Prison Break

*Chapter 4: the Initiation of the Fall*

*Horimandeaus Bathe: A Succinct History of Stormgate*

There was burning and then there
was *burning*. The escape from the high
security prison had *burned* its mark
across the political and social landscape. The Dominion had suffered
humiliation; not only had an otherwise low-operating band of mercenary thugs
managed to escape prison, but disarmed, dis-armored, and detained they had
managed to kill one of their ace mages and escape the city. The dominion
thrived on a perception of omnipotence, and incompetence and failure where
poison to its existence.

The
post-op period was especially brutal. Commissar Tarkus had taken special
interest in the how, the what, and the why of the so called “Stormguard”’s
escape. He wanted background, motivation, reasoning, history, loved ones, ties,
by god anything the regime could leverage into something that would make them
the victors, or their opponents the villain. So the Blue-cloaks forensics unit
got to work, analyzing the events and evidence of what happened.

The
first point of analysis was the naming of the group; of course a loyalist
faction would refer to themselves as a guard. Protect the old ways, protect the
old order; add in the obvious nationalistic use of Storm, the investigators
believed, and it was as glaringly obvious as the sun. No law-abiding and loyal
citizen would feel anything but contempt for the previous administration, let
alone be willing to name themselves as anything wistful of the old times, or so
the regime reasoned. They should have been tagged and bagged sooner, and the
failure to do so was due to a lack of discipline on the part of the officer
corps; re-education or dismissal should be the tools of choice. Clearly it was
easier to believe in corruption of their own ranks over their own incompetence.

The
second; their guards were clearly incompetent or ill-trained. The escapee’s
must have had outside help which either meant corruption or ill design.
Considering the unimpeachable nature of their superiors, it must have been the
former. Fourteen officers were sentenced to death on grounds of treason because
of this, and a further fifty-three enlisted summarily executed. Still there
were other avenues for knowledge, like the new risen noble families.  The Ravinoff’s somehow remained above
suspicion; they had sworn an oath of blood to be in the interests of Dtormgate,
but despite their age-old blood loyalties they were impugnable. So true was
a variety of others; that left only the newly risen and a handful of early
noble backers. Assuming that those who had joined at great personal detriment
(the early allies among the old nobles) would not be betrayers, this left the
shiftless merchant class and new nobility. Regulation and scrutiny was coming
to Stormgate; for the good of all, or course.

This was
the extent of what was, lacking a better word, public. The other machinations
of the Stormguard had eluded the surface level analysis of the forensics squad
and entered internal, and therefore external, legend. The prisons had been
proven vulnerable. The actual conflagration was one thing; the destruction of
the teleportation-lock had been another entirely. Whoever had done this had
shown that they could break their prisons with impunity; if the regime couldn’t
stop someone from teleporting in they couldn’t stop a full scale invasion. The
Stormguard had not been the only ones to escape in the chaos, and it wasn’t
entirely clear if the entire reason why they had gone to prison in the first
place wasn’t contrived. How had the guards shown up so quickly at the scene of
an otherwise undetectable crime? Especially packing such firepower, firepower
that was now allegedly dead by their own hands? No self-respecting troop of
that power would let one mage take them captive unless they wanted to. No, this
must have been planned.

Even
more urgent was the destruction of Stormgate’s blood archives. The second most
secure facility outside the palace, every informant, convict, and otherwise was
now off the hook. The archivist general, a particularly demonic individual if
reports are to be believed, in charge had been killed. They had tried to
contain the information, but criminals are not as dumb as they let on. They knew
that if the regime hadn’t managed to catch the damn fools, it’s because they
had destroyed the blood repository. So they tested their boundaries, hesitantly
at first, but when it became clear that no one was beholden anymore, sources
disappeared into the wind. Suddenly the state intelligence agency went from all
seeing to half-blind.

The
Stormguard itself had disappeared into the night. The few members whose
descriptions still turned up positive scry-ID’s were clearly in the middle of
nowhere or not in the city; the others were either unscryable or dead, it was
uncertain. Whichever faction had planned this had done a good job, and for the
first time in years the regime felt panic instead of confidence, and the city
took note.

*Chapter II: The fall from grace: Stormguard or Stormfallen?*

*Stromthurd Lecturn: The People’s History of Stormgate.*

How does
a dream die? The first is through abandonment; in Stormgate the dream was
fervently and methodically attended to. A city born on merit, ability, and
dedication, where any man or woman could rise in the service. Yet those who
fell, those who chose not to succeed in the tests of life often found other
ways to better their situation. The nobles of the previous era did so by
extracting from their subservient; the people turned into nothing more than
money generation.

In this
new era, begun under Tarkus, there was a new ideal. The old failures were wiped
away; the new and able rose to replace them. But still some fell through the
cracks. Foreign emissaries who found their influence curtailed, local leaders
who no longer could leverage their influence for personal profit,
extra-national organizations, and mercenaries. The result was the cauldron that
brewed the Stormguard, whose prison break sparked an internal crises amongst
the Stormgate government.

The
Stormguard had managed to slaughter a few dozen good men in their escape.
Notable among them was Crand, a solder and high ranking member of the
bluecloaks. They had somehow managed to break the prison’s interdimensional
lock, a fact that did not go unnoticed by the city’s criminal elements. By the
end of the day a large portion of those held in the prison, or that were
awaiting consignment had escaped. Normally this would have been no problem; the
dominion archives had a store of ever criminal’s blood on hand for easy
scrying. The Stormguard had destroyed the reliquary, and murdered the archivist-general
in cold blood. The damage to the city’s ability to limit the criminal element
was irreparably harmed.

Post-break
investigations determined that this was likely the Stormguard’s goal; brilliant
detective work had revealed that they were a loyalist group with ties to the
old Twin-kings monarchy. One of their members was even a scion of the Helmborn
house, who were fervent loyalists that had lost their heads when their coup
attempt against Tarkus failed. There were even possible ties to Oathstone,
though whether this support was material or incidental was difficult to
determine; they had certainly sent one of their warriors to the group. Further
work revealed a deep web of corruption within the ranks of the bluecoats, and
the perpetrators were quickly caught and punished.

Attempts
to locate them afterwards were stymied; they either couldn’t be scry’d or if they
could were already far beyond the bounds of the Dominion’s borders. Tarkus was
livid; the coming weeks would alter the course of his government and of
Stormgate forever.