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Tannin Castle was a famous small city in the south of the Gallic Empire, renowned for producing high-quality wine.
The Tannin Family were the lords here. The head of the Tannin Family was merely a hereditary baron, unremarkable in the Empire's hierarchy of titles. Yet because Tannin Castle produced twenty-five thousand great barrels of high-quality wine each year, along with dozens of bottles of aged fine wine every so often, the Tannin Family were immensely popular throughout western noble circles.
After all, what nobles cared about was the style of their food, drink, and daily luxuries. The Tannin Family's premium wines were essential face-saving goods for every noble, while aged Tannin wine was an absolute luxury. Relying on their ancestral winemaking craft and the superb vineyards in the five river valleys under Tannin Castle's rule, the Tannin Family lived in carefree ease, rich enough to rival a region.
But over the past few days, Baron Tannin's mood had been heavy. Every morning at dawn, he climbed to the tallest tower of the castle and stared blankly at the enormous army slowly passing by his castle in a rolling tide, like a flood.
A unit of heavily armored infantry, a unit of heavy crossbowmen, a unit of light cavalry, a unit of heavily armored lancers, another unit of heavily armored infantry, then another unit of light cavalry.
Unit after unit of soldiers, each a thousand men strong, marched past Tannin Castle in neat formations. Their breaths rumbled like thunder, their footsteps flew like the wind. As their boots struck the earth, dust billowed up, drifting lazily high into the sky and floating far away on the wind, coating even the grapevines on the trellises in