The Phoenix King War

Military action

The Xiao emperor is assassinated without a legitimate heir. The Great East is engulfed in war. After a quick, bloody fight the Sinclairs win and their dynasty starts.

The crown prince of the Xiao dynasty, Xiao Tian Li, became emperor at fifteen years old. He murdered his wife the next year. The next winter he is assassinated, assumedly by her brother but it was never proved.

With no heirs his chief general, Phoenix Lord Ying, claims the throne and names himself the Phoenix King. His first act was to execute all of Xiao Tian Li’s relatives even if they weren’t a threat to his reign. Included among his victims was Xiao Mei, Xiao Tian Li’s cousin and also the granddaughter of the Sinclair Chieftain, Xing Sinclair.

By this time the Sinclair clan was the largest and most powerful clan in the Great East and Xiao Mei was beloved not just by her grandfather but by the whole clan. The prophet Jun had foretold “when the Phoenix rises the heart of the clan shall break, but shall be reforged and tear like a dragon.” Xing correctly interpreted Ying’s rise and the tragedy of Mei’s death as the first part of the prophecy and decided that he must fulfil the second part. The Sinclairs, along with their allies and other bereaved parties, declared war on Ying.

After quickly taking several key fortresses and cities in the west, Ying beat back the allied armies at the Battle of the Heather Plains at massive cost to his own forces. Unwilling to lose more men for a seemingly doomed monarch, several of Ying’s lords and generals chose to abandon him and return to their own lands or even switch sides. Ying switched to a purely defensive strategy, shoring up his remaining cities and holing up in the capital, Guówáng zhī chéng, the City of the Kings.

Rather than head straight for the capital the Sinclairs took each city one by one, lowering the moral of each remaining city until they just surrendered to the messenger. The only place that held out for long was Blue Jade Town, a fortress blocking a pass through King’s Garden mountain range the army had to go through to reach the capital. Blue Jade Town was held by Ying’s brother and lasted almost a year of siege before being almost torn down by an eighth rank Earth Mage hired by Xing. The Sinclair army reached the capital to find Ying had fled months earlier.

Xing Sinclair was crowned Emperor of the Great East by the resident court prophet in 87006 B.T.K. He posthumously anointed Xiao Mei as crown princess. He rewarded all his allies generously with the private treasury of the now extinct Imperial Xiao clan but did not declare the war over as he knew Ying well from their youth in the imperial army together, and that the title Phoenix Lord was not undeserved.  
Sure enough five years later Ying raised an army from among second class lords, bandits and mercenaries in the Far East. He began terrorising the minor cities in the east heading towards the capital in an attempt to draw Xing onto the battlefield where he could be killed. Xing did not take the bait and dispatched the Grieving Warriors to route Ying’s ragtag army. After several hit and run attacks that kept the rebels on edge the rebel army disintegrated and Ying was killed by Zian Sinclair, the Marshal of the Grieving Warriors. The emperor levied heavy punishment fines on the rebel lords and declared the War of the Phoenix King at an end.