Even darkness must pass
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To See Such Times
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In the Sarangrave, chaos reigns. It is a season of ruin, of madness, bloodshed and terror, fury and despair, magic and steel and water and twisted bough, poison and hope, light and darkness, endings and beginnings. You can feel it in the air. The red dice are rolling, the world is in free-fall and nobody has the slightest idea of what will be showing when they finally come to rest.

The blight of ruinous Spring magic begins to settle over the waters here, but at the last moment it frays and falls to pieces. Instead, a different power of magic spreads out, filling the waters with wholesome healing power. Imperial magicians have undone the scheme of the Druj, replacing their malign curse of death with a benign curse of life for everyone fighting here.

There is plenty of other magic at work here. The behemoth god-beast Kroll has risen from the nameless lake to loom over the Palace of the Sleepers, and yet the Palace itself has vanished. Wards and traps unfold across the marshes and the forests laid down by fleeing magicians and desperate covens. The Druj miasma clings to everything here, heightening feelings of fear and despair, but the Imperial armies are accompanied by thousands of golden knights drawn from the court of Queen Eleonaris. Part of Zenith has fallen under Druj control, trapping Imperial armies in Bloodwater Marsh, but the Empire moves its own soldiers to try and reclaim it. The power of the Shackle Smasher has been unleashed in the Nesustak Forest, while wicked wards of Spring and Night run riot across the marshlands. Alliances shift, and nobody can be entirely sure who is a potential friend and who is secret foe.

All Seem Accursed
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The chaos spills south into Zenith. The Towerjacks have come to the forest of Lustri. There they meet the Argent Sword; the army of heralds, guardians, and soldiers from the Iron Labyrinth who march as part of a costly bargain wrought with the Sovereign Lords of the Cities of Autumn.

The second army of Urizen is a thing of wonder. An army of minotaurs, their horns adorned with gold and steel, who march in the shadow of three dozen many-armed bronze colossi each a head taller than any mortal being. An army of hammer-wielding smiths, as broad as they are tall, warriors of the City of Fire and Stone under contract to Callidus of the Coins. An army of both swift-moving almost fox-like scouts with a supernatural sense for the presence of wealth, and of ox-sized silver spiders recruited from the City of Bridges to provide expert support on matters of logistics. They march under orders from a human general, and they are unlike anything that has been seen in the Empire in living memory.

During the Summer Solstice, the Druj attempted to assail the marshes of Proceris. With the aid of the Green Mother they sought to transform the bog octopuses of the waterlogged region into ravenous monsters; if not for Imperial heroes the many-legged tasty cephalopods would have undergone an unnatural growth spurt. Their scheme was stopped, those responsible scattered.

Now a ward of Night magic hangs over Proceris protecting it from further trouble - there are sentinels already at work seeking out any remaining Druj and giving them swift justice. Even with the power of the ritual reduced to protect only the region where it is cast, there is nowhere for these guerillas and ambushers to hide - the empowered magic of Night sees to that. Ironic, given that empowerment was worked by the Druj in the first place…

Two armies then march to the woodlands of Lustri. The Urizen of Zenith are first to warn of the Druj trap. The Tainted Basilisk have worked their own enchantment on the forest, weaving an entangling net of Spring magic between the trees. The effect is horribly familiar - a ward that is all too easy to pass into but almost impossible to escape. Druj warriors and awful venomous abominations alike sneak and skitter between the trunks of the dark woodlands waiting for the armies to put a foot wrong.

They have reckoned, however, without the ingenuity of the Towerjacks. This trap may be magical in nature but ultimately it is just another kind of fortification. There are safe paths here, as well as deadly ones. There are choke-points and dead-ends, killing grounds and barriers, but the Holberg engineers are no stranger to such concepts. It takes a little less than a week to reconfigure the Imperial strategy, and then with the Towerjacks in the vanguard the armies storm the walls the Druj have raised.

The fighting is bloody and terrible. The Argent Sword are disciplined but fundamentally unfamiliar with woodland fighting. The Towerjacks are adept at predicting and defusing the traps of the Druj wards, but they must still deal with the warriors and beasts protected by that magic. Blood spills and pools beneath the trees as the season rolls on. It is slow going, every step risks setting off a trap or an ambush. Yet the armies do make progress, do take those steps.

Almost immediately it is clear that the armies of the Druj are not in Lustri. It is clear they are relying on their ward to hold back any Imperial counterattack while the six armies that came down from Therunin have pressed into the Sarangrave in hope of slaughtering the Empire’s soldiers in the southern Sarangrave.

It might have worked. The ward is powerful, but the Towerjacks make all the difference. They unravel the puzzle, match cunning for cunning, disable the traps, and break through the dead-ends and barricades of writhing thorns. Ten days before the Autumn Equinox news comes from the front; the armies of Urizen and the League have been victorious. Lustri is now in Imperial hands once more.

So Our Path Is Laid
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Six armies of Druj, out of Therunin, fresh from the ruination of the Stork’s Gaze. Without exception they hurl themselves into the fray, an overwhelming assault against the Bloodwater Marsh and the Imperial armies caught between their hammer and the twin anvils of the vallorn of Béantal Dol and the colossal fortification of the Tower of the Skink.

There is a desperation to their strategy; it seems that several of these armies are drawn from the septs of the marshlands. Six armies. The Arrow Viper and the Thorn Born, the Jagged Claws and the Hunting Scorpion; the Flame Beetle and of course the Tainted Basilisk. They have pulled out all the stops; almost all of them bear an enchantment of Spring magic that grants them the cunning of the predators coupled with a thirst for blood and mayhem found nowhere in the animal kingdom. The blessings of the Tainted Basilisk.

They face two Imperial armies - the Winter Sun and the Granite Pillar. The Granite Pillar continues to fight alongside the Knights of Glory drawn from the Summer realm, who relish every opportunity to strike against the hated Druj. The Winter Sun bear a different boon - a strange enchantment of Night magic whose effects are at first not entirely clear. The Granite Pillar have their work cut out for them, holding the territory the Empire has already taken while the Winter Sun focus on seeking out native forces that might aid the Empire’s plans.

Battle erupts across the Bloodwater Marshes again - the Empire fights against the desperate, furious Druj and their vicious enchantments. Like the orcs, they are also caught between hammers and Anvils. From the south-west, six armies. From the east, the Tower of the Skink. To the north of them, the vallorn and the feverwater. A war in microcosm, as the Imperial armies must split their attention between pushing into Whisperwood and fighting off nearly thirty thousand powerfully enchanted Druj warriors.

Watcher in the Water
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In the north, the ghulai of the Palace of the Sleepers, along with their college of magic, have disappeared. They have left behind a terrible beast; the catastrophically large single-eyed octopoid horror that they called from the lake below their conical hill. As large as a castle, the supernatural terror sweeps aside the soldiers arrayed against it with its immense muscular tentacles.

As it fights, it lets loose terrible booming cries that cause the lake around it to surge and explode upwards. The ground itself runs like water, miring those trying to fight their way clear of the area. It soon becomes clear that the god-beast Kroll does not intend to fight alone. In answer to its thunderous call come hundreds upon hundreds of bog octopuses. Not the tiny cephalopods that throng in the marshes of Proceris to the south, but full-grown beasts that sometimes rival an ox-wagon in size. They erupt from the marshes, falling on the Imperial armies.

While they fight, the Druj forces battling to keep Sarangrave fall back. They seek to take advantage of the confusion to flank the northern force - the Eastern Sky, the Fire of the South, the Gryphon's Pride, the Lions of Adelmar, the Northern Eagle and the Boyar's Hasta, and the Summer Storm, joined by the Quiet Step from the Barrens, and the Citadel Guard and Golden Axe driving north with some preternatural force.

Arrayed against them are the Deadly Blade and the Hidden Snake, the Hidden Widow and the Poison Crane, the White Lion and the Red Lizard. They are no less desperate than those attacking in the south, and many of them bear the same enchantment - a parting gift from the ghulai of the Palace of the Sleepers no doubt. The Deadly Blade and the Hidden Widow supplement their vicious attacks with terrible venoms, which they distribute among the other armies freely. Their aim is clearly to kill as many Imperial soldiers as possible; an aim that is proudly supported by the cruelty and merciless tactics of the Black Wind. They wield the power of fear and despair as a weapon that is well-suited to their hands.

It is just as well that the water here runs with life, or their murderous plan would have taken an unspeakabl