381YE Summer Solstice winds of war

Overview

As Summer 381YE approaches, the Empire continues to fight against threats both external, and internal.

Imperial forces are engaged with the Grendel on the southern coast of Urizen in Redoubt and Spiral. In the west, a large Imperial force launches a major assault against the Jotun forces occupying the Mournwold, while the Navarr launch a strange offensive of their own. And in Weirwater, a lone Dawnish army fights a force of living nightmares.

News of the Empire's victories and defeats spreads quickly across the Empire, in part thanks to the peripatetic Navarr. Each Wind of War consists of a report on the campaign, delivered in reasonably in-character language. Players are encouraged to use this text as the basis for creating their own stories about what their characters, or their company of soldiers have done during the last few months. It is usually followed by a short out-of-character section which deals with absolute facts - the nitty-gritty of numbers, regions captured, and important game effects.

As always, how much or how little of this information you choose to know in character is up to you. Part of the purpose of Winds of War and Winds of Fortune is to make players aware of things their characters 'should' know based on what their roleplaying says they have been doing for the past three months.

Unfinished Business (Redoubt)

The Grendel have a foothold in Naris, in Redoubt. This cannot stand. We are to set out and take that land back! We've been inactive for too long - time to bloody our axes. Have Fun!

Admiral Edgardo i Ruiloba i Guerra of the Freeborn Storm

The Freeborn Storm - the grand Imperial navy - arrives in Redoubt like a comet from a clear sky. Supported by independent Freeborn and Navarr captains, and by several vessels from other nations, it assaults the beaches of Naris with the intention of driving out the Grendel insurgents who have captured several of the southern spires. Supported by the garrison of the Court of the White Fountain, the kohan and corsairs engage in a spirited campaign to liberate as many Urizen, and kill as many orcs, as they can.

The orcs are not prepared for such a concerted attack - without the support of their own armies, they are swiftly overwhelmed by the Freeborn tide. Spire after spire is liberated, until a final vicious battle takes place at Evenstar, the base-of-operations for the Grendel invaders. Rather than engage in a lengthy siege, the Freeborn Storm and their allies launch a full-frontal assault against the hospital. It is easy to see how Evenstar fell to swiftly to the Grendel - it is a spire built to encourage healing and convalescence, not to defend against a naval assault. Beautiful gardens are no substitute for stout walls.

In addition to the orcs, there are a dozen or so freakish creatures of the Spring realm defending Evenstar - hulking humanoid horrors with cruel serrated spears and gaping maws full of razor teeth. Heralds of the eternal Siakha, they are dangerous and hard to kill - striking devastating blows with their barbed weapons - but they do die eventually. Their presence is not enough to stem the tide of Imperial attackers and within a few hours the spire - and its associated Spring regio - is recaptured.

The Grendel took many slaves during their initial invasion. Sadly, few of those slaves remain to be liberated - a significant number have already been carried away across the Bay of Catazaar to who-knows-what dark fate. Tragically, among their number are most of the Urizen healers and physicians that made Evenstar a place of powerful healing, as well as perhaps as many as a score of wealthy patients from various parts of the Empire.

Of possible interest to the liberators is news that several Grendel ships - not war vessels but fast pirate ships - were supplying Evenstar in the months since its capture. They took many slaves away with them, and several treasures from the captured spires of southern Redoubt. Some of the Urizen have an interesting story to tell their liberators. Several of them were pressed into service unloading these swift Grendel pirate ships. They report that in addition to the expected cargo - weapons, armour, food and drink - but there were also occasions when they were restricted to their barracks, and the Grendel soldiers unloaded the cargos - on each occasion, it is believed they were bring in wains of building materials. Yet there is no sign of this phantom cargo anywhere liberated by the Freeborn storm.

At the same time the Imperial navy is mopping up the Grendel defenders in the south, the Northern Eagle is hard at work repairing the roads and bridges in the north. It is perhaps fitting that a Vaurshkan army is at work rebuilding roads damaged in the recent turbulent storms - the folk of that northern nation are known for their roads after all. They have made good progress - another season and the essential infrastructure should be rebuilt sufficiently to allow smooth passage through the territory again.

The Granite Pillar are also present, taking defensive positions in the north and around the Court of the White Fountain, ready to resist any further potential invasion by the southern orcs. They offer assistance to the Northern Eagle - but it proves unworkable to employ both forces on the task at the same time.

Game Information - Redoubt

The Freeborn Storm have liberated the spires captured by the Grendel during their recent invasion - the victory points in Naris accumulated by the southern orcs have been neutralised.

The Northern Eagle is half-way through the task of repairing the roads and bridges in Redoubt. As detailed in last season's Wind of Fortune, it will take another season of work by an Imperial army to completely restore movement through the territory. While an army with the Siege wuality could have repaired the roads in one season, it is not possible for two armies to combine their efforts to match that speed.

Flesh and Bone (Weirwater)

The Golden Sun will march to Weirwater. There we will grind the winter driven husks back with Iron and Fire.

General Zoran Orzel of the Golden Sun

Shortly after the Spring Equinox, the dead rise in Weirwater.

The night is dark indeed when the corpses of dead Dawnish pull themselves from their graves. The stars are still hidden, and the moon is little more than a thin silver sliver when the first shambling ghouls begin their assault. Choked in dark earth, some of them incongruously garlanded in the flowers that adorned their graves, they lurch towards the nearest human habitation, hungry for the flesh of the living. The curse that calls them is egalitarian; noble and yeoman alike are dragged from their slumber and sent stumbling to prey upon their countryfolk. The freshest corpses are the most dangerous, but those who endure the assault of the ravenous husks talk of ancient, withered dead lurching alongside the more recently departed - some barely more than skeletons cloaked in tattered parchment skin, dull red flames burning in their empty eyesockets.

A night of horror ensues across Weirwater that leaves dozens dead. The nobles are well equipped to deal with these ambulatory cadavers, but it is easy to forget that many yeomen have served in the armies of Dawn in their time. Where people are not taken by surprise, they are generally able to survive until sunrise. Yet across Weirwater hundreds die. While a single solid blow is often enough to deal with the average husk, there are a great many of them. Worse, a number of the corpses are those of Dawnish knights and nobles, buried in their armour, often with their shields. Even the mightiest blow is to no avail when it is turned aside by rusted plate, earth-clogged chain, or a clumsily interposed shield.

There is no warning, but the people are not caught entirely unprepared. Ever since the horde of unliving horrors emerged from the Semmerlak, there have been people in Weirwater predicting an event of this nature - although they have severely underestimated the magnitude. There are stories of glorious courage and vigilance across Weirwater. The witches of Applefell and their criminal allies materialise out of nowhere to protect the town from a hundred or so corpses, only to disappear again with the sunrise. The war-witches of Spiral Castle join with House Griffinsbane to drive off a terrible force of withered Varushkan warriors and Dawnish soldiers that rise from an ancient battlefield in northern Weirmoor. The troubadours of Culwich rally the people of the village against a sodden cohort of drowned fisherfolk and stranger things that drag themselves, dripping and stinking, from the mud of the Semmerlak. Axe-wileding lumberjacks from the Weirwater Vales, many of them dour Varushkans, create a no-nonsense perimeter around their camps and chop any husk foolish enough to attack them into bloody pieces.

As the sun rises, the assault of the unliving slackens. At first it is easy to believe that the bright sunlight has ended the curse - that a single night of horror is all that they will have to endure. This proves optimistic, however. The husks have stopped attacking the living but they have not returned to their graves. Rather, they have begun to shamble and stumble towards Hawksmoor, to join the unliving army there - an army that is already on the move.

The abominable horde begins to move east through the trees, a slow tide of abominations moving toward the nearest large settlement - the hedge-encircled town of Hawthorne. As they march, they slaughter any living being that crosses their path, overwhelming a small village, several farms, and the estate of the Amici, a minor noble house. The witches of Hawthorne begin to muster their defence, sending desperate messengers to Applefell and Culwich, and south into Semmerholm, asking for aid.

Aid is already on it's way, however. Two nights after the dead rise, the Golden Sun march into the forests of Weirsmoor from Astolat. Moving with grim determination, the heavily-armoured knights push eastwards as fast as they can. Passing Spiral Castle, the de Casillon nobles bring the commanders of the army up to speed on the terrible events overtaking Weirwater, and offer what aid they can. From the scattered reports, they estimate that perhaps as many as another thousand malign spirits have been unleashed into Weirwater - spirits that defile the fallen of Dawn by possessing the bodies of those who should have been left to sleep beneath the soil and driving them to prey on their descendants, their families, and their friends.

Even as they hurry to intercept the unliving host, they take few chances. As they sweep eastward into Hawksmoor, their forces spread out to ensure as many straggling unliving ghouls as possible are destroyed. The small groups of abominations are no match for a Dawnish army, and barely slow their advance ... until they reach Hawthorne at least.

The army arrives to find the siege of Hawthorne well underway. The poison-thorned hedges provide an effective perimiter, but the hordes of the unliving feel no pain and even as the magical poison is ravaging their flesh they continue to push forwar. Bolstered by every noble knight and war-witch who can reach the town, the witches coordinate a desperate defence. It is not enough to turn the unliving horder aside - the living are outnumbered and overmatched by the dead - but their courage is at least sufficient to delay the unliving long enough that they are only just breaking through the defences as the Golden Sun arrive.

The cadaverous host initially ignores the Dawnish soldiers, focusing their attention on murdering as many of the people of Hawthorne as they can. As the horns sound, and the army advances implacably across the torn fields surrounding the town, the ghouls slowly begin to register the presence of five thousand knights and yeoman-soldiers. Their attention turns away from feasting on the civillians, and they lurch forward to engage the Golden Sun.

Previously, the unliving have avoided direct engagements. Even during their ill-fated foray into Astolat, they retreated rather than fight the Golden Axe and the garrison of the Castle of Thorns. That is no longer the case. The desperate moaning howl they voice as they pour out of Hawthorne is like a living thing, assailing the spirits of the Dawnish soldiers that seek to stand against them. Some break - it is too much for them - the terrible hunger, the terrible moaning, the horror of fighting the walking corpses. Here and there among the hordes, on tattered scraps of surcotes and tabards, and even the occasional soiled standard, one cannot fail to spot the heraldry of the nobles of Weirwater; the burning phoenix of House Novarion; the white eagles of House Orzel; the golden pegasus of House Arwood; the red gryphon of House Griffinsbane; the stars of the |De Ledure and the De Céleste; and the hand-and-spiral of the De Casillon. While the army might have begun as a horde of Varushkan and orc corpses, perhaps a third of their number are now made up of the mortal remains of the people of Dawn.

The battle is savage; the unliving hurl themselves onto the Dawnish soldiers without regard for their continued existence. The first wave is quickly dispatched ... but the second wave is harder to deal with. By the third wave, the Dawnish lines start to buckle slightly. Here an armoured knight stumbles, tripping over a fallen body. There a yeoman presses forward a little too far and is quickly surrounded and torn apart. The lines hold, but people begin to die. The fourth wave pushes the line back a step.

But only a step. With the drums and the horns, the magic of the witches and the words of the troubadours bolstering the will of the warriors to keep fighting, with the cry of "Glory!" echoing, the army as one soldier takes a step foward. Then another. The unliving rally - there is no doubt that there is some will at work here directing their strategy - but the onrushing tide slackens. The fields around Hawthorne are littered with the bloodless dead ... and with too many bleeding bodies of fallen soldiers and civilians.

The unliving retreat. Between one moment and the next, they seem to lose interest in both Hawthorne and the Golden Sun. They begin to shamble north, away from the town and the army. After a few steps many break into a loping run. Fleeing. A cheer goes up from a thousand throats, from the Golden Sun and the survivng defenders of Hawthorne. The enemy has broken!

And then the final horror begins. Here and there across the battlefield, and in the town, bodies begin to move. Soaked in blood, eyes filling with an unnatural hunger, they rise again. The vessels have been cut down, but the spirits that drive them are not so easily dismissed. They seek out new hosts, and the nearest hosts are the bodies of those who fell desperately defending their people. They turn their hunger on those who they died fighting alongside. The cheers turn to wails of horror and grief, as those courageous combatants who gave their lives endure a terrible second existance as pawns of the enemy.

Most of the newly risen are dealt with quickly, once the initial shock lessens, but several dozen follow the main body of the unliving horde north. The Golden Sun give chase, and over the course of the season there are several other engagements with the cadaverous horde. In each case, they go roughly the same way. The first few rounds of battle go to the Dawnish, but the unliving wear them down, exhausting them until they make mistakes. Then, on an unspoken signal, they flee the field and regroup, and the whole thing happens again.

The strategy of the Golden Sun minimizes the number of Dawnish soldiers who fall to the unliving, but conversely they give few opportunities to destroy the enemy. And after every engagement, a portion of those who have fallen rise again, reinforcing the unliving and slowly transforming the horde from a mass of Varushkan and orc husks into a mass of Dawnish husks.

Game Information - Weirwater

The unliving army is on the offensive. The Golden Sun have won each engagement, but have not dealt many significant losses to the unliving horde. The situation is complicated by two factors. It doesn't help that in one night the initial horde, primarily Varushkans and orcs, was bolstered by an additional thousand Dawnish troops. Worse, it has become clear that the husks are recovering a proportion of their losses even as they fight - very much as if the spirits that drive them are seeking out new bodies when their old one is rendered unusable. On the plus side, while the Dawnish have lost some manor houses, villages, and farms, the host has not managed to gain any significant ground, and the situation is considerably less tragic than it would have been without the intervention of the Golden Sun.