War in the Isles
Crisis Updates
For most of the past year, the Mourning Isles have seen small scale war. After the massacre at House Crackneck's wedding that also killed the Marquessa of Longwood, several Mourning Isles houses had been fighting a combined Northlands-Crownlands force. After a raid against the Mourning Isles that resulted in the destruction of the Crackneck-Longwood fleet, there had been a series of raids in the Crownlands and Northlands by presumed Islander forces, burning villages and putting inhabitants to the sword.
The raids quickly come to an end after a massive naval presence from the Crownlands begins to patrol the Bay of Thrax, stopping and searching vessels trying to make landfall in the Crownlands (which infuriates a number of captains), which largley ends the raids trying to sweep in directly from the Isles who have no desire to quarrel with most of the navy of House Grayson and its vassals. But possibly more significantly, there was a smashing victory organized by Lord Rysen Crovane, who had land forces under the command of Princess Marian Redrain and naval forces uner Lord Aethan Kennex trap and destroy a significant group of raiders near Greywater Bay.
As the raids end, the belligerents remain hostile to one another, but lapse into a de facto ceasefire with the ocean between them and no sign either will attempt to challenge the Crownlands blockade just yet.
Meanwhile, the Highlord of the Mourning Isles, Prince Victus Thrax, attempts to further push acceptance of his reforms. He sails to Sungreet at Farmorn Point, the holding of House Helianthus, the duchy of Thrax which has been highly critical of Thraxian reforms. Duke Ivan Helianthus is not there personally to greet Victus' show of force, and his appointed Voice was a former thrall freed by Victus' reforms, a man whose parents were raiders who had butchered men and women at Maelstrom. The Duke of Sungreet himself was away, helping his vassals oversee a massive naval buildup, in case Eurus retaliates to the Faith's announcement.