THE WAR OF THE NORTH SEA

By the year 471, the Commonwealth of Alben and the Isles was a waning maritime power, with its hold on its islands being slowly picked apart by her neighbours. Her rival, the Kingdom of Dannen, had long contended its claims in the North Sea, especially around the area of Hämod, which marks a natural barrier between the North Sea and beyond. Control over it would mean control over a third of the waterways into Europen. King Albert of Alben was unwilling to make a move against this rising power, but his military council saw an opportunity to overturn the Commonwealth’s fate if it succeeded. When a handful of fishermen were killed in a skirmish with Danner settlers in Hämod, the Commonwealth declared war and seized control over the islands. But while they were preoccupied with advances in the north, raids swept through the eastern coast of Alben, forcing the Commonwealth’s army to reinforce Anglen, leaving an opening wide for the taking. The famed marshal of Dannen, Hannes Frederik, the man who earned the title of God of War from his fate-changing participation in the Second Calamity, sailed across the North Sea with a small elite guard of ten thousand men and landed in Skoten. A force twice its size was dispatched to drive the invaders away, but the Commonwealth suffered a decisive defeat at the Battle of Ekkleßing, which ended the war, with Hannes’s raids threatening to become a full-scale invasion. Albert died of a stroke when he learnt of the Commonwealth’s defeat, which ceded the Northern Isles to Dannen.

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