In the 5th month of the year 3081, 9 years after Maathen Volkov was crowned the King of Unified Castia, 8 years after the announcement of his intentions to unify the Western Kingdoms, and 4 years after the last holdout in the north, Sylval, fell, Maathen Volkov signed a peace treaty with the southern kingdom of Fassen. The treaty assured the people of Fassen and its crown prince that Unified Castia would neither seek to conquer nor mobilize against the kingdom as long as Fassen upheld its own side of the bargin-a permanent cessation of raiding along Castia's southern coast. Fassen would remain the last independent territory west of the Dazhan River.
In the 3rd month of the year 3082, Maathen Volkov mobilized his military and declared a war of conquest on Fassen and death to the Igonic Royul lineage.
In the 10th month of the year 3081, the Governorship of Sylval, held at the time by the Unified General, was transferred to the General's wife, and the Unified General was provisionally reinstated and placed in command of a select group of Imperial Militia veterans by the King, himself. They were tasked with quashing a rebellion in a remoate vilalge in northwest Fassen on the Verdant Coast spurred by oppressive and untenable trading conditions on the part of their Castian neighbors across the Bay. With Prince Nine Igonic's agreement, Maathen suggested that Castia handle both the establishment of stringent trade laws and ministerial supervision in South Castia and the suppression of the rebellion in the name of the Igonic Crown as a gesture of apology and goodwill towards Fassen.
When the Unified General and his men reached the village, however, they found no rebellion, only Prince Nine, himself, and an elite guard. The 12 veteran soldiers of the Castian Imperial Militia were surrounded and massacred. All were dead within an hour of stepping foot on Fassenian soil. The Unified General, however, was not targeted.
On the 410th day of the year 3081, Dunne Volkov renounced all loyalty to or citizenship of Unified Castia, his service and fealty to his brother, King Maathen, and all ties to,a ffection for, and faith in Unified Castia. The former Unified General swore fealty to Prince Nine Igonic and was immediately named the Prince's Consigliere, the highest non-royal position possible in monarchic Fassen.
The reason for Volkov's defection has never been clear to anyone but Volkov, himself, nor likely will ever be. It has been theorized and widely accepted even by King Maathen, himself, that it was a petty, personal, and trivial spat possibly over the affection of the Unified General's then-wife Crystaum Cordair, the last Princess of Sylval's royal lineage. However, it has also been accepted that the barbarous, hierarchic, and highly martial culture of Fassen was simply more appealing to the Iskan Unified General than that of Castian civic meritocracy. It is said, after all, that upon arriving in the Fassenian Capital, Portt, Volkov was immediately rewarded for his service with a palace, an immense vault of wealth, and in the course of six months, took no less than thirteen wives, both female and male, between the ages of 13 and 19.
On the 20th night of the 3rd Month of 3082, the ancient, impregenable clay walls of Genan city were breeched by Fassenian gysic forces and the city of Genan was raped, pillaged, and massacred. While not personally returning to Castia with his new forces, Dunne Volkov took and was given all credit for the attack and its preparation. This suprised no one in Castia. After all, if Fassen had, in 3,000 years and innumerable wars, never breeched Genan's walls, it surely took a former resident to do so. In response, King Maathen declared war on Fassen on the 21st evening of the 3rd month of 3082. It took the Castian colelctive forces until the 25th night of the 3rd month to liberate Genan from its Fassenian gaolers.
Of the almost 2 million residents of Genan in the year 3082, it is estimated that roughly 800,000 were killed over the course of the 4 days Fassenian forces held the city, while a quarter of a million fled to the countrysides never to return to Genan, another 90,000 were mortally wounded during the siege and perished within a week of the city’s liberation, and roughly 112,000 received life-altering permanent injury, physical or psychological after surviving the massacre and subsequent siege.
Over the course of the following 18 months, King Maathen, his newly appointed Unified General Dianthus Osten, and the Unified Forces conqureed the kingdom of Fassen from west to east, offering no mercy but for those who swore immediate loyalty and submitted themselves willingly as prisoners of war. The King, the Unified General, and the Unified Forces reached Portt on the 39th day of the 2nd month of 3083. 86 days later, on the 2nd day of the 5th month of 3083, with over 2,000,000 lives lost on the Fassenian peninsula, Prince Nine, his wives, and all blood relatives were executed. Fassen was named a territory of Unified Castia. King Maathen, Unified General Osten, and a militia of roughly 100,000 would spend two months in Portt, with another 100,000 distributed across the peninsula to maintain peace and install a transitional government.
On the 1st day of the 8th month of 3083, King Maathen would finally return home from campaign. General Osten would remain in Fassen for 3 more months.
On the 41st day of the 8th month of 3083, King Maathen would announce to the Castian public that his brother, former Unified General Dunne Volkov, was found alive in Fassen and would be tried for treason against Unified Castia.
9 months later, on the 1st day of the 8th month of 3084, Volkv was publicly arraigned for his crimes, his flesh seared in the manner King Artorius long ago commanded, and yet, at the end of the trial, a tear-stained King Maathen would admit to his public that he was not strong enough to kill his own brother. Dunne Volkov would be exiled and imprisoned in the city of Misk for the remainder of his life.
On the evening of the 17th day of the 2nd month of the year 3096, Dunne Volkov wore a green broadcloth shirt, grey flannel pants, and used a longfork to turn thinly poudned slices of ji on a table-flame in a Ceralan-themed restaurant in the southeast quarter of Misk. On the other side of the table, Arnica Osten poured two more glasses of Ceralan sweetwine and asked if Volkov didn't think the ji was getting a bit overdone.