For generations, people called this fractured limestone of Steinlaut 'Stremena-Dolg' — the land of broken ridges. They herded sheep along knife-edge karst ridges, navigated sinkholes by memory, and paid little mind to the massive ruins (Alendrian, or perhaps older than the name) buried deep in gorges below. To them, those monuments were best left undisturbed.
Then came Hesa's westward push. The stern lords of Haus Steinlaut imposed military allegiance and their name upon the geography, erecting dark-timber keeps in sharp conflict with the pale-marble ruins below. But the karst resists. Ravines crumble into sinkholes; subterranean rivers swallow patrols; ceaseless wind through porous limestone keeps the frontier wild and largely unexplored.
At their center stood Steinlaut Crossing — a town built onto an impossibly ancient pale marble bridge. That crossing is gone now. Shattered by its defender's own hand. And the story of why is everything tearing this frontier apart.
A young house forged in frontier wars, controlling southwest Hesa. Once praised by Emperor Matthias I, they fell under Sigmar II to accusations of Erbbruch — stolen valor and falsified inheritance. Whispers say their true name was Steinlaudt, honors stolen from a defunct line. Never proven, but alliances frayed. The stain never dried.
Now they claw back toward imperial favor through two kinds of power.
Hagan's elder sister. True architect of Steinlaut's survival. She believes the Empire is a living structure to shape or raze. Loyalty spoken can be leveraged; she gives none freely. Her ambition is architectural: build alliances, bind debts, wait years, strike the keystone. She does not hate enemies. She removes them. Her obsession: the Frontier Assessment Convoy and Land Patent it will deliver.
Grim, disciplined, deeply pragmatic. Speaks rarely; words placed like foundation stones. Forged in Sitztange and Gruenstein's brutal campaigns, hollowed by abandonment until only this remained: those willing to stain hands preserve the bones. When Grimzog's goblins surged from the west, he saw opportunity. With Bathild's blessing, he brokered a pact: goblin steel for conquest. Grimzog gets territory and Alendrian blood; Hagan gets warriors who reach where imperial plate cannot — the deep karst, the sunless ravines. He carries that bargain like a swallowed stone. He does not speak of it.
Born in Brackenthollow, a Gruenstein hamlet swallowed by Empire's westward push. Family were charcoal burners and hedge-healers, folk charms passed through women who tended hearths. She remembers smoke, mother packing one sack, men arguing fight-or-yield — and that it didn't matter. Brackenthollow is ash now.
Sir Hagan sheltered there during campaign, met a woman quiet and unafraid. Bond forged in firelight and silence. Married her against Bathild's advice; Bathild fabricated lineage from defunct von Brackental. Ilsa wears the name like borrowed silk.
Pregnant now. Keeps rowan berries and salt hidden, whispers to hearths, traces bone charms braided in hair — rowan twig, fox tooth, hearthstone chip from home that doesn't exist.
Born in @Dolzan, Sitztange ravines to trapper and smuggler. A desperate need for lumber left @Dolzan in ash. Steinlaut forces took him in; proved worth mapping invisible terrain, reading goblin signs weeks before patrols. Hagan placed him at Hochbrink as page — cover accessing correspondence, schedules, conversations of officers forgetting servants hear things.
True role: spy, courier, informant fluent in goblin dialects and imperial ciphers. Moves between camps, lairs, court with ease. Loyal but not blindly. Carries pre-recruitment smuggling contacts. Pouch of goblin trinkets origins unexplained.
The uprising happened on his land — his bridge, his archive burning below. When rebellion threatened to make the crossing a symbol of imperial failure, Hagan made the call: unleash the colossal karst behemoth.
He ordered Gisela of the Deep — his trained beast-warden — to bind the creature and drive it into a frenzy against the central span. She executed with the efficiency he had praised. Bridge shattered. Scholars screamed. Millennia of engineering notes burned or plunged lightless.
And amidst collapsing marble, Gisela broke — not from creature's agony, but from his command. She fled into sunless depths within hours. She hunts there still, protecting the people her former master tried to crush.
Now the Krs-Hodaci organize in ruins she fled to. Every sabotaged wagon proves shattering the bridge didn't crush rebellion — it radicalized it. The woman protecting those rebels is the woman he made into a weapon then watched shatter. The goblin pact exists to solve exactly this problem. If Grimzog's creatures cannot root out what Hagan created... what was any of it for?
From deepest limestone gorges where water cascades down white marble steps and vivid flora overgrows geometry, the Krs-Hodaci emerged beyond banditry: syndicate of native smugglers, political refugees, radical defectors. Their motto: "Gravity binds what iron shatters." Having sunk to the world's bottom, they are its bedrock.
To occupiers: filthy insurgents in sinkholes. To oppressed natives: lifelines, keepers of ancestral choruses.
Hidden inside collapsed Alendrian aqueducts and water-catchment basins. Cracked roof floods space with sun pillars. Pure water cascades geometrically perfect steps. Strategically brilliant — labyrinthine cisterns and echoing chambers mask camps and armories from forces above.
Ancestral Hearth: vast fire pit on fallen column — planning, meals, ancestral choruses under sun shafts. Sun-Shaft Terraces: north, catching light for Plamen-root tubers and medicine herbs. Brazen Alcove: east, holding dormant bronze automaton — the Bronze Maestro. Viaduct Lofts: south, colorful tents strung across aqueduct channels, unreachable by armored troops.
@Sorina — Priest and the Solemn Central point of Orbit
@Dragan Bardhylov — Massive Con Artist with a Heart of Gold
@Gisela of the Deep — The Penitent Beast Master
@Amalia Corvi — Exiled Healer whose recklessness is her own enemy
@Chalceus — Craftsman who wants to live
Hagan's beast-warden. Trained by him. Trusted. Praised for efficiency following orders. When commanded to drive behemoth into frenzy against Steinlaut Crossing, executed perfectly.
Then broke. Not from creature's agony. From weight of knowing: scholars burning, knowledge lost, millennial bridge reduced to jagged teeth over roaring river. Fled within hours. Krs-Hodaci took her in.
Now hunts gorge's most dangerous beasts alone, returns calcified fangs to trophy plinths. Living proof of Hagan brutality. Its most complicated casualty. No reconciliation while goblins hunt and Hagan refuses acknowledgment. But she is there. Remembering everything.
Where @The Weiland Grade meets @The Covenant's Trench. Lime kilns billow caustic smoke; laborers shatter Alendrian columns into mortar. Ancient ruins dismantled, burned — paving trench supposed to secure conquest. Toll-wardens extort travelers, confiscate artifacts. Outer camp crawls with mercenaries and smugglers. Only shelter: Das Zollbuch und Beil — overpriced bunkhouse of hacking loggers and desperate souls.
Empire's greed meeting reality: wonders fed to kilns, heritage rendered mortar, wagons leaving west targets for sabotage.