The Death of Gendai Winter

On the evening of the thirty-ninth of Spring, 221 AS, Lord Gendai Winter of Yensan, Nidahn, was murdered on his balcony. He was stabbed twice through the heart and once through the back of his neck by an assassin’s dagger, each puncture made with uncanny precision. Before anyone knew of the patriarch’s fate, he was dead, drowned in his own blood and his skull fractured in two from its impact with the flagstone floor. Gendai had been Lord of his House for some sixty years; an uncommonly long time for any house, let alone in Nidahn, a land known for its political plots. In the later years of his life, though by all accounts a good ruler, Gendai had become a highly progressive man, one known to push boundaries.In the eyes of his neighbors, he had begun to far overstep his bounds, and at the time it was assumed that, in all likelihood, he had been killed for it. The culprit was never caught, and so such theories were allowed free reign to spread as far as they liked; of course, we now know that Jacobi Luther, Lady Mayor of Ironbeck, was to blame, though this is itself less relevant to the actual events of the Diamond War. Regardless, in the wake of Gendai’s death, his title passed to the hands of his young daughter, Lioka Winter, who had always been a controversial subject.

Lioka Winter and Her Friend

Lioka Winter’s upbringing had been troubled, to say the least. Lioka was distant, a far cry from the customs of the people she had been born to. She was barely a noble, some said, though such individuals took care to keep their words out of Gendai’s ears, for Gendai was fiercely protective of his daughter, and she of him. It was this love between father and daughter that compelled Gendai to allow his daughter’s many escapades, and indeed, the girl was rarely seen in her House’s manor, let alone within Yensan; her time was better spent, she felt, beyond the walls of the city. There, her life was anything but troubled, in fact she seemed to find it quite joyous, as she spent day after day exploring, playing, singing and hunting, and always by the side of her nigh-constant companion, a bastard girl called Niana Di.

The two of them had met in a small village south of Yensan called Matinh, and since their meeting, it was said, they had shared a closer bond than sisters. In fact, once, when Lioka had caught a fever, it was believed that Niana was regularly allowed inside the manor to provide the young heiress with comfort. Many speculated about the two girls’ bond, wondering whether or not their relationship went deeper than simple friendship, a prospect that, at the time and considering the relative distaste for same-sex relationships of the Nidahnese, would have been incredibly damaging to the reputation of House Winter if true. Gendai himself paid no mind to such rumors, dealing with their threat to his reputation simply by ignoring them as one would a mildly annoying gnat. So it was for many years; a kind of awkward, willful ignorance of the fact that Lioka even existed, one that persisted until Gendai had passed, and shattered the instant his daughter took charge. Because, within mere months, Lioka’s name would be known far and wide, and would in fact be quite impossible to ignore.

Lioka as Lady Mayor

Lioka’s rule, like the girl herself, was distant. She acted and spoke sparingly, preferring to go up and into the mountains to meditate and grieve, with Niana by her side, of course. Indeed, since her father had died and Lioka found herself spending much of her time in the manor, Niana had seemed to become a permanent resident; Lioka made no appearance to the people of Yensan in which Niana was not in her immediate vicinity. For the following two months, all was quiet in Yensan; Gendai’s unfinished political work was left to the ministers by Lioka’s orders while the newly-named Lady Mayor herself was almost entirely absent. It is believed that, for a period of about two weeks roughly a month after Gendai’s death, Lioka was quite literally absent. During that time, no recorded sightings of Niana or Lioka exist; it was, at the time, entirely unclear as to where they had gone.

When she finally reappeared, she had changed. Whether her grief had finally broken her or a sickness had seized her mind, Lioka was quite certain of one thing: the perpetrators of her father’s death was none other than the royal Kahn Dynasty of Kalu. It seemed that in this belief, she had the Fates themselves at her side, for she returned to Yensan with the words of a Moonseer, whose fingers could weave moonlight into prophecy. Where she had found a Moonseer, and how she had received its wisdom, was unclear, but the scroll was, indeed, etched with the mark only the Moonseers knew how to create. To Lioka, the Moonseer’s words were a call to war against the sitting ruler of Kalu: Jhi Tao Kahn, Empress on the Diamond Throne of Nidahn. The prophecy in question went like this:

A war in the North, a name lost in snow;

A traitor on the throne, a tomb far below.

A promise to the Ice, a feast for the crows;

A child left to fate, a truth yet unknown.

In these words, particularly those of the second line, Lioka found certainty of Jhi Tao’s guilt. Who else, she argued, could be the traitor on the throne, if not one who had betrayed the sacrosanct laws of the land so grievously as to kill the Lord of House Winter? To Lioka there was no other valid answer, and with this new knowledge on repeat in her thoughts, she began in secret to prepare for war with the Kahns, to topple the traitor on the throne in vengeance for her father. She planned not to march on the city through the great Tem Yi Pass that connected the cities of Nidahn, but to take her forces north, through a dangerous route that cut briefly through the Arctic North, the uncharted polar wastelands North of Nidahn where few have ever tread and fewer have ever survived. However, as no known civilization occupied the lands far North of Merridel, taking such a route would allow Lioka’s forces to attack undetected from above Kalu, coming down the slope of the Lai Xeng Valley, which sat in the shadow of the great mountain known as Muna, and where Kalu was situated. The city would be blindsided, and the element both of surprise and of the high ground would be Lioka’s and Lioka’s alone. With Kalu’s defenses entirely engaged with the attack from the Arctic, a second force, smaller and disguised as a trade convoy, would cut off Kalu’s only escape through the Tem Yi pass, closing the city in and effectively sealing their fate. If all went to plan, Lioka was sure of Kalu’s demise, and that she would easily be able to bring her father the justice he so deserved. By the time the Summer Solstice had come and gone, the match was out, and Lioka Winter was about to strike it.

The Siege of Lai Xeng

Lioka launched her attack, at the head of her army with Niana by her side, and over the next week her army marched North. Though some seventy men were lost to the elements, it was nothing crippling, and by week’s end Lioka had arrived at the crest of the Lai Xeng Valley. The first of many long nights filled with fire and steel began, as the Winters rained fiery projectiles launched from catapults into the city and the Kahns scrambled to mount a defense. At first, the Kahns seemed determined to hold out against the siege, and to stop the Winters in their tracks, but by the end of the first night things seemed to change—inexplicably, the Kahns’ defenses seemed to soften, and over the course of the next few days the Winters had crushed the city’s outer defenses and broken through the walls. There, Lioka believed, the Kahns could be routed and crushed.

But the Kahns had planned exactly this—they had turned the siege around on their attackers, forcing them to expend valuable resources breaking down the city’s walls, all the while lying in wait to collapse upon the Winters the moment they entered the city. And indeed, when by nightfall on the fourth day of the attack the Winters played their opening hand, the Kahns revealed the doves up their sleeve.

The armies of Kalu attacked without mercy, their charge led by none other than Jhi Tao herself. She fought like a Demon, wielding the heirloom of the Kahn Dynasty: Jokai, the Diamond Edge. A Kalunese qopet16, dating back to the First Kahn Dynasty over a thousand years ago, Jokai possessed a blade made from a sheet of pure, sharpened diamond, supernaturally hard to destroy through old world magic. Though its exact powers have never been clear, it is generally agreed upon that the blade bestows its wielder with the power to control ice and snow. Lioka had expected the blade to make an appearance, but she had not guessed that Jhi Tao, a woman of what she believed to be such cowardice as to assassinate her father, would risk her life in such a way to wield it on the front lines. As the events of the following hours would prove, this was an error of unthinkable magnitude, as Jhi Tao would, almost single-handedly, rout the initial ground attack on the city. Despite the obvious bias in records on both sides of the conflict, all known accounts agree that Jhi Tao summoned up her own personal lightning storm, which caught the Winter soldiers by surprise and sent nearly all of them to an early grave.

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When the Winter forces finally began to respond, preparing to continue their aerial death-rain, Jhi Tao called her forces back, and it is believed that this was the only reason she did not march straight up the mountain and behead Lioka herself. No; instead, Lioka doubled her efforts, keeping up a night-and-day rotating shift and firing into the city to no end. Firebombs rained down from above like meteors, leveling and burning to the ground huge swathes of the city. Though once again Jhi Tao was nowhere to be seen, Lioka seemed not to care; her wrath, some Winter soldiers report, was a means to punish the Diamond Empress for her resistance. For three days, this assault on the city continued, until finally, on the third day of the second siege, the nonstop assault abated, and Lioka sent a messenger to the city, offering a parley between Lioka and Jhi Tao. The offer stipulated that the two parties were to come alone, and that Jhi Tao was not to bring the Diamond Edge. According to the testimony of Ser Garth Cress, an aging Human knight who had served at House Winter’s will for the last twenty years and who was quite close to Lioka, having taught her to ride horses when she was younger, Lioka expressed a desire to know why Jhi Tao had killed her father. Many of Lioka’s advisers, Ser Garth included, were against the idea, but Lioka was set on the plan deader than a doornail. And so the messenger was received, and for the remainder of the night both sides held their breath as they awaited the Empress’s reply.

At dawn the next day, Jhi Tao agreed, and sent the messenger back with a brief message of her own. Her exact words are recorded in the history books, remembered by all who were present and lived to tell the tale:

“Hear my vow to all the Storms, girl: if you attempt to harm me, or to deceive me, I will throw you off my Mountain and watch you shatter like glass before I go.”

At noon that day, Lioka and Niana made their way up the Mountain to meet with the Diamond Empress to parley. Many who were present at the time reported that Lioka had found it surprising that Jhi Tao would agree to the meeting, but had been adamant that the rules of the parley be respected. And so together, the pair climbed the mountain, and presumably met with Jhi Tao, though what was said has never been ascertained. All that is known is that, when hours past nightfall she returned, Lioka’s rage knew no bounds. For much of that night she stewed, with Niana by her side in her tent, while a blizzard howled outside.

The Battle in the Blizzard

Though records are scarce to nonexistent for what happened following the parley, at some point during the night, a battle within Kalu’s walls began. An almighty charge of House Winter’s soldiers entered the city, under the cover of heavy snowfall, and in response came the Kahns’ own forces. It is entirely unclear what came to pass during these hours spent shrouded in the blizzard, but when the crash of steel against steel finally began to abate, what remained was ruin. Kalu had fallen entirely during the night, and Jhi Tao, along with her husband the Diamond Emperor Yokao Kahn, and the remainder of the Kahn family were gone. Many of their bodies, including those of Jhi Tao and her children Jess Kahn and Jan Zhi Kahn, were found, but many others were not. Critically, Yokao was missing, as were several other members of the extended Kahn family, including most of Yokao’s family, Jin Pu Kahn, the mother of Jhi Tao, and Jhi’s own brother, along with his daughter. These missing bodies have never been recovered, though it’s assumed some were simply buried too deep in the heavy snow, which would only be further piled on in the coming months. It’s also relatively unlikely that considering the conditions any Kahns would have made it out alive, as no potential survivors have ever emerged, though some strange circumstances did occur during rangings north of Muna in later years. Ultimately, whether confirmed dead or simply missing, House Kahn was entirely extinguished that night. There was also the matter of the sword Jokai which was also never recovered, a fact that confounds the mythkeepers of Merridel to this day, considering that the blade is enchanted to return to the diamond throne in the Kahn palace should a crescent moon rise and Jokai is not in the hands of a Kahn. This does seem to lend credence to the idea that at least a few Kahns remain in the world, but again, it’s unclear why they wouldn’t return to their ancestral homeland and reclaim their throne. To this day, the fate of the Diamond Edge remains unknown.

Lioka Winter herself was found to be in critical condition, according to the testimony of one private Aita Dehn, who saw her being carried by a group of soldiers to the physicians’ tent. Though she received the best available care, the young matriarch was announced dead at high noon the day following the battle. Following this, Niana Di by a signed order of Lioka was given the position of acting Lady Mayor, charged with ruling and protecting Yensan in the absence of any surviving members of House Winter. From these events, we can indeed presume that in fact Lioka Winter died by wounds of an unknown nature, sustained during the battle, while under the care of her physicians. With her vanished one of the most culturally-important objects in all of Nidahn, along with the entirety of House Kahn, expunging the Nidahnese Grand Orderly from the world forever.

Aftermath, and the Closure

Following the Battle of Kalu, the Winter forces retreated to Yensan, where Niana was soon to take power. The period in which she ruled Yensan lasted a mere two months, and during this time she was regarded as a very unusual ruler. She was not overly grand or extravagant—and in fact it is estimated that a mere .3% of the city’s collected taxes went toward her own expenses—nor was she particularly austere, as best can be told. She was not on the whole particularly present; she, though more frequently than Lioka had, appeared once or twice a week to the populace, announcing minor edicts—the sort of thing one might call quality of life changes. She spoke nothing of Lioka’s war against House Kahn, and indeed nothing of Lioka herself; she had entirely closed herself off from the subject. It is believed today that Niana had fallen into a deep depression in the wake of Lioka’s death, and could not bear to engage too much in the world around her; the well-known tradesman and resident of Yensan, Luqo Weyao(who many viewed as a town elder) said when asked about the situation that “the girl is trapped inside her thoughts, and so it seems, wishes to remain so.”

During her brief rule, things felt very much as though they were liable to come undone at any moment; as thanks to a series of dangerous summer storms, word of the Battle of Kalu had yet to reach south of Nidahn. As a result, in these two short months all of Yensan would hold their breath as they waited upon the metaphorical pin to drop. Finally, news of the battle reached South to Runestone, and from there word quickly spread to the other Grand Dynasites. After convening briefly in Beacon Lake, the four remaining Houses agreed that Niana Di, whose rule had been authorized by a known seditionist guilty beyond doubt of crimes against House Kahn, was to be stripped of her authority. Yensan was to be placed under the care of the Xenpings, a Yensani lesser noble family of merchants, who sold much of the raw materials such as stone and sulfur that Nidahn was known for. Meanwhile, the diamond throne of Kalu was left untouched, and the city at the base of Muna was abandoned. The position of Grand Orderly went to House Luther of Ironbeck, a city known for its iron mines and its profitable relationship with the steelworkers in the Dwarven city of Dalway, and with the loss of Houses Winter and Kahn, it was the most powerful noble family in Nidahn. A mere month later, Niana Di would end her own life, opting to join Lioka according to the letter sent to her parents shortly after her demotion. Today, this letter has acquired something of a famed historical status, being called the Closure, as a true, final end to the war. In it, Niana apologized for what had happened and expressed that she would have tried to pull Lioka ‘back from the edge’, had she recognized earlier how her lifelong friend’s mind was falling apart. She quite famously cursed the name of the Moonseer who had given Lioka her prophecy and galvanized the war effort; finally naming the exact individual as Dunyun Rai, personal Moonseer of House Luther. In the closing of the letter, Niana spoke about the love that she and Lioka had shared for their entire lives, wishing more than anything that the two had simply left Yensan forever and spent the remainder of their lives together, far away from the mountains of Nidahn.

And thus the events that had spanned most of 221 AS, which came to be called the Diamond War, came to a close, and albeit not with great ease House Luther came to sit upon the highest seat of power in the land. They were, of course, far less respected than House Kahn, which had over the course of two separate dynasties ruled Kalu and Nidahn for over a thousand years, dating back even into the period known as the deep past, of which very little is known. It has remained as such to this day, and though the War long since past, the people of Nidahn have never forgotten what they lost when, on one Spring night in Yensan, Lord Gendai Winter was stabbed to death on his balcony.