Whispers (7:14) were on the warpath and found Xiphos (12:40) to be a nice target over which a victory would bring some vengeance for the ABS/CoV Alliance war from age 43. Xiphos had a solid war history and was right in their target range. Whispers was hoping to gain some acres at the least, but preferred to get a war out of it.
Xiphos was also searching for war, having waved several kingdoms with no war to be found. Xiphos notes that Whispers was 10% larger than them, but that 20% of their kingdom size was in the bank province. Xiphos Monarch wasn't for warring Whispers at first, due to the large bank and the lacking of much honor. He therefore chose to drag out the hostile and see how things looked after a while, hoping that the bank province would be less effective out of war and would maybe be randomly hit and brought down some acres. However, after about 48 hours of hostile, the bank province was growing and Xiphos' players still wanted war. Counting Whispers' two full Thief/Mages into the calculations gave them the advantage of having 25 attackers vs 23 attackers.
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