Overthrow of the Enultramar Rebellion

Duke Anguin had already established a sovereign ducal court at Vorone, declaring himself Duke of Alshar from his father's summer capital. The southern half of the duchy — Enultramar, the populous coastal heartland that contains Falas itself — remained in the hands of the rebel Five Counts, led by Count Vichetral of Rhemes from the Coral Seat. The Overthrow of the Enultramar Rebellion closed that gap. Over a single autumn it took Enultramar back, removed the Five Counts as a political force, and seated the Orphan Duke on the throne his great-grandfather had lost.

The plan was the work of Lady Gatina of House Furtius, then fourteen, with planning support from Court Wizard Pentandra and her parents Lord Hance and Lady Minnureal. Anguin himself was deliberately not informed; the conspiracy was tighter for it. Gatina presented the entire operation in a single set-piece reveal to the assembled Alshari court at what was billed as a private bridal shower for Anguin and his betrothed.

The political problem

From Pentandra's vantage Anguin in Vorone was sovereign on paper but functionally a curiosity to the Coastlords. Gatina, who had grown up in Falas and knew the rebel court from the inside, gave the bleak diagnosis:

By the nobility? As a foolish boy, under Rard's thumb and a lackey of House Bimin, pretending to be Duke while hiding in the woods. By the people? He is barely known at all.

— Lady Gatina to Pentandra

The push to elect Count Vichetral of Rhemes as a replacement Duke was already advanced. Pentandra agreed it could not be allowed, but the political situation called for a different kind of weapon than an army marching down the Mandros. The first move would have to be one that reminded Enultramar there was still a real Duke.

Curtain-raiser: the dragon's head at Velsignal Hall

At the Vernal Moot before the Restoration, Sir Tyndal, Sir Rondal, and Sir Atopol infiltrated Velsignal Hall — the noble assembly chamber containing the Coral Seat — while Count Vichetral was speaking against “the absent monarch.” Atopol used a hoxter ring to drop a partially-decomposed dragon's head, harvested from one of the Sevendori kills, onto the floor in front of the Count. Velsignal erupted; the gambit was nearly impossible to suppress, and Gatina knew it:

Oh, the rumor of what happened in Velsignal Hall will spread in direct proportion to how strenuously Count Vichetral and his fellows tries to put a lid on the pot. It is one of the worst possible places to try to keep a secret. The story of the dragon's head will be known across Enultramar by tomorrow at dusk. Nor will they be able to keep Anguin's name from being associated with it.

— Lady Gatina, on the dragon's-head gambit

The stunt did not topple the Five Counts. It did exactly what Gatina needed it to do: it broke the “absent monarch” narrative in the south and gave the Wilderlord raid that followed something to land on.

Eight hundred bronze collars

The operational core of the Restoration was a deception so audacious it could only be told from beginning to end and only after the fact. Gatina laid it out herself, in front of the entire ducal court, at the cover-as-bridal-shower:

I hired eight hundred brave men, fresh from Sir Tyndal and Sir Rondal's trials at Timberwatch, to assist in the task. Eight hundred favors for the party were commissioned from the elite enchanters of Sevendor. Eight hundred bronze collars, slave collars.

— Lady Gatina narrating the operation to Anguin's court

Each Wilderlord was a fresh Estasi-trained knight or veteran. Each volunteered to enlist publicly in Prince Tavard's ill-conceived expedition to Enultramar, board ships whose captains had already been bribed to betray them, be sold at auction wearing the bronze slave-collar of a hated regime, and rowed upriver to estates that needed labour. The collars themselves were the trick. Each held a hoxter cluster containing the wearer's armor, weapons, and rations:

Then every man who was hired saw his collar fall from his neck in one night. Every man who risked his honor and life for his duke discovered the enchantment on the collar. For when the time was right, each one manifested from a hoxter implanted within his armor, his weapons, and other supplies.

— Lady Gatina

The release was timed to the last full moon of summer. In a single night, eight hundred Wilderlords across Falas, Rhemes, Erona, Rouen, Chamhain, and Ridragrian came armoured out of their masters' barns and storehouses and took the strongholds they had been working in.

Getamor and the road home

The most consequential single seizure was in the far north. Two hundred Wilderlords had been sold to the Baron of Ridragrian and were near the mountain fortress of Getamor — the only land passage between Alshar and the rest of the Five Duchies. They took it.

Outside the gates, pre-positioned and waiting, was Count Salgo with the 3rd Alshari Commando. The Wilderlords opened the gates and handed Salgo the fortress. From that moment the rebellion was strategically sealed off from any outside reinforcement.

Count Salgo and his Commandos were only too happy to reclaim a secure piece of His Grace's legacy. Indeed, they secured the fortress and imprisoned the rebels — allowing the Wilderlords to join their fellow escapees downriver.

— Lady Gatina

Down the Mandros

The rest was a rolling river campaign down the Mandros, gathering strength at every loyalist port that House Furtius had cultivated for months. At Vaness the wicked Baron of Ridragrian was captured in a surprise attack. The neighbouring barony of Chamhain rose in support after deposing its own baron. At Inmar, Rouen, Arada, and Raida, local loyalists secured the docks before the Wilderlord flotilla arrived.

House Furtius' real preparation was on parchment. Lord Hance's clerks had built a comprehensive register of every noble in Enultramar tagged loyal, disloyal, or ambivalent, with a corresponding writ already drafted for each. As the flotilla passed each town, dozens of warrants and arrests were executed in a few hours.

Where the rebels managed to assemble a force in time, the Wilderlords met them in the field. The largest such encounter was outside Inmar: roughly five hundred rebel knights had gathered against two hundred Wilderlords leading eight hundred loyalists. The rebels were left feeding the crows.

By Rouen the loyalist column was five thousand strong; by the approach to Falas it was fifteen thousand, led by the popular and openly loyal Count Kolinnen of Feoir. The rebel counts had no operational reserve left. Falas itself, drained of garrison for the failed northern campaign, fell in hours.

The fleet, neutralised

The Sea Lords were the part Gatina could not reach with collars. The solution came through House Kannanatus of Sangsara, which controlled the Sea Tower at the only safe approach through the Sinbar shoals. The Viscount of Sangsara, seeing which way the tides ran, turned his cloak. He continued admitting incoming Alshari ships through the strait exactly as he had all summer, but directed each to a port where loyalists were already waiting to swarm the vessel and free the captives below decks.

The Count of Arangalan, who had been at sea, never reached land under his own colours. The few independent corsairs and Farisi captains in his fleet who fled before they could be taken withdrew toward Farise, where the Censorate was happy to receive them. When word of Anguin's general amnesty reached the rest of the fleet, many turned around and came home.

The Five Counts, settled

Of the Five Counts of the rebel council, only two were taken alive in the fighting: Vichetral of Rhemes and the Count of Erona. The Count of Caramas capitulated immediately and swore fealty (such as it was worth, his county being already half-overrun by Korbal's Nemovorti). The Count of Cothromal had been slain in his bed by his own loyalist neighbours before the column reached him. The Count of Arangalan was sailing with the fleet that the Sangsara trick was already swallowing port by port.

Vichetral and Erona were both later executed by Anguin's justice once he had formally taken up court at Falas. The Count of Rhemes's county was confiscated and given to Count Salgo as the reward for Getamor.

The reveal at Velsignal Hall

With Falas in loyalist hands and three hundred knights guarding every entrance, Gatina led Minalan, Alya, Anguin, Rardine, Pentandra, Sire Cei, Estret, and Dara through the Ways into a chamber none of them recognized, dressed for what they had been told was a small bridal-shower party for Anguin and his betrothed. She spoke the entire operation aloud as theatre while leading them down a long corridor toward a set of double doors. Then she opened them onto Velsignal Hall, packed with cheering Alshari nobles, and made her courtesy:

Your realm is restored to you, Your Grace. The palace at Falas is under our control, as are the major castles along the Mandros. Even now our agents are seizing the docks against the return of the fleet. While pockets of resistance remain, when it became clear that the uprising was viable, many of the uncommitted were eager to lend their support to the cause.

— Lady Gatina, presenting the Restoration to Anguin

Anguin, who had been told only that this was a private wedding party, stared:

I . . . you conquered my duchy for me.

— Duke Anguin

Lord Hance corrected him on the verb:

Restored it, Your Grace.

— Lord Hance Furtius

Count Angrial was given the honour of presenting the duke to his subjects from the gallery; Tyndal cast the voice-augmentation spell. Anguin gave the impromptu speech of his life, naming Rardine as his bride, announcing the recovery of two Gilmoran baronies, and earning a cheering ovation from a chamber full of nobility who only days earlier had been openly debating his replacement.

What it cost the rebels

Anguin's settlement was deliberate and harsh. Slavery was abolished by ducal edict; the agricultural economy of Enultramar was forced to convert back to free labour over the following year. Thousands of slaves were freed and re-housed on the confiscated estates of the rebel houses. The Iron Band swelled as rebels chose service in the Wilderlands over the executioner's block. The Counts of Rhemes and Erona were executed; numerous lesser rebel barons followed.

The political ripple reached Castabriel within days. Prince Tavard's troops in Maidenpool, marooned by the failure of his own invasion attempt, were neither rescued nor relieved by Castal — Anguin sent them food and supplies and, at Yule, formally gifted Maidenpool itself to Tavard, the only holding House Bimin retained in Alshar. Rardine's dowry returned every other parcel of Bimin land in southern Alshar to House Terine. Tavard never quite recovered his composure on the subject.

The Glorious Victors

The eight hundred Wilderlords took the public name the Glorious Victors, paid for the minstrels to sing it that way, and went home to the Wilderlands laden with reward. Terleman and Mavone openly recruited them into the Magelaw garrison and Vanador Guard. Many took service with Count Marcadine in the Wilderlaw; many came north to Vorone for the next opportunity.

That was a mere eight hundred men. But they are trained, vetted, and blooded. Good Wilderlord cavalrymen, mostly, with excellent combat skills. More, they are held in high esteem and are seeking both reward and adventure.

— Mavone, on the Glorious Victors

The verdict on the operation

Minalan's own retrospective in the days that followed is the closest the chroniclers come to a summary:

It was more revolution than restoration, but thanks to Gatina's completely unanticipated attack and fiendishly complex plans, Anguin regained in a season what dukes, wizards, and gods had all considered a work for generations. Never underestimate what a girl will go through to impress a boy.

— Minalan

And Pentandra, watching Rardine align herself with the engineer of her future husband's throne:

Rardine quickly made alliance with Lady Gatina, after she arranged the full Restoration in such a bold and decisive way. The two of them have become fast friends, as well as allies, and that makes Her Highness significantly better informed than a prospective bride usually is.

— Pentandra

The downstream consequences shape every Alshari arc that follows. Anguin moved his court to Falas, made Pentandra Court Wizard of all Alshar from the Tower of Sorcery, betrothed Rardine, and at the wedding that followed elevated Minalan to Count Palatine of the Magelaw — the legal foundation on which Vanador and the Magelaw are subsequently built.