As the warriors of the Elvenhost gathered on the eastern coasts of Viridor and embarked on the ships the King had commanded be made ready, the elven generals met several times with the King and the adventurers to plan the invasion.
|
The elven generals' initial plan was straightforward enough. Sail to the northern tip of Known Alair, land, cross the Trakar where it was narrowest, push along the southern edge of the Engeror Mountains into Duceor, leave a sizable rearguard at the mouth of the Versate Pass, and storm Vorsand, delivering the King and his sword into the vicinity of the Dragon as safely as possible. |
Orwin and Duceor |
The humans - especially Surya - and Elverandil the smith, were not satisified with this on a tactical level. If anything went wrong, and the assault on Vorsand took too long, the whole Elvenhost could be trapped in the Versate pass.
What emerged instead was the idea of a diversion. A hundred and fifty thousand elves had already taken ship as agreed in Kobur to aid the beleagured Dwarven city. The remaining 400,000 were split into half; 200,000 would land just south of the Trakar swamps, and assault the dragon's watchtowers and forces on the northern edge of the Desolation. Lord Celondil was given command of this force. This King, escorted by the remaining two hundred thousand troops, would follow the original plan, and bring the war to the Dragon.
This decided, the adventurers tabled an additional proposal. Using Kobort's magic for flight and shapechanging, the band would go on ahead of the army and reconnoitre. Hildraft's mental message magic would allow him to contact Vollun - who would remain with the King's army - and relay back the results. Eladriel and Thraldor elected to accompany them, though as they had no magic for flight, they were compelled to travel with the horses - in pockets, polymorphed into mice.
Next morning, the fleet sailed. Thousands of graceful elvenships glided away from the island of their exile and headed towards the mortal lands, where so much grief and loss had befallen the elven people, to wrest them back from the forces of Darkness.
Once their ship had passed the Isenbriand, the three heroes soared into the air, cloaked in Invisibility. Leaving the ships far behind, they flew across the waters until they reached the coast of Alair. Following the proposed path of the northern assault, they crossed the Trakar, observing as they did so that the lizard men who lived there seemed to have improved the technology and quality of their settlements considerably since "their day". There were also more villages, the ones near the marches notably better fortified than anything either the heroes or the elves had been expecting.
Once across the Trakar, they started to travel across what had once been Orwin. This far north, there were few settlements, and they saw no-one. At the end of the day, they landed and made camp. Setting guards and making sure no lights were visible, they sent the two familiars to range out and survey the area. Nose-biter soared into the air, while Nefkhet-Nephhor faded out into the Ethereal plane and roamed the area on the ground.
After a couple of hours, the owl returned with reports of a small town nearly ten miles away. Not fortified, it appeared to contain several hundred human thralls and fifty or seventy lizard man slavemasters. Deciding this was no threat, but content to leave its' destruction to the army behind them, the party turned in, sleeping in shifts.
Next day dawned clear and cold; there was more than a hint of snow in the air. Resuming their invisible status, the scouting party flew on. Several hours later, they crossed from Orwin into what had once been the nation of Sinval, a prosperous land of pleasant cattle-meadows, famous for its' rainy weather and dour inhabitants.
Sinval joined Trialt in the first attack on the Dragon's forces in 900. While the Trialtans merely fought, failed and died, an unknown and unsung warrior of the Sinvalese managed to achieve what no-one since has done; he inflicted a wound on Varkar Barduric himself. The wound was fairly minor, but the Dragon's fury knew no bounds. Not satisfied with wiping out the Sinvalese army to the last man and horse, he personally spearheaded a retributive assault into Sinval that razed every town, city, village and hamlet from one end of the country to the other. Every living Sinvalese that didn't flee was slaughtered, and the land remained deserted and barren to this day. This hideous example was the direct cause of the surrender of Enning and Antrol.
The effects of this were still clearly visible to the band as they passed overhead. No sentient being lived anywhere they passed; no building stood intact, and very little of anything grew in most places. While not quite equal to the destruction visited on the land of the Elves, the ruin of Sinval made it a most depressing place to be, and the travellers were almost glad when they passed the border into Duceor, and began flying over the Dragon's military sites instead.
The bulk of the support, training, equipping and mustering of the Dragon's war machine was centred here. As they flew, they passed barracks, forges, armouries. The place was obviously geared to support a very considerable troop strength indeed. What was noticable was that this troop strength was not there.
Leaving the plains behind, the three entered the mouth of the Versate pass. In "their day", this had been a quiet backwater, the Duceorans having established the town of Vorsand in the pass in the hopes of expanding trade northwards through the mountains. This had come to naught because they had never managed to find anyone worthwhile to trade with. Now, the valley was strongly fortified. Light walls stretched across it at regular intervals and troop units were encamped at regular intervals. These seemed to be of a security nature rather than a garrison though.
Reaching the top end of the pass, the three saw that which no free human or dwarf had seen in a thousand years; the city of Vorsand. It was unrecognizable as its' former self. Sprawling across the valley, the walled city was composed of huge, blocky buildings, made from a variety of stones, some brought from considerable distances. The architecture had a strangely ugly appearance, as if designed by someone whose outlook was categorically not human.
The city walls were pierced by several mighty gates, and as they flew closer, the group realized that these arched doorways were enormous; easily large enough to admit a dragon two hundred feet high at the shoulder. Tiny-looking man-sized gates were visible to either side. Kobort warned his friends; a strong magic was associated with these gargantuan gates.
Flying safely over, the scouts looked around at the city. It was well defended; everywhere, troops and siege engines protected the approaches and internal streets. Kobort studied the officers closely, an idea forming in his mind. Among them he started to see members of the Kin, well-armoured, and bearing curious double-ended swords.
In the centre of Vorsand bulked a building, vastly bigger than any of the others. Oval in shape, it was at least three hundred feet high and five long; a double row of odd-looking chimneys, bigger than a man, marched along the roof. Near one end, a steady plume of smoke was emerging from them.
Taking the lead, the sorcerer angled his flight towards the other end of the building, and, taking his courage in both hands, flew slowly and carefully down one of the chimneys. Inside, there were fifty feet or so of smooth-walled flue, and then the chimney suddenly opened out over an enormous space.
The entire inside of the building was one titanic room. The roof was vaulted, and arched cloisters ran around the outer edge. Directly below, Kobort could see a vast expanse of red-brown, scaled, muscular back and haunch. Beneath that was the dull glint of gold; more than that, gold, silver, mithril; armour, weapons, coins, jewels; a staggering hoard of treasure dimly glimpsed in the sultry light of the chamber.
Kobort could hear - or feel - a deep, intermittent rumbling vibration; the Dragon was obviously speaking. Interspersed with this were responses, clearly from a normal-sized speaker, their tone tinged with urgency and fear. This fear rose as they discussion grew more vehement, and suddenly there was a blaze of light, a brief scream, and a wash of heat that was as soon gone.
At this point, Kobort fought a brief but difficult battle within himself, for the lust of the Dragonhoard fell on him, and he had a struggle not to slip down and take just a little something... even worse, he was pretty sure that the Anakha was probably down there somewhere, and he deeply wanted to go and look for it. But sense won out, and he moved carefully to the edge of the chimney and peered into the chamber.
|
|
The room was unlit, save for the intermittent flares of flame from the Dragon himself. Varkar Barduric's vast bulk three-quarter filled the immense chamber, dominating it utterly. His house-sized head was at the other end of the room. All three heroes could feel, beating against their faces, two sensations; heat, and far greater, malice, dreadful, powerful evil. |
Tiny and distant, standing in the cloisters at the far end, Kobort could see the miniscule figures of half-a-dozen senior-looking Kin and Lizard officers. Midway in their group was a space, where a twist of smouldering ash rested on a section of stonework that still glowed a dull cherry red.
As he watched, the Dragon turned with massive grace and moved up the hall, pausing almost directly below the watchers. Bending his mighty head to the treasure below, he began to sort through it, his table-sized claws flicking and shifting the items with an almost impossible dexterity and strength.
That was enough for the intrepid scouts. Each of them could feel the claws of the Dragonfear tearing at them, trying to freeze them in terror. Rising through the chimney, they emerged into the fresh air and made good their escape.
As they did so, a deep, thunderous chuckle arose in their wake. Was the Dragon enjoying his treasure? Or... perhaps he had a better idea of their presence than they suspected...
Two days later, the band met the Elvenhost coming the other way. The encampment they had made was compentent, well sited, properly defended; and yet, the obvious casualties they'd taken were shocking, far more than they should have against the sort of opposition the band had seen crossing the Trakar.
Clearly, the warriors with no battlefield experience were facing up to the harsh truth; learn or die.
On arrival, the group reported what they had seen to the King and his generals. Many of these were staggered that they had managed to get as far as Vorsand at all, much less come back unscathed. There was much talk as to how to use this advantage; in the end, Doronond jumped at the possibility of a short-cut, of getting himself and his sword direct to the Dragon without sacrificing half his army. So it was decided, and everyone went off to get some sleep.
Midway through the night, a disturbance arose at the edge of the camp. Hildraft, who was on watch at the time, assumed it was just another attack, but strangely, the sounds of shouting and alarm subsided rather than erupting into a clash of weapons, and shortly afterwards, a messenger arrived to summon them to the King's tent.
What they found there surprised them. Standing calmly before the King were three Lizardmen. Each was dressed in robes of rough homespun cloth, and carried a short staff topped with a single lizard claw. On the front of the robes were insigina, and after a moment's thought Hildraft remembered what it was. It was the claw-within-a-scale emblem of the deity Shuskhra.
|
In Hildraft's day, Shuskhra had been the main (pretty much only) lizardman god, a wild, savage patron who epitomized the ideal of the primitive hunter/gatherer/raider the lizardmen had been before the Dragon. Since the invasion, Varkar had brutally suppressed the old faith, presenting himself as King and God to the lizard people. In general this had worked, but every so often the adventurers had noticed Lizard warriors make the Sign of the Scale with their claws before going into battle. And there had always been persistent rumours of a secret Lizardman society or cult, hidden in the deep Trakar, dedicated to the overthrow of the usurper God. The leading lizardman spoke up, naming himself Sangr'm, a priest of the Scales of Steel, and a leader of the secret resistance. Citing their shared desire to be rid of the Dragon, he proposed to join himself and his forces to the Elvenhost, who represented to his mind the best hope so far of achieving this. |
Lizard Man |
The elvenlord who had scoffed at the verisimilitude of Mergil now stood up. He asked in a condescending voice if this meant the lizardmen were swearing fealty to the Elvenking. Sangr'm responded with contempt for that suggestion; however, he said, his God had instructed him through visions that brooked no denial (and here he shuddered as if at a painful memory), to go to the elven army and ally himself to it for the cause and purpose of defeating the Dragon. He listed what he had to offer: two thousand lizard troops (not a great benefit), twenty guides through the Trakar (useful) and ten clerics of Shuskrah (pretty damn useful).
Doronond arose and stepped close to Sangr'm, looking him deep in the eyes. This was a difficult moment for the elves. Their new beginning of unity, of equitable dealing with the peoples of Alair, was easy to maintain with humans, and dwarves; but these potential allies were lizardmen, the shocktroops of the order which had swept the elves to the edge of extinction, over whom the elves and Surya's people had fought a war in Surya's grandfather's time.
After a moment he spoke. "We will accept your offer, Sangr'm priest of Shushkra, with thanks. And when all is done, we must meet again, to devise ways in which our peoples may live at peace, if we can earn peace. But hear me well. If you betray us, then no lizardman will live in the wake of our victory." Sangr'm bowed, and withdrew, going to meet the elven rangers who had been guiding the army through the Trakar, and to introduce them to his own guides.
Once he was gone, Hildraft withdrew also, finding a quiet place. Invoking the divinatory powers given him by Kord, he pleaded for some help and guidance. Kord's answer was simple. "A warrior needs a sword and a shield. Mergil and the King are your sword; the Staff of Defence is your shield. Use it wisely!"