Lord Ochen Shagari’s War Journal

Fourteenth of December, Seven Hundred and Sixty Ninth year since the Seminal War

It took four days to accomplish, but the Army of the Jeweled Cities is ready to take the last Northern Outpost. It is clear from what few reports I have that the rebels, Westmarch, Ironbark, and Glacierheart together, have no more than two thousand men left in the field. They probably have a few more in reserve up in the Mountains, but they have left them there to ease the strain on their supply line. It makes a certain amount of sense that they aren't fielding their full strength as they must strike a balance between manpower / orcpower available for combat and available to transport the food and supplies their warriors need. With conditions the way they are, they have chosen to reduce their strength in the field and to concentrate it in one location to simplify their logistics and shorten their supply lines. Earlier in the year, any force that they would have put into one of the Northern Outposts would have been easily surrounded and cut off. With the snow limiting mobility the way it is now, the roofs and walls of those same outposts are warm weathertight refuges for man, orc, and foodstuffs alike.

But just as they have turned Fort Westmarch into a trap for my Army of the Jeweled Cities, I will turn their Northern Outpost into a trap for their forces. I have set the Siege Corps to manufacturing the same kind of sled that they have used against our walls to such great effect. I dare not dispatch independent raiders under the cover of night and storms in the same way: there is too much chance that they would either get lost or fumble their strike. I intend to send them in just before dawn on the same day that my main column is ready to storm the outpost. Let us see how they like dealing with unexpected explosions, fires, and breaches in their walls, followed by a four-thousand-man assault of those breaches.

Shaman’s Records

Fourteenth of December, Seven Hundred and Sixty Ninth year since the Seminal War.

Shaman Elder Wolfbite Glacierheart recording

I cast the runes this morning. The Fate rune landed in the middle of all of the others. Much hangs in the balance this day. War, Death, Glory, Battle, and Despair fell interlocked, twisted across, above, and below. A battle will be fought, and its outcome will determine the path this war will take. Great moments of Glory and Despair will come to pass in this battle, each a turning point for the people involved. Death will abound, and the battle ground will be as a killing field and bleeding place. Shaman, Warrior, and Soldier fell intertwined. All present will fight without exception. Blood landed across Victory and Defeat. The outcome of this battle, win or lose, will be drenched in blood and bought or sold by many lives.

This, then, is the turning point. This is the knot where all of Fate's threads twist about each other. Some continue unmarked. Some are frayed but refuse to break. And still more snap or are snipped, sheared away to an abrupt end.

I look to the one outpost north of Fort Westmarch still held by the combined forces of Westmarch, Glacierheart, and Ironbark. Come the dawn, the banner that flies over that place of death will fly over all of Westmarch and Glacierheart in the fullness of time.

Aris Crtu's Journal

Fourteenth of December, Seven Hundred and Sixty Ninth year since the Seminal War.

It has been too quiet for too long. The Army of the Jeweled Cities has done nothing but take its lumps since we drove them back from this outpost. They could have taken this place that night, had they made even one more attempt. They had the numbers to soak up the casualties and keep coming, walking over our corpses to claim their prize. I guess their morale broke. I image we must have looked like lords of war with the torches casting their pitiful light from behind us and the field of dead before us. I certainly didn't feel like one. As soon as they left, I heaved my guts up.

We have been reinforced, but the numbers are still stacked against us. If the Army of the Jeweled Cities does come in full force, then it will be the same as before: a slaughter. Seventeen hundred men cannot hope to stand indefinitely against four or five thousand. If nothing else, they can afford to lose two or three men for every one of ours, particularly if they just want to keep us bottled up in here for a week or so. Our supplies can't last forever.

But I don't think the Army of the Jeweled Cities can afford to besiege us either. The winter itself would see to that. Without proper cover against its fury, they would quickly freeze. If they do decide to come at us, they will attempt to storm the outpost. It is their only viable option. They could also sit on their hands at Fort Westmarch, but Shaman Mul the Silent has already showed them the folly of doing just that.

The Army of the Jeweled Cities will come, and it will come soon. They have no other option. They have no other choice. It is win or die for both them and us.

Shaman’s Records

Fourteenth Fifteenth of December, Seven Hundred and Sixty Ninth year since the Seminal War.

Shaman Mul the Silent of Clan Glacierheart recording in haste

Today is the day of decision in this Westmarch War. I can smell it on the wind. I can feel it in the ground. I can taste it in the water.

The sun lies just below the horizon. When it rises, the fires of battle will be lit. By the time it rises again this will be a place of blood and ash.

The Sentries are shouting alarms. The war drums beat the drumbeat of death. As Aris Cretu would say: hostile contact imminent.

Chronicle Vian's Log

Seventeenth of December, Seven Hundred and Sixty Ninth year since the Seminal War.

Old Leon, acting as the scribe for Chronicler Vian due to injury.

Where to begin? With the alarm, and the sundering of the wall. The Second battle for the Ironbark Outpost, as the men have come to call it, began when the Army of the Jeweled Cities used our own tactic against us. Three teams of men, probably drawn from their Siege Corps, emplaced charges of gunpowder at the southwest, southern, and southeastern sections of the wall. They lit the fuses just before dawn, and it was the light from their torches when they did so that alerted the sentries. Several sentries fired on the engineers, slaying most as they fled. The ones at the southern wall managed to heave some snow onto one of the fuses and extinguish it, but the damage was done. The charges detonated and tore holes in the walls. The splinters from the explosion cut across the open spaces beyond the breach and scythed through many men and orcs. The Army of the Jeweled Cities threw assault columns into the breaches as soon as the smoke had cleared enough for them to see where they were putting their feet.

Once again, Sgt. Gork lead the defense of the southern breach. Shaman Mul the Silent led the defense of the southeastern one, and a Westmarch Lieutenant by the name of Kione Kareem took command of the southwest one when his superior officer was cut down by an arrow. The situation was fluid and chaotic for the first few hours, until the sun had cleared the horizon enough that the battlefield was lit by anything besides torchlight. In that time, I think the individual superiority of our soldiers and their training in small unit / warband tactics helped immensely.

By the time the Jeweled Cities assault columns were repulsed for the first time, the defenders numbered only one thousand three hundred and eighty or so. I (Chronicler Vian) estimate that the Army of the Jeweled Cities lost just over five hundred men before they fell back to try again. Lieutenant Kareem had been wounded sealing off a breach in his line, but refused treatment. His forces had taken the brunt of the losses, but still held strong. Sgt. Gork at the southern breach had seen almost no serious fighting, once our foes had realized who lead that set of defenses. Shaman Mul the Silent was in the thick of the fighting at the southeast breach, but had managed to get orders to a reserve unit to get the gunpowder out. It wouldn't be of much use until there was a lull in the fighting, but she was clearly thinking ahead.

Shaman Mul the Silent's forethought paid off when the Army of the Jeweled Cities launched their second attack just after breakfast. She had ordered the approach to her breach studded with barrels of gunpowder. Such improvised charges would be of limited use without a reliable way to detonate them, but she found one. Details on that matter are still unclear, but the next attack to approach her position was broken before it came to grips with her forces.

Lieutenant Kareem also used the time to re-arrange his forces somewhat. He sent his bowmen and skirmishers into whatever elevated positions they could find, with orders to fire freely at any target that presented itself. When the second attack wave came in, they inflicted more than a few casualties. Their practice as snipers on the goat trails and in raiding the supply convoys proved useful. A disproportionate number of the men they killed were junior officers and standard bearers. The attack came in disorganized, and spent its efforts over too broad a front to break through again.

At the southern breach, Sgt. Gork found himself again skirmishing more than fighting. He suspected a trap, and so pulled some of his men and orcs back, as if to reinforce the other breaches. That movement was what the Army of the Jeweled Cities was waiting for. They stormed forward in earnest, only to be met by Sgt. Gork's returning squads mounting a counter-charge. The fighting was close and savage, but Sgt. Gork once again broke the back of the attack by raw stubbornness and a refusal to give ground despite all odds.

Both sides came to an uneasy truce for lunch. Fighting in these winter conditions expends energy at a furious rate, and hot food is essential to keep fighting. The head count from units as they rotated through the chow lines comes in at one thousand two hundred and sixty-five. It is hard to estimate the number of men that the Army of the Jeweled Cities lost in this second attack, due in large part to the mess that Shaman Mull had made of one of their formations. What reports we do have estimate the foe's losses as 'almost total' for that portion of their attack, so I (Chronicler Vian) place their total losses at about two thousand men up until that point in the battle.

When the Army of the Jeweled Cities mounted their third attack shortly after lunch, they clearly had abandoned attacking Shaman Mul the Silent's breach. They sent forward just enough skirmishers to keep her forces pinned in place, and concentrated their efforts against Lieutenant Kareem. He had continued to refuse treatment, and his forces were hard pressed indeed. Their line broke shortly before nightfall after three hours of fighting. At that point Sgt. Gork and Shaman Mul the Silent had to pull back from their breaches or be overwhelmed from behind. The fighting carried on amid the buildings of the outpost, and I (Chronicler Vian) was wounded in that time, having taken a cut to the right arm. It will recover with time and care, but I (Chronicler Vian) cannot allow myself to relax at the moment. The fighting once again became fluid and chaotic. Unit cohesion broke down on both sides. Once again, this favored us, as our men and orcs were used to such fighting.

By the time night fell fully, the fighting had died down in large part because there was no one left able to fight. The final headcount leaves The Ironbark Mercenary Company with two hundred sixty-two men, of which Sgt. Gork 'the Scarred' Burling, Assistant Chronicler Aris Cretu, and Standard-bearer Samantha 'Tam' Fiskr are three. Of the Westmarch Militia, only one hundred and twenty-two men remain. Sadly, Lieutenant Kareem is not among them, having died attempting to once more seal off the breach in his lines. Of the Glacierheart orc warbands, two hundred and thirty-five, including Shamans Mul the Silent and Koroc the Singer, survive. Those losses are brutal. Beyond brutal, they are devastation incarnate. No formation can stand up to those kind of losses and not have to reorganize. Counting from the beginning of this whole mess, Ironbark has taken almost seventy four percent casualties. The Westmarch Militia has taken nearly seventy-six percent casualties, and the Glacierheart warbands have taken just over ninety percent casualties. They have more reinforcements available, freshly raised and trained warbands to come forward, so their numbers are expected to climb again in the near future.

But if our losses are horrific, the Army of the Jeweled Cities' has lost even more. They lost almost every man that they committed to this attack, which leaves them with only the men they left at the other outposts and Fort Westmarch. Reports put their total numbers at no more than one thousand eight hundred across all three locations. We may not have the manpower available to storm any breaches, but we do have the numbers to isolate exterminate what is left of the Army of the Jeweled Cities.

This war is not quite finished yet, but it is all over but the dying.