Day 1: Public Address
The air crackled with a combination of biting cold and raw fear as the sun began to sink toward the horizon, casting the village in a permanent, dreary twilight. Kael had summoned the entire population, the approximately three hundred souls of Ashfall, to the open square outside the manor.
He stood on the collapsed cart, repurposed as a crude, elevated platform. This was the first time the Baron had addressed his subjects, and their faces—skeletal, defeated, and wrapped in heavy, threadbare cloaks—showed only resentment and deep suspicion. They expected a new lord's empty promises; Kael intended to give them only reality.
Beside Kael stood Sergeant Rylen and his four knights, their polished armor now the only symbol of undisputed authority in the settlement. Their presence was a silent, lethal declaration that the command structure was enforced and absolute. Steward Elms hovered at the base of the cart, clutching his ledgers, visibly trembling.
Kael did not raise his voice; he projected it, using the deliberate, measured cadence of a field briefing—a voice designed to penetrate fear and enforce compliance.
"I am Kael Veynar, your appointed Baron. I will not waste your time with flowery lies, or with talk of magical solutions that do not exist."
A wave of bitter murmuring swept through the crowd, quickly silenced by a harsh, practiced glare from Sergeant Rylen.
"You believe this land is cursed," Kael continued, ignoring the disruption. "You believe the failure is divine punishment. It is not. The failure is human. It is the result of years of negligence, criminal mismanagement of the soil, and the greed of the man who held this title before me."
He waited for the initial shock to set in, watching their suspicion shift into a brittle, desperate anger directed toward their absent former lord.
"We have food for forty days," Kael stated. He delivered the figure flatly, without preamble or emotion. "At the current rate of consumption, everyone you see standing here will be too weak to work in thirty days, and everyone will be dead in forty-five."
The murmuring stopped instantly. The silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by the sharp, whistling wind. Fear gave way to a dawning, terrible realization.
"Furthermore, the well water is contaminated," Kael added, driving the point home. "It is not fit for man or beast. It is a poison. The soil is depleted. We have been condemned to die by starvation and disease, sealed in by debt."
He let the horror settle, then snapped the silence with a new tone, hard as cold iron. "But we will not die. I refuse to be discarded, and I refuse to allow the three hundred people under my command to be discarded."
He held up a single, large, dark root—the bitter Goat's Foot Tuber that Steward Elms had reluctantly identified. "This is the food of desperation. It is not bread; it is life. It grows where nothing else will. We will forage it. We will boil it under the strictest purification rules. We will survive on it until the land yields better."
He then delivered the command that applied the mathematical cruelty of his triage plan.
"The food supply will be rationed starting tonight. The rules are absolute. Any person who is healthy and capable of hard labor—those in the Contingent and Core groups—will receive their ration only in exchange for a full day's work. You work, you eat. You refuse to work, you do not eat."
A man near the front, gaunt farmer named Torvin, found his voice, shaking his fist. "My lord, I am slow now! I have children! Will you starve the old men and the sick?"
Kael met the man's gaze, his own expression unyielding. "Those unable to labor—the infirm, the elderly, and the very young—the Dependent group—will receive a minimal subsistence ration, distributed by Healer Mara and overseen by the Steward. They will survive, but their rations are the minimum required to sustain life. We will not expend resources on those who will not contribute to the survival of the unit."
The crowd erupted. The shock of the famine timeline was replaced by outrage at the systematic, heartless rationing.
"We are not slaves!" cried a woman.
"You take our food! You are worse than the last Baron!" roared a man, pointing at the granary.
"We will raid the granary ourselves!" another yelled, emboldening others to surge forward.
Kael allowed the noise to rise, watching the chaotic energy peak. He allowed the population to vent their fear and anger before delivering the final, crushing enforcement.
He held up a hand, silencing the square with a single, sharp, practiced gesture.
"Rylen," he called.
Sergeant Rylen spurred his horse forward until the animal stood directly at the base of the cart, its heavy breathing audible over the diminishing shouts.
"The granary is Imperial property," Kael announced to the crowd, his voice cutting through the final pockets of resistance. "The rations are under my command. Any attempt to breach the granary, to steal from your neighbor, or to defy a direct order will be met with immediate, unsparing force from the knights. Under the Emperor's law, I am authorized to use force to maintain order and protect Imperial supplies."
His eyes swept over the shocked faces, enforcing the chain of command. They had expected aristocratic weakness; they found military certainty.
"Tomorrow, we work. We will dig a channel to secure clean water. We will collect the soil's ash and feed it back into the fields. The land is not cursed. It is broken, and we are going to fix it with discipline, not magic. Those who work will live. Those who defy will starve. Choose."
With that, Kael stepped down from the cart, leaving the population of Ashfall paralyzed by the sudden, terrifying choice between starvation by neglect and survival through absolute, disciplined obedience to the new Baron.