The Imperial Succession War has entered it’s second year and there’s at least 200,000 dead already.

A four-way battle with the peldak legions on one side, and the three major claimants fighting each other for dominance. Our forces have been able to keep raiding and looting to a minimum, but the princes wisely decide to avoid direct engagements with us, knowing how thoroughly they’d be crushed.

But as the days pass more and more princes are being assassinated, the current count is five, and one was even Prince Arjuna of the Adgaon Province, who led the Mercantile Faction.

The faction split immediately after his death into the West Coast, East Coast, and Southern Peninsula Factions, all with specific goals and proposals should their team win the imperial throne. And with less diluted factions and goals, the loose coalitions of the Spiritual and War factions have come undone as nobles started defecting to ones which more closely align to their interests. Similarly, the new factions have begun poaching supporters. There’s no reason why the East Coast can’t also support some expansion wars, and they’re already making promises on who should rule the land.

By the end of the year, we expected the original three factions to splinter into at least a dozen.

A dozen small armies will be more difficult for our legions to keep in check than three larger ones. Our forces have mastered this era of warfare, and it isn’t possible for the tendori to muster an army large enough to challenge us. We can’t be everywhere.

We don’t yet know how the princes are being assassinated, nor do we know how many underlings and commanders have been killed. The factions naturally won’t be open about this, and there are currently no reports of legionary commanders being targeted.