Shadows Beyond Titan's Gate | Events of the Ages

  Since their inception, the Order of Blade Ghosts have seemingly operated in secret without reward or recognition. This behaviour stands at odds with the other knight orders, who present themselves as the paragons of the Kingdoms' present forces, and has been an apparent cause for tension between these knights and their compatriots. Most outspoken are the Order of Adamant Claws, whose commanders have petitioned the higher echelons of the Orders of Knights on more than one occassion for the censure of their counterparts. The Lord of Shields himself has remained silent on the matter, perhaps presenting a neutral opinion in respect of his senior status, but it seems doubtful that his private position is entirely divergent from his own lieutenants.
  Regardless, what little evidence exists continues to indicate that the Ghosts have continued in their clandestine habits, with the approval of an implied majority of the Knight Lords, and likely acting far beyond the accepted terms and duties of the knights' conduct. This review intends to present collected evidence of one such event - a seemingly conincidental set of occurrences which in totality describe an operation of astonishing complexity and subterfuge which shifted a course of international events into the favour of the Northern Kingdoms.

Opening Context
  Following the defeat of the Titanodragon of Calam at the hands of the knight orders, the peoples of the Northern Kingdoms and the Forgewrought Empires were able to travel freely between their lands for the first time. While there had been rare occurances of individuals travelling between the two regions previously (perhaps most notably, the signatories of the Treaty before the Sun, who travelled to Breta from a city-state in the Empires known as Anvillon), these trips required exorbitant measures to survive the monster-infested or toxin-riddled wastelands they crossed. As such, the sudden freedom to travel was a boon almost universally; between trade, leisure and study, there were few who would not find some excuse or another to take a trip if they could. The construction of Titan's Gate, at the far edge of the Valley of Calam that the fallen dragon had once called home, would ensure that control over this belonged in the hands of the Northern Kingdoms alone, but more than one challenger would only learn this upon facing the Crimson Warders who manned its walls themselves.
  On the other side of Titan's Gate, there were no borders clearly defined. With plenty of space, but little value to the land, the disparate factions which constitute the Forgewrought Empires prefer to maintain smaller, more heavily fortified or mobile territories as a consequence of the roaming beast hordes that plague the region. As a result, an individual leaving the territory of the Kingdoms does not find themselves greeted by the lands of a second, long-established neighbour, but instead has the selection of half a dozen newly-raised settlements with fresh and rising powers behind them.
  The topography of the plains beyond the valley leaves no mandated routes or channels with which to direct the flow of incoming travellers, so these places rely on temptations with little in the way of subtlety to draw the numbers - advertising experiences or opportunities that a potential visitor "simply cannot miss." Out of these, the settlement of particular interest is Stockhold.

The Stockhold
  The settlement known as Stockhold was founded by an entrepeneur known as Rora Scathe, in the last years of the Dragon War at the Kingdom's border. An Anvillon-born merchant, Rora had made an entirely reasonable sum through trade relationships with a number of outerlying agricultural cells to the east of the city. Per the construction plans, Stockhold was originally intended as an outpost from which to store the collected produce before transporting it to the markets of Anvillon's Interlocks. Building the outpost so close to the monster den that was Calam was a risk, but the complex was small enough to avoid drawing attention and, unknown to its owner, their focus at this time was already on the advancing knights to the north-east.
  All evidence indicates that, following the Titanodragon's defeat and the scattering of its minions, the discovery of an entirely new market right next door was as favourable a turn for the Stockhold as any other trader in the area; for Rora, the potential offered by the farm produce of the Kingdoms would be the ticket to success. In the Empires, efficiency was the only concern when it came to food production. Without the stretches of land to grow crops in the quantities that the cities required, its supply was a matter for the specialist company-clans that held the secrets of extracting what little good was available in the earth and the sky and placing it into something that could be consumed. What came out of the process were a collection of packaged shapes and textures, coloured and flavoured by brand rather than their nature as foodstuffs.
  Conversely, farming as a dedicated lifestyle in the Northern Kingdoms involves a degree of artistry. Of course, there is the need to maintain a steady supply to keep the nation going, but beyond that there is a great deal of work that goes into creating the finest product to put on sale. Not simply the greatest size or the strongest flavour, but a carefully orchestrated blend of factors that might one day be the perfect choice for the plate of a regent. For all of their machine-like precision, this was a concept that the agricultural cells that the Stockhold drew from fundamentally lacked.