The Winter March of Fire and Fang: Siege of Wien, 1550–1551

An Eventide of Albion Chronicle Entry

Date: December 26, 1550 – January 1, 1551Location: Wien (Vienna), Crownlands of Bohemia, Holy Roman EmpireParticipants:

• Ivan IV Vasilyevich (The Tsar of All Rus’), accompanied by a supernatural coalition army

• Michael Lvovich Glinsky, Elder Garou of the Shadow Lords, Tsar’s War General

• Order of Gabriel, fanatical Prodigal hunters trained in both mundane and arcane arts

• Kindred of the Camarilla, remnants turned prisoners or traitors of the old Elysium of Wien

🔥 Prelude: The Black Snow Accord

In the waning days of 1550, as frost cloaked the rivers and the sun’s light waned early upon Eastern Europe, Ivan IV—called “Grozny” by his kin, and feared as “the Thunder-Tsar” by his enemies—assembled a force at the borders of the Kingdom of Poland. With papal sanction unraveling and the Holy Roman Empire turning inward amidst internal strife and Sabbat infestations in the south, Ivan saw opportunity.

A secret treaty, later called The Black Snow Accord, was struck between Ivan and several disgruntled Polish noble families. In Kraków, his army doubled in strength, bolstered by seasoned Polish warriors disillusioned by the Church’s rising fanatics. Marching west under banners of frost-rimed thunderbirds and twin-headed direwolves, they moved into Bohemia—toward the fortress-city of Wien.

🛡️ Wien: Fortress of the Burning Cross

Once a city of Camarilla sanctuary, Wien had fallen to the Order of Gabriel—a fanatical sect of mortal and Awakened Hunters trained to eradicate all supernatural life not sanctioned by their rites. Its old Elysium had been converted into a black citadel: a training compound for killing Changelings, Garou, and even the Kindred who opposed their crusade. Their elite wielded holy relics and cruelly repurposed fae magic.

The fortress was defended by:

• Three concentric walls laced with silver and cold iron traps

• Mortals enhanced by stolen alchemical and fae artifacts

• Wardings that weakened Umbra-travel and spirit-shifting

⚔️ The Five-Day Siege of Broken Moons

The siege began under a blood-red moon on the night of December 27, 1550.

Day One: Ivan’s front lines—composed of Russian bear-kin Gurahl and Polish kinfolk archers—tested the outer walls. War drums and spirit howls echoed as the air shimmered with spiritual tension. Casualties were heavy. Snow turned pink with blood.

Day Two & Three: The Garou packs, many of them Shadow Lords and Silver Fangs, led coordinated strikes under the guidance of Michael Glinsky, Ivan's brutal and brilliant war-general. Bastet scouts sabotaged inner defenses and uncovered sacred relics buried beneath the old Camarilla halls.

Day Four: The defenders released abominations—mortals twisted by captured fae glamour into fae-warped Juggernauts. Fire from the heavens scorched the eastern assault lines. Ivan himself, cloaked in black fox-fur, entered the fray wielding a saber blessed by a shaman of the Dreaming.

Day Five – The Fall of the Cross: On the Feast of the Circumcision, January 1, 1551, the fortress breached. Garou tore through the inner sanctum. The final duel occurred beneath the shattered stained-glass window of the Cathedral Hall.

🩸 The Duel of the Twinned Titans

• Order Champion: Sir Godomar von Lichtheim, a giant of a man clad in blessed steel and wielding a Chimerical blade forged from the essence of a slain Sidhe’s dream. His strikes rent the air with glamour and seared Garou flesh.

• General Glinsky: No longer fully man, Glinsky had bound war-spirits into his sinews. His claws were plated in silvered obsidian, and he moved with the storm-gifted grace of his Shadow Lord ancestors.

Their duel shook the bones of the earth. It is said both landed mortal blows:

• Godomar’s blade pierced Glinsky’s heart as the Garou’s jaws crushed the knight’s windpipe.

• They died in the same breath, one choking on blood, the other gasping the name of Gaia.

🌕 Aftermath: The Crimson Banner of Rus

Wien fell. Its tainted relics were destroyed, its prisoners—mostly Kindred of the Camarilla—freed or sent east to Ivan’s new holdings. A war council of Garou and mages sanctified the ground in a cleansing rite that lasted seven hours.

The Order of Gabriel suffered a mortal blow. Their main European training bastion was gone.

Ivan returned to Moscow in early February 1551, his march now immortalized in both Kindred whispers and Garou songs as The Winter of Righteous Flame. Glinsky’s body was entombed in the Siberian Umbral Glade known as the “Howling Ice.”

🕯️ Legacy

The supernatural world would remember this battle as a turning point. A Garou king, bound by no tradition of Camarilla or Council, had risen and burned the heart of a fanatical order. The world, mortal and otherwise, was no longer safe for the hunter or the hunted.

And in the Dreaming, the Sidhe whisper that the Chimerical blade of Godomar still wanders, seeking a new wielder.