Drauso is the general the Moon Wilds broke. Three legions went west under his standard with orders to bring the jungle under Gorathi rule, the way three centuries of jungle had been brought under it before. The Vexlings met them in the dark, with the hypnotic gaze and the corrosive silver blood the western foresters had warned of and the legions had filed as superstition. By the time what was left of the column came back out of the trees, the Eternal March that the war-church preaches can only ever advance had stopped for the first time in living memory, and Drauso had a name he did not choose.
Another emperor might have had him executed for it. Veramus did not, and the reason is not mercy. A man who has been publicly unmade has nowhere to stand but beside the emperor who let him live, and Veramus, who outlasted his own rivals rather than out-fought them, understands the use of a loyal failure better than most. So Drauso keeps a seat in the court at Azantir, his command stripped, his name a thing the legions say to frighten new recruits.
What he has left is the bounty. When the legions found the creature the Vexlings had begun to gather around, the thing the Gorathi call the Argent Mother, Drauso became the loudest voice for putting a price on her head. Kill the queen of the hive, he argues, and the Wilds open, the legions are avenged, and the man who lost them is the man who found the road west.
A queen can be killed. I have stood close enough to see her. Set the price high enough and someone will bring me her head, and then we walk into the Wilds whenever we please. — Drauso, to the war-council at Azantir
The foresters who live along the western edge will tell anyone who asks that it does not work that way. The Wilds have always had a mother, they say, and always will; killing her is not a victory but a way of making the hive worse. Drauso does not listen to foresters. He cannot afford to. The bounty is the only road he has back, and a man on his last road does not weigh the rumor that the road goes nowhere.