the country was irreversibly bleached in salt. This alone would be tragedy enough, yet the wind continued to blow even after the initial storm. Hundreds of thousands of curim of salt, no longer a death sentence of salinification, were carried south in a rainstorm that had been, for the moment, deemed a thankful respite from the disaster.
“The salt couldn’t pass through the rivers or any body of water, so we’d assumed that meant everything was over. We would be fine,” recalls Kara Siegward, six months after that fateful day. A former farmer who had managed to flee the northern administrative districts with her husband Marco, she remembers how so much hope crumbled into dust. “The rain fell on our lips, our hair, and it burned. Salt on all of our wounds. It was so cruelly poetic. Saltwater rained into starving soil.”
Kara, Marcus, and their infant daughter Rebecca—born mere days before the first anniversary of the pale, would not survive to see the end of North Ambria’s revolution. Their story is the furthest thing from uncommon. A hundred thousand more would starve or die due to untreated disease before Prince Balmund’s control on the desperate nation was shattered.
It may seem unthinkable now, but the situation, the truth and horrifying reality that North Ambria faced at the time, was not so easily communicated to the rest of the continent.
Calls for aid did not, initially, fall on deaf ears. Within the first week, the Bracer Guild had already begun to disseminate as much current information as they possibly could to newspapers, embassies, governments, and humanitarian NGOs. North Ambrians who had managed to find the strength to organize, to gather what was left of their communities, ran to Ored, Jurai, and Erebonia with photographic evidence and signed testimony from hundreds of fellow survivors.
“I’m old enough to have failed far more requests than I’d like to remember, but none of them ever felt like true failures until the Salt Pale,” recounts Cameron Schultz, the guild’s first S-Rank bracer. “I tried to get Leman to take my name off the unofficial S-Rank registry. They wouldn’t. They told me that it would do more damage to public faith in us than our failure did. I still don’t see the difference.”
The Holy Seat had heard of the catastrophe first, and as such we began to prepare first. As much as we would have all loved nothing more than to deny that the reports were accurate, the risk was too great to ignore. If we were wrong, if it was all a ruse or overblown, then we would have been made the fool. Lives, however, would still be saved that otherwise would perish.
The courtyards of Arteria were overfull with thousands and thousands of crates of non-perishable foods, construction materials, radios, orbal heaters—quite nearly every single piece of equipment we had for assisting in disaster relief, a collection of resources intended to be used over the course of a decade rather than for one single event was on display and being organized for transport en masse.
Our numbers were pulled from every corner of the continent, everyone we could spare and many we could not, to flood North Ambria with enough aid and comfort so as to stop the bleeding and ensure they recovered. We, though, us alone, we were not enough. It was not for lack of unity. My testimony after my initial investigation of the bleached lands was far more than enough to sway the ears of the Pope and every branch of the church. We had no dissent among our ranks.
It was to be a man-made miracle of effort. A horrifying tragedy with a hopeful, merciful ending. Something for the church, and every cooperating nation, to point towards when a future crisis had some dragging their feet.
In the final seventy-two hours before we departed in full, to join our initial first response forces, we were almost completely abandoned by the nations of Zemuria.
While Balmund and his Royal Guard had fled to the North Ambrian Embassy in Remiferia immediately following the Salt Pale’s appearance, he still intended to govern and rule his shattered nation from two borders away. As a result, despite the mountain of information being delivered to him regarding the near complete eradication of all infrastructural support systems in his Principality, even he did not believe such severity was true.
“It was unfathomable that something like that could happen so quickly. Even with the Septian Church confirming the worst of it, we couldn’t accept it,” defends [Alexandre’s Dad], Captain of Balmund’s Royal Guard. “And why should we have? It was being exaggerated. Those we left behind were only trying to leverage a disaster into something cataclysmic for pity and profit from the rest of the continent.”
Crown Prince Balmund treated the Salt Pale as a political crisis, first and foremost. He downplayed the disaster, assured foreign press outlets as well as heads of state that North Ambria could recover perfectly fine on their own. The soil was not salted. Commoners are known to panic in the face of what they do not understand, and there must be terrorist insurgents among them fanning the flames of panic to incite a violent revolution.
This was a somewhat common tactic of national leaders and politicians following the Calvardian Revolution. While Leman and Ored transitioned peacefully to democratic governments decades later, the nations that didn’t were incredibly wary of an armed ‘peasant uprising’ at any given moment. The one notable exception being Liberl, as their aristocracy had been all but gutted in terms of power due to a still unconfirmed act of divine intervention from Aidios herself.
[See “Madrigal of the White Magnolia” for further reading on the topic]
Prince Balmund’s condemnation of the desperate pleas of his people poisoned the waters and remaining soil of North Ambria’s salvation just as violently as the Salt Pale itself.
“The Principality of North Ambria, as healthy as our minds are, have been traumatized temporarily by an otherworldly phenomenon. We have taken losses, yes, though it is nothing greater than the worst a hurricane can offer,” claimed Balmund, to the Crossbell News Service, Vol. 45, Issue 9, S. 1178. “These unsubstantiated reports of cataclysm are merely fear mongering—my government is fully functional. It is not uncommon for a monarch to vacation in another country.”
As he was speaking, lying, perhaps unknowingly at the time, to every journalistic publication on the continent, the Septian Church was mobilizing what remains the single greatest humanitarian aid effort in recorded history. As the days went on, as the weeks continued, our grasp on the situation slipped more and more.
Prior to Balmund’s vehement denial of the horrors of the pale, the Septian Church had already negotiated and organized a united front of funds, resources, personnel, and logistical support for emergency aid to the Principality. Every single nation on the continent had agreed to lend their mira and people without hesitation. They had no reason to question our claims of catastrophe and pleas for help in salvaging hope from what was likely to be the most destructive tragedy in a hundred generations, past and future alike.
Even as the Bracer Guild leaned harder into diplomatic efforts, utilizing their best and brightest, those once open ears and hearts began to close, ever so slowly, and then, once the line had been crossed, faster than we’d feared possible.
“It is of the opinion of the staff, Editor in Chief, as well as the Imperial government that this supposed tragedy in North Ambria has not been adequately substantiated, and has been sensationalized for the purposes of violent revolution and terrorism,” printed the Imperial Chronicle on (date here). “We do not want another Calvard at our borders, my friends. We must hold fast, and not succumb to heartstrings being played.”
This sentiment was echoed by Calvard, and to a lesser extent Liberl, Crossbell State, Leman, and Remiferia. Only Ored and Jurai had true doubts, but those were quickly silenced by the growing and overwhelming public opinion that North Ambria was either playing some megalomaniacal geopolitical game in tandem with Erebonia, or it was just as Balmund claimed:
To lend a hand to North Ambria, as it reached out with cries of terror and desperation more disturbing than should exist, was to support and endorse terrorist insurgents. Violent revolutionaries. In turn, this would be supporting, in a sense, the Calvard Republic’s side of their eternal tensions with the Erebonian Empire.
If there was one thing that smaller nations feared most, more than nearly all else, it was drawing the ire of the Imperial war machine.
The veritable army of Brothers, Sisters, Knights, all of us, still marched, flew, to North Ambria, but we did not arrive with the flags of the continent behind us. What was once a salvageable tragedy of unprecedented proportions had become a near completely pyrrhic effort. We had promised them salvation, rescue, and the Goddess’s mercy in the face of unknowable agony.
“Because of Balmund, in the time it took to travel from Arteria to North Ambria, every country that was passed abandoned the march, as if it were some sort of twisted choreographed performance,” recalls Father Jerome Walden. “I was in the crowd in Kilva when the church arrived by the thousands when there should have been hundreds of thousands of soldiers and journeymen. Our hope was crushed, our spirits, already so weak, were broken utterly. We begged, we pleaded, and they listened, yes. Because of Balmund, they heard nothing but beggars and conmen.”
We broke our promise, yet the people of North Ambria would still clung to us in the coming years, for we were among the few that walked among them at all.
“The idea of a revolution had been considered for decades—even I’d heard about it once or twice—but I wasn’t a revolutionary before Balmund condemned us to this endless cycle of blood, babies, and smoke. You could call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. I wouldn’t. I’ve never put much faith in sprawling predictions made by folks who say they’re great at guessing games.”
— Colonel Josef Valestien, founder of the Northern Jaegers, c. S. 1180
Despair was the pervading emotion for North Ambria as that first surge of humanitarian aid began to slow. There was to be no true second phase, as had been outlined by the church in collaboration with Erebonia, Calvard, Ored, Leman, Jurai, Crossbell, and Liberl. At best, the scrambling remains of Balmund’s government could say that, with careful rationing, they would be able to survive for six or so months.
Their calculations were proven incorrect in mere days, when economists and socio-cultural researchers from the University of Haliask presented the country with a report that detailed, in short, that they had at most three months until there was simply nothing left to eat other than, Aidios forbid, themselves.
Hunting was not viable. Neither was praying that their minimal surviving harvest would be enough. Foreign aid could not come fast enough.
The vast majority of wildlife had vanished from what remained of the countryside, fleeing into Jurai, Ored, and Erebonia. Farmland that was still fertile had already been seeded for the season, and were almost completely growing Lingonberries which, due to its low nutritional benefits but distinct flavor, was primarily used to ferment high-proof alcohol.
There is a common misconception on how exactly history panned out over the next year. This is partially a result of information suppression and propaganda, but it is just as much the fault of how difficult records of the period have been to acquire, and just how many who were involved have since passed into Aidios’s arms.
For those who believe they know the story, the Northern Jaegers were founded as a direct result of the North Ambrian democratic revolution in S. 1179. This is technically accurate, though with a rather massive caveat. Many of the remnants of the North Ambrian Royal Army, most of whom had already been under the direct command of Colonel Valestein, had begun acting as an illegal extra-national militia of sorts since August 9th of S. 1178. What would become the Northern Jaegers did not formally register as a jaeger corps until after the revolution.
This is incredibly important to understand, as there was not enough mira nor food to keep North Ambria alive through what they assumed would be as mild a winter as all others had been. Colonel Valestein did not wait for the nation to change, nor for the people to become more destitute, but neither did the soldiers who followed him.
They marched south. Their first contract was, fittingly, for the Imperial government. In many ways, this is what sealed North Ambria’s fate into what was almost an endless cycle of death and mira. Erebonia, both the nobility as well as the central government, enjoyed the easy access to a cheap, desperate, and highly-trained army to be hired for nearly any and all jobs that ‘needed’ doing.
“Every soldier, every single one of us, had taken an oath to protect North Ambria and her people. Balmund and his government had betrayed that. Betrayed all of us. I did what I still firmly believe anyone would have done in my position,” recounts Colonel Valestein. “There is always a solution, no matter how uncomfortable it might be, to a problem. The Northern Jaegers were supposed to be a temporary answer to our empty stomachs. We needed time to find a better solution. We still need more time.”
Almost overnight, there was hope born from the blood being spilled on foreign soil. Mira began to flow back into North Ambria, though this feeds into another misconception that is shared even among North Ambrians themselves. It was ‘common knowledge’ that North Ambria was kept afloat financially entirely due to the Northern Jaegers. This was not exactly true, though, according to nearly every first-hand account taken during that period, the citizenry was rather convinced that it was.
In essence, there wasn’t a meaningful difference.
Sixty-two percent of the struggling nation’s revenue came from the Northern Jaegers. It was by far the largest stake of any contributing business or income stream, though it was not quite as singularly responsible for North Ambria’s literal survival as it appeared to be. That being said, the Northern Jaegers were certainly considered the singular, greatest hope, and rightfully so.
The transition from formal military to jaeger corps was never fully completed, as the Northern Jaegers, until their disbandment as a result of the Northern War and annexation by Erebonia, operated with the structure and systems of an at-the time modern army. Soldiers still served their country, simply not typically within her borders. There was a false sense of nobility, of honor, that arose with the Northern Jaegers.
“For every other jaeger we met, as our reputation grew, it was just a job to them,” recounts Captain Evelyn Clark, [the one who burned Celdic and tried to take Juno]. “It was our mission. Our duty. We could never see eye-to-eye with the other corps. Least of all the Red Constellation. They made bets. Had fun doing what we did just to survive the night. They made it all out to be a game. So did Zephyr, but those lunatics didn’t mock us every chance they got.”
Within the industry, Colonel Valestein quickly developed a reputation for being ‘the most honorable man on the battlefield’, which was very much at odds with the absolute fact that the Northern Jaegers utilized more child soldiers than any other corps or military combined. This was due primarily to the emergence of the Juvenile Jaeger Corps in September of S. 1178.
The JJC was a child soldier feeder program that recruited boys and girls as young as ten to be trained to join the main force by, at the earliest, age thirteen. At the time, it was proposed as a two-fold solution to the thousands of orphaned children. They had nowhere to go, and if they fell in combat, or during training, that was one fewer mouth to feed.
This level of cold-hearted practical thinking, I assure you, was not done without the most extreme of desperation and consequence, as the JJC had a near one-hundred percent graduation rate. This was presented as ‘everyone having a place in the mission’, but the truth was[///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////] [///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////][///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////][///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////][///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////][///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////][///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////]
[Publisher’s Note: The following section has been redacted by joint order of the Septian Church and the Bracer Guild. Information regarding the JJC will be declassified no earlier than S. 1254.]
Yet, even with all of that, nothing could have prepared North Ambria for that winter. The salted land, the northern half of the Principality, had reflected so much sunlight that the ground temperature had been steadily dropping since July. Once the seasons changed with the rest of the continent, North Ambria froze nearly solid with permafrost that has, in many places, still yet to melt.
If a body was buried in North Ambria, there was every chance it would not decompose for decades.
The pale had not only destroyed their homes, traditions, and loved ones, but the local ecosystem in its entirety. As their neighbors enjoyed a mild winter, a raging tundra grew ever larger in North Ambria, burying all but the most southern reaches of the country in snow and ice. They did not have the proper infrastructure to deal with temperatures nearly that extreme before the pale, and they certainly didn’t that first winter.
The death toll soared.
It was a common theme of the period. Every tiny rege that North Ambria clawed towards the surface of hope was quickly followed by plummeting several hundred arge into depths of despair. It was just as common a theme that they did not stop climbing, no matter how close to the bottom they fell.
“North Ambria was already Gehenna. Why shouldn’t it freeze over, too?”
—1st Lieutenant Richard Ilhardt, Fourth Division of the Northern Jaegers
The North Ambrian winter of S. 1179 began in October of 1178. It shattered temperature records in its first two weeks, dropping so far below freezing that the minimally insulated and overcrowded buildings across the country did little to warm the population. What remained of the aristocracy, those who weren’t able to flee or did not wish to, were among the very few whose homes provided any such shelter from the cold.
Several noble houses opened their doors, fearing violent retaliation akin to the Calvardian Revolution if they did not, to what can only be called refugees, though this kindness came at a cost of painting a target on the back of every noble who didn’t follow the pattern. There was, disgustingly, yet understandably, a cited practical reason for their refusal.
With fewer mouths to feed, the more likely North Ambria was to survive the winter. The Northern Jaegers were working as fast as they could, but without a windfall of mira or food, they would have little to return to in the coming months. There was no room for hesitation, as every moment wasted was another dead friend or loved one.
On October 30th, S. 1178, a group of refugees who were taking shelter in a noble’s estate found the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. Some of the children had wandered into the cellar and in efforts to find them, they discovered an enormous cache of canned food. A stockpile large enough to make a real difference, especially if the rest of the aristocracy had followed suit.
“We were all beyond our breaking points. Before the revolution, I was a school teacher. It was why I’d joined the church, primarily.” explains former General Maria Wilhelm, the Vice Commander of the Northern Jaegers from their inception until 1198, and then Commander following the death of Colonel Josef Valestein until they were dissolved in 1205. “I had no military experience. I only knew that our only way out was to fight. As it turned out, I was very good at rallying citizens together who also had no military experience. It was…easier than herding kids and teenagers in class.”
Wilhelm is widely cited as the other face and driving force of the North Ambrian revolution, as she was extremely successful in galvanizing the surviving population to support the military coup being spearheaded by Valestein. While the two did not plan their efforts in tandem, they quickly came together in a coalition that would accomplish what many had deemed pointless and impossible.
“I remember hearing about that basement that went on for ten selge, filled to the ceiling with canned goods, and knowing for sure that that family was on the poorer side. In relative terms. I was only a day’s walk away, so I marched through the snow—I wanted to make sure that it was distributed fairly, but by the time I arrived nothing had been done. The noble family still resided over their land and house, and as I stood there, in their garish foyer, surrounded by the starving and destitute, nearly freezing to death, I…picked up a gun from one of the half-dead soldiers and shot the Baron, his wife, and their children.”
The commoners that had taken shelter from the cold in the estate quickly followed her lead, though the vast majority of the Baron’s personal guard joined the cause just as fervently as the rest of them. In less than a day, the land was reclaimed by the populace, and with bellies not quite so empty, and hearts a bit warmer, these would-be revolutionaries became far more motivated than any thought possible.
It had not been long since the pale had destroyed North Ambria, but nearly every personal account describes the interim period between its appearance and the start of the revolution as lasting a hundred lifetimes. Where once there was not even a glimmer of hope, there was a spark that burned brighter than the very sun they could not even see.
“That was all they’d needed. An example to follow. History is full of moments like that. Once something is proven to be possible, there are thousands of attempts at replication. The Calvardian Revolution wasn’t a topic that was widely taught, though I had done my own research. I wasn’t trying to be the next Sheena Dirk. I wasn’t even part of the revolutionary movement that had been bubbling since before the pale.”
Word spread like wildfire of ‘Wilhelm’s Uprising’, though disorganized attempts at doing the same across the Principality failed in quick succession. The North Ambrian Democratic Revolutionists, who had survived the pale, mobilized and promptly platformed her in every single method possible. Hijacked radio transmissions, hand delivered missives and letters, and even a few limericks to keep her name in the hearts and minds of the populace.
[Limerick here, pretend it was clever <3]
It was that song in particular that reached the Kreuzen Province of Erebonia, and the ears of Colonel Valestein himself. The current marching orders were to proceed with a contract negotiation in Calvard, though the Colonel, after very little deliberation, led the Northern Jaegers back to North Ambria for a gamble unlike any other. There simply was no other option if North Ambria was to survive.
“At any point, the soldiers under my command could have decided I’d lost my damned mind and mutinied. I’m still shocked they didn’t. I would say I did lose my damned mind when I turned us around from more mira and aimed our guns at the aristocracy,” chuckles Colonel Valestein. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t believe that Maria was a real person until I met her. I’m grateful she is.”
By the time the Northern Jaegers returned home, rumors of Wilhelm's Uprising had also reached Remiferia, to which Prince Balmund responded very poorly. Simultaneously, he seemed to finally understand that the crisis was as horrifying as many had been trying to tell him. As such, he decided it was in his best interests to focus on saving face over anything else.
“It is now that I call out for aid to assist in suppressing these revolutionaries that have infested our fair Principality. These terrorists have corrupted the minds of my people, making them believe that there is no path forward but destruction of centuries of holy tradition!” proclaimed Prince Balmund, in an open letter distributed to the Crossbell News Service, the nobility of Erebonia, and key members of Calvardian parliament. “My family is being held hostage in their lands by birthright, and I refuse to accept this. I ask that our age-old alliances be levied! We cannot allow chaos to consume an entire nation!”
To say that his pleas fell on deaf ears would not be accurate. Erebonia listened, as did Calvard. They both saw an opportunity to exert further power over the continent. The Calvard Republic reached out to the burgeoning revolutionary movement and promised aid in formally setting up their new governmental structure after they succeeded, an offer which was quickly and unanimously accepted.
Erebonia, however, bided their time. If they intervened, or even directly assisted the North Ambrian nobility, they would likely be pressured into annexing what was essentially dead and useless land. They would do so years later under drastically different circumstances.
For the moment, they were content to watch, just as the rest of the continent did.
“A quote goes here, probably something profound or silly but it seems profound.”
Rioting had erupted in the streets of Haliask by November 9th, as well as every other scrap of remotely livable land in North Ambria. What little energy the population had left was going to burn itself out in a matter of days if something didn’t change. History seemed doomed to repeat itself as it had in Calvard, with the blood of greedy, stubborn, and short-sighted nobles being spilled for the sake of survival.
“Josef was the most charismatic man I’d ever met. He had this way of speaking that was calming, motivating, and absurd all at the same time,” recalled Wilhem. “I think this was how he was able to connect so easily to everyone he met. They came in expecting someone gruff or extremely professional, and they walked away inspired and hopeful. Sometimes, even chuckling.”
“Dad got his tongue tied up a lot. He was embarrassed by it,” chuckled Sara Valestein, foster daughter of the late Colonel. “Funny thing is, I was around him so much growing up, as you’d expect, that I just assumed that how he spoke was how you were supposed to. So, if you’re wondering how he sounded, he sounds like me. Sort of.”
“When we lost Josef, we lost…a considerable amount of his deployment. For about a week, we thought we’d lost Sara, as well. We didn’t have either body, so we held empty grave funerals for both. Side by side. And then—a sincere miracle. Sara…showed up to report in. There were no other survivors. She’d been pulled out of a mass grave by the Imperial Army. Just as quickly as she’d appeared, she vanished again. A month passed. Two. We’d…assumed the worst. We got a package, one morning. No return address. No signature. Inside was twenty-five thousand mira, in cash, a handwritten letter, and several rocks that were likely to throw off any would-be thieves in the mail service.”
I’m sorry this isn’t more.
“The next month, another package. Fifty-thousand. The same letter. Another month, one-hundred thousand. The same letter. It fluctuated a bit, but every month we’d get at least one-hundred thousand mira from our ‘anonymous’ benefactor and the same apology.”
“We’d had very few deserters before the annexation. Most I wouldn’t classify as such, since they were followed by suicide. Some came back out of guilt, but a few never looked back. To my knowledge, Sara was the only one who left, looked back, but did not return.
Roughly forty-five percent of the nation’s funds were provided by the Northern Jaegers, though for the general population, the differences in percentages were all but unknown and essentially meaningless at the time.
“On paper, it was forty-five percent. In practice, it was double. Everything that wasn’t some fancy tea or liquor we couldn’t even afford ourselves was circled back into feeding us when we came home. So we could go back out. It never felt like there was any other way to pull your weight, though looking back, that was probably by design.”