Two wars recently ended, planting the seeds for future conflict.
A network of highly ambitious merchant lords saw an opportunity to overthrow the nobility and take power to themselves in the Kingdom of Ispan. To avoid a prolonged, grinding war, the Ispanite Coup was quick and targeted. Mercenaries feinted to engage the nobles' armies in the field while assassins stole into the palaces and estates and eliminated the nobles en masse. To avoid an escalating conflict amongst themselves, the merchants agreed to split the country into independent city-states. This also allowed them to frame the coup as a revolution against the unjust aristocracy rather than a naked power grab, and thus the Free City Region was born. Mercenaries still stalk the countryside, seeking work or raiding for supplies. Refugees mostly fled to Aelonia due to the outbreak of war in the Dragon Kingdoms. Some surviving members of the ousted nobility opportunistically joined with either the Black Fist, in the hopes that, should Horde truly return, so would their thrones, or with the Dragon King, hoping he would back their attempts to retake their lands.
Mikhail Romnov, born in the Dragon Kingdoms but raised in Ispan, was once a militia archer who turned to adventuring before returning to fight in the Ispanite Coup. Following the coup, he formed an army from revolutionaries and mercenaries under the banner of the Black Fist of Horde and invaded the Dragon Kingdoms. He killed the Dragon King and set himself on the throne as the Black Duke, claiming that the long-dead god Horde was the true monarch of the land. He has spent the years since tamping down pockets of resistance and uniting the disparate dragon fiefdoms under his control. It is said that the Dragon Prince, Demitri von Rhinestadt, escaped the sacking of the palace with his closest advisors and seeks to rebuild his power and retake his rightful throne. If such rumors are true, the Prince no doubt seeks to awaken one or more of the Elder Dragons.
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