Siege of Teraholm

Siege of Teraholm 	Siege of Teraholm
Date: 
* Campaign: December 18-February 14, 476-477
* Siege: February 14-April 12, 477
* Battle: April 12, 477
Location Teraholm, Brun
Result Brun Victory	Date: 
* Campaign: December 18-February 14, 476-477
* Siege: February 14-April 12, 477
* Battle: April 12, 477
Location Teraholm, Brun
Result Brun Victory
Belligerents 	Belligerents
Kingdom of Brun 	Colony of Laashburk
Commanders and Leaders	Commanders and Leaders
Campaign:
* Lord Protector "Snowfire"
* Lord Wulroth Ironhand 
* Savrek Brownback
Siege:
* Lord Wulroth Ironhand 
* Savrek Brownback
Battle:
* Lord Protector "Snowfire"
* Lord Wulroth Ironhand †
* Lord Caeseth Craw
* Savrek Brownback	Campaign:
* Magnate Lenna
* Magnate Hossoth 
Siege:
* Magnate Lenna
* Magnate Hossoth
* Magnate Tevoth
Battle:
* Magnate Lenna
* Magnate Hossoth (pow)
* Magnate Tevoth
Strength 	Strength
Campaign: 10,000
Siege: 9,000
Battle: 15,500 
* 7,500 Defenders
* 8,000 Relief Force	Campaign: 11,000
Siege: 11,500 
Battle: 10,500
Casualties and Losses 	Casualties and Losses
Total: 8,800
* Campaign: ~2,500
* Siege: ~1,300
* Battle: ~5,000	Total: 5,300
* Campaign: ~1,500
* Siege: ~800
* Battle: ~3,000
Preceding 	Subsequent
Siege of Makenth 	Battle of the Barrow's Den
== Campaign ==
After his retreat from Makenth in late November, Snowfire arrived back at Teraholm and immediately started addressing the Drow invasion. He detailed messengers to all of the clans to send everyone they could spare to Teraholm, began building entrenchments and fortifications north of the fortress, and sent others to fell trees, flood streams, and generally slow their advance as much as they could. Snowfire's second in command, Wulroth Ironhand, was resentful that Snowfire had abandoned the Fragas at Makenth, and frequently advocated for going on the offensive. Snowfire got so irritated by Wulroth's consistent pestering that he considered sending the lord to personally arrest Cravis Brownback, the ambiguously loyal Dragonborn lord that still repeatedly refused to detach the majority of his troops. By that point, it was too late, however, and the Drow had arrived.
In the mere month Snowfire had to prepare, he only managed to scrounge up 2,000 additional troops, giving him 10,000 total against Lenna's 14,000. Magnate Lenna's advance had been slowed by continual harassment from Brunian irregular, though she was skilled at dealing with insurgent troops and detailed 2,000 of her own to guard her flanks. By December 18th, Lenna's forces made contact with Snowfire's. Most of the best Brunian warriors were with Bard, and many of Snowfire's troops were of dubious quality. However, they were defending their homeland, and morale was reasonably high. Lenna was mostly unaware of the quality of both the dragonborn troops and their commander, and was thusly mostly cautious with her approach. She had seen how tenacious the dragonborn had been at Makenth, and given her limited numbers with very long lines of reinforcement, she did not want to dash her armies against a formidable opponent. Over the course of the next month, the two sides engages in a series of maneuvers and light skirmishes as they jockeyed for position. A strong defensive position occupied by Snowfire in the hills surrounding Teraholm would be steadily outflanked, with Snowfire forced to retreat to another defensive position. Lenna would occupy the former dragonborn positions, and then work to get around the flanks of their new lines. Then, the process would repeat. 
Lenna's forces continued to raid and pillage the countryside, and brutal skirmishes sapped the strength of both sides. The dragonborn seemed to get the worst of the damage, but it was blunted by continual arrivals of small numbers of reinforcements from other clans. To Snowfire's delight, Savrek Brownback, his favorite subordinate from the Battle of the Western Pass, was one of the arrivals, commanding a detachment of Brownback troops. Savrek had mostly recovered from his wounds and proved to once again be a very skilled subordinate, devising a counter-flanking maneuver that significantly slowed the Drow's advance. Wulroth was decidedly frustrated by the avoidance of open battle with the Drow, though he did not argue with Snowfire's approach. Instead, he got out some of his annoyances by leading skirmishing parties, which were typically the bloodiest. Lenna too was growing agitated by the lack of an engagement as her casualty lists grew, and she began to disrupt dragonborn communications to and from the outside world. She detailed special forces to target any messenger birds coming in or out of the dragonborn lines, and while they did not get all of them, they were effective enough to prevent King Bard from hearing any further about the situation. 
As the winter rolled on and December turned to January, the stalemate continued. Snowfire had heard very little about Bard's position, and his concern grew. He was confident that the stalemate would continue for at least another month, and decided to meet up with the king. He reluctantly left Wulroth in command with strict orders not to engage in pitched battle and to continue the process of falling back until he returned. With that, he headed south to Toth, and then east to the River Noan. Along the way, he met up with some wounded troops, two thousand in total, from the Tryrian Campaign whose injuries had healed, and traveled with them into Tryr.
Unfortunately for the dragonborn, Wulroth was a naturally aggressive commander, and his desire to fight the Drow likely affected his judgement. His defensive positions were much sloppier than Snowfire's, and he was not at as enchanted by Savrek's tactical advice. Magnate Hossoth, who Lenna had ordered to command her special forces, noticed some flaws in the dragonborn line, and pointed them out to Lenna. Lenna gambled on an exploitation of these weaknesses through a night march that occupied vulnerable ground. As Wulroth moved to retreat, he noticed that the drow had blocked off the planned defensive position. Infuriated he had been outmaneuvered in a strategy he didn't even favor, Wulroth decided to attack the drow instead. Lenna had been anticipating this, and easily repulsed the dragonborn attack. Before she was able to cut off a dragonborn retreat, Wulroth withdrew his forces into Teraholm proper, with the drow moving in to besiege it on February 14th.
== Siege ==
This began the second phase of the conflict. A few days after the siege began, Lenna was reinforced by Magnate Tevoth's force who had successfully captured Makenth, bringing her numbers back up to 14,000. Wulroth had about 9,000 dragonborn with him. Any hope Lenna had that the dragonborn would prove easier to defeat once they were besieged in Teraholm was dashed as they continued to hold out. The drow's expertise in journeying through caves was continually frustrated by the dragonborn's intimate knowledge of the cave systems surrounding Teraholm. Wulroth led regular raids and small but ferocious hand to hand engagements became commonplace in the tunnels under the mountains. Still, the Drow, aided by the tactics learned by Tevoth during the siege of Makenth, were well prepared for siege warfare, and their engines of war steadily pierced the earthen walls of Teraholm. By the beginning of April, much of the outer ring of walls were a ruin, and the Drow began to plan an assault on its inner core. Wulroth was anticipating this, and was prepared to make the Drow bleed horribly from street fighting. They would have to wrest every inch from the dragonborn.
However, this was ultimately not to be. Flush from the stupendous victory at Battle of Twoffes Wood, Snowfire arrived outside of Teraholm with 8,000 additional men in early April, including Lord Caeseth Craw. Snowfire managed to sneak in news of his arrival with the clever usage of smoke signals, which immediately led Wulroth to change his plans. Enticed with the possibility of taking the initiative in the fight against the drow, Wulroth planned an all out assault. Thanks to intelligence gathered by Hossoth, Lenna was also aware of the presence of Snowfire's army. She was therefore faced with the choice to admit defeat and retreat to the more defensible Makenth, probably losing the opportunity to defeat the dragonborn outright; or to continue the fight and possibly get her army surrounded and destroyed. The cautious Lenna preferred the former choice, and prepared to retreat from her position. 
== Battle ==
To her surprise, on the morning of April 12th, thousands of dragonborn assailants came surging from the central keep of Teraholm. The ragged defenders of the fortress scored some early success, driving Laashburk's forces out from the outer walls as the forward elements of Snowfire's army made contact with the southern flank of Lenna's. Unfortunately for the Brunians, they did not maintain their advantage for long. Snowfire's troops on the field did not have enough number or mass to make a difference, and when the drow began to counterattack, they were forced to retreat. Wulroth, flush with the vigor of battle, directed his army forward, hoping to drive the drow in disarray from the field. The dragonborn rapidly lost cohesion as their battle lines became a mangled mess. On the hills north of the city, Lenna deployed her reserves: the elite driders, servants of Lolth with the upper half of a drow, and the lower half of a massive spider. As the dragonborn charged, they met the mass of driders, and were immediately halted. Backed by the presence of the driders, the drow successfully checked the dragonborn advance, and began to force them back. 
Rallying his forces, Wulroth entreated his soldiers to charge, for their homes and families, for their king, and for Brun; shortly afterwards, he was struck with a glaive to his neck, slashing down into his chest and cleaving a massive hole. He fell to the ground, mortally wounded. His soldiers, seeing their commander fall, surged forward, and momentarily beat them back enough to retrieve Wulroth's body. Ironhand was miraculously still alive, though his upper organs were nearly spilling out as he gushed blood. He staggered to his feet again, and gave a wordless roar in anger and defiance. A second blow to the forehead from a javelin knocked him to the ground again. He attempted to rise once more, javelin protruding from his forehead, before a crossbow bolt struck him through the heart, finally killing the tenacious general. 
Wulroth's death coincided with the reversal of Brunian fortunes as they began to retreat back to Teraholm; slowly, at first, and then rapidly as the drow pursued. Soon enough, the retreat became a rout, and many hundreds of dragonborn were cut down en masse. For the first time in the war, the Brunians had been routed. Lenna saw the opportunity to seize Teraholm, and set Hossoth to the task of assaulting the fortress. Savrek Brownback, who remained behind with a token force to hold Teraholm, stepped up to the challenge of ending the rout. He skillfully deployed his troops in key defensive locations, and reacted swiftly, organizing gradual fighting retreats. The fighting made a wreckage of much of the remaining structures of Teraholm. The momentum of the drow advance slowed heavily thanks to Savrek's decisiveness, and they suffered heavy casualties for each inch they took: just as Wulroth had initially claimed they would. Eventually, the drow assault petered out when Magnate Hossoth was captured as she was directing her troops. By noon, the drow silently retreated back to their lines they held at the beginning of the battle. 
The dragonborn defenders had suffered horribly, losing 4800 of their 7500 total number; the drow suffered comparatively less but still significant, 3000 of 10500. The forward elements of Snowfire's army had lost just 200, bringing the dragonborn total to 5000. Snowfire rather belatedly learned of Wulroth's attack by the afternoon, when the battle was already over, and cursed his impatience. He hurriedly pushed the rest of his vanguard forward, though when he realized the fighting was done, he decided to pull back. The situation of the dragonborn was actually significantly worse than it had been at the start of the battle, with the defenders of Teraholm heavily bloodied. Many of the best soldiers left had perished in the assault, and morale was at an all time low. However, Wulroth's ill-advised attack had the important strategic impact of shaking Lenna's confidence. The dragonborn had gone from being at the edge of defeat to launching a counter-attack that pushed her back nearly all the way to their starting point five months previous. While she knew they had suffered heavy losses, she also knew that they had a reinforcing army arriving on her flank, and she had no idea what state their morale was in. With the loss of the reconnaissance offered by Hossoth's expertise, she decided to follow through with her initial decision to withdraw. That night of the 12th, she ordered a withdrawal from Teraholm back to Makenth. 
The following day, Snowfire prepared to skirmish with the drow before bringing on a proper engagement, only to find they were gone. Wary of a trap, he cautiously sent out reconnaissance, spending another day ensuring they had left before finally linking up with the spent garrison of Teraholm. They resupplied the fortress, bringing in long-needed foodstuffs, and finally ending the long and costly siege. 
== Aftermath ==
The Siege of Teraholm was the bloodiest battle fought for the Brunians in the Great Riverlands War. They suffered a total of 8,800 casualties, though thanks to additional were able to recover their numbers relatively quickly after the loss. Snowfire was surprised to find that rather than continue a defensive campaign, Savrek Brownback advocated for going on the offensive. The dragonborn would have to keep the initiative if they were to drive the invaders from their homeland. Though initially reluctant, Snowfire saw the wisdom in Savrek's counsel, and after letting their troops rest for a week, the combined army of about 10,000 marched north to Makenth.