Winter's ice pierce hearts
Five wounds of a broken realm
Bloody Maytime comes...
In the frigid north, as the new spring melts the long-frozen ice of winter, from the high and mysterious cliff faces of the Tambakos Mountain Range arises a grim figure, called a phantom from a bygone era by some, an imposter by others, and yet by others a messiah return from the dead, come to restore order to the broken realm.
Decades ago, the Great Collapse resulted in the destruction of the Tsardom of Imarati, a monarchy that had been on death door even before the apocalypse. As chaos swept the globe, Imarati shook itself to pieces. Angry workers marched on the palace, breaking in and rampaging through the halls, slaughtering aristocrats and destroying the ancient treasures that had been exalted for so long. The Tsar and his family were captured and executed, with only his second-born daughter Helene escaping with the aid of a servant boy and a secret door. With the royals massacred or fleeing abroad, and the people razing the capital to the ground, anarchy swept across the nation. Warlords, communes, and various others began a decades-long struggle for power as famine and plague stalked the land. Eventually, a stalemate arose, with the Tetrebi, led by a returned Grand Duchess Helene to restore the monarchy; the Tsitlebi, republican revolutionaries led by the Red Council, an assembly of eleven civil servants; the Mstvaneta lead by a would-be president, the elderly Lizzie Arveladze; and the Quvitlebi led by the monks of mountain churches. Meanwhile, splattered across the center of the country, anarchists burn across the land in an uneasy peace.
Peace no more.
In the holy city of Cutaisunda, the monks of the Quvitlebi declared from their isolated mountain temples that a miracle had occurred. The long-suffering winter of the nation was over, and Spring had come to be ushered in by a prince. Besarion, the only son of the last Tsar, who had been but a toddler when the Royal Family was executed, believed to have been killed during that dark day was not, in fact, dead, but was alive, and the true ruler of the country. Said to have been smuggled out in a laundry basket before posing as the son of one of the palace workers who'd taken pity on the toddler prince, and eventually made their way to the sanctuary of the Cutaisunda Holy Temple, where he was raised by monks, preparing for the day he would save Imarati. A day, according to the monks, that has finally come. Besarion was anointed by Father Zakaria Melikishvili as the true King of Imarati, and with that, a campaign to restore and unite the country was said to have begun. A campaign that has begun with an army of tanks crossing the Ricassa River, the de facto boundary between the Quvitlebi and the Tsitlebi controlled areas.
But with this, a five-way civil war begins. In Arrah, the Red Council issues orders to halt Besarion's invasion. In Ondassi, Arveladze asserts she will never surrender, even from her wheelchair. In the ruins of the capital, mobs sing of finishing what they started so many years ago in the abandoned palace. In Potedia, Grand Duchess Helene denounces the spring prince as a False Besarion, an imposter seeking to steal her throne. Who speaks the truth? Will it matter when the future of Imarati has decided on battlefields and the spring of the nation watered with the blood of brothers?
Tsitlebi
Leader(s): Red Council
Headquarters: Arrah
Government: Socialist Republic
Army: 12,000
Color: Red
Mstvaneta
Leader(s): Lizzie Arveladze
Heaquarters: Ondassi
Government: Dictatoral Presidential Republic
Army: 7,000
Color: Green
Anarchists
Headquarters: Ruins of Soikon
Color: Purple
Quvitlebi
Leader(s): Father Zakaria Melikishvili & Prince Besarion
Headquarters: Cutaisundra
Government: Theocratic Monarchy
Army: 13,000
Color: Yellow
Tetrebi
Leader(s): Grand Duchess Helene
Headquarters: Potedia
Government: Secular Absolutist Monarchy
Army: 3,000
Color: White