Battle of Dorikina

== Overview ==
The Battle of Dorikina was the decisive confrontation of the Fifth Vidstossi-Doriyan War, which began with the invasion of the northern Kingdom of the Gates in 310 ABV during the height of the Anarchy by the Doryi states of Melcheezor and Chazor. 
After a series of initial successes, the Doriyan hosts occupied most of their ancestral territories. However, with their defeat at the second battle of Zora to a vidstossi host led by Sturmuth, most of the doriyan conquests - including the re-established city of Dor on lake Doriya - were in jeopardy of being reclaimed by the Vidstossi host. Intent on crushing the Doriyan invaders once and for all, the newly ascended Wergom, Lán-Drej, having executed Sturmuth and gained control over the northern armies, marched north for the decisive battle.
He met the Doryi army upon the Doryikina, in an entrenched position, where they had established a camp surrounded by wooden palisades on a bulge around which the river flowed. A brook cut through the bulge in the south, and there, lined up behind the brook, the Doryi army had placed itself, with King Gabolak of Melcheezor at the centre.
Beligerents 	The Gate Kingdom	The Doryi Alliance (Melcheezor+Chazor)
Commanders 	Wergom Lán-Drej † (Main host)
Garmuth (4,000 man detachment)	King Gabolak Melcheeza (1st army ~20,000)
The "Fallen King" Galáspatri (2nd army ~ 30,000)
Army Sizes 	39,000 	~50,000
Losses 	13,000 dead
16,000 captured	N/A
Result 	Defeat 	Victory
Consequences	Lán-Drej falls in battle
The north is annexed into the Doryi kingdoms	The ancestral lands of the Doryi are reclaimed
Galáspatri is made "Prince of Zora"
== The First Day ==
Confident in his numerical superiority, Lán-Drej ordered the advance at dawn. Thus the Vidstossi host began a slow, measured advance against the Doryi right flank, while the Wergom ordered an additional 4,000 spearmen led by Garmuth to circumvent a small lake, and thus, sneaking through the forests, strike at the rear of the enemy. 
Hostilities began when Garmuth's engaged the Doriyan's right flank, the two sides raining arrows down upon another over the course of an hour whilst the main Vidstossi host advanced.
Then, when the Wergom blew his horn thrice, the Vidstossi chariots surged forwards, crashing into the Doryi right flank, which buckled considerably as the war machines mowed down hundreds of men. 
While this was occuring, Garmuth led his forces across the brook in the far west, and immediately encountered a minor Doriyan detatchment of ~900 men. These men, who wore wool hats, and bore scrolls with the inscriptions of Va'al, and delayed Garmuth considerably as they fought the much larger Vidstossi detachment to the last man.
Despite that the Doryi right flank was holding, Doryi discipline seemingly collapses as the Vidstossi army advances towards the centre, and the Doryi left flanks are retreating, and when Garmuth, having defeated the smaller Doriyan detachment, arrives from the west, the Vidstossi are able to seperate the right flank from the main Doryi host. Over 7,000 Doryi are killed as an entire third of the Doryi host is surrounded and destroyed.
Much of the day has passed, and it is in the evening when Lán-drej secures the brook and assembles his officers to hold a victory speech, praying and thanking Rakli by sacrificing a stallion and a mare. He awarded the charioteers who had separated the right flank, and thanked over seventy soldiers who had performed well during the battle. Then, the Wergom began preparations for the final assault upon the Doryi camp.
== The Battle of the Doryi Camp ==
As the sun set in the west, Lán-drej ordered a three-way assault against the Doryi camp. However, as his chariots reached the Doryi, where they had sought refuge behind pallisades, the chariot charge broke apart, as it was revealed the the Doryi had dug triple ditches filled with poles, and hidden by grass. Over a hundred chariots are lost in the chaos as they either fall into the trap, or crash into one another in the ensuing panic. 
The Vidstossi infantry had similar problems, as the Doryi had erected a ditch in a semicircle before their main line. Lán-drej ordered his men to fell trees and build improvised bridges, and the men surged forwards, attacking the Doryi assembled on the other side, and forming "bridgeheads" upon the other side of the ditch. Meanwhile, Lán-drej ordered scouts to see where the ditches ended, so that they could be circumvented.
The fighting becomes increasingly tenacious during this period, as the Doryi, seemingly with order restored, refuse to give ground to the vidstossi attackers. Thousands of men perish as the sun finally disappears beneath the horizon.
Then, scouts return, informing the Wergom that Doryi ships have anchored themselves *over* the river. 
== Galáspatri’s Trap ==
This was the moment that the Doriyans had been waiting for. In the darkness, several hundred ships of the Doryi fleet had been rowed upstream. They had been filled with strong ox-skin ropes, at least a dozen per ship, and then anchored next to one another using bags of sand. They were tied together to one another and to the beach with poles, while the Vidstossi army engaged the Doryi encampment, which was stronger than they had initially believed.
The infantry’s engineer corps – another invention by Galáspatri – carried logs cut square between the ships, and laid them over the ships side by side, nailing them together with large copper nails. Having done so, the army started to march over, just as the Doryi encampment was collapsing.
Lán-drej tried to order his right flank to turn around, and burn the eastern bridge, but by the time his scouts had returned with news of the trap, it was too late. As they turned around, Doriyan chariots stormed over the bridge, penetrating deep into Vidstossi lines, and overrunning the Vidstossi regiments, the survivors retreating back to the ditch. 
Though Lán-drej's chariots made a breakthrough on the east, they were soon overrun by the newly arrived Doriyan army, and soon both flanks of the Vidstossi host were in disarray as the newly arrived Doriyan chariots and regular infantry threw themselves against their enemies exposed flanks, and though he attempted to rally the troops himself there was little Lán-drej could do to restore order.
As the sun began to rise again in the east, Gabolak ordered the Doryi center, which had regrouped during the night, to fall upon the Vidstossi. Soon, the entire Vidstossi army is in disarray, and the left flank is in danger of being completely cut off from the center and right.
Realizing that he was facing the prospect of total collapse, Lán-drej led his personal regiment in a final, desperate charge against the Doryi army. But it was too late. Overrunning the nearest Doriyan unit, the charge soon collapsed in on itself, and all hope was lost.
Injured and surrounded by Doriyans, Lán-drej fell on his own sword.
Despite this, the Vidstossi host fought for another 6 hours. Ten thousand men, under the leadership of Ragnárr Voltzi, managed to break through the encirclement, and escape towards the south. The rest were surrounded, and over 10,000 vidstossi were slaughtered, the rest taken as captives, to be made into slaves or sacrificed to Va'al.
== Aftermath ==
Lán-drej had fallen on his sword with such force that it became stuck the rock where he had fixed it. When Gabolak later discovered the battlefield and Lán-drej’s body, he decided to arrange a proper burial for the Vidstossi King. Lán-drej was clothed in a clean tunic, his wounds sown and two spears laid in a cross over his chest. He was laid on a Doryi flat-bottomed ship, dragged out in the Doryikina, and there he was burnt, as it befitted a Vidstossi commander. Then the rock was transported on rolling logs to Doriya, where it was placed at the Queen’s Garden. A small wooden shrine was erected around and over the rock, built from Vidstossi spears and axes. 
Lán-drej became a figure of legend in Doryi folklore – called “King Lahngdrezi the Long-Legged.”
The Vidstossi could do little to resist the Doriyan hosts after the Battle of Dorikina, and all the lands north of Ahara were taken, and divided between Melcheezor and Chazor. Dividing the land into new provinces, Gabolak awarded the new lands to his princes, who were non-inheritable and acted as governors for the Great King. Apart from Zora, which was given to Galáspatri and expanded so its provincial borders reached the sea. Galáspatri settled the half-ruined city with his Rothinji mercenaries, with Doryi labourers and workers and with Vidstossi women, and was given the title “Prince of Zora”, and it was awarded to his descendants for time immemorial.
Category:Battles
Category:Doriya
Category:Vidstos
Category:Wars
Category:History