Priest Benek's death became a flash point in the war

  Gwendolyn ap Numaness, the Queen of Swynfaredia hatched a scheme to annex land of Fumaya for three reasons.   1) Swynfaredia has an influx of infighting and she hopes manufacturing an external enemy will unite the feuding factions.   2) Gwendolyn wants to distribute new land grants to her strongest supporters and maybe maneuver her less loyal vassals to take losses.   3) It's close to the 900th anniversary of Swynfaredia's royal charter. Gwendolyn wants to cement her name in the history books as a great monarch by having an expansion of territory.

Queen Gwendolyn believed her annexation of Fumaya would proceed quickly, but the Fumayans defense has been a lot stronger than she anticipated and the war has turned into a grinding war of attrition.

Hoping to regain momentum in the war, the queen gathered as many mages as she could with Overland Flight spell as possible for a large scale multi-pronged flank attack with elite squads using flying spells to hit behind enemy lines. There was an intelligence leak and the Fumayans were able to prepare anti-flying spells and stop a majority of the flying squads. The only place where flying squads managed to break through in numbers was in the Duchy of Nerozik.     The original plan was for the force in Nerozik to stay mobile and inflict terror on Nerozik civilians to force the Nerozik troops to chase after them rather than to reinforce the Fumayan center, and a lot of the troops sent for this task were among the shadiest and least disciplined troops Swynfaredia had. This technically worked, the Nerozik were not able to reinforce King Henyrk's main force, but Henryk's troops held the line anyway only ceding a small amount of territory and making the Swynfaredians pay a bloody price for their icremmental gain.

Priest Benek tried to shepherd some children to safety and ended up getting cut down by an overly excited blood-thirsty mercenary.   Benek was hardly the only casualty. Hundreds of dead commoners were slain, and a few highborn knights were killed trying to defend the peasantry, including the eldest son and heir apparent of Duke Narcyz Nerozik.   Lots of homes and mills were burned and lots of livestock was slaugthered. If the marauders found anything of value, they looted it.   But for all the damage inflicted, the death of Priest Benek was the most shocking bit of damage to most ordinary Fumayans.

The mercenary's Swynfaredian Dragonblood commander immediately noticed Benek's religious regalia and executed Benek's killer on the spot and withdrew his squad from the area. But a beloved elderly Compact priest was brutally murdered with multiple witnesses and bad news travels fast.

The normally apolitical Cult of the Compact is now preaching about the evils of lSwynfaredia though they word their condemnation to place most of the blame on the Swynfaredian elites.   Benek's many protégés are working diligently to make Benek a Tapukeah as soon as possible.   Rather than breaking the spirit of the Fumayan people, the aggreigous attacks on civilians have galvanized their resistance and has caused the citizenry to stop complaining about King Henryk's more controversial wartime policies.   More importantly, this has forged a wedge between Swynfaredian commoners and Swynfaredian Dragonbloods.