Almost simultaneously, on the churning seas less than fifty kiloters from the Southshore coast, a massive fleet carved through the waves from west to east, bearing down on Southshore with the determination of a debt collector hunting a fleeing rchant.
The largest vessel at the heart of this mismatched armada was not the flagship, and the banners fluttering from its masts told a story more twisted than a drunk bard's tale.
Three flags danced in the salt wind.
At the top, representing nationality, flew Stormwind's blue lion banner with its golden border - proud and regal as any kingdom's colors should be.
Below that, the organizational flag bore the Storm insignia of the Edmund Chamber of Comrce - a symbol that struck fear into the hearts of competitors across the known world.
But the third flag was where things beca gloriously ridiculous. The royal standard of Kul Tiras snapped in the breeze, declaring that genuine Kul Tiran royalty sailed aboard this vessel.
By every law of civilization and marriage, a wedded woman must bow to her husband's authority, and a married princess absolutely cannot continue flying her own royal colors without causing international incidents.
There existed only one explanation for this brazen violation of protocol: the ship carried Princess Jaina Proudmoore, the official fiancée of Grand Duke Edmund of Stormwind Kingdom.
According to the diplomatic agreents hamred out between the two nations' leaders, Daelin and Llane, Jaina belonged to the Duke family in life and would haunt them in death. She no longer counted as Kul Tiran entirely, making her nationality officially Stormwind Kingdom.
This arrangent existed primarily because Daelin had wanted to boot Jaina out of his kingdom faster than a tavern keeper ejecting a troubleso drunk, so he couldn't wait for Duke to return and actually marry her - he simply kicked her out preemptively.
In the ten years since Duke's mysterious disappearance, the military and rchant circles of Kul Tiras had treated Jaina with all the warmth and trust typically reserved for plague-carrying rats.
Of course, Jaina was no helpless princess Calia. With her extraordinary magical talents and razor-sharp intellect, she had never been content to sit quietly in corners and embroider pretty flowers.
On her eighteenth birthday, Jaina began constructing a fleet within the Edmund Chamber of Comrce frawork without spending a single copper coin from the Duke family coffers. Today, the magnificent armada of fifty ships - including five full battleships - stood as testant to her relentless ambition.
This achievent was about as easy as teaching orcs to write poetry.
During her teoric rise, she received absolutely no preferential treatnt from Kul Tiras, Stormwind, or even the Edmund family who theoretically should have supported her.
Just to get shipbuilding slots at the yards, she had to grovel, sche, and call in favors with the desperation of a beggar at a noble's feast.
She couldn't fathom why Edmund's direct descendants rejected her with such passionate intensity.
Initially, Jaina suspected that Miss Ilucia Barov - most likely her absent fiancé's secret paramour - was systematically stealing control of the Edmund family fortune and influence.
She discovered her assumption was magnificently wrong.
The Edmund family operated with a structure completely alien to any other family or organization on the continent. It functioned with an organizational efficiency that transcended their primitive era by centuries.
Even with Duke missing, presud dead, or possibly transford into sothing unspeakable.
Every person in positions of authority continued executing their duties with chanical precision.
Ilucia commanded the comrcial empire. With her frightening economic genius and her equally brilliant father providing counsel, she generated enough wealth annually to make Lordaeron's entire royal treasury look like a child's piggy bank.
Reginald Windsor maintained iron control over the family's vast private army, subjecting them to training regins so brutal they made Spartan warriors look soft. While publicly the Edmund family claid only thirty thousand soldiers, every single veteran who had been "discharged" over the past decade and sent ho to serve as militia possessed skills that would make Scarlet Crusade elites weep with envy. The family could mobilize one hundred thousand elite warriors faster than most kingdoms could muster their palace guards.
Edwin VanCleef operated in shadows within shadows. Born from the Brotherhood of Stonemasons, he controlled both construction projects and intelligence networks with equal mastery. Nobody knew what deadly surprises he had built into every castle, or how many spies answered to him in the darkness.
Turalyon commanded the family's knights - over a thousand warriors including three hundred paladins who could probably conquer small kingdoms before breakfast. They protected Jaina with professional competence, but she knew with bitter certainty that they would die for their duty while feeling absolutely no personal loyalty to her whatsoever.
The sisters Sylvanas and Lirath controlled a mountain regint of five thousand fighters - a lethal mixture of elves and humans who could probably hold off an entire orc clan indefinitely.
The family's chief steward, Makaro, implented the policies Duke had established before vanishing with the unwavering devotion of a religious fanatic. He tinkered with technologies that baffled even the most brilliant dwarf engineers and gnomish inventors. He stockpiled mysterious materials that left even Antonidas - the greatest magical scholar of their age - scratching his beard in complete bewildernt.
Every December thirty-first, these powerful family mbers gathered for their annual reports.
The etings contained no specific details, only completion percentages reported with mathematical precision - ninety-four percent, one hundred twenty-two percent. Makaro consulted Duke's original progress charts and distributed scores and rewards with the efficiency of a calculating machine.
Every reward and punishnt followed a comprehensive manual that updated itself annually. The system was so sophisticated it included precise coefficients for calculating the effects of natural disasters, droughts, floods, and probably locust swarms.
These gatherings weren't hidden from Jaina, but everyone treated her with the courtesy typically reserved for decorative furniture. She had initially attempted to seize control of this incredibly powerful organization through her status as fiancée, but quickly abandoned that fantasy in crushing despair.
The entire family operated as one enormous, perfectly calibrated war machine. Unless she could demonstrate wisdom and foresight surpassing Duke himself, nobody would obey an "outsider" who hadn't even officially changed her surna to Edmund.
Jaina felt so devastated she couldn't even summon tears - they had all been used up years ago.
She remained trapped within the Edmund family structure, unable to claim any real authority despite her theoretical position as future matriarch.
The benefits existed, certainly. The annual "fiancée allowance" of one hundred thousand gold coins, increasing by ten percent yearly, was more than most kingdoms spent on their armies. Duke had also granted her access to magical tos that she'd relocated to Stormwind's Royal School of Magic before his battle with Ner'zhul.
Unfortunately, compared to the Edmund family's legendary treasure vaults, these gifts amounted to pocket change scattered on the ground!
The most infuriating aspect was Duke's twenty-year plan.
Unless his death could be absolutely confird, no changes were permitted for two full decades. Even then, modifications required unanimous agreent from every senior family official.
To fund her magical experints and prove her capabilities, poor Jaina had been forced to venture into comrce like so common rchant...
But when she turned twenty, Jaina's fortunes finally shifted.
Her salvation stood beside her now - a high elf advisor and butler who had appeared at precisely the right mont.
She called herself Magna Evans, but possessed a far more terrifying true identity - Magna Aegwynn.
Yes, she was divh's mother, the forr Guardian Aegwynn herself!
"Duke has returned. What in the na of all the Light should I do?" Jaina asked Magna with barely controlled desperation.
"Actually, you could follow my example. If the Edmund family requires an heir, simply help Duke produce one. That's exactly what I did with Nielas back then. It's not as if I was the one who had to raise the child afterward."
Jaina nearly choked on her own blood from sheer outrage.
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