"The author of Star Eternal has actually stopped updating for more than half a year, and he used to regularly send out manuscripts anonymously and publish them in the underground printing house in Yuexi Town. There is a grapevine that the author's real identity is the son of a farmer in Alwin, and he cannot be blamed for the reason for the stoppage, which is said to have suffered an accident on the way to the business. Skar sighed, "This work is a rare conscience in this era, and I sincerely pray that nothing has happened to him." ”

Oster was stunned, how could he be so familiar, as if he had heard it somewhere.

Skar added, "However, last week, I took advantage of the opportunity to go to Mooncreek Town to turn over goods, and I sat in the underground book club. I read there the last volume published half a year ago, which is also the next volume of the stonemason brothers, so I can talk to you about it briefly. ”

Oster was shocked, no wonder this person was always missing, and it was several days as soon as he disappeared, and he was chasing after him; As the leader of a gang, the leader of the rebels, and the enemy is currently taking the time to slip away, what a hardcore book lover.

Skar led the group to a nearby outpost for a short rest. Sitting around the table and boiling a pot of tea, Skar began to tell the history of the Brotherhood and the origins of the Armory;

“…… For thousands of years, the priests and nobles of this land have wielded the use of light and magic, and have supernatural powers like gods. To ordinary people, these rulers with divine powers are high up and cannot be disobeyed; No matter what kind of oppression and exploitation they suffered, the people could only endure it silently, without the slightest ability to resist.

Later, the Orc Revolt came, and these alien refugees used the evil power of the Burning Legion to defeat the ruler of the so-called God of Power. Although the uprising was short-lived, it was defeated a few years later due to a lack of support and a full-scale counterattack by the Alliance. However, some of the so-called demonic technologies left by the orcs have not been completely destroyed, and have been quietly preserved by the people;

Soon after the war, an artisan organization originated in the area of Stone Tablet Lake, and developed magical engineering techniques suitable for civilian use, referring to the ordnance used during the Orc Rebellion occupation and some of the books left behind by the Legion demons. As a result, their skills have improved rapidly, and a large number of mechanical tools and equipment have been manufactured, which has greatly improved the ability of local people to explore nature, production and construction.

This organization was later chosen by Tulayan, the Protector of the Kingdom at the time, to take charge of the rebuilding of Stormwind. Speaking of Tulayan, this Paladin High Lord is not very religious in his approach to teachings, and he is also a good hand at planning, building, and developing industries. The path to modernization in the Kingdom of Stormwind actually began during the period of the Papal Dependencies. The Lord Protector doesn't mind whose technology he uses, as long as he does his job well. As a result, the craftsmen exerted their unparalleled wisdom and paid hard sweat, which lasted nearly ten years to build the most advanced and prosperous city in history.

However, those years coincided with the most frequent regime changes in Stormwind; Not long after the start of construction, Tulayan crossed the Stargate expedition to the Outlands and his whereabouts were unknown, and the papal vassal was subsequently overthrown by the First Republic. During the Republic, the Anti-Stormwind Alliance frequently attacked the city, and the construction was intermittent. It was not until after the restoration of the Third Dynasty of Urion that the main body of the new city was completed.

Despite several rounds of expansion at this point, Stormwind, with its twenty districts, is known as the Light of the Alliance, and is second to none in all of Azeroth. However, the reigning Third Dynasty withheld the huge amount of construction money owed by the previous dynasty for various reasons;

I don't know whether it was because they were afraid that the advanced technology mastered by the craftsmen would threaten the rule, or whether the aristocracy and the church simply wanted to rely on this large sum of money to relieve the financial pressure; In the end, not only did the craftsmen not receive any compensation, but they were all exiled to the wild western wilderness at the time of war for the use of demonic sorcery and for assisting the orc army in wartime.

Under the leadership of the outstanding leader Edwin Van Cleef, the artisans who had left their homeland did not feel sorry for themselves or resigned themselves to degenerate, but took the initiative to join the tide of reclamation in the west, helping the immigrants make tools, improve crops, and build roads.

In every field, every road, every farm, and every market town in the west, there is a sweat of hard work shed by craftsmen. It can be said that without the Brotherhood, there would be no West today, and they have won the deep support and love of the inhabitants, and have become the de facto rulers of this wilderness. How prestigious was the Masons' Guild in the West back then? The officials and decrees of the kingdom were ignored, and the people only recognized the commands of those with cogs tattooed on their bodies.

However, with the discovery of a large number of gold mines and the reclamation of large tracts of fertile land, the western region became increasingly prosperous, and the output value of industry and agriculture once surpassed that of Alwyn, becoming the richest region of the kingdom, which aroused the coveting of Stormwind.

The prosperous rulers of the western region extended their tentacles, and the kingdom army soon took over large swaths of land and used it as a granary and a source of soldiers. Garrison forts and knightly domains were erected, and the use of force to impose exorbitant taxes and forced labor caused growing discontent and revolt among the inhabitants.

Van Cleef went to Stormwind to negotiate with the royal court as a union representative, but was arbitrarily and unjustifiably detained. The royal family could not buy the upright leader of the Brotherhood, nor could they find any bad deeds in him, so they accused him of disrespecting the queen and arrested him and imprisoned him.

That night, when he heard the news that he was about to be executed, he easily opened the cell door, escaped through the sewers he had built, and took one last look at the city he loved before leaving.

Upon returning to the west, Van Cleef, who had come to his senses, established the Defia People's Army and began to mobilize the masses to revolt. The artisans united the vast number of peasants in the west and adopted a new emblem, made of the craftsman's hammer and the scythe of the harvest witch, as the symbol of the People's Army.

Van Cleef was not only a brilliant craftsman, but also a military and organizational genius, and his ranks quickly grew to defeat the kingdom's army, which had mages, cavalry, and siege tanks. Not only did it liberate the entire western region, but it also controlled a large area of the Elwyn Forest for a time. Seeing that the rule of the Third Dynasty was about to be overturned once again, the rulers of Stormwind were crying and ready to abandon the city again;

However, Van Cleef was suddenly assassinated in a secret and heavily guarded base deep in the Hope Mine. With the death of the leader, everything is in vain.

Originally, the rebel army was complex and full of contradictions, and it was all thanks to Van Cleef's personal charm to suppress the forces of all parties before they united with the outside world. Now that the leadership core has been lost, and Van Cleef died too strangely and unexpectedly, there is no time to arrange the aftermath, and the rebel army begins to disintegrate internally, and is broken by the Kingdom Army individually.

The remnants continued to fight for months and eventually failed. Defiya's base, the area around Yuexi Town, which was originally the most prosperous in the entire west, was massacred and set on fire by the Kingdom Army, and was reduced to a ruin, and it has not fully recovered after many years.

After the suppression of the Defia uprising, the royal family and the Church, fearing that the people would revolt again, not only carried out a brutal purge of the areas where the Brotherhood had been active, but also completely destroyed magical engineering artifacts and drawings, forbidding anyone to study or mention them;

Since then, almost everything about the Brotherhood has been erased, including its most valuable craft. In the way they do best, the rulers poured dirty water on the rebels, slandering Defia as a murderous criminal gang that was the source of all unrest. That's the story of the West so far. ”

Speaking of this, Skar took a sip of his teacup and continued slowly;

“…… What is not written in the book is that in the last days, Van Cleef only had time to leave the warehouse to his successor. But alas, because the handover was too hasty, I don't have all the technology here, and the factory outside is only the tip of the iceberg of the Brotherhood industry;

I relied on this valley to establish my first base and recruited a group of faithful righteous people. And use the equipment in this valley, plus intercept some of the magical raw materials stored by the kingdom and the church, to create some light engineering weapons. We usually disguise ourselves as beggars to go out and fight, robbing the rich and helping the poor, sweeping away evil and eliminating traitors, while waiting for the opportunity.

Now, the disaster situation is so critical, the people are struggling to make ends meet, and starvation is everywhere. The royal family not only opened a warehouse for relief, but also continued to increase the excesses and miscellaneous taxes, fought everywhere for the interests of the upper class, and sent a large number of young people to the north as cannon fodder; The Church controlled a large number of people and arable land, but maintained the most backward production and management methods, did not allow serfs to flee the famine, and took the opportunity to abduct and sell people into slavery; The local government only protected the wealthy, and even colluded with big businessmen and landlords to exploit refugees to enrich themselves.

The Stormwind Kingdom's reign in the west is crumbling like a ruined house, and it is only one last kick away from causing it to collapse completely. So, I organized the rebels in the area of Montenegro County, with the members of the beggar gang as the backbone, and formed the current rebel army. ”