RWBY Elseworlds: Knightfall

Prologue: Fall of Westguard

Narrator's POV

It was quiet in the town of Westguard. It's a small town that resided within the territories of Vale and along the border with Vac-...the former Kingdom of Vacuo. It's relatively big for a town not entirely supported by Vale, but it was big enough to easily fended of bandits and the...Grim. 

But those who had a keen eye for nature and been reading the news from Vale, no one has seen those murderous creatures of the dark in years. Not since the Last Great Grim Migration and the Second Battle of Mt. Glenn. Not since word arrived of...the Grey One.

The biggest surprise to them and the rest of Remnant was of a new nation that was around for as long as the other four kingdoms. Maybe even longer. It's on the forgotten dragon continent of Drogon, the powerful Shurem Empire. It conquered all of the lands in Drogon before going dormant to the rest of the world. Until the Vytal Tournament seven years ago. The same time that the Grim all but vanish and the arrival of...the Lone Swordsmen.

After the events that transpired on Mt. Glenn a few years ago, the kingdoms fell into disarray. Bandits started attacking and occupying more of the unfortunate villages across Remnant. The White Fang also took over small portions of land from the kingdoms and often raided cities for supplies. Lastly, major riots broke out in cities of Atlas, Vacuo, Mistral, and Vale over the legitimacy of the Huntsmen and their academies. After all, one...man took down the single thing that stood in the way of humans' and faunus' survival in just one night than what they did for almost a century. Through this chaos is when the Shurem Empire struck the first blow in what has come to know as the Second Great War of Remnant.

After a fleet of Flagships of the Royal Atlesian Navy entered the Glacier Pass to intimidate the new nation, the Empire quickly called to defense and attacked the fleet before sinking all of it beneath the ocean.  Seeing the opportunity, the Shurem Empire declared war on Atlas and anyone who sided with them.  They then released an entire fleet of bombers ranging from light to heavy in a destructive bombing campaign that hit hard on all strategic points across the continent of Solatis. Particularly hitting hard on their military bases, the shipyards of their navy, and the City of Atlas. The kingdom tried to fight back but since they were hit so hard and so fast, the Atlesian Military, especially their navy, was decimated. But General Ironwood's fleet managed to make to Vale before their inevitable defeat during the 1st Battle of the Atlesian Ocean.

With their biggest obstacle out of the way, the Shurem Empire launched a two-pronged ground invasion on Solatis and on the Kingdom of Vacuo who tried to send military aid to Atlas. Since there was little to no opposition, within the first months of the war, the Kingdoms Atlas and Vacuo fell to the Empire. 

But suddenly as they came, they stop their advances on the Valean-Vacuite border by the Cobalt Run and the Mistralian-Atlesian Sea Border. No one knew why they stop until the rulers of the Shurem Empire, Emperor Shu Halcion and Empress Remliel Aerra Halcion, made an announcement that they will continue their conquest, but only after the remaining nations could actually put up a fight. 

Professor Ozpin of Beacon Academy in Vale and mysterious women by the name of Salem took this opportunity to send their shadowy organization to the strip remaining City Councils of their power and pronounced the now promoted Chancellor James Ironwood to be the leader of the newly formed League of Free Kingdoms(League for short). They managed to rally all the people of Vale, Mistral, and newly formed Kingdom of Menagerie under one cause: to push pack the Empire's advance and defeat them. Within a year into the war, the various villages/towns, bandit groups, and even the White Fang folded in on a temporary truce between them and the League so they could join arms with former Huntsmen/Huntress and common civilians in the military. Ever since then, the war was quiet.