A nation born of blood will surely drown in it.

This maxim, written by the defeated, by those who were cast out of their gilt halls and high towers, was scoffed at and written over by those very men they referred to. All the sweeter too that those defeated, the subjects of the Witch-King of Gog, presided over a depraved tyranny. It was, to the liberator sons and daughters of Eronymous, first Emperor of Caecras, the indignant bleating of a broken foe. Their new state, founded by these wayward legions, was to last one thousand years. Upright and moral warriors would maintain the rule of law and justice. Brilliant erudites would advance the sciences and uplift the citizenry from the darkness of ignornance.

Eight hundred years have passed. Eight hundred years fraught with brutal conquest and plunder. Eight hundred years of merciless progress bought at any cost. Peace was rare, a blessing by which mankind might prepare to make war again. The lives of innumerable heroes had been spent to make Caecras into what it was: the greatest nation to span the continent, a sanctuary for millions of pious and dedicated souls. The insipid and iniquitous that nipped and bit at its borders were no cause for fear. They had always been there, and one day they would not.

Eronymous' sound architecture of state, a map for an Imperial millenia, had manifested favorably, despite all the fallibility of common man. With such faith, zeal, and adherence how could one thousand years not come and be made theirs?

In simple terms: A nation born of blood will surely drown in it.

The descendants of Eronymous were hacked to pieces and displayed in grisly fashion atop the parapets of the capital. The imperial dynasty was undone in a matter of hours. The orcs, the slave-soldiers of Caecras, the beastmen that were the source of so much of the nation's martial success, had risen in mutiny by the direction of one who styled himself their king.

It was not a feat for him to the rotten heart of Eronymous' Empire from its chest and undo the work of eight hundred years. It was no feat at all. It was as simple as any of the other petty wars he and his kin had been forced into.

Even as the institutions of the state collapsed and local rulers scrambled in that sudden vacuum, many questions remained: How had the orcs undone their conditioning and turned their blades on their masters? What would become of the nation? Where were the master wizards of the Tower Arcane, those who had first wrought the orcs?