Battle of Ks'jateh

The battle of Ks'jateh was the final confrontation of the Cursed wars, that began with the rise of the Nhjera brothers in the year 8:57 (Vht'shjenjé calendar). Their decade-long reign created the largest empire the Iron Desert had ever seen, but by doing so antagonised all the neighbouring states, in particular the Azure Army of the Shadowborn. Through the deceit of the Shadowborn poet Katsasashtír, the Nhjera brothers fell into discord and eventually torn their empire in two. Both of the brothers met personally, along with the Azure general Rakhyrín and the southern commander Sčvensjáht upon a burnt, rocky place known as the "Plain of faces". It was a dreaded place because it was said the chaotic rock formations were said to resemble that of skull faces, the burnt remains of ancient deities that were destroyed upon the death of the world.
The battle was thus a tripartite battle with the allied Sját and Vht'shjenjé versus the two brothers' respective factions. It was finally conluded in the year 8:69 (315ABV) and was the largest battle ever fought in the Iron Desert.
Belligerents	
Vht'shjenjé 	Sját 	
Black banner faction	
Purple banner faction
Commanders	Rakhyrín 	Sčvensjáht	Dras'jahkatan	Assjashínan
Army sizes	20.000 	20.000 	26.000 	23.000
Losses 	16.000 	3.000 	~22.000 	~20.000
Result 	Pyrrhic victory	Victory 	Defeat 	Defeat
==Prelude==
The rise of the Cursed changed warfare in the Iron Desert due to their sole focus on surface warfare. As illustrated in the Scorched board game Ketáh, warfare in the desert had previously been a combination of strategic surface warfare with cavalry and subterranean fighting with infantry. The Cursed, originating with outcast nomadic clans from Shjevrenjé, focused solely on surface fighting and besieged enemy cities by cutting their supply lines. Because of this, their initial campaigns were stupendously successful and in a few years they carved out an empire larger than anything seen before in the Iron Desert. Their conquests ground to a halt in the north as their armies poured into the lands of the Hoshár, who themselves were locked in a war against Vht'shjenjé. As the Azure Army, led by the then aspiring commander Rakhyrín, later annexed Hoshár territory the two mighty factions were at war. The Azure Army's renowned heavy infantry proved useless against the cavalry hordes and had to adapt to a completely new type of war.
Rakhyrín maintain a defensive strategy of area denial, instead letting neighbouring states to take the blow from the enemy. It worked for a time but it stretched her forces thin, leaving her vulnerable to attack. Were it not for the Vht'shjenjé agent Katsasashtír, who successfully managed to divide the enemy forces into two factions, she would perhaps not have managed to hold them at bay. Rakhyrín then decided to go to the offensive, marching her troops into enemy territory to finish them off, eventually catching them at the plain of Ks'jateh.
Meanwhile, the southern state of Sját took the opportunity to send their forces north. Their troops were well-fed and well-rested, not having fought a decade of bitter trench warfare against the Cursed.
==The Eve of Battle==
The Battle began with Dras'jahkatan taking a strategic position upon the highest point, counting on the elevation and superior numbers to hold back the Azure Army. However, his brother started the battle by assaulting him in the rear at nightfall, and the two brothers were locked into mortal conflict in the dark. Assjashínan managed to encircle his brother with his forces in the hope that it would offset his numerical disadvantage.
It could've ended there with the two brothers fighting for supremacy over their own newly carved-out empire, but then Rakhyrín and the Azure Army arrived in the West.
==The Blaze of Death==
In the few remaining hours of darkness before the dawn, Rakhyrín ordered her troops to attack. Hoping that the two Cursed factions had decimated one another throughout the night, her forces broke into deadly melee upon the high plateau with the rise of the burning sun. By the morning, her forces was locked in deadly conflict against both of the Cursed armies, but the worst enemy to them all would prove the sun itself. Upon noon, the temperature upon the high desert plateau reached as high as 50°C. Soldiers from all three armies dropped dead upon the plain from dehydration and exhaustion while carrion birds and maggots feasted upon the rotting bodies around them. The massacre was unspeakable, the plain littered with dismembered corpses and steaming blood.
Dras'jahkatan then feigned collapse by allowing his centre to withdraw, the Azure Army moving in but quickly finding themselves surrounded. Had Assjashínan's forces not interrupted those of his brother's by assaulting their flanks, Rakhyrín's forces would've perhaps been annihilated completely at this time.
==Breaking through & Southern Intervention ==
Despite this, Rakhyrín managed to muster her forces and focus them for a spearhead attack she personally led towards the south-east, where she eventually managed to punch a hole in the Cursed ranks and break through. The desperate strategy paid off, for at this time Sčvensjáht's army had arrived from the south. Rakhyrín herself had been badly injured in the battle, with a serious gash in the thigh and three fingers cut off by a heavy bronze sword, but was filled with new resolve as she saw the green banners in the distance.
The Cursed armies, severely broken and near collapse, suddenly found themselves facing an additional twenty thousand enemy troops. Upon the eve of the battle, the two brothers reconciled in a poetic manner as they stood back to back upon the high cliff in a last stand, their forces taking up stalwart defence against the invaders. In a poetic manner, the two brothers eventually died together on that very spot, unified in death with their once proud armies destroyed around them. Of the nearly 50.000 Cursed that came to the field of Ks'jateh, less than 7000 made it back to their home. 
Category:Battles
Category:History
Category:Iron Desert