In the city of Sumbria, the civil war between the Blade Houses lasted for eleven savage days.

In the early battles of the first violent hours, the citizens had flocked into the streets-some to avenge their fallen prince, and some to protect their homes from marauding gangs of soldiers. Gilberto Ilego, now universally acknowledged as the prince's assassin, had rallied his supporters about him, and the city burned and shuddered as it transformed into a place of surging battle lines.

Days passed; alliances shifted, soldiers clashed, and the dead were left unburied in the streets. The crash of magic spells sent rows of houses slumping into rubble, and the citizens abandoned the nobles to their fight. The market quarter became a place of tent ghettos and frightened families; women and children stood in the streets and stared up the hill at the palaces of the mighty.

One by one, the great houses besieged each other. In the first few days, a half dozen of the small fortresses fell-until the battering rams ran short of soldiers willing to man them, and those sorcerers with the power to breach the walls eventually fell victim to each other's spells. The factions split, then split again as each Blade House determined to protect its own affairs, and the great battles of the days before dissolved into street fights and skulking nighttime brawls.

Food supplies fell and sicknesses began; finally the soldiers themselves abandoned the fight. Some dragged themselves back to their barracks and remained slumped in apathy. Others took to looting empty houses, installing themselves in taverns barricaded into little forts. There they drank themselves into a howling stupor, raiding the surrounding streets for women, bread, and gold; rolling in their own filth as the city took on the stench of the damned.

Only Gilberto Ilego's house remained at war. It was a savage, mindless battle fought against the entire world. Ilego was blamed for all the nation's troubles, and so he shut himself inside his lair and struck out at anything that dared come near. His men made savage raids into the market streets for food and snatched careless citizens to use as conscripts for their unceasing attacks on other palaces. Like a monster in its pit, Ilego carved himself a niche among the ruins of a better world.

Until, one cold-dawned autumn day, the sound of wondering; joyous cheers came drifting in across the city roofs.

As the tiny sound began to spread, tired Blade Captains ran to their battered marble towers and stared. Soldiers crowded into gateways, looking at one another in confusion as citizens crept forth from their homes.

The cheers turned into a roar of adulation, and suddenly the crowds began to run out into the sun.

Through the gates of Sumbria-opened by a swarm of citizens who then flung aside the keys-came a procession more welcome than a shower of purest gold. Colletran soldiers, all with their weapons slung and swords sheathed, marching in column beside a wagon train that stretched far away into the foothills of the Akanapeaks.

The soldiers escorted cart after cart loaded to the brim with priceless food; there were bales of bread and biscuit, sacks of dried fish and flour. Whole pyramids of sausage followed barrow loads of autumn fruit. The populace of Sumbria gaped at the treasury in shock, standing in stunned amazement as the triumphant march passed them by.

And then the wagon crews began to hurtle bread into the crowds, sparking off a delirious storm of cheers.

The Colletrans had brought everything that a war-torn city might possibly need. Food and water, tents and blankets, shovels to clear rubble and five thousand hands to use them. Scores of healer priests dismounted and moved out to treat the sick. Barrels of water and beer were trundled over to a makeshift hospital. Colletran soldiers presented themselves to exhausted Sumbrian citizens, enlisting local aid in sweeping looters from the streets. Civil order restored itself in one great heady rush as food gushed out, unmeasured, into the hands of the poor.

What no one in Sumbria could possibly know, of course, was that the food and provisions had been largely stolen from Sumbria's own outlying farming hamlets, farm after farm having been left completely decimated.

Cheering swept the city as if it were a day of festival, with people swarming down the streets to behold the wonder of the age. Flowers flew through the air and landed at the feet of a black, high-stepping hippogriff, whose armored rider soothed the crowds with steady hands.

Ugo Svarezi, now prince-elect of Colletro, conferred with Sumbrian citizens, noblemen and troops. With the looting at an end and law and order restored, an amnesty was declared; but an amnesty that did not extend to the villain of the play.

Every tragedy needs a decent scapegoat for the crowd. Sealed up inside his palace, Gilberto Ilego found Colletran snipers firing at his embrasures and Sumbrian nobles hammering at his gates. Drunk, desperate, and wild, he could only slump against his own walls and laugh as he saw Svarezi ride like a demigod through the adoring Sumbrian mob.

The palace's left wing fell beneath a hail of spells and trebuchet stones; a company of Ilego's men deserted through the rubble and fled, only to be cut down in the streets. In the gatehouse tower, Ilego's last surviving companies barricaded themselves behind the doors, snarling like wild animals spitting from a cage.

The entire population of Sumbria swarmed about Ilego's lair, screaming out for blood. Amongst the combined soldiers of two cities, Ugo Svarezi rode like a heavy-hearted father gazing upon wayward children. The crowds wanted to please him, to point up at Ilego and blame him for the war. Svarezi gave them his benediction and rode on into the storm.

Ilego, tired almost past thinking but still capable of reveling in irony, swung carelessly from his own battlements and leaned out across the crowd. He hoisted a glass to the citizens and drank to their health with wine. He swallowed, then interrupted his drinking in pantomimed surprise.

"What? No chorus? No music heralding the curtain call?" The ragged courtier brayed like a laughing ass. "Svarezi! Surely you can stage a better production than that? You have the costuming, the timing… even the proper cast!" Ilego half made to serve himself more wine. "I, of course, shall play the villain. I'm told one is needed in any proper tale.

"Sadly, I fear this is less a tragedy than a mere farce-with you, dear little citizens, playing the sheep who take the fall."

Below him, a mob of untold thousands jeered up at him in hatred. Ilego bowed before his audience as though idly acknowledging their cheers, and then cocked a hand up to his ear and gaped down at them in shock.

"What's that? Did he never tell you what we planned?" Ilego clung above his gate, eyes wild above a ragged beard. "Did he never tell you I was to rule Sumbria, and he Colletro, together! Did he tell you why he stole the Sun Gem? Did you ever ask him why?"

Dragging up through the streets, there came a titanic wheeled machine; a massive armored box drawn by a dozen cartage teams. Ilego greeted its appearance with a cheer.

"Never extend the final act, and always dazzle them with an unforeseen display!" Ilego raised a careless bottle to the crowd. "Time's up, my friends! It seems we have our curtain call!"

Down on a cleared street, among the mob, armored gunners checked their hoses and retorts, then raised clenched fists to their commander. The master gunner jerked the valve release and slammed his visor shut across his eyes.

Mounted at the forefront of the machine, the Sun Gem blazed unutterably bright. A searing bolt of violet light spat across the air, and Ilego's gatehouse wall blew apart. Molten stonework fountained through the sky and superheated masonry exploded in an example of demolition such as all Faerun had never seen. In an instant, the palace of Ilego was no more.