The "blood thrall problem" at Krim Fortress was indeed quite serious. It was a minor flaw concealed beneath the glorious victory achieved when the Winterwolf Legion of the Kingdom of Nordtov stormed into the Kavkhoka region under the Wolf Maiden's orders near the end of the Ten-Year War.
The fortress was known as the "Unbreakable Wall." For the past four hundred years, the Bosia Confederacy had spent a fortune repairing and maintaining it as a military stronghold. Elite members of the Blood Eagle Clan and ten thousand elite blood thralls were stationed there year-round, making it a force to be reckoned with on Transia's soil. Yet the Winterwolf Legion hadn't taken the fortress by siege.
Grand Duchess Shani of the Thorn Clan had infiltrated it. After a successful surrender negotiation worthy of "Wang Situ," aided by the destruction of Cadman City and the grim reality that the Blood Eagle Clan had been wiped out, the Blood Eagle vampires in Krim Fortress had surrendered with surprising ease.
Those bastards hadn't even tried to negotiate for better terms. After surrendering, they joined the Thorn Clan, received favorable treatment, and even got their own faction. They had originally intended to take advantage of the situation and settle in Transia, but then Murphy and Triss, the "comeback" husband-and-wife team, rose to power. Unwilling to stir up trouble, Grand Duchess Shani could only assign them a new territory.
The Thorn Grand Duchess had sent those traitors to the other side of the Great Wilderness, where they happily began a new life in Port Joseph, in the Far East. But the ten thousand armed blood thralls still holding the castle had been left in the lurch.
The Third Brigade Maxim had handed over earlier had shown that while some armed blood thralls were just "soldiers who