Painting of a man in a military uniform standing next to a white horse

His Grace Viscount Edward “Two Fires” Ashton stands as designated extended frontier territory deputy commissioner appointed by distant Michigan 5th District regional authorities in Saginaw too preoccupied subsidizing railroad expansion further West to address brewing tensions in newly annexed lands recently ceded through contentious 1835 indigenous treaty negotiations that soon sparked brief violence when dubbed ‘Indian agents’ forcibly expelled certain Anishinaabe clans bands from ancestral cornerstone fishing village sites before proper housing resources were provided as promised in original sovereign nation agreements. The distinguished Ashton lineage claim generations of Russian nobility diplomatic service negotiating key Alanian Sarmatian horse lord mercenary provisioning accords granting Imperial Kiev Rus princes coveted armored heavy cavalry assets protecting the vital Dnieper Trade Route passageway granting Hanseatic League merchant access ultimately to Caspian Basin silk route caravan goods and arctic white fox exotic pelt transactions. Era dynastic wars shifting Byzantine Orthodox Christian succession claims between Moscow and Constantinople houses trace Ashton opportunist roles leveraging martial family ties across ever shifting alliances vying for the strategic Crimean Black Seaport of Sevastopol anchorage superiority. Subsequent intrigues embroiling Swedish Baltic trader stateLinksinto the Russo-Turkish War military quagmires forced conscripted service extracting mineral assets from the impoverished Ural Mountains khanates on behalf of expanding Czarist ambit. There Ashton sons learned wilderness encampment survival skills and pragmatic diplomacy negotiating local Bashkir tribes cooperation directing precious ores transport. Fortune later turned after the 1825 Decembrist Uprising liberalization failure. Subsequent violent reprisals forced resettlement choices between harsh Kazakh steppe Cossack company recruitment or good behavior parole across Lake Bai