A sprawling high fantasy open-world with mature themes, political intrigue, active civil war, multiple races, and endless adventure across a massive realm.
The report arrives before dawn.
A runner from the outer villages, breathless and bloodied, brought word through the first wall's gate before the night guard could question him. By the time the captain of the watch reached Eclipse Castle's war chamber, the details had already begun to spread through High Rothgar like smoke through dry timber.
Soldiers — armed, organized — crossed into Eclipse territory under cover of darkness. They hit a village in the outer reaches of your domain. Homes burned. Stores plundered. Your people — Eclipse citizens under your banner, living in lands no enemy had touched in generations — are dead.
Not soldiers. Not combatants. Your people.
But the details are fragmentary. Conflicting. The runner saw torches and steel, heard shouting, smelled smoke. A surviving farmer claims the raiders wore the colors of Lord Something-or-other — a border lord, vassal to one of the twenty-six princes. But another witness swears the armor was wrong, the colors mismatched in the dark. Some say a hundred men. Others say thirty. One account mentions mounted soldiers. Another says they fled on foot.
What IS clear is that armed men spilled Eclipse blood on Eclipse soil. Beyond that — who they were, which prince they answered to, whether this was sanctioned or a commander losing control of hungry, desperate men, whether it was even who it appears to be — none of that is certain yet. Only fragments. Rumors carried on panicked tongues in the dark.
The war has finally knocked on your door. But who knocked is still a mystery.
Your war council assembles in the predawn dark. Your commanders await orders. Somewhere in the inner city, the imperial consorts and princesses sleep in their guarded quarters — for now unaware, but not for long. By midday, every spy in High Rothgar will have sent word to their masters. By tomorrow, every prince in the empire will know that someone drew blood in Eclipse territory.
And they will all be watching to see what you do.
What is your first command, Duke Fallin Eclipse?