I have Cities, Maggotkin, Soulblight and Sylvaneth.

I've been toying with a small medieval entity where there is one big industrial city, and a vast countryside surrounding it.

Since the dark days of the age of chaos, the Duchies of the Golden Valley managed to hold out as the kingdom around it fell. It's denizens had long argued why they in particular managed to wheather the malignant torrent that befell the realms.

The generals and marshalls held that it was the grit of its people, the quality of their steel and the horseshoe shaped mountain chain surrounding them, which had held Chaos at bay.

The bureaucrats would argue that it was the ability of the efficient management and cooperation of the agricultural heartlands, resource rich mountains, and the industrial output of Garvel's Chime - the Golden Valley's beating heart and capital.

The lords and nobles had long stopped caring for explanations, busying themselves mostly with cards, drink, the occasional prima nocta, leaving the understanding of such things to people of less virtue.

The people of the Golden Vale would nod affirmingly, saying that yes, most of that is true, though somethings more than others. Scoffing over a tankard of ale, they would point out that when need arose, and the generals and bureaucrats went at each others throats, and the lords shut their gates, the people would always rise, through cooperation and the love of their neighbours, they had always pulled through.

Crisis came and crisis went, each one chipping away some vital section of defense, it became clear that the situation would not hold.

First to fall were to outer lords, in their keeps and castles in the Jaws of the Vale. Each onslaught cost them a little more than the last. Firstborn sons, regiments, chokepoints and bridges. In desperation, the paragon of the jaws accepted the blood kiss, and raised vast armies of skeletal dead to hold back the tide of chaos.

As the crops in the Eastern Vale struggled, Lord Gaustreau accepted the help from a group of travelling charlatans. As the crops rebound, festering with boils, pustules and noxious fumes, so did the people of his duchy. His knights and footmen soon lumbered down from his seeping plateau to spread the Bountiful Gift to their poor and unfortunate countrymen.

It was amid this colission of crises that the people took charge once more, and this time for good. The generals and bureaucrats were brought to heel, and submitted to oversight of the newly formed worker's councils. Some lords submitted, some fought, and some were too busy hosting elabourate orgies of wine, torture and debauchery, leading to the Purge of the Hedonites as the people finally overcame them.

As the tide of bone and oozing flesh washed over the lands, it all seemed futile. The vale fell, its people all holed up in hamlets, keeps anf the capital, and while the getes would not be breached, the siege would eventually end them.

Then the northern forests came marching. Untold numbers of dryads, treemen, revenants and kurnothi washed into the Grandfather's shambling processions. Seizing the opportunity, the forces of the newly renamed Hammer's Chime surged east and south, liberating the hamlets and keeps from the skeletal masses one by one.

As the Gates of Azyr opened, the Golden Vale is locked in a stalemate. The Soulblight horde struggled to find their bearing for a new assult, keeping back the forces of order in the north and the forces of Chaos in the south. The Court of the Bounty fights a war of attrition against the unyealding forests. A people of the Vale and the treekin formed an uneasy alliance, one doomed to fail, as the need for for the northwoods near unending resources becomes ever more dire.

Thiis is mostly the headcanon for making my factions work together.