Achaean News
Endgame at the Water's Edge
Written by: Captain Blackgale
Date: Thursday, July 3rd, 2025
Addressed to: Dawnlord Aroan Shire
Lord Aroan,
The game is played out and the field lies bare; every pawn spent, every shadow drawn thin and scattered by grief. I have nothing left to barter, nothing left to wager - not since you took my boy and left this emptiness in his place.
It is only us now, Queen against Queen, each wounded by losses the other can barely fathom. I see the engines rising on your ramparts, the heavy arms of your catapults casting long shadows across the water. I know the odds, and I know the taste of coming defeat.
Yet still, I am drawn forward, if only by what little I have left.
I am tired of masks and riddles, of poison passed beneath the table; I am tired of fighting ghosts. When a month's cycle is run, my banner will rise for the final time. I have no more cards to play, no more hope for subterfuge, only a reckoning that I cannot, will not, turn away from. Ready yourself, for the end draws close and I will see this through, if only to prove that grief is not all that remains of me.
Let the sea bear witness to what we have lost, and to what we must now become.
Blackgale
Penned by my hand on the 11th of Valnuary, in the year 979 AF.
Endgame at the Water's Edge
Written by: Captain Blackgale
Date: Thursday, July 3rd, 2025
Addressed to: Dawnlord Aroan Shire
Lord Aroan,
The game is played out and the field lies bare; every pawn spent, every shadow drawn thin and scattered by grief. I have nothing left to barter, nothing left to wager - not since you took my boy and left this emptiness in his place.
It is only us now, Queen against Queen, each wounded by losses the other can barely fathom. I see the engines rising on your ramparts, the heavy arms of your catapults casting long shadows across the water. I know the odds, and I know the taste of coming defeat.
Yet still, I am drawn forward, if only by what little I have left.
I am tired of masks and riddles, of poison passed beneath the table; I am tired of fighting ghosts. When a month's cycle is run, my banner will rise for the final time. I have no more cards to play, no more hope for subterfuge, only a reckoning that I cannot, will not, turn away from. Ready yourself, for the end draws close and I will see this through, if only to prove that grief is not all that remains of me.
Let the sea bear witness to what we have lost, and to what we must now become.
Blackgale
Penned by my hand on the 11th of Valnuary, in the year 979 AF.