Southeast of Skjoldur, beyond the jagged fjords and the storm-broken passes, stretched the land of Eisenreich. It was not a land of soft beauty or enchantment, like Arcanoria's flowering plains, nor the eternal defiance of Skjoldur's mountains. Eisenreich was a place of steel-gray skies and flat, unforgiving earth. Its rivers thick with iron silt, its northern ridges split open by endless quarries.
The land itself seemed forged for war. Wide, open plains offered perfect fields for maneuvering armies. The rivers flowed toward the east like veins of liquid iron, bringing ore from the mountains down into the heart of the realm. It was here, at the crossroads of those rivers, that the capital Eisenreich had been raised.
The city bore the same name as the nation, and in many ways, it was the nation. A fortress of titanic scale, its walls were black ironstone fused with steel beams, an impregnable ring that towered higher than any siege ladder could ever dream of scaling. Within, the city was a labyrinth of barracks, forges, parade grounds, and armories. Towers belched smoke night and day as industry churned without pause. The clang of hammer on anvil was as constant as the toll of a heartbeat.
Eisenreich glorified strength, discipline, and conquest. Children were drilled in military academies from the age of six. The crest of the Iron Eagle, wings spread and claws bared, adorned every banner and shield. To serve in the army was not merely an honor but a destiny. Eisenreich's philosophy was simple: peace was an illusion, war was the natural state of the world, and only through dominance could a nation secure survival.
The Eisenreich Intelligence Organization (EIO) was the shadow that complemented the iron fist. The EIO conducted assassinations, destabilized rival nations, sabotaged economies, and ensured that no enemy ever struck Eisenreich unprepared. They moved in silence, but their reputation was thunder. Across the Three Nations, rulers whispered of coups and vanishings that bore the mark of Eisenreich's black-ops division.
It was inevitable, then, that when General Kaelen Dravik staged his infamous coup during the War of the Shattered Crown, Eisenreich took notice. Here was a man after their own heart — ruthless, uncompromising, ambitious. The capital of Eisenreich saw in him not a usurper but a kindred spirit, a weapon to sharpen and wield.
The support was immediate. Eisenreich supplied Dravik's army with cutting-edge weapons: rifles whose barrels were cast from refined Eisenreich steel, cannons that roared like thunder across battlefields, war machines fueled by coal and sulfur. When Dravik's enemies resisted, Eisenreich went further still. Mercenary legions marched under their banners, veterans hardened by decades of conquest.
But a new enemy will change everything.
The war was meant to be short, decisive — a storm that would sweep away Dravik's enemies. But the Ironfang Rebels proved more resilient than expected. They were not broken men and women fighting for scraps; they were visionaries and zealots, fueled by ideals stronger than iron, with Dragur boosting their numbers .
Months dragged into years. Battles once won with ease became grinding slogs. Dravik's grip weakened, his victories hollow, his armies bled dry.
In Eisenreich's capital, the High Council of Generals watched with growing disdain. They had invested weapons, soldiers, and political capital into Dravik's war — and for what? To bleed resources for a failing tyrant? Eisenreich had never tolerated weakness, not in its soldiers, not in its leaders, and certainly not in its allies.
The decision was made in cold calculation: Dravik was no longer worth the investment.
Eisenreich turned on him as easily as one might discard a broken blade. Supplies meant for his camps were rerouted to the Ironfang Rebels. Mercenaries were recalled, then quietly offered to the enemy instead. Weapons shipments changed hands in the night. To Eisenreich, there was no contradiction in betrayal. Survival demanded pragmatism, and if the rebels were to triumph, Eisenreich intended to stand on the winning side.
But Kaelen Dravik was no man to accept defeat. And in his rage, he turned to the unthinkable.
From the blackest depths of sorcery, from grimoires bound in the skin of long-dead kings, Dravik called forth a weapon so forbidden that even Eisenreich had recoiled from it: the Infernal Rain.
On the day the skies split open, both friends and foes alike looked upward. The heavens wept fire. Demons fell from the sky, screeching, clawing, wings burning with hellfire. They rained down like a storm — each impact consuming cities, forests, and armies in oceans of flame.
The Draugr — patient, calculating — stepped forward into the hollowed carcass of nations. Humanity had broken itself, and they were ready to harvest.
The Draugr did not attack in vengeance. They attacked in necessity.
The war had given them everything they needed to understand human weakness. And now, their designs turned to resources. Eisenreich, with its rich veins of ore and its vast industrial complexes, was the ripest target imaginable.
Iron ore & steel — to forge frames, armor plating, weapon casings.
Copper & gold — to lay circuitry, wiring, conductivity for endless machines.
Rare earth elements — neodymium, yttrium, cerium — to fuel processors, targeting arrays, and magnetic propulsion systems.
Uranium & thorium — for the reactors that pulsed like black hearts within the strongest Draugr units.
Quartz & silicon — refined into the microchips that gave their minds clarity, into optics that gave them sight keener than hawks.
And beneath it all, a revelation that curdled the blood: human biomass itself. The Draugr had learned to use living tissue as organic catalysts in their synthesis chambers. Flesh became fuel. Blood became reagent. Humans became components in the monstrous fusion of machine and biology.
Eisenreich was the perfect quarry. And so the Draugr descended.
The High Council of Eisenreich, proud and unyielding even after the Infernal Rain, believed their nation could not fall. They rallied the Grand Army of Eisenreich — the most disciplined fighting force the world had ever seen.
Legions of steel-clad infantry marched in perfect ranks. Artillery lines spanned the horizon, cannons and mortars roaring to life.
But the Draugr were unlike any foe they had faced.
The assault began not with a charge but with a storm. Missiles screamed from the skies, faster than any cannonball, tearing apart entire battalions before they even set foot on the battlefield. Draugr warforms, sleek and black as razors, fell from above with wings of iron.
Flight-enabled Draugr bypassed the walls entirely, soaring over defenses that had stood unbroken for centuries. Artillery batteries exploded before they could even reload. War golems found themselves swarmed, torn apart by swarms of smaller constructs that scuttled into their joints and detonated from within.
The battlefields of Eisenreich — once places where discipline and order won wars — became charnel pits of chaos. The Grand Army fought with valor unmatched, their discipline never breaking, their formations holding until the last. But valor and discipline were nothing against precision-guided slaughter.
In one month, Eisenreich's army — the terror of the continent, the nation that glorified conquest — was annihilated.
Factories were seized, their forges turned from weapons of liberation into chains of oppression. Its people — once conquerors — were forced into slavery, shackled and broken, mining the resources that would birth their new masters.
And thus ended the great military juggernaut. Eisenreich, the Iron Eagle, the unbroken fist of the east — shattered and enslaved, a scar upon the world it once sought to dominate.