02 - Iron Kingdoms W.. - Captain Spud Is Amazing

108.1.141.197
42 Iron Kingdoms
Skirov Rail Line (finished in 478 AR). During this
time Khadorans began manufacturing mechanika and
warjacks on par with Cygnar’s armies.
Also during the Quiet Century, Exarch Rudyin
Goresecha’s recollection of his journey through the
realms of Urcaen is detailed in Accounts of Urcaen
(1st ed. 320 AR). Fifteen years later the Temple of
Menoth published City of Souls. It was a collection of
the accounts of faithful sent to Urcaen and brought
back through the power of Menoth. Their visions in
death inspire Menites to embrace the words of the
Lawgiver with greater fervor. Through the power
of resurrection, Menoth has given those with doubt
further reason to believe, and Menites began taking
up the faith in record numbers.
A major calamity came about in 415 AR when a
wizard battle burned much of Mercir to the ground.
As rebuilding began in earnest, the Fraternal Order
blamed the fire on a woman, the “mad wizard”
Stacia Versh, who had terrified the Mercir guard
and the city’s populace for years with her magically
enhanced penchant for arson. The Church of Morrow
contributed aid to the displaced people until their
city was restored, and Stacia later confronted and
destroyed a group from the Order of Illumination in
the Cardare Mountains. She was consumed by her own
conflagration, and the goddess Thamar embraced
Stacia’s fierce soul.
Cannon fire off the coast of Ord punctuated the
end of the Quiet Century when Khadoran and Ordic
navies clashed over issues of piracy. By 464 AR, Khador
had once more invaded Ord intent on reclaiming
goods lost during Ordic privateer campaigns. Cygnar
intervened and diplomats negotiated a settlement.
A few ounces of gold richer, Khador begrudgingly
withdrew, but Cygnar’s partisanship angered them.
They declared peace diffidently, and the tranquility of
the Quiet Century ended.
The Sulon Declaration
The greatest turmoil since the Border Wars with
Khador did not come from outside Cygnar. Instead it
came from within and tested the faith of every man,
woman, and child. During the Quiet Century, Menites
had so grown to despise Morrowans that in the latter
half of the 5th century AR, open hostility erupted
between the two faiths. Blood spilled in the streets,
and the Church of Morrow accused Menites of being
blindly violent and callous. With the Crown’s support,
authorities arrested Menites and charged them with
harming Morrowan holy sites, clergy, and faithful.
At the crest of this wave of blind aggression stood
Sulon, the Visgoth of Caspia. Viewed by many as a
visionary, he took charge of the Temple’s efforts and
drove the faithful to acts of aggression against the
Morrowan Church. Sulon called for an exodus in
which all Menites of Cygnar would join him in the
City of Walls. By summoning the faithful to him, Sulon
sought to build an army that would shake the nation’s
capital city to its core.
By the summer of 482 AR, tens of thousands
of the Menite population of Cygnar had moved to
eastern Caspia, a powder keg waiting to explode. The
Crown tried to placate the masses by giving in to some
of Sulon’s constant demands, but matters changed
after Cygnar refused the self-declared Heirarch the
right to expand the city beyond the easternmost wall.
The Hierarch’s demeanor darkened and he filled his
speeches with treasonous rhetoric. Riots and religious
crimes soon were rampant, and the Crown made a
plea for Sulon’s peaceful surrender while staffing the
bridges and walls with troopers and warjacks. Sulon
replied with these words: “Send the lawless pawns of
Morrow to Urcaen. Make them to wallow in fear while the
City of the Lawgiver is made strong with our faith!”
During the Longest Night of 482 AR, Sulon’s army
came across the bridges from eastern Caspia with any
weapons they could find including burning pitch,
plows, swords, and rifles. As the Crown’s forces shoved
the rioters into the waters of the Black River and back
into the eastern half of Caspia, the Menites unveiled
a final gambit. A cadre of zealots fearlessly guided
wagons filled with kegs of blasting powder into the
midst of the bridges. The explosions sundered the two
halves of the city. The stone viaducts were obliterated
and their shattered remnants tumbled into the river.
The eastern section of Caspia was blockaded, and the
Menite faithful used the city’s walls to their advantage.
Sulon was quite pleased; he called his faithful the
Children of Sulon.
After holding eastern Caspia for two years the
Hierarch and his followers, called Sulese, made a
desperate drive into western Caspia in an attempt to