My current work feels a little obsolete. :)

[ex_ottoyuhr]

I'm still going to update names and so on and get a final .808 version out, but I'm going to have to explore .890 extensively and see what it's like relative to ASLOW. Battle for Sicily (and now probably Native) has different objectives from ASLOW -- working at a lower level, focusing on the individual fief, where with ASLOW individual territories won't be worth your bother for long, and eventually there'll be a much stronger "narrative" element.

Incidentally, the evil cult story arc is quite thoroughly cut from ASLOW. The intent was to subvert it massively -- no such cult actually existed, but the player would still spend most of the game opposing them before figuring that out. But in order to subvert a trope, the author must first get his audience to buy into a trope, and this is one of those so completely played out that it's just not worth it to subvert. Blame Fire Emblem 4, I guess -- in my other planned fiction I would've laughed this sort of idea off the drawing board in an instant...

Anyhow, the game's going to start with the end of the (needs-rename) Ajarine unification, with -- spoiler! -- the death of Emperor Kardis in battle and the subsequent question of the succession. It looks like the new system's going to help a lot in setting up that campaign, and all sieges and so on in general...

So, time to wait for the game to stabilize from any bugs found (although this certainly doesn't seem to be another .800), and for the next module system to be released -- although, again, I'll do the last .808 update first.

[Riptokus]

For the name and the war - My assumption is "the Ajarine Unification" accomplished is the domination of the plains where the Ajarine city-states are, hammering them into one united empire. The fact he is called "Emperor Kardis" implies he established an imperium. Therefore, you could say "He fell forging the Imperium out of the scattered cities in the area." Therefore it wouldn't be called Ajarine anything. Imperiums have always had one thing in common. Expand or die! Imperiums are always expanding, aggressively most of the time. Just as the Romans viewed their conquests as campaigns, so would the residents of any imperial city.
That means it would probably be seen as the Plains of Resen Campaign. The problem with this is he started in Chelm, and found his wife quite a ways to the south. You really need to think through every battle of that. If they started in Chelm, how come the capital is so far south? An alternitive to the entire situation is start them in Ambrolauri, since it is to become the capital of the empire. That way, the second wife is taken fairly early in the days of the establishment of the imperium. That makes it more realistic that he'd be of age when Emperor Kardis dies. But think of what that means. 15 years the wives knew of each other, one bitter at the other for ursuping her son's future rule, the other not accepted as well by the court. 15 years of that situation brewing could very well be why Ambrolauri is a conniving, backstabbing city. The "True" line being hated by the ones they displaced. The original heir line maintaing only a small amount of loyal outward support for fear of alienating the mother of the future emperor. This would be the world that Rishta grows up in. Shihab would already be an adult when the new wife is taken, so may be resentful of how his mother is treated. Where are each of these players, and what are they doing while Kardis expands his realm?

Here's a fictional campaign timeline. Knowing what happened allows you to properly place each city in context, with amount of time in the empire, which allows you to understand how much time each former kingdom had to get a firm grasp of imperial traditions. I got these dates based on a war I actually did against the Ajarine, with some made up stuff in it(Like Baheisir falling was really me going back and resupplying my armies, whom were in a pretty bad state after Chelm, or the "Fleet battle", those cities were mine at the point and really all I did was go back for more troops to try to handle the huge forces that were around Tinori. As you can imagine, I gave up after loosing a 2nd large army.)

-9? - Prince Kardis of Ambrolauri takes a wife, gives birth to Shihab
0 - The old king of Ambrolauri dies
2 - King Kardis Finishes pacifying bandits in his kingdom.
3 - A Border dispute leads to open warfare with the kingdom centered around Kobulaiet
7 - In a series of swift victories, the kingdom around Kobulaiet is captured, ending a four year war with said kingdom.
8 - Shihab takes a wife, and they give birth to a child, Arcos. Meanwhile, the kingdom of Ayrum believe Kardis is plotting to attack, and therefore launch an attack of their own. Ambrolauri is assaulted. This assault is beaten down, and an Enraged king Kardis decides to Conquer Ayrum. It falls before the year's end.(Making Shihab 17)
9 - King Kardis is flattered by an Ayrum woman, whom not only convinces him to revive a long-dead law, but also to forge an empire. They have a child, Rishta, who is granted the status of Heir apparent.
10 - The armies of Emperor Kardis are stopped dead at the bridges of Tinori. The Neighboring Sivaic kingdom, whatever it will be called, engages in a fleet battle with Emperor Kardis when he tries to defy their statement that no ships are to go near their city for the purpose of assaulting Tinori. This causes problems betweem the Ajarine imperium and the Sivaic kingdom from that point after.
13 - Emperor Kardis has forged another large army, and marches towards Chelm.
15 - Chelm falls
18 - Baheisir falls. Emperor Kardis sends his men across the river. they then follow it downstream to Tinori.
21 - Tinori falls.
22 - The truce with Aimara is destroyed in devastating raids across the river against the city of Ayrum.
24 - Emperor Kardis dies in the final battle against free Ajarines, at Silstra. (Making Shibab 33, Arcos 16, and Rishta 15.)

Naturally since mine is based on my own engagement with the Ajarine, it's not going to be what is real. Understanding something like this allows you to develop further history off of it though. Such as, Kardis's first wife is a grand tactician, demonstrated by the fact that when her home was attacked, the agressor city fell quickly, in contrast to the border dispute that sparked four years of warfare. That means that she would feel responsible for her own situation for being a second wife, and perhaps why she didn't just plant a dagger in her rival at the first oppurtunity. She may have even followed the army victories, consolidating after her husband as a way to stay out of the conflict. That would explain why her line was in Baheisir at the end of the advance, since it's closest to Silstra, which was the next conquest. As for the other queen, given what happened to the first, she probably never left the side of Kardis, therefore she probably died in Silstra too, since she was picked up after a battle and she wouldn't want the same thing happening to her.

But that is in my imaginary timeline, not in what is in your story. I suggest you go through your notes and try to figure your own timeline out. It will defenatly help prevent having Carthagenians in the Second World War 

[ex_ottoyuhr]

It pains me to see this alternate timeline when I've already revised the timeline myself. I did the same genealogical homework you did, and determined that if the game's backstory from the foundation of the Ajarine Empire to the beginning of the game was the fifty years I wanted it to be, and Emperor Kardis was the great-grandfather of the hero, then the conspiratorial Emperor Rishta, Arcos' cousin, is about seven years old as of the time of the game. That kind of surprised me.

I also noticed that I was doing everything wrong concept-wise. The intent was to subvert the "evil conspiracy attempting to take over world" meme -- the hero would discover about halfway through the story that the alleged centuries-old conspiratorial organization didn't actually exist -- but to subvert a meme requires the audience to buy into it. What was I thinking? Anyhow, they're now cut.

Additionally, the game wasn't opening with anything resembling a bang, and the backstory looked a good deal more interesting than the story story -- so I'm revising it accordingly. The game will now start at the end of the unification war it previously mentions -- Emperor Kardis, for example, will be on screen at the beginning, and thus we'll have a natural start-with-a-bang/tutorial to begin the game...

If you don't mind, though, I'm going to hang on to your alternate timeline for future reference. It's a very interesting one -- I especially like the idea of the Ayrunine woman being the one more or less responsible for the empire. It's even more interesting given that back in the cultural mainstream, the Misli frown on polygamy and try to avoid wars...

It didn't occur to me that Prince Rishta would be quite as messed up as he is -- a disinherited half-brother fifteen years older than himself... Not good. I can't help but think that in the original timeline, the one you're working with here, the Empire would never have formed in the condition it's depicted in -- Prince Shihab would have turned on his father at some point. This is not Saudi Arabia or China, where an emperor disinheriting one lineage in favor of another is nothing remarkable; this is more like England just before the Wars of the Roses. (Come to think of it, if Honseli have roses, Shihab has all the makings of Edward of York, Kinin could be Calais, and we definitely have our "Queen not worth ten marks...")

On Ambrolauri: The first empire's capital was there (and it's west of Chelm, not south -- I need to add a compass rose). Chelm is on the outskirts of Ajarine civilization -- see also Arnold Toynbee's discussion of how world-states tend to form from outsiders, as with the Macedonian conquest of Greece -- so the establishment of the Imperial court at Ambrolauri, though inconvenient and off-putting to the natives of Chelm (let alone the Karachines), helps to give the government some sort of legitimacy with the more civilized western Ajarines. Now that I think about it, it probably isn't necessary and isn't helping much, but I doubt that Emperor Kardis figured that out.

[Riptokus]

So are you going to call the war "The Plains of Resen Campaign"?