I. The Siege of the Ledger
The gilded halls of Aurum, the coastal capital, were ruled not by kings, but by the cold, calculating efficiency of the Ministry of Commerce. They measured the stability of the Trazarch Union in quarterly ledgers, treating the entire nation as an economic machine. For weeks, those ledgers had been screaming a story of impossible, escalating chaos—a financial plague they were structurally incapable of understanding.
The initial shockwaves were severe enough: Corvin Nyx's original Manore grid sabotage, the sudden disappearance of thirty mercenary guards, and the unprecedented, simultaneous escape of four key high-value slaves—including the highly valuable Garrus Vane and Alcides Ynatos. These events defied all established precedent. Single slave escapes were expected; a calculated, multi-asset liberation suggested a coordinated intelligence effort, which was an existential threat the Union's Ministry of Commerce was ill-equipped to handle.
The Ministry's initial reaction was a dangerous mix of denial and bureaucratic procedure. They did not pursue the possibility of a powerful, organized resistance like the Raven Lord; they pursued the most economically logical threats: embezzlement and banditry.
II. The Bleeding Coffers: The Compounding Chaos
Corvin's operations, managed by Veridian Vex and funded by the raids, became a relentless, compounding financial war against the Union's wealth.
A. The Strategic Drain
The Ministry's primary countermeasure was to approve massive emergency expenditures to hire new, higher-tier mercenary companies to pursue and eliminate the threats. This was a colossal, wasted investment:
The Phantom Army: Veridian Vex's precise creation of fake trails pointing to a phantom enemy—the fabricated "bandit kingdom"—had worked flawlessly. The Ministry's auditors and investigators, seeking simple answers to satisfy the ledgers, funneled gold into chasing this ghost. This massive, continuous expenditure was a wasted investment that proved Corvin's thesis: the Union's obsession with coin made them strategically blind to the true, single-point threat.
Continued Ambushes: Crucially, the Raven Legion was executing multiple, small-scale Road Ambush missions during this period. These ambushes, executed under the silent cover of the Black Flock, targeted the Union's vulnerable logistical routes—the East-West Industrial Artery and the North-South Strategic Axis. Every successful ambush removed gold, weapons, and supplies that were destined for the Ministry's central accounts, simultaneously denying them revenue and forcing them to commit more gold to replacing the lost assets.
The False Revenue Gambit Fallout: The financial chaos was intensified by the successful urban operation. Corvin's infiltration and subsequent False Revenue Gambit in the market town had injected an impossible surplus of gold into the municipal treasury. The subsequent internal panic, fueled by the Magistrate Velan's terror of exposure, locked up local funds and slowed internal audits to a crawl. The City Guard, preoccupied with securing the 'compromised' treasury, was useless in tracking down the actual threats.
This strategic financial hemorrhaging meant that the immense wealth the Trazarch Union could theoretically field (20,000 troops) was being drastically curtailed. Every gold piece wasted chasing Corvin's deception was a soldier the Union could no longer afford to field against the real threat. The Imperium was winning the war of logistics and finance before the first major battle.
III. The Problem of Obsidios Lithos (The Unsanctioned Order)
As the Ministry chased phantom armies, the structural evidence of Corvin's success became too profound to ignore. Reports began to trickle in about a bizarre atmospheric and structural phenomenon near the foothills of The World's Teeth:
The Atmospheric Contamination: The region near Lithos was now under a perpetual, localized cloud cover—the Obsidian Ordo. This phenomenon was scientifically inexplicable. Local officials and surviving handlers reported an unnerving psychological effect: a profound sense of absolute vindication of order settling over the land, replacing the Union's usual fear and chaotic anxiety. This aura was eroding the psychic control of the handlers and minor officials. Not only this, but the aura emitting from the tower caused all slaves and villagers to become curious, to seek out where that feeling of Dark Order came from. IT was the downtrodden, the abused, the enslaved, and people that did not agree with the moral rot, the corruption that as festered for so long. They are the ones who felt a sense of order and hope drawing them it.
For everyone else so deeply corruption, so deeply rotted to the core they felt Dread, they felt a primal Fear grip their hearts. A dark order established by one man's will to see this festering malignant pustules of corruption and rot.
The Unsanctioned Build: Reports, initially dismissed as the ravings of demoralized slaves, described an impossibly fast construction project: a massive, dark, pyramidal fortress—the Obsidios Lithos—guarded by fiercely loyal soldiers (the rapidly expanding Raven Legion) and sharp-eared builders (Sorcerers and Obel Harth).
The Bureaucratic Wall: The Ministry of Commerce was strategically crippled by its own core philosophy. Focused purely on financial loss and recovery, the reports detailing the arcane weather and the fortress were filed away by low-level clerks, deemed the responsibility of a different, non-existent defense ministry. The very idea of a fortress appearing overnight, commanded by an ex-slave and projecting an aura of Order, was an existential crisis too profound for the gold-obsessed Ministry to process rationally.
IV. The Fatal Decision
The escalating phenomenon of the Obsidian Ordo and the total loss of control over the eastern plains demanded a specialized response. The Ministry could no longer simply file the reports away; the strange cloud cover was starting to affect trade and local compliance.
The highest echelons of the Ministry of Commerce convened a secret session in Aurum. They were forced to admit that their usual mercenaries and auditors were failing. They needed a mind that could see beyond the ledger.
They made a fatal decision: allocating a significant amount of gold—a final, desperate gamble—to hire a Master Inquisitor. This Inquisitor would not be chasing bandits; their sole mission would be to penetrate the region, find the source of the atmospheric contamination, and neutralize the political threat behind it. This Inquisitor would be granted absolute, unilateral authority to execute whatever measures necessary to stabilize the region and restore the flow of commerce.
The war was now inevitable. The Union was finally sending a team capable of seeing past the financial deception, forcing Corvin Nyx and his growing army into the final confrontation that would either secure the Imperium's foundation or shatter it forever.