Battle of Ka

Belligerents	
League of Ashad	Tiorunae Anderise
Commanders 	
 Various 	
Camur Rauna†
*Ionius†
*Onerius†
*Pallius†
*Arrius†
*Lasca†
Strength 	Approx 5,400	
2,400
Losses 	Approx 1,000	2,147
Result 	Victory 	Defeat
The Battle of Ka (Syannic: Veiaku Ka) was, according to legend, the greatest battle of the early Stone Age. It marked the culmination of an invasion of the Syannic river plain by the hosts of the Tiorunae Anderise, a powerful coalition of Tiuannic tribes, in pursuit of an escaped bride, a war which is recorded in Syannic legend as the Seraiveioszku Niveiana, the 'First War of the Northern White People'.
According to sources, most of the large Syannic sarszīnata (kritocratic proto-states) pooled their resources to form a great coalition army, which met the Anderise host at a tributary river near a settlement called Ka. There, through clever use of the terrain, ambush tactics and political trickery, they inflicted a crushing defeat on the Tiuannic army, whose casualties were such that the entire Camurite order in the north was brought to the brink of collapse.
The main historical source for this battle is The Ballad of Cirtu and Lavia, one of the earliest pieces of Syannic literature. It sometimes appears in literature under other names, including the Battle of Lavia and the Battle of the Bride.
==Prelude==
According to the Ballad, the war was triggered when a young Tiuannic man named Cirtu fled from the Camurite confederation with his love, who had been promised to the high chieftain, the Camur. Fleeing south, they throw themselves on the mercy of the 311th Särszín of Syel, who agrees to shelter them.
Later on Camur Pajla, the jilted husband, arrives at the Syel demanding to know where they are. The Syellese offer him shelter and deny all knowledge, expecting him to pass south. However the Sorosarszin, fearful for the safety of his charges, walks into the interior of the island to check on their hiding place, and is in secret followed by the Camur.
Luring Cirtu out with a wolf howl, the Camur then attacks and nearly kills the young couple, murdering the 311th Särszín in the process and killing five of his bodyguards before being driven into the woods, where he dies of an infection from a slingshot wound.
Somehow learning of this, and desperate for vengeance, his sucessor calls together the fighting men from no less than thirteen Tiuannic tribes, including the three he directly controls. This host of the Tiouanae Anderise storms into northern Syan, exterminating several tribes and gaining control of the fertile uplands above the swamps.
In response, the leaders of every major Särszínat in the Syannic world met and formed the League of Ashad, under the nominal leadership of the Särszín of Ashad. There they formulated a plan to lure the Camurite army into a disadvantegous battle and destroy it utterly.
==The Battle==
====Phase One====
The Tiorunae Anderise were marching south, seeking a crossing to the island of Syel that they had been informed existed by Syannic disinformants. They encountered the main body of the coalition drawn army drawn up against a brook, with spearmen ranged out in front and slingers massed behind the water.
Although deprived the immediate shelter of the river, the spearmen were deployed by the Syannic army to screen the terrain that lay behind them. The healthy looking land surrounding the brook was in fact completely waterlogged, a type of terrain the heavy Tiorunean warriors were totally unused to, and this would play a critical part in the battle to come.
====Phase Two====
Camur Rauna divided his army into four columns, which are launching a general charge towards the strung-out Syannic spear line. The Tiorunean warriors had substantially higher stamina than the Syannics, and they crossed the distance faster than the League's forward commanders had anticipated.
At once, the League of Ashad's spearmen begin and orderly withdrawal towards the brook, into the ford. One formation of spearmen was trapped behind another and caught by Rauna's left column, and is nearly annihilated. However, that group proves to be the exception, and the rest of the Syannic spearment withdraw in good order to the stream.
====Phase Three====
The Syannic spearmen continued to withdraw, fording the river with practised ease. As they do they engage the Tiorunean van in small skirmishes, exploiting their familiarity with the terrain to make up for the superior fighting skills of the Camurite warriors. 
The Anderise charge leads them headlong into the sucking mire that flanks the river, slowing the heavy warriors to a crawl as they pick their way between footholds. Losses on both sides are marginal. At this point, thunder sounded in the distance and a storm began to roll over the battlefield.
====Phase Four====
The Syannic spearmen finally escaped the southern edge of the mire and retreated behind the slingers, who advanced into firing position. They began a vast area-based bombardment, with formations of thousands of slingers launching volley after volley of stones into the river and its surroundings.
The impact on the densely packed, lightly-armoured Tiorunean warriors was severe, and for the first time casualties started to mount. The Anderise van was particularly hard-hit, and those warriors which had reached the southern shore of the river were greatly dispirited. Ionius, commander of Rauna's left, is slain by a slingshot.
====Phase Five====
In an attempt to rally his forces and regain the initiative, Camur Rauna orders his central and right columns to form a wedge formation and advance on the Syannic line. Doing this, the first Tiorunean warriors set foot on drier ground, emerging from the mire. Four hundred Syellese slingers landed at the west of the battle, behind Rauna's line.
Yet this was costly, as the front of Rauna's wedge immediately become the focus for the League's slingers. One Tiorunean formation disintegrated, and several others were severely thinned out. The Syannic slingers withdrew as the Tioruneans advanced, "like bees suffocating wasps". Stalled in the mire, the Tiorunean left continued to suffer and lost its lieutenant, Lasca.
====Phase Six====
The punishing bombardment continued to take its toll on the Anderise, with a second formation disintegrating and the wedge breaking up.. However, the Tiorunean right flank finally manages to close the gap with the League left, and manages to inflict certain losses on the League's left.
However, the greatly depleted Tiorunean formations were not at their most effective. Meanwhile, the reinforcements from the river engaged Rauna's archers, with female Syannics taunting and mooning the enraged Anderise to distract them. The rain had ruined their bowstrings, however. Meanwhile Pullius, commander of the right-hand Anderise column, fell to a slinger.
====Phase Seven====
Tiorunean morale breaks down, and the army began to retreat back through the mire. However in the panic of the retreat and the blinding fury of the rainstorm many warriors tripped and fell, trampled by their own comrades or drowned in the mud. Three whole formations of Anderise troops disappear as Camur Rauna sustains a wound to his elbow.
As they finally reach the northern bank, the Tiorunean army apparently let out "a jubiliant sound", as more than one thousand Syannic warriors from Nanan, Goman, Tuman and others aligned with Rauna emerged from the treeline to the east, bearing fruit and fresh water.
====Phase Eight====
According to the chronclers, bitterness in the Ashadi forces towards Nanan and the other traitors "ran deep", as only the very senior commanders had been informed of the plan. The Nanani provided refreshments to Camur Rauna's lieutenants, and after some hours were approached by the Camur himself, "born aloft on a litter by his three remaining lifeguards". In the meantime, the Syellese slingers detroyed Rauna's archers.
Suddenly, the Tiorunean commanders and their guard were convulsed by spasms. One seized a spear and slew a Nanan commander, but it was too late, and the poison did its work. The Nananite army then bombarded the weary Tiorunean remnant, which finally broke and scattered in all directions.
==Aftermath==
The decisive defeat of the Tiorunae Anderise at Ka was to have profound implications for the developments of both the Syannic and Tiuannic worlds.
The results were most immediately felt in Tiuann. At a stroke, a great proportion of the fighting males that underpinned the Camurite order had been annihilated, and soon the north was wracked by history's first successful slave revolt. Across the Tiuannic world women crawled from their slave pits, slaughtering those men too old or young to have joined Camur Rauna's army and establishing a new matriarchal order, which would eventually evolve into the Riunnic civilisation. The north was wracked by such struggles for some years, and only in the west, where the tribes had been too remote to heed Rauna's call, did the ultra-patriarchal order remmain intact. Camur Rauna's own capital, Lyryt, became the core of a new Riunnic kingdom.
In the short term, the Syannics repopulated their northern territories, and the Särszínatu Syel erected a series of border fortifications that would eventually become the Katasärszínat.
The long-impact on Syan was, however, perhaps greater even than on the Tiuannics. Within a century of the Battle of Ka the Syannic world would be near-destroyed by the cataclysmic tidal wave upon which the Syannic calender was based, the Beïveï. This event destroyed most Syannic civilisation in the flood plain, and with the partial exception of the Syel none of the pre-Beïveï Syannic states emerged into the new era. Excepted from the devastation were the states of northern Syan, principally Nehan, An and the Katasärszínat, who shielded the Syannic core from hostile attention and allowed their southern kin the space to recover. Had the Tiorunae Anderise still held the Nirsyannic plain, and remained united under the Camura, it seems likely that what remained of Syannic civilisation would have been obliterated by a Tiuannic expansion to the sea.
Category:Battles
Category:History
Category:Syan