The Long Road of Reman Guilt

The Whereabouts and Journey of Sgt. Brannith Marius during the events of the Crimson Harvest (the October 2025 event).

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The falling season of the Crimson Harvest brought little cheer to the 8th Legion of the Imperial Reman Republic, especially to those tasked with securing the long, desolate stretch of the Western Road that snaked toward the Alliance of Dwarven Clans. Sgt. Brannith Marius, his short gray hair and gray/white beard matching the grim horizon, commanded a small, detached cohort tasked with monitoring the deep ravines where Reman trade convoys were frequently lost. His duty, as always, came before festival or personal leave; the Court of Lullin and its autumn celebrations were hundreds of miles away—an abstract luxury Brannith, as a disciplined Reman, not only could not afford but had no desire to attend. His mind, though troubled by the Empire's moral rot, was rigidly focused on the iron-clad Law of the Legion: Protect the Supply Line, Ensure Free Trade. 

His absence from the festival was one of necessity, driven by a surge in border raids. The air was thick with the scent of pine and unwashed barbarians when his patrol finally ran the source to ground. A coalition of desperate Norse raiders and hulking Orc bandits had established a crude forward camp near the borderlands, intent on ambushing the next dwarven shipment of steel. Brannith did not hesitate. His tactical mind, honed by years of conflict he could no longer fully believe in, took cold command. He used the terrain—a narrow, foggy pass—to his advantage, leading a swift, disciplined Reman assault. The fighting was brutal and brief, less a battle and more an execution of applied tactics. Brannith, wielding his spear with the grim efficiency of an executioner, focused not just on winning, but on minimizing loss to his own men. The Norse fought with berserker fury, and the Orcs with brute strength, but they lacked the organization and Law that made the Reman Empire such a deadly force. The bandits were shattered, their makeshift camp destroyed, and the immediate threat to the Western Road was neutralized. 

It was three days later, exhausted and scrubbing the drying blood from his leatherwork, that the official dispatch runner finally caught up to Brannith’s cohort. The runner, pale and breathless, delivered the grim news of the Court of Lullin—the massacre, the vampires, and the shocking depth of corruption and chaos that had torn through the festival. As he read the dispatch, confirming the names of the dead and detailing the sheer, unbridled disorder that occurred, Brannith felt the chill of the mountains deepen in his bones. He had missed the slaughter, but the dispatch brought a cold, crushing weight of failure that settled deeper than any mountain snow. Lullin, a city of the Emerald Folk, had suffered this monstrous betrayal—a place outside the formal rule of the Legion. Brannith knew the bitter truth: the sickness was rooted in the Empire's own moral decay. The Empire's brutal history, the abuses like Count Orlock, and the long shadow of Reman conquest had poisoned the well of trust, driving other Cultures away. If only the legions had not sown such hatred, if only their presence could be accepted as protection and not prelude to enslavement, they might have been positioned to prevent this chaos. He had won a small victory for Free Trade against common bandits, yet the news from Lullin confirmed the ultimate cost of the Empire's failures. As a man who revered the final trust of The Morrigan, he understood that his lonely victory was insignificant against the scale of the debt now owed to the dead. His conflict deepened; the Law had been saved, but the people were sacrificed because the Reman people could no longer be trusted to protect them.