The Ash Curtain (The First Known Major Neuman Offensive)

The Ash Curtain is the Legion’s name for the fall of Kavros, one of the Eastern Reach’s mega cities, to the Neuman. Kavros was not a border outpost. It was a hub, tens of millions of people, layered in defensive rings, with supply towers reaching the upper atmosphere and its own standing garrison of two hundred thousand Legionnaires.

It fell in less than a month.

Prelude to Collapse

Kavros had always been considered untouchable. Its elevation, anti-air systems, and deep-stocked food reserves made it a fortress city in every sense. The Nine kept it well-supplied because it sat in the path of key high-atmosphere trade routes, including those the Neuman used for their drifting archipelago-cities.

The Neuman didn’t storm the walls on day one. They appeared in the sky. Silent. Drifting in on thermal currents. Hundreds of glide-wings catching the light like sheets of oil. They circled for days without attacking, mapping every inch of Kavros with inhuman patience. The garrison grew restless. Civilians were ordered inside.

When the first strikes came, they were surgical, water treatment towers, thermal exhaust stacks, and the primary food synthesis grid. Kavros could still fight, but its people couldn’t drink, couldn’t keep cool, and couldn’t feed themselves. Within a week, the first Legion counter-strikes failed to even touch the Neuman forces. They were too fast, too high, and too coordinated.

The Siege

The Neuman didn’t waste ammunition on the walls. They went for the breathing space inside the city. Any open square or plaza became a kill zone. Legion squads moving between sectors would find their positions pre-sighted, glide-borne raiders diving from above with compound bows and human bone arrows tipped in fast-acting neurotoxins.

Kavros’ skies became a constant rain of bodies, not Neuman bodies, but its defenders, snatched from rooftops or lifted screaming into the clouds before being dropped to the streets below.

The worst came when the Neuman began deploying their “pens” inside the city itself. Civilians were herded into sealed structures, marked not for execution but for transport. They weren’t killing indiscriminately; they were collecting.

The Ash Curtain Event

On the twenty-seventh day of the siege, Kavros’ garrison made a final push to reclaim the central industrial district. The Neuman let them advance. Then, without warning, the sky went black. Witnesses say it was as though the air itself had been blotted out.

What followed is still debated. All Legion sensors went dead at once, cutting off live feed. Reinforcements dispatched from the nearest Citadel found the city still standing, but empty. Not in ruins, empty. The streets were covered in a thin layer of ash that tested as bone-white calcium. Banners hung from poles, fused into the metal. Buildings were intact but silent.

Of the two hundred thousand defenders, not a single body was found. The civilian population, nearly forty million people, was gone.

Aftermath & Legacy

The Legion has never confirmed what happened inside Kavros during the blackout. Rumors from scavenger crews claim they’ve seen Neuman archipelagos drifting above the Eastern Reach with whole city blocks embedded in them, Kavros’ streets and towers rebuilt in the sky, populated by human cattle.

The Ash Curtain became a cautionary name in Legion doctrine: never assume the Neuman will fight for territory. They don’t conquer cities to hold them. They take what they want, strip it of what they need, and leave behind a hollow shell.

Today, Kavros is still avoided. Not because it’s dangerous, but because it’s too quiet. The ash still clings to the streets. Nothing grows there. And at night, when the air is still, Legion scouts swear they hear wind moving through the upper towers in patterns too regular to be natural… as if something above is listening.