Salt and Smoke

Set up story first. Catalyst for war was expulsion of Prince from Ishikia to his mother’s house at Ansora as Mofren burned him thinking to kill him.

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Novel opens up with the POV of Oissholo’s marriage to one of the Nabaian princesses, a hostage actually. She does not want to be married but Mofren made her so. She was a cousin of the Queen

Scene at marriage after

Next chapter is of Queen at the feast who converses and speaks with her brother in the gardens post wedding about unrest and her fears of Sibelian distrust towards them and how we wished for asylum in her brothers lands in Shytskapalo.

The king’s pregnant sister who was supposed to be the heir died in the wedding night, supposedly committing suicide by slitting her throat in the gardens discovered by the Queen and her brother

Next chapter is Prince going to the funeral crypt with the High Priest and saying how he did not trust the circumstances of her death about how supposedly she was discovered and he feared a take over. He feared his bride most of all, fearing her to be a spy.(winterfell fire novel. Sack by ramsey)

Someone then starts a fire. He smells something burning.

The next part of the novel is from the brides perspective as they remain inside the tower with guards barricading downstairs as there are reports of “pirates” who have come into town to sack and are burning the town.

She is idiot an naive and talks with her shrewd cousin(like cersei and Sansa) and she says that all will be well, saying that pirates would not breach the tower’s defenses.

As the bottom town burns, Oissholo escapes eastwards to raise an army. He drags out one of the fresh corpses from the crypt and gives it some of his clothes so they will think he is dead.

He flees to his mother’s town of Ansora. He schemes to raise an army as the westerners do not know of his death.

Mofren paints a tragedy about what has hppened and assures the surviving peasants that they have nothing to fear. He brings akong many Nabaian settlers and worksmen to help “rebuild” Ishikia.

Meanwhile Oissholo drums up support from Ansora and of the injustice. He partakes first in Eastern politics and agrees to give Ansora a stake in their goods and profits as well as for him to take an Ansoran wife(not of his clan) to let him go back west with an army.

In a feast afterwards several of them mention to Oissholo about the glory of finally pushing out of their homelands these Nabaian dogs and making Sibele independent again. (The Sibelian League, of which Ansora was the leader was formed to defend against Nabaian incursions. Oissholo and the Kings of Ansora managed to convince them to liberate the western cities from Nabaian control. Anti Nabaian sentiment was growing as well in Ishikia who wanted the government to push out the Nabaians and join the sibelian league)

Finally the sibelians raise their armies, and march west. They eventually kill and plunder so many people that the Nabaians flee in a mass migration west

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Matrilineal succession. Eldest sister’s son.

Ishikia House rules over, Mofren is father of the king’s wife, so their children are of his house.

The Prince is of the house of the King’s former wife, of the House of Ansora.

There is no heir to the House of Ishikia anymore as the female line has gone extinct, therefore the throne goes to Maskamiso’s first son, but Mofren plot to place his grandchild on the throne via the wife