Taken from:

Nemith the Reckless — 7th Year and Last

Annals of the Empire — Sieur D'Isellion

It was in this year that Nemith, last of that line, succumbed to his most foolhardy ambition, the conquest of Gidesta. The year began badly, a double dark of the moons at Winter Solstice is always inauspicious, yet Nemith scoffed at the customary rites to propitiate Poldrion at such a time and humiliated the Auspex who came to take the auguries for the coming year. Relations with the official priesthood deteriorated sharply from this point.

It was at the Imperial Solstice festivites that rumours began to circulate that the Emperor would be acclaimed at Equinox with the epithet 'Reckless'. The delay in his acclamation by the Great Houses mas already a source of considerable irritation to Nemith and his correspondence with General Palleras suggests he mas even considering the use of military force against some of his more outspoken detractors. While such an idea may seem hard to credit, this mould explain his unprecedented decision to retain the cohorts under arms from the previous year, through harvest and on into the autumn and winter seasons. Needless to say, such orders mere very unpopular with the troops, leading to considerable unrest in the camps as well as a poor harvest and hardship in the rural areas with so much of the workforce absent. This in turn forced up the cost of bread in the cities and led to growing agitation among the urban poor. The princes of the Great Houses remonstrated with the Emperor on several occasions, until Nemith showed his contempt for Sieur Den Rannion by using his letters as napkins at one of his debauched entertainments. The Princes of the Convocation refused all invitations to the Imperial residence from that point but Nemith merely took this as a sign of their acquiescence.

By Equinox, the cohorts were suffering famine in their encampments and revolt threatened. Nemith sought desperately for a campaign which would both offer the soldiers booty and remove them from the more prosperous reaches of the Empire. Believing Caladhria and Dalasor to be pacified, he ordered the troops north across the Dalas. The tales of distant riverbeds thick with gold and cliffs laced with seams of silver are repeated several times in his letters to his wife, evidently a powerful incentive. As the Imperial accounts for the year show, he was nearly bankrupt by this point and all the Princes of the Great Houses had been refusing him credit for two full seasons. He was indeed acclaimed as 'Reckless' at the Equinox Convocation, an insult all the more galling as he was, of course, unable to retaliate in any way.

The Gidestan campaign began badly as the Mountain Men emerged from their winter homes in the valley fastnesses of the Dragon's Spine and began to fight back. Their ferocity overwhelmed peasant levies used for undemanding duties in Lescar and Caladhria. More crucially, it became apparent that they had far greater numbers to field than had been expected. In alienating princes, patrons and priests, Nemith had left his armies without experienced commanders, essential intelligence-gathering and the means of rapid communication and resupply. As his losses mounted, desertion became a major problem; Nemith ordered ever more harsh disciplinary measures but of course this only made matters worse. The Princes refused to levy more cohorts from among their tenantry and openly sheltered men fleeing the Emperor's own lands. It is debatable whether Nemith could have salvaged his rule at this point by withdrawing back across the Dalas. Perhaps he could, but events in Ensaimin and Caladhria soon made this academic.