Gurvani War - Mindens Hall

## Gurvani Assault on Minden’s Hall

### Summary

Six months into his tenure as Spellmonger of Minden's Hall, Minalan is thrown into battle again as a small army of gurvani attack the village. He and his apprentice, Tyndal, gathered other townsfolk and attacked the hoard as Sire Koucey and Sir Cei led two dozen knights into the fray. Minalan spotted and defeated a gurvan shaman. That shaman had a large piece of irionite powering his spells.

### The Battle

The attack began in the middle of the night when the nocturnal gurvani had a natural advantage. Minalan awakened to the village's alarm bell being frantically rung. Deducing the emergency was most likely an attack on Minden's Hall by a gurvani raiding party, he woke his apprentice Tyndal, weaponed-up, and boldly moved into the street. There, he and Tyndal immediately fought and killed a trio of gurvani.

As they made their way to the bell tower, Minalan collected more townsfolk. At the tower, they saw at least 150 gurvani surrounding a few of the village residents defending themselves from within the bell tower. As he was the only one with military experience in the group, the men looked to Minalan to lead the counterattack. Knowing full well that would be a catastrophe, Minalan instead deployed the archers and men bearing axes so as to cut off small groups of gurvani, then surround, and slay them. This worked well but would not relieve the bell tower before it was overrun. Minalan crafted another plan.

Minalan deployed the largest share of villagers to the far side of the tower square. Hoping to scare the foe into retreating, he then conjured a large and intimidating illusion of a fire demon to distract and frighten the gurvani hoard. Just as a bold gurvan challenged the illusion, Sire Koucey and a score and four mounted knights charged into the milling gurvani. Minalan's village defenders charged into the back of the hoard, and it looked like victory was in the making.

Just then, Minalan felt the stirrings of magic from within the crowd of fighting gurvani. Realizing it was a spellcaster, Minalan drained the last of his own magical energy to cast a warmage augmentation spell to speed his attack on the shaman. The gurvani shaman was in the midst of casting extraordinarily powerful spell, but Minalan tapped the power to augment his own spell, then rapidly slashed at his opponent. The surprised shaman was expecting only frightened humani of the village, but not a warmage in full charge! Minalan ably dispatched his adversary but did not count on the power built into the shaman's spell. Realizing that power left unchanneled would explosively level the town and everyone in it, Minalan conducted it into his languishing illusion causing a pillar of illusion and fire that reached a mile into the sky.

> Magical power that is summoned and not used can either dissipate slowly, or it can release explosively, depending upon the vessel and a host of other factors. [...] somehow.  It was happening too quickly for me to form an apis, or other thaumaturgical construct to absorb the power.  I had to channel it.  I still had the remnants of the fire illusion hanging around, and that seemed to be the most convenient thing to do, so I sent it all into one big fire-illusion spell and directed it straight up.
>
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### Aftermath

Minalan and Sire Koucey deduced that the attack by the large *Gurvani* force and a witchstone-powered *shaman* on the hamlet of Minden’s Hall was likely a reconnaissance-in-force ahead of many more gurvani waging war on the humans of Boval Vale and perhaps beyond.

Minalan found the witchstone that the enemy shaman held. It was the largest piece of irionite that he'd ever heard about. Fearing some kind of magical contamination from the green stone, he carefully wrapped it in a cloth before handling it. Upon later examination and plumbing his meager references, Minalan knew he needed better information about the irionite and the gavani attack. He also knew that simply possessing the stone would bring wrath of the Censorate--and the bans they enforced--down upon him. Nevertheless, Minalan and Tyndal set off to seek information and guidance from the Tree Folk of Amadia in the north of the barony.

## References

1. ↑ Mancour, Terry. Spellmonger: Book One Of The Spellmonger Series (p. 34). Kindle Edition.

**Glossary**