War of the Lord Descended

### Result

Drunig victory, local cultist forces retreat inland. Many drunig colonies destroyed or highly damaged.

## Combatants

Kingdom of Drunigzar

Cultists of the Lord Descended; Drunig Cultists

## Commanders

Camilogos the “Count of Dawn”

Unknown, possibly High Priests of the Lord Descended

## Fighting Forces

Drunig colonial garrison; Drunig Levies; Drunig Navy; Drunig Expeditionary Force; Gnoll Corps; Drunig Mercenaries

Human Cultists of the Lord Descended; Peacock Ogre Cultists of the Lord Descended

## Casualties and Losses

Heavy losses for the drunig civilian population and the drunig garrison.

Massive cultists losses.

The **War of the Lord Descended** was the conflict between the Kingdom of Drunigzar and its colonies against the local population of the lands in the Pinewood Peninsula, which would later become known as the Land of the Lord Descended. The war would become the first showing of the Cult of the Lord Descended that would possess the near totality of the local population in the area, as well as the first time the Kingdom of Drunigzar would require to deploy its armies to defend the colonies. The resulting war managed to defend the more developed drunig colonies at the cost of those that were taken unawares, and while the war was declared over by the Drunig authorities, skirmishes still happen to this day.

## Origins

The Drunig exploratory teams first established contact with the population in the area in [date not added because we have no clear calendar system, come on people, we need this], in the context of the founding of the 2nd Generation colonies. The drunig expeditions arrived to the territory in search of fortune and land to farm. After the successes of Cabakrotiro y Cabakapa, the leadership of the colonial expedition decided to start expanding in areas along the coast that were not yet under the threat of being swallowed by the Forest of Bloody Vengeance, unnaturally expanding from decades now. This would allow the settlers to establish an active agricultural economy, which the mainland needed more and more with the constant demographic growth of the country. The local population was friendly enough, composed of a mix of hundreds of small farming towns and nomad herding tribes. They appreciated the chance to have access to sea trade through drunig ports. As such, the establishment of the settlers was quite smooth, and they even managed to grab a considerable area of arable land. The success of the colonial efforts gave way to the founding of the colonies of Cabakritinnii, Cabakonninni and Bibile, with many more colonies on the way. As per usual, the city growth made planning the construction of defensive fortifications quite difficult, and thus most of the colonies made do with a series of watchtowers surrounding the city. The one exception being Cabakonninni, that was able to build a couple of small coast fortresses around the city to ward off pirates, which combined with the watchtowers, turned into a defensive structure that would form the basis for the dual walls that surround the colony nowadays.

## The fall of the “Lord Descended”

Around 25 years after the first settlements in the area, the phenomenon known as “The Descent” happened. Many wizards and astromancers still debate what exactly happened, but according to some the locals “a blinding light fell from the sky”, approximately at the southern edge of the Forest of Bloody Vengeance. Whatever was it, the impact caused a massive flash, followed by a great knocking, being seen and heard by near the entire region. After the flash, small bits of a strange material started falling from the sky. Drunig settlers at the time mention that a small dust of an unidentified material fell from the sky, and an expedition to the inner regions mentioned the bits on the ground grew larger and more concentrated the deeper it went into the land. The material seemed to cause severe headaches and momentary loss of consciousness to those settlers that began to accumulate the strange dust, and the most egregious cases fell into a maddened stupor. After a couple of violent incidents, the colonial authorities announced that there were severe risks to getting into prolongued contact with the material, which would later be called “reality” by the native population. The lack of wizards in the colonies meant that the now well known dangers of this substance went unnoticed for months, and that kept the colonies too busy with dealing with this substance to prevent what was about to happen.

At the very least, the many incidents gave the colonial authorities enough information to declare that this “reality” dust was a hazardous substance and needed to be removed from the land as fast as possible. While the cleaning efforts in the colonies were underway, drunig civilians noted a strange change in the behavior of the local population. Before the incident, they were very open to drunig contact, but more and more they were becoming more secluded towards themselves, always whispering and falling silent when someone from outside got close enough to hear them. Eventually most of the native population just stop travelling to the colonies, which left the colonies with just the drunig settlers and whatever garrisons they had brought with them. After a year of this, reports started coming in that strange disappearances were occurring in the borders of the colonies. Farmers, herders and small travelling merchants went inland to work and they never came back. Things began escalating when explorers from the garrisons began disappearing as well. Patrols were sent to watch the areas, but they only met with failure. A couple of them were attack by what they described as crazy hooded people, but their reports only caused more confusion. At first, it was believed these were bandit attacks of some sort, but when patrols started coming with tales of this bands including women and small children that were attacking the soldiers with just as fierce zealotry as the men, the authorities began suspecting this was not just a spike of criminal activity. They sent messages to the mainland, asking for reinforcements to counter whatever was causing this. This decision would prove to be a very timely one in hindsight, knowing what would happen immediately afterwards.

## The Night of Blood

Three days after the firsts messages for aid were sent, the colonies suffered a massive attack from the local population. Tens of thousands of people, including both humans and peacock ogres, dressed in hooded clothes, began attacking the edges of the colonies. This forces were near universally composed of civilians, armed with crude weapons or farming tools. The sheer shock of the attack and the massive numbers they had proved horrifyingly effective, sweeping most of the outposts outside of the colony cities themselves, slaughtering hundreds and capturing thousands. The terrified and confused refugees that were able to escape told horror stories about how the locals were chanting and singing happily while vivisecting the captured drunig where they stood, bathing in the blood of their victims while praising “The Lord Descended”. Any attempt at talking to them had resulted in even further prayers to this “Lord Descended”, redoubling their efforts to take the settlers alive to sacrifice them at some later point in time. This were also the first recorded accounts of weapons, clothes and accessories made with the mysterious “reality” material, with many experts hypothesizing that exposure to considerable amount of this element was causing their madness.

The garrison forces were quickly dispatched to the cities’ borders, whoever could take arms was drafted and the civilian population was taken to the docks, in case of an emergency full evacuation. Quick barricades were built around the cities, and whatever navy support was close was ordered to offer long-range fire to try to contain the hordes of madmen quickly closing in. During the night, thousands of hooded cultists charged at the quickly built barricades. The garrisons were part of the Expeditionary Force, men well trained and equipped, but the sheer amount of cultists, their suicidal ferocity and the lack of proper fortifications meant that the battles that night were bloody affairs. And even while the troops resisted the waves of cultists, slowly retreating more and more inwards and cutting swathes of the madmen by volley fire, navy long-range support and clever use of the narrow city streets, some colonies were met with dangers from inside. Many drunig citizens, who ignored the warnings against gathering “reality”, had fallen for the same madness as the native population, and began sabotaging the defenses. This was particularly bad in the colony of Bibiferno. Bibiferno was a very recent colony outpost, and as such, it was much smaller and less populated that the other outposts. During the Night of Blood, some drunig settlers who had gathered a lot of “reality” had gone mad and infiltrated the navy ships. It’s not clear what happened next, but it is theorized they blew up the powder keg of some of the biggest ships, sinking a total of 6 ships of the line in the process, and crippling the defensive efforts. With the maddened hordes charging from land and with the docks burning, the flames consumed the entire city. The surviving ships gathered whatever survivors that threw themselves to the sea in desperation and departed.

To this day, the ruins of Bibiferno lay abandoned as a sign of the madness that still possesses the local inhabitants of the region. This account also made the drunig authorities definitively confirm the corrupting influence of “reality”, and completely banned its use or possession under penalty of death.

The other colonies, although horribly mauled, managed to survive the night. By the end of the night, hundreds of drunig soldiers had died, and many, many more cultists laid down dead, covering the cities in blood. However, by the time dawn broke, the waves of crazed cultists started thinning out to manageable levels. The remaining cultists ran away once their bloodlust had been satisfied, searching for protection in the local forests. The surviving drunig had prevailed, although they were too exhausted and wounded to have any chance to chase them down. Outside of the more developed colonies, the authorities decided to take flight and find refuge somewhere far, since there was no way to know when military aid would help, and the small populations had little hope to stave off the hordes on their own. The colony of Crysanferno in particular was particularly successful, since its geographical position on a small island meant that the local population was much smaller than in the mainland. As such, Crysanferno quickly became a rallying point for many refugee ships, nearly doubling its population.

## The March to Safety

The efforts of moving the population to a safer place began almost immediately after the fight. Although it was expected that the cultists would need to retreat and regroup, the destruction in lives and infrastructure meant that there was little chance of defense for most of the colonies if they decided to try immediately. The colonies of Cabakritinnii and Cabakonninni, much more developed and prepared for an attacked, were immediately supplied by the regular patrols of the Expeditionary Force, who hadn’t even been noticed of the conflict yet. Meanwhile, smaller colonies were using whatever ship they could get their hands on and try to leave to Crysanferno. This left the colonies of Bibile and Paolotera in a problematic situation. Their populations were big enough to make an evacuation to somewhere else unfeasible: not only they didn’t have enough ships to move fast enough, but even if they had, there was no place with enough resources on hand that wouldn’t cause a humanitarian crisis (Crysanferno was in the middle of one already). And if they decided to stay, there was a real chance of them being overrun, since the damages caused by the attacks during the Night of Blood were severe, and their manpower had been cut dramatically.

The answer came soon enough. A small navy patrol fleet arrived a week later the Night of Blood after chasing down pirates in the Leviathan Gulf. Shocked and aghast by the news of the attack, they bowed to help moving the children, women and the gravely wounded back to mainland Drunigzar. They would also leave a good portion of their manpower to help strengthen the colonies. Even then, this was not enough. The solution, then, was a compromise between Bibile and Paolotera. Out of the two cities, Bibile was the one that with the sterner defenses, having been funded many years before Paolotera. Thus, it had a better chance of defending itself once properly supplied and its constructions repaired. But after the Night of Blood, their manpower had shrunk significantly. As such, the fleets would take as many non-combatants as possible, and the city of Paolotera would be abandoned, marching as fast as possible towards Bibile. That could give Bibile the necessary manpower to resist until the Expeditionary Forces arrived in enough numbers to rescue them.

Organizing the evacuation from Paolotera took around a week. Even with the navy’s help moving many non-combatants, there was just not enough space in the ships, and thus many civilians still had to march alongside the militia. As much army personnel as possible bowed to accompany them, and gave them as much ammunition and weapons as they could carry without slowing them down. Nevertheless, even after that, the chances of success were slim. A fast pace march towards Bibile would take days. Crossing the more than 200km between the two cities through the coast on foot and having to carry both supplies and civilians through the coast and forests was difficult, and that was without taking into account the risks of the cultists chasing them.

## The Declaration of War

By the time the population of Paolotera began their march towards Bibile, news of the attack finally reached the capital, and from them it was a couple of days that the entire kingdom knew of the attack. This shook Drunigzar to the core, due to not only the violence of the attack, but also because of its nature. There was no reason for it other than collective madness or some sort of monstrous interference, which was the answer reached once news of Bibiferno’s fate reach authorities. The need for action was clear: not only had this been an inhuman, traitorous and unjustifiable attack without provocation, and caused thousands of civilian casualties. This event risked the entire confidence of the colonial project overall, risking a massive exodus back to the mainland, which would have been catastrophic for Drunigzar. The loss of the trade and produce of the economies combined with the weight of having to feed all of the returned mouths was impossible, leading to a near guaranteed collapse. Thus, it was decided to declare war upon the cultists, to drive them away by any means necessary. The Expeditionary Force and the Drunig Navy were summoned to this task. Formations of volunteers and mercenaries were formed and the country was set on a war footing, dedicating as many efforts as possible to war production. This didn’t mean that the Drunig economy would abandon its trade in any way, by this point they couldn’t afford that anymore. As such, the special taxes and levies set upon the population were badly received by the population, who only really accepted them by the shock and brutality suffered by their fellow citizens.

However, the war needed to end quickly, and there were still many unanswered questions about this conflict. The Drunig High Command didn’t know the reasons for the attack outside of the madness caused by the “reality” substance. Was it caused by the natural properties of the element? Or was a malignant entity causing this through it? Did the cultists have some form of leadership and organization? Or were they just maddened and frenzied hordes? The fact that a simultaneous attack suggested some form of coordination, but the attacks themselves showed no organization outside of mass frenzied charges. Was this coordination magical in nature, maybe by some sort of unified mind? Or were there mortal leaders of this cult that could be targeted and destroyed? The existence of the drunig saboteurs in Bibiferno hinted at some yet not understood form of coordination, though it was theorized that the exposure to “reality” could affect the individual’s sanity, different levels of exposure could affect how much they would lose. What was the ultimate reason for the attacks? The increasing number of refugees told stories of human sacrifices and rituals of bathing in the blood of the captured, with many more prisoners taken alive, their ultimate fate unknown. How many locals were affected by this madness? If the worst had come to pass, and many drunig officials held that option, the entire population of natives could have been affected by this madness. That, or the maddened members of this “Cult of the Descended” had gone against those locals unaffected by the effects of “reality” and killed them first, only going after the drunig population once they had ran out of unaffected individuals. This theory would eventually be proven correct, once the Expeditionary Forces began advancing through the lands and saw the gruesome work of the locals. Finally, how would the Drunig forces deal with the effects of “reality”? If somehow the armies became corrupted due to the effects of this material, it would cause unimaginable damage. Drunigzar hired some of the most wizards and astromancers of the kingdom to try and come up with ways to, if not destroy, neutralize the effects of this accursed substance. While more investigation was underway, the consensus after hearing the testimonies about the violent incidents before the Night of Blood was that the substance needed either to be in direct contact with an individual for a very long time for it to work, and the more substance were around the quicker its maddening effects would work. As for ways to destroy it, it was decided that more experimentation was required, and time was something they could not afford.

The expeditionary forces were under the command of Camilogos the “Count of Dawn”, a brilliant man that had achieved the rank of “Great Captain” after a mere two decades of service (with many rumors murmuring that was partially the result of him being the king’s bastard brother). The Expeditionary Force was sent in two ways: A first wave was quickly sent a week after the declaration of war was approved, trying to reinforce whatever holdings the settlers still managed to defend. This would be composed of whatever units of the Expeditionary Force were readily available, and as many navy ships they could spare. The first wave would also include many scout units, ordered to scan the land and search for heavy concentration of hostiles, possible surviving settlements and to serve as a communication line between whatever colonies were still standing, to try and organize the resources already there. In theory, this could give the colonies enough manpower and supplies to survive any other assaults of that kind, enough for the main army to arrive. Once it was on the territory, the information gathered by the scout units would be used to sweep the land as clean as possible, eliminating vulnerable cultist centers and to gain enough time for the third phase of the project to begin: the construction of massive walls protecting the land and separating it from the rest of the territory.

While a full sweep of the territory was suggested and planned, there were two main reasons for its rejection. First, the plan that would take years, if not decades to complete, and it would require multiplying the size of the Expeditionary Force many times to cover the entire territory. That would mean a demographic and economic strain on the kingdom too severe to maintain. And second, the closeness of the land to the Forest of Bloody Vengeance meant that the mere act of warfare there would mean the curse could extend to the drunig population. This would not only threatening the colonies affected by cultist activity, but also colonies like Cabakrotiro and Cabakapa, already well established and too near the forest to be immune to its effects, should it decide to attack drunig settlements. While the curse of the Forest of Bloody Vengeance was not guaranteed to extend to Drunigzar, the risks were simply too great to ignore. Still, the Crown ordered wizards to study the growth rate of the forest near the drunig colonies, in case of a change of behavior against Drunigzar and an evacuation was needed.

## The Second Wave

The first reinforcements from the mainland arrived to the colonies a week later. They were received with high praises by the colonies, although the cities weren’t on a state to afford any kind of celebration. Immediately they were put to work reinforcing the defenses, building walls, barracks and barricades, training the militia conscripts, rearming the garrisons… The scout forces were sent to investigate inland, to see if they could locate the enemy’s movements, plans or whatever other useful information. The scouts that had been sent from Bibile to locate the Paoloteran refugees was successful, confirming they were still mostly safe and on route, but sudden downpours in the area had caused the ground to turn into mud, horribly slowing down their advance. They were tired and running out of resources, and the cultists had attacked multiple times during the previous nights, albeit in low numbers, exhausting the defenders.

This became quite a problem after a couple of scout patrols identified multiple masses of cultists forming around at the inner points in the land. According to their movements, it was believed they would try a three-pronged sweep of the drunig colonies with three major hordes, tens of thousands of men, women and children each, all chanting in a seemingly trance. The movements of this bodies suggested they would reach both extremes and the center of the coast, and advance along the coast, destroying everything in their way. The scout also saw drunig prisioners, covered in pieces of “reality” fashioned as ornaments singing just as madly as the rest, which confirmed the corrupting effects of “reality” and explained why the cultists were capturing as many drunig alive as possible: it was believed that hundreds of drunig prisoners now had been brainwashed and joined the ranks of the fanatics. This news would prove a horrifying prospect for the defenders, especially those with family and friends turned against them.

This news also meant that the defensive projects were needed to be done as fast as possible, to be ready to the attacks. This news was particularly bad for the Paoloteran refugees and the Bibile defenders. The refugees needed to hurry up to reach the defenses in time, otherwise they’d be swept under a sea of cultists. And without the extra help that the men of Paolotera would lend, Bibile may not have enough strength to defend the city. Luckily for Bibile, the arrival of the reinforcements meant a boost for their preparations. Bibile’s reinforcements also include 200 members of the Gnoll Corps, whose arrival caused quite a lot of concern for the locals. While they had been the more disciplined the army had been able to choose, and further trained as much as they could be, they were still gnolls, and they weren’t there to help prop up the defenses, they were there for the slaughter. Something like that made the defenders quite nervous, but if they could defend them against the cultists, they would have to be tolerating. The gnoll issue was short lived, however. The discovery of the cultists’ forces advancing towards Bibile, and doing so fast and after looting the now empty Paolotera, meant that the refugees may very well not make it to the city in time, and may be butchered right at the gates of the city. A small patrol, alongside the entire Gnoll Corps, went to the rescue to the refugees, to try and gain enough time for the survivors to reach Bibile safely.

## The Battle of the Mudded Wastes

The rescue unit from Bibile was quickly rushed to meet the refugees on the way. The rains had stopped, but the land was still difficult to traverse. The refugees were tired, starving and running out of gunpowder and arrows to defend themselves, and the nightly raids had caused a lot of damage to the convoy. Many soldiers were wounded to the point they couldn’t fight anymore, so the sight of the reinforcements made them take heart. This was not to last, however, since the rescue unit wasn’t there to bring supplies and more protection, it was there to inform them they better hurry up, since the mass of cultists from Paolotera were right behind them. The pace of the advance increased, despite the exhaustion and the hunger. The cultist raids increased in intensity, to try to slow them down enough to not make it to Bibile, but the fresh reinforcements managed to counter this strategy. However, the cultists’ advance was much faster than the refugees, seemingly unhindered by the muddy terrain.

This would culminate in the Battle of the Mudded Wastes. The Mudded Wastes was a small area near Bibile that, due to the lack of strong vegetation, became a sea of mud when it rained. And during that night, the storm brought a deluge of rain. There was no time to take a detour without being surrounded and killed to a man, and there was no way to just ran straight through the area and reach the city in time, without putting the integrity of the defenses in peril. Thus, the soldiers decided to set up defense in the area while the civilians ran to the city. The idea was not a suicide stand, as that would only mean Bibile would lose many fighting men before the cultists arrive to its borders. A plan was formed that they would form a rectangle formation, spearmen on the front, with archers and arquebusiers behind them to provide cover fire. They would also try to use whatever element could slow the cultists’ advance: gunpowder barrels, spikes and stakes hidden in the mud, broken glass… Everything would be put at the sides of the rectangle formation, to avoid being surrounded by superior forces. For this, the small amount of cavalry available would also try to play a game of cat and mouse, attacking and quickly retreating to cause disarray and to force the enemy to chase them, although the muddy terrain meant that this tactics promised to be costly. Gnolls would be put at the sides as well, to try and dissuade the hordes from taking on the flanks directly, hoping that the ferocity and violence of the gnolls was enough to intimidate even the maddened hordes. The forces would gain enough time to let the refugee reach the city, and once this was accomplished, the forces would slowly walk back to Bibile, trying to cause as much damage as possible while maintaining the defensive formation.

The clash between the cultists and the drunig forces began a short while before dusk. The more solid position of the defenders, the unorganized attack of the fanatics and the uneven muddy terrain gave the drunig forces a very solid advantage from the beginning. The cultists were throwing themselves at the drunig’s spears without little thought for their own lives. The mud and the terrain made their charges imprecise and robbed them of most of their strength, and the slippery land made them trip and fall, being easy prey to the spearmen and the archers. Any big wave that seemed to be particularly threatening was met with a volley of arquebusier fire, from time to time aiming to the gunpowder barrels set beforehand, with devastating results. The flanks were being successfully defended as well, managing to concentrate the brunt of the enemy forces in the front. The Gnoll Corps here was particularly successful, their animal savagery matching the cultists’ madness bit by bit, but with the better equipment, training and with the animal instincts of the gnoll, they were carving quite a swathe on the enemy’s forces. The light cavalry, seeing this was effective enough, decided to fall back and provide support as mounted arquebusiers, helping stop the cultist stragglers that had avoided the gnoll and were marching towards the rear, all while keeping a safe distance.

The cultists were being butchered. Hundreds of cultists fell during the first minutes, and by the hour the Mudded Wastes seemed a sea of blood, muck and bodies. And yet, they weren’t falling fast enough. Most of the drunig solders were already tired from marching with little rest from Paolotera to Bibile. They were exhausted, hungry and arrows and gunpowder was running low. After a couple of hours, the losses of drunig began mounting, finding more and more difficult to maintain formation. The more fresh troops were ordered to slowly take the frontline positions, leaving others to other activities such as caring for the wounded or helping the archers and arquebusiers. But in the middle of the chaotic melee and with nighttime closing in, organizing such a complex maneuver was not possible. Adding to that, visibility was becoming an issue once sunlight disappeared and night covered the land. And the cultists just kept coming.

The worst was yet to come once a group of near a hundred peacock ogres, dressed in a crudely fitted armor made out of “reality” were seeing closing in. Luckily for the soldiers, a yellow flashbang in the night sky briefly illuminated the sky, the signal that indicated the civilians had arrived to Bibile safely. Emboldened by having saved the civilians and loved ones, the drunig defenders began slowly but surely retreat towards the city, walking backwards to never turn their back on the cultists. The sheer amount of bodies in the field was slowing them down considerably, but there were simply too many, and the peacock ogres were just charging anyway. Their maddened charge was crushing dead bodies and fellow cultists alike. The defenders realized that staying and fighting to the death would mean the end for the entire force, and as such, the captain of the defenders ordered a slow folding of the formation. The center would slowly move more and more backwards, and the flanks, with the gnoll at the lead, would advance forward. Once the majority of the forces were safe, they’d dash to Bibile, while the Gnoll Corps and a handful of volunteers sacrificed themselves. The captain vowed to stay and fight alongside his men. By the time the entire force of peacock ogres reached the front lines, most of the drunig’s defenders were well underway to Bibile.

The plan worked. By dawn, most of the drunig forces were at the gates of the city, and were received by the population like heroes. They were dirty, wounded, famished and exhausted, but exultant, knowing that they had not only survived, but also saved their families and loved ones. In total, more than 1/10th of the defenders had fallen in battle, and many of the survivors would need to recuperate for a long time. A good amount of supplies had been abandoned to expedite the retreat to Bibile, but all and all the battle was considered a near miraculous victory. Considering the disadvantages the drunig had in an open field against such superior numbers, the defensive formation and superior training, equipment and positioning had made up for the teeming numbers of the enemy. The massive losses suffered by the cultists would dent their capacity to besiege the city, and with Bibile reinforced now by land and sea (and with the defensive structures properly prepared) the colony stood a great chance of successfully defending itself from the now seemingly inevitable attack.

The last bit of good news came noon, when a small group of a dozen stragglers (nine humans and three gnolls) managed to reach the city walls on horse and foot. Shockingly for the settlers, the one leading the group was not a man, but a gnoll. A hulking figure, more than a head taller than the tallest soldier of his group, he had the look of a corpse, covered in dry blood near completely. With knife wounds all over his body, the right eye gone, ribs cracked and seeable outside of his body, right arm ended at his elbow and the left half of his jaw seemingly ripped apart. How even a gnoll could have survived such state was unknown, much less lasted enough to reach the city walls. And the most surprising thing of all, It was carrying the unconscious and wounded body of the captain, who he had apparently saved. After giving the body of the captain to the nearest guard, the gnoll fell to the ground, unable to stand any longer. While medics and wizards struggled to keep the survivors alive, the few of them in good enough condition to speak talked about how they managed to escape. Apparently, after hours of taking down hordes and cultists, he ended up in a duel with one of the ogres. After a deadly long dance of death, in which the gnoll had been hit with a club the size of a child to lose half of his face, the gnoll then jumped towards the ogre and ripped his throat with what remained of his jaw. This act of utter bestiality somehow broke whatever madness was affecting the hordes, giving them pause and allowing the drunig survivors enough time to pick up the wounded and run away with whatever men and horses were still around.

The tale of this strange gnoll who had against all odds managed to save the last survivors of the Battle of Mudded Wastes quickly spread throughout the city. The Bibile authorities decided to order their medics and wizards to fix him up at all costs, since he could become a very useful morale booster for the immediate fight they still had up ahead. As, of course, the cultists’ defeat in the Mudded Wastes did not mean they would retreat and give the defenders enough time to rest.

## The Second Battle for the Colonies

The cultists were not going to wait for too long before the attack. Soon, the scout units were reporting masses of cultists nearing all of Drunigzar’s colonies. The attacks started during the darkness of the night, with cultists hiding their total movements from the drunig (and more importantly, their navy, since shooting blindly from ships was guaranteed to bring more harm than good). The three-prong attack affected the colonies of Cabakritinnii, Bibile and Crysanferno. Fortunately for the drunig, this time, the settlers were not going to be caught unawares: Well armed, well provisioned, and very well motivated, the armed forces of Drunigzar were more than ready to take on the teeming masses this time. The fact that the fate of the captured drunig prisoners became public was also a great motivator, since that meant they would fight to the death every time. Cannons filled with grapeshot had been brought from the smaller navy vessels and put in well defended positions. Archers had been positioned in high towers to maximize their range and effectiveness, ready to throw volleys to whatever area felt particularly pressured by the hordes. Walls filled with spikes and stones blocked the areas around the city, funneling the cultists into the drunig spearmen and artillery. The layout of the cities was prepared to hold off the hordes as easily as possible, readying killing grounds filled with arquebusiers and cannons on every wide street. And in those narrow streets, units of spearmen were ready to stop the masses. Civilians were given enough weapons to block and fortify their own homes, turning every building into a fortress that needed to be taken one by one. Even the navy had been practicing their long range firepower, to be able to bombard an area with precision during low visibility. And if the worst possible outcome occurred, hundreds of small boats were ready to move the population to the navy ships. The flag of Drunigzar waved proudly on the highest buildings, raising the morale of the defenders. The leaders of the defenses wore their gala uniforms, wearing the white and blue of the kingdom and sporting the horned helmet traditional of drunig’s army men. The only thing left for the settlers was wait and brace for the inevitable arrival of the hordes of madmen to their doors.

The long preparations paid off. Outgunned, outfought and with their numerical superiority rendered moot by careful preparations, the zealots were pushed back again and again by the drunig. Hundreds of the cultists died before even reaching close combat, and by the time the drunig soldiers decided to orderly retreat to the second line of defense, thousands of cultists were covering the ground in blood. Despite even the hammer blow of the ogre cultists, precise artillery fire made even those ineffective.

The biggest fight occurred in Cabakritinnii, where the cultists were able to push their forces fully. The forces tasked against Bibile had been bled badly in the Battle of the Mudded Wastes, and the city’s forces were able to contain and push them back easily. The fight for Crysanferno was particularly easy, since most of the cultists in the area had fallen already, and there was little to no hope for zealot reinforcements, since they didn’t have any major fleet power to counter the Drunig Navy. The few, scattered attempts of groups that were caught using stolen fishing boats to try and infiltrate the city were blown away with contemptuous ease, sinking to the bottom of the Viviani Gulf.

By the time dawn broke, the sun shone over a drunig victory. The defenders stood exhausted but victorious, having spent near all of their gunpowder and arrows reserves. Multiple times the navy ships had to send part of their gunpowder reserves to keep up with the rate of fire, and many cannons became unusable after the constant heat and pressure they were put under. The area surrounding the colonies and the most outer rings of the cities were covered in blood and bodies of the cultists, with very little drunig casualties in exchange. The cleanup operations commenced immediately, since so many bodies could spread diseases fast. This cleanup was supervised by the few wizards assigned to the colonies, to find ways to not only safely dispose of the bodies, but also all of the objects made out of “reality”. Every bit of the accursed material, once discovered, would be covered in heavy leathers and protected with sealing incantations, which hopefully would be enough to separate them successfully from the corpses of their owners.

After a lot of thought, it was agreed that keeping the “reality” pieces covered in blocks of volcanic cement and moved in separate places around the city, dispersing it as much as possible. These blocks would be watched over from a long distance, just in case the effects of the “reality” would still reach the minds of the guards.

## The arrival of the Expeditionary Force

The news of the recent victories in the colonies were received with great enthusiasm by the entirety of the kingdom. After the fear that the sudden attack and destruction had caused, the good news help the population recover their confidence in the colonies. Still, there was still much to be done. The main body of the Expeditionary force arrived to Crysanferno a couple of days after the Second Battle for Crysanferno, with Camilogos the “Count of Dawn” at the head. Thousands of highly trained infantrymen, alongside drunig cavalry and mercenary groups were deployed in the city. The first task of the force was to make the entirety of the island clean, no matter the cost. This would allow the Expeditionary Force a strong jumping point in the area that could be easily defended and from where launch the necessary attacks. This sweep would provide to the drunig experts a lot of information about the nature of the cultists. The few native towns that weren’t razed to the ground by the cultists themselves were a spectacle of gore and horror. There, the bodies of dozens of individuals had been tied to stones, posts, walls and whatever other surface they could find. Some of the bodies had rotten away, showing only dry parchments of skin and dry blood, but even then, the expressions of pain and horror could be seen in their long dead faces.

The wounds varied from complete evisceration to the hacking and ripping apart of entire limbs. In the cases where the apparent sacrifices hadn’t died relatively quickly, there were signs of what looked like ritualistic stabbings in the eyes, mouth and hands, with the victims possibly struggling for days before death took them. This was hypothesized to be an attempt of converting them by using “reality”, since there were signs of introduction of stones and blades within the body which coincided with the witnessed cultists’ use of the material. If the victims didn’t die because of the grievous wounds, they would turn into fellow zealots. There was no distinction between the victims: men, women, children and old people. They were all shown to have suffered the same fate. The only case that seemed to have escaped were babies, their fate yet unknown. Another fact that made the authorities worry was that there was barely any “reality” remain on the sightings. The cultists didn’t leave any piece of “reality” behind if they could help it, which made once again drunig High Command worry. The material had been seen used to make weapons and armor, but if the entirety of the native population had been turned without drunig authorities noticing it, it meant that there must be much more “reality” running around. If so, an extraordinary amount of that stuff was still unaccounted.

While this investigation was happening, the cleaning of Crysanferno was completed in near a week. The remaining centers of cultist resistance were discovered and neutralized. This task was easy since the territory of Crysanferno was relatively small, the cultists’ losses were severe after two great battles and they couldn’t receive help from the mainland due to not having any way of avoiding the Drunig Navy. Once the island was secured, the Expeditionary forces landed near Paolotera, to recover the city and assess the damages. To the surprise of the army, while the city had been ransacked of everything that the cultists might have found useful, the structural integrity was intact. They hadn’t burned the city, they hadn’t brought down the defenses, they hadn’t defiled the place with their rituals… the entire city had been plundered cleanly. Many agreed that a pirate raid would have caused a bigger mess. Fearing some sort of trap, they sent experts to search for any indication of anything afoul, from an ambush to a hidden stack of “reality” underground that could corrupt the unsuspected forces. This proved unnecessary, as the cultists hadn’t done anything to the city. Perplexed, but relieved, the Expeditionary Forces contacted the rest of the colonies. Once they reached the rest of the cities, they organized their forces to start the construction of the walls that would protect the cities from any kind of attack from the cultists. The atmosphere at this point was optimistic, since the amount of losses the zealots had suffered guaranteed the drunig a massive advantage: if the drunig scouts could discover and identify any concentration of cultists, they could be dealt with one by one, far away from the walls in construction, making the war effort a much safer affair for the colonies.

And yet, the scout teams reported some strange sightings. Alongside the grimly regular dilapidated towns, they found many groups of cultists moving away from the colonies. All of them seemed to be carrying big quantities of “reality” on them, both wearing it as accessories and in bags and containers. Drunig High Command decided to send four scout patrols to follow closely and without being detected, to see what their destination and goals were. The first one was apparently ambushed during the night, and had to run away to the closest drunig outpost before getting any useful intel. The second one went missing and was never heard from again. The third one came back shouting and singing in the way of the cultists, their eyes gouged out but somehow able to ride their horses back to the colonies. They were shot on sight.

The fourth and final patrol was able to accomplish their mission. After they returned, they reported that thousands of cultists were gathering on an area near the border of the Forest of Bloody Vengeance. Most, if not near all of them, were bearing some sort of “reality” load, and they were concentrating it there. They had to turn back to their headquarters before the cultists could catch them. This news obviously worried immensely the Drunig High Command. “Reality” had proven to be supernatural and corrupting, and if the news were true, colossal amounts of the material were being gathered in a singular point. Whatever the cultists were planning could not be good. Camilogos ordered to move the troops to intercept whatever they were doing as soon as possible.

The Expeditionary Force moved towards the area their scouts point them to, while fighting whatever cultist they found in their way. Oddly enough, this time around the cultists’ behavior tended towards avoiding fights, trying to scurry away at every chance they got. Still, they were pursued when possible, but the Count of Dawn prioritized the timely arrival to whatever the zealots were planning in the middle of nowhere.

## The Discovery of the Blue Stairs

It wouldn’t be that long before the army’s scouts brought some info that made the Expeditionary Force’s advance grind to a halt. According to the reports, the scouts had witnessed the cultists concentrating on a strange, massive crater in an area close to the forest. Thousands of trees had been uprooted and fallen due to the force of the impact, whatever it was that caused it. The numbers of cultists that were in the area were astonishing, even the great masses that assaulted the colonies paled in comparison to that teeming mass of madness. It was theorized that this accounted for more near a fourth of the total native population in the area, and the cultists were still coming. The singing and shouting of the cultists could be heard from miles, haunting the eerily calm natural scenery with promises of madness and death. If those numbers were to clash against the entire expeditionary forces, they could easily be swarmed into oblivion. And that was not the worst part. Right in the middle of the crater, there seem to be some sort of building in construction. At first it was believed to be a temple, but after extremely careful observation, it was proved to be a stairs of some sort, a construction of colossal proportions. The ominous blue tinge it showed meant that the construct was entirely made out of “reality”. The construction seemed crude, with thousands of cultists (which included hundreds of drunig converted prisoners) working carefully massive blocks of reality to make a spiral staircase with crudely made weapons, also made out of the accursed material. Its height was, even at this stage, unnaturally high, and by all means it should have collapsed under its own weight. Whatever unnatural force was keeping it together was also making the cultists work to death. Repeatedly, the drunig watchers saw cultists falling over dead from exhaustion, their bodies used as either bonding materials to strengthen the construction or as food for the cultists, eating their fellows while they were still breathing.

Whatever the purpose of the cultists’ construction, it couldn’t be good. The sheer amount of “reality” gathered made many drunig watchers either gouge their eyes out or just run laughing and singing to the site, even though they were looking at it from miles away. The army set up a vigilance system for the watchers, just in case they fell into madness and began sabotaging the army’s supplies. If the effects of the stuff were that great now, the stairs once built would have unimaginable consequences for the entire region. It was decided it had to be stopped at all costs. But getting near that thing was just out of the question. The Count of Dawn and the Drunig High Command had to think of a plan to take down the construction and deal with the hordes of lunatics around it. Fortunately for the army, the effects of the monstrous contraption seemed to be enthralling the cultists too much, pretty much ignoring the congregating armies of Drunigzar. This made enough time for the Count of Dawn’s preparations to begin.

The goals of the Drunig forces were twofold: destroy the malignant structure and take down as many of the cultists as possible. The first one seemed possible: the army’s gunners promised that, with enough big cannons and enough gunpowder, they could eventually hit the stairs enough times for it to collapse. It would take a lot of time and shots fired, and that’s not counting the chance of the dark properties of the staircase affecting the trajectory, but it could be done. It would, however, necessitate bigger cannons, bigger than the Expeditionary Force currently had, and bigger than even the Navy had. The Count of Dawn ordered the best smelters and weapon makers of the kingdom to make 50 massive cannons, more than twice the size and range of even the biggest galleon cannon. These were cannons designed to break some of the heaviest and most defended walls in the world. Their ammunition was specifically crafted by wizards and astromancers to ward off magic, just in case the baleful effect of “reality” could nullify their power. Specially trained teams of gunners were brought from the mainland to operate this pieces. However, even if this plan was successfulll and the stairs were destroyed, most assumed that any attack against the cultists’ idol would turn the mass of cultists immediately in a frenzy, swarming the Drunig army and risking the safety of the colonies. The solution for this were to organize the parallel construction of a massive fortress. It was planned to be built at the edge of the range of the new cannons ordered by the Count of Dawn. The construction would need to be prepared for weeks, if not months of battle. A complex series of walls, trenches and dugouts was prepared to slow down the cultists. One of the ideas that was planned for it were a series of dugouts, as deep as possible, with retractable bridges to move across. It was theorized that the mindless cultists were capable of little complex coordination, and as such, they would either find this obstacles impassable or they would try anyway. This would slow them down enough for artillery, archers and arquebusier teams to thin them down. The entirety of the army would not be there, just enough to mount a strong defense against the zealots. It was simply too risky for the colonies to leave them undefended against the cultists, so they would remain in the cities, just in case the cultists decided to march against the colonies. Meanwhile, the defenses of the colonies and the great walls were underway, taking a lot of the energies of the colonists. The war economy had attracted many people to the cities, now boiling with life and activity, to the point where their economic growth was bigger now that during peacetime.

The construction and preparations for the fortress and its massive cannons lasted for around a year. The growth of the cursed staircase was slowed down by attacking every single new group of cultists carrying “reality”, preventing both building material and manpower to arrive to the crater. Talks were made about just keeping this strategy to starve the cultists to death and forego the fortress, but the risks of the cursed staircase being finished was something unacceptable. Once everything was complete, the fortress was an imposing structure of wood and stone in the style of the old nogarese fortresses, but adapted to resist long sieges. It was prepared to push back any wave of cultists, and even if they decided to just stall them by cutting off supplies, they could be well fed for months while the drunig cavalry raiders picked away at their forces slowly but surely. Three floors, all of them filled with easily defended corridors and carefully prepared killing grounds, were prepared to be as tall as possible, to increase the defenders’ range. Spiral stairs that could be blocked easily could bottleneck the attackers if they ever got in. Specially prepared positions for archers and cannons were ready to use grapeshot and burning and explosive arrows to maximize their efforts. At the top of the keep, the great cannons were ready to launch barrage after barrage against the damnable staircase. Reinforcements were ready to both defend the cities and help the soon to be besieged in case of need. Once the preparations were done, the order was given to begin the assault.

## The Battle for the Stairs

The first volley of the great cannons was unsuccessful. The range of the cannons was already struggling to reach the stairs, and the shots went around it, but they got no clear hit. They did a number on the cultists around, squashing dozens of the madmen and whatever few infrastructure they had built, but no real damage to the stairs. After the cannons cooled down, the second barrage started. This one actually had an effect, with one of the last cannons hitting the upper part of the stairs, not really threating it to collapse, but scratching a good chunk of the still unfinished areas. This did have an effect. The entire congregation of cultists screamed in pain and rage. In unison, they all ran towards the source of the being that had dared to hurt their idol. The order was given to the regular artillery to fire when ready at the mass, but then something unexpected took place. The mass of cultists stopped right before entering into the firing range. Thousands of pairs of eyes were looking at the fortress with an expression of undiluted hatred. Whatever foul madness had possessed them seemed to have noticed the drunig fortress as a veritable threat to its plans, rather than just a road bump or a source for more sacrifices and converts. After what seemed an eternity, the cultist armies smiled… and then revealed what seemed to be human figures, unnaturally thin and drenched in blood and dry parchment, covered in armor, ornament and weapons of “reality”. They were being carried in crudely made wood chariots pulled by cultists and seemed immobile, so it took a while for drunig watchers to confirm they were not just dark mockings of statues, but they were actually alive. Their eyes had been gouged out, and in their place, carefully crafted pieces of “reality” filled their eye sockets. Deep scars covered every inch of body, and their arms were contorted in a mockery of a prayer. Four of this things, which were later dubbed as the High Priests, began a howling scream that was slowly followed by the rest of the cultists there. So loud was the screaming that glass objects in the fortress cracked and shattered. The scream slowly morphed from an animal shriek to a cackling, maddened laughter, reminiscent of those seen during the previous confrontations with the cultists. And then, abruptly, silence.

The drunig army contained their breath within their fortress, now expecting any kind of foul darkness to fall upon them. And after what seemed an eternity, the cultists ranks starting moving into two separate groups. To the horror of the defenders, half of the sea of zealots moved towards the coast, where the colonies were located. The drunig army sent a warning flashbang, seen by nearby scout units who immediately ran to the colonies to warn that another wave was coming. Meanwhile, the rest of the cultists began their assault on the fortress. The sudden charge surprised the drunig defenders, who took a moment to order the defensive firing to begin. Fortunately, the defensive moats slowed them down immensely. The deep trenches dug out around the fortress were both deep and wide, and no matter how many attempts the cultists made of jumping them, they all fell into the depth, dying from either the impact or from being crushed by the weight of other cultists.

That was, until the bodies started piling up. The cultists began to throw their wounded and dead to the chasm, alongside those who had tried to jump over it. The holes became shallower until they created multiple bridges out of the deceased and dying. Multiple passages were formed, getting closer and closer at the cost of their lives. All while arrows, cannon and arquebusier shots rained down upon them. The great cannons were still active, shooting as frequently as their own ponderous weight allowed them to. Their rate of fire was quite slow due to the time-consuming reload and cool down times, and their accuracy was not the best at this ranges, but once in a while they hit the stairs, causing tremendous damages to the structure, and making the cultists scream in pain while this was going on. Still, the rate of gunpowder consumption began to be unacceptable. Even with the massive reserves they had prepared throughout nearly a year, the great cannons needed a frightening amount of gunpowder for each shot. The engineers calculated that at the rate of firing both against the cursed stairway and the cultists below, they would ran out of ammunition and gunpowder before they could take down the damnable construction. It was ordered that the rate of fire against the cultists would slow down, only shooting at ranges where it would cause the maximum damage. It was not a critical situation just yet, but by this point, the moat defenses had been breached, and now the cultists were piling up alongside the walls of the fortress. The many ogre cultists were individually targeted to slow them from taking down the doors, but their gigantic bodies created rises that the cultists were using to try and reach the first walls. The spearmen were on top of the walls, taking down any cultists capable enough to climb over the bodies of their comrades. The ferocity of the cultists was unlike anything the drunig army had seen before. The madmen were being blown apart, burnt alive from boiling oils thrown from the top of the walls, cut down and impaled, and yet they did not stop. They would ignore wounds that would kill a man twice over, and then they would jump at the walls to serve as another stepping stone for the teeming hordes. They would climb the towers of corpses forming alongside the walls, only to be skewered from above by spearmen. And even then, they would grab the spears with all their strength to throw the soldiers from their position and drag the soldiers into the bottom screaming.

The Drunig High Command evaluated the situation. At first glance, the besiegers had the clear advantage. They had the fortress surrounded with enough numbers to spare, and while the defenders had taken every possible precaution, exhaustion, hunger and disease could undo all of their efforts. The only thing the cultists had to do was just isolate the fortress, even the reinforcements would be hard pressed to help the besieged, since they mass of cultists moving towards the colonies would be a big enough threat. But ending the defenders was not the goal, the goal was to stop them from damaging the stairs. And at the rate of damage it was receiving, they would be lucky if they’d take it down in two weeks.

Still, the defenders were plenty and they still had resources to last more than that. The rationing of gunpowder notwithstanding, they were still defending solid positions, and trading near a hundred cultists for each drunig loss. Throwing boiling oil turned out to be a great strategy, not only by burning down the cultists, but by turning the human towers too dangerous and slippery to cross. The main problem the defenders had to deal with was morale. They were surrounded, no hope for escaping the fortress and no hope to cut their way out of the circle of madmen crawling upwards towards them. They had limited supplies and were exhausted out of days of fighting. To avoid accumulating wastes and preventing diseases, they could just throw their wastes to the attackers, but even still the space inside the fort was limited. The Drunig’s Expeditionary Force had been trained to deal with quick, fast-paced campaigns, and this slow siege was grinding the patience of the soldiers quite fast. And there would be a moment, however, in which they would require to start moving from the walls. When the space available inside the fortress started to shrink floor by floor, the defenders’ spirit might break, and once again, the reinforcements were just not expected. The masses that were on their way to the colonies needed to be stopped before a catastrophe could occur.

The only real chance the drunig army had to claim victory was if the destruction of the cultists’ idol would break whatever foul darkness it had instilled in them and retreat. But that was not a guarantee. Another option, and one that was pursued by the drunig forces was the hunting of the so called High Priests. Out of the original four seen at the beginning of the battle, one had been seen leading the cultists that moved to the coast, and that left three in charge of the assault on the fortress. The drunig forces’ objectives were simple: destroy the stairs and take down the cultists’ leaders before being overwhelmed.

The destruction of the stairs was a slow but steady process. The engineers were more and more able to adjust the massive cannons to increase the rate of hits, and the structure began showing signs of wear and tear. Every successful hit was responded by the cultists with a loud shriek of rage, and it was then responded by the drunig with triumphant cheers. The problem was finding the High Priests. The first one was easy enough, once he was located, a barrage of arrows and grapeshot managed to take him down. The problem were the other two, since, after the fate of the first one, they blended alongside the masses. And spotting a single individual from the teeming masses was not easy. Drunig spotters were constantly on alert, searching for the High Priests day and night, even under the light of the cultists’ torches.

At the tenth day of the siege, a sudden jolt of activity took the drunig army by surprise. The reinforced doors of the walls started to crack and buckle under the assault of peacock ogres, that had managed to reach them with enough strength due to the tightening restrictions in gunpowder. The drunig commanders gave the order to slowly prepare the retreat to the higher floors, to defend the great cannons as much as possible. The drunig army had started to move their resources upwards days ago, since the thought of the cultists getting a hold of part of the gunpowder cache and trying to blow up the foundations of the fortress altogether was something unacceptable. The doors were finally cracked and brought down, allowing the swarm of cultists to pour in. Slowly but surely, the assailants began to win ground, though even then the losses were such that both the defenders and the attackers could use the mountains of corpses to block entire walls shut. By the twelfth day, the drunig had to close the doors blocking the first and the second floors, now more trapped than ever within their own fortress.

By this point, exhaustion and despair was beginning to bleed the morale of the defenders, fast. The chances of the attackers to cross was impeded every time, with gravity even more in the defenders’ side, blocking the stairs was now a game of seeing which side could clog/unclog the stairs fast. But eventually, the defenders would run dry of resources, and their rest was not ideal. Lack of sleep, rest and the constant noise of the cultists’ chants and the tortures of those few captured drunig, kept alive while slowly butchered and turned into madness with knives and blades made out of “reality”, was threatening to turn the defenders as mad as the masses they were fighting against. And yet, during the thirteenth day, fortune finally struck the defenders. Near depleted of gunpowder and with half the cannons rendered unusable due to the heat and the constant use, the last barrage managed to hit some sort of weakening in the base of the stairs. The screams of the madmen reached unheard levels as the stairs slowly buckled under its own weight, the previous cracks adding up more and more to the faster and faster chain that saw the complete structure tumble to the ground. Many of the zealots started ripping their eyes out, killing one another and themselves or screaming with such intensity that their lungs collapsed and fell right where they stood, devoid of air. The watchers even reported that hundreds of cultists, those in the outermost parts of the crowd were beginning to run away, either to the stairs or to the nearby forests, hiding from sight. This gave the defenders enough time to organize a countercharge, pushing the drunig cultists from the lower part of the fort, and even managing to retake the bailey, closing the doors with whatever they could find. With the cursed stairway finally down, the drunig artillerymen could finally begin shooting with the cannons at the swarm of bodies again, causing grievous damages to the horde. This would not be the end of the siege, however.

The besiegers, while reduced after weeks of siege and upheaval in their ranks, still outnumbered the defenders by a wide margin. The difference in chants suggested that the High Priests were now focusing whatever foul forces they possessed into keeping the horde in check, and while the effects of the “reality” stairway was gone, they still had enough influence to keep the mass together and focused on the enemy. After the initial moments of chaos and confusion, the attackers redoubled their efforts, wanting to punish the interlopers for their sins. They began to try to crawl over the walls of the fortress, forming once again mountains of bodies by taking their fallen and piling them up, forming ramps that they could cross. The spearmen were able to defend the walls of the higher floors, but after having to slowly yield the first floor again, their reserves of gunpowder were spent. All they could do now is to resist for as long as they could and their now scarce resources allowed. In a moment of desperation, the engineers decided to take those great cannons that had broken of overuse and just throw them to the cultists below, turning whoever was below into a red mist. In another stroke of luck, this action would actually take down one of the High Priests, who was directing the masses to try to scale up the walls. The many tons behemoth of a cannon impacted upon the mass below like a hammer of the gods, crushing everything below. The engineers reported the cultist shrieking in a similar way that when the stairway was destroyed, and many throughout the mass began acting in disarray. While the actual body was not confirmed as dead, there was no way of confirming it after the sea of body parts that the fall of the cannon had caused, so they had to go with just the reaction of the enemy.

Finally, by the eighteenth day, after near all water and food in the fortress was over and all hope seemed to be lost, the watchers announced a drunig army marching towards them. Reinforcements had arrived, and in the form of cavalry and gnoll mercenaries. The charge of this new army and the reinvigorated drunig besieged completely shocked the cultists. Not ready to fight a battle in two directions, and just as tired as the drunig defenders, the cultists were squashed. Thousands fell under the weight of the drunig cavalry and the gnoll savagery. The forces of the cultists quickly began to rout, their singing and screaming mixed more and more with tinges of death and fear. The drunig army chased as many as they could, the land covered in the dead. It took a full day of chasing the strugglers before the exhaustion of their steed forced them to go back and regroup.

The state of the fortress [defenders] was of exhaustion, but relief, as they could finally sleep soundly, knowing that the enemy had been defeated. Though, after the reports of the rout arrived, there was no mention of the last remaining High Priest, so it was assumed he had managed to run away. Still, for now, the cultists were not in a position to restart the attack, now that the defenders had received reinforcements and supplies. The fortress had become a grotesque graveyard, covered in literal mountains of bodies. No amount of cleaning up and burying the dead would make that place inhabitable again, so it was decided to abandon with all due haste before the rotting carcasses began spreading disease. The defenders took whatever the cultists could use if they ever returned and left towards the colonies, leaving the fortress under the possession of crows, wolves, vultures and rats, lording over a true paradise of rotting meat.

## The Third Battle of Bibile

While the Battle for the Stairs was going on, the colonies received the news that an untold number of cultists were marching once again to the shores. The efforts of the cities to shore up their defenses tripled, and levies were called to reinforce the Expeditionary Force. At this point, the walls of the cities were quite underway, and many were near construction, but they’d still need some more time before they could truly be foolproof. The Expeditionary Force organized all of their available manpower in each colony, preparing to defend the territory like before. The spirits were high, however, since this would not be the first time they would face the cultists, and this time they had professional reinforcements. The increasing presence of the Navy also meant that there was little fear of running out of supplies, so even a prolonged siege would be fine. The problem began when the scouts informed that the mass of zealots was not dividing to attack each colony, it was going in full force against Bibile. With the numbers that the horde had amassed and Bibile being one of the hardest hit cities throughout the entire war, plans were approved to send as many reinforcements to the colony as possible. Helping Bibile in full force was not an option, since there was every chance that a yet unseen horde could pose a threat to other colony, and thus they needed to take precautions.

The hordes arrived around a week after being spotted. The city had rushed the construction of the walls and had managed to finish the first of the walls, but the second line of defense was still under construction. The army commanders in Bibile decided to use reinforce it as much as possible, and maybe turn this weakness into a possible killing ground. But after repeated discussions, the chances of creating controlled killing grounds in the spaces between the walls was thought of as too risky, and so the first wall prepared for a rapid evacuation should the barricades in the incomplete parts of the wall began to crumble. The population of Bibile had been thoroughly prepared to deal with the invasion, and if at any point the city seemed to be overrun, the Navy would organize the evacuation. Still, the defenders were spirited. This was not their first confrontation, they had pushed the madmen twice already, and this time they had more men and supplies than ever before.  The numbers were a problem, though. The sheer brutality of the assault saw the outer barricades inundated, and had to be abandoned with due haste to the second line of defense. This was expected, but the speed in which it fell was not. The attackers were attacking as if they were rabid animals, their usual screams and chants replaced by raged shrieks. They were more coordinated than before, and more determined, taking the bodies of their fallen comrades as shields to advance and to create human piles to scale up the walls.

After the fourth day of fighting, the drunig reinforcements were nearing the walls of Bibile. Sensing danger, the cultists redoubled their efforts to get in. Though the reinforcements could have advanced on them, they were still outnumbered, so the Expeditionary Force decided to launch hit and run attacks with mounted archers and arquebusiers. With little chance of breaking the walls now that they were being surrounded, the cultists started doing something they had never being seen doing before: during the night, they starting moving towards the coast and jump into the water. Hundreds of cultists jumped into the waters, their weapons gripped firmly on their mouths. This took the defenders by surprise, especially the Navy, since it was designed to fight other ships and provide long range artillery support, shooting down a sea of cultists struggling to fight against the currents was an extremely inefficient use of their weaponry. And while the lack of light was a problem, the number of cultists made aiming pointless. There was no way they would be able to climb over the navy ships, but with so many of them, a good amount of them was bound to reach the dockyard, opening a new frontline right at the city’s undefended side. The authorities quickly sent reinforcements to the docks, but by the time they arrived, hundreds of cultists had already climbed up and were running into the streets. This was particularly dangerous, as many of the cultists who arrived were peacock ogres, whose brute strength tore down the few defenses that were in the right positioning. This caused a panic in the harbors, and allowed the cultists to start running amok the docking districts and resulting in hundreds of civilian casualties. It took a while for the city defenses to start stabilizing the situation, and while the drunig tried to stop the cultists from butchering the civilians, the zealots were looting as much weapons and gunpowder as they could find. While they couldn’t really use cannons or arquebuses, they knew to explode the gunpowder caches wherever they could find them, causing many fires in the city.

Dozens of drunig civilians were called to help slow down the fires while the army kept the cultists at bay. The city was close to fall into a state of near pure chaos. Enemies at the door and enemies within, the defenders were beginning to stretch thin, their close rank formations in tight streets invalidated by the growing fires. The reinforcing armies, trying to relieve the pressure, intensified their attacks, ordering successive infantry and cavalry attacks. The navy started to bombard the areas where the cultists were throwing themselves to the sea, slowly clogging the coast with bodies, but their proximity to the walls made the navy bombardments fearful of accidentally opening a crack in the walls, so they couldn’t unleash their full potential. Thankfully, the sheer amount of bodies in the water was slowing the cultists more and more. Not all of them could swim well enough to reach the docks, and the amounts of dead bodies and blood was making swimming impossible. This gave an opportunity to the defenders to assemble and regroup. At the head of the defenders were the veterans of the Battle of the Mudded Wastes, who at this point had become heroes for the citizens. Carrying the banner of Drunigzar and launching a defying war cry, they slowly pushed the cultists back to the sea, though the destruction in the city was making the tight formations of spearmen difficult to maintain.

The battle was balance on a knife’s edge. If the drunig armies could push the cultists back into the sea, defending the dockyard would be easy, but the longer they stayed inside of Bibile, the more chaos and disarray they would unleash. And that would stop the city’s efforts to stop the fires. If nothing changed, the entire town would burn to a crisp without the cultists needing to breach the walls. When all seemed lost, the drunig soldiers received reports of a particular individual between the cultists. He had his eyes gouged and was being guarded by a dozen or so peacock ogres that had managed to swim across the dockyard. His eyes had been replaced with pieces of “reality”, and his body was covered in a mix of bloodied leathers and “reality” armor. This was one of the High Priests, and in his hands rested a two handed sword, swinging it at blinding speed despite the apparent weight of the blade. The local authorities assumed, and correctly so, that this individual was the leader of the cultist forces, and decided to order an attack to take him down. This was not easy, since the cultists were pressuring the settlers from pretty much everywhere, and there were at this point little forces available for the attack. And since the dockyards had been overrun, there was no hope of receiving aid from the seas, and that included getting more supplies.

The drunig organized a hundred men, including gnoll reinforcements from the Gnoll Corps available within the city, and charged. Despite grievous casualties, the cultists stayed strong, seemingly protected from harm and fear by their leader, who kept screaming and singing all throughout the battle. Even shooting him from a distance was pointless, since his ogre bodyguards were able to stop most of the fire shot against him. The cultists managed to push slowly towards the city’s biggest powder keg, somehow knowing its location and importance. If the powder keg was destroyed, so were the majority of the city’s reserves of gunpowder. Without them, there was no way to stop the cultists from crossing the walls, condemning every single man, woman and child in the colony to the fire and the cultists’ desecrations.

The defense of the powder keg was the zenith of the Third Battle for Bibile. The defenses of the powder keg, while strongly designed, were mostly focused towards an invasion from the walls, but not from behind. This forced the defenders to rush many cannons to the streets connecting the area to the docks, to try and bottleneck the cultists. While they were slowed down, the presence of the High Priest seemingly gave the cultists unnatural durability. Ignoring most but the most damaging of the wounds, the cultists overran the defenses and pushed the spearmen squares to the very doors of the building. The Gnoll Corps was once again thrown into the maw of the enemy, and once again, it had considerable success, slowing their advance to a crawl. The drunig troops began encircling the cultist forces, which quickly reduced the numbers of cultists that were attacking the powder keg. As a last ditch effort, the cultists threw themselves into the spears of the defenders, climbing on top of their skewered bodies to try to jump over the defenders. This ended in a panic run towards the building, dying by the hundreds. A group of two dozen or so cultists, including the High Priest, managed to enter the building. They couldn’t just burn the powder keg by throwing torches at it, since the building was prepared for that kind of attack, and the gunpowder reserves were in the deepest part of the building. The corridors of the powder keg ran red with blood, while the desperate cultists trying to reach the depths.

The following events are poorly recorded, since both the drunig and cultists entered into a panicked frenzy: the drunig had ended all of the encircled cultists, but the infiltration of the powder keg caused a massive panic. Hundreds of drunig soldiers franticly advanced towards the docks, to both secure the dockyard and to run away from the now seemingly inevitable blast. Cultists entered in some form of trance, and many of them suddenly started to scream confusedly, their prior cohesion suddenly lost. Many of them actually began retreating, jumping into the red waters and leaving their wounded comrades behind. The cultists at the doors of the city also began to find some way to flee the battle, slowly at first, and then on masse. The drunig armies engaging the cultists had to retreat, least the mass of running cultists overran them. Many of the zealots didn’t even try to run, but fell into an state of rage and despair, tearing chunks of their own flesh while screaming. In less than an hour, the fighting inside the walls had stopped, and outside of the walls, the drunig army was chasing as many cultists as possible. The city was in a state of chaos, with drunig soldiers evacuating nearby buildings from the seemingly inevitable explosion, though the sudden panic within the cultists’ ranks was making everyone in Bibile ask themselves what was going on.

It would be during these moments of chaos when the soldiers within the city saw the figure of a gnoll exiting the powder keg. He was a hulking figure, covered in scars and wounds old and new. He was dragging a two handed sword made out of “reality” in his left arm and, grasping within his half broken jaws, the ragged head of the High Priest. The sight of this brought cheering to the entire city, now putting two and two together and linking the death of the head cultists to the routing zealots. The city began focusing their efforts in extinguishing the fires, which they managed to do. By the break of dawn of the next day, a fifth of the city had fallen prey to the flames, and the streets were covered in bodies, but Bibile still stood. After two days of resting and regrouping, the armies that had been sent to aid the city were diverted to help the forces embroiled in the Battle of the Stairs.

## Aftermath

The drunig victory at the Third Battle of Bibile and the Battle of the Stairs marked the end of the War of the Lord Descended. The destruction of the Stairway and the death of most of the known High Priests forced the cultists to retreat inland, to places far away from the drunig forces, now coming to the land in more and more numbers. The lack of proper opposition allowed the Expeditionary Force to sweep the land, forcing them to run away from the colonies, task that they completed without any real difficulty. Meanwhile, the settlers finished the construction of the dual walls that now protect the colonies, and even expanded the sea defenses to avoid an attack through the coast, like in the last battle for Bibile. They also started the reoccupation of Paolotera by civilians, since up until now only military forces had been allowed to take positions in the abandoned city. The paoloterans commenced the construction of their own double wall project, guaranteeing that the population never had to suffer the misfortunes of the war.

After five years without attacks to the colonies, the Crown declared the war over, confirming the victory of the drunig forces. Drunigs both in the mainland and colonies rejoiced the news by throwing great parades and parties. Many of the soldiers who fought for the colonies were allowed to settle in the territories, not only rewarding the war veterans but also giving the colonies settled defenders. The reconstruction of the colonies became a prosperous business, and the arrival of new manpower for the reconstruction of the cities and the walls made the colonial population grow quickly. The recovery of the farmlands near the colonies was more difficult, since the mere idea of possible cultist attacks kept people from living outside the walls. To compensate this, there’s been many propositions to create an unified third wall that would defend the entirety of the coast from the inland. Even though this would allow to safely control a major portion of the land, the sheer costs involved and relatively low benefits keeps this idea from materializing.

However, not all was good news. The costs of the war, while not catastrophic, had been higher than expected. For an army composition that focused on small and fast moving elite units, an attrition war that threw pretty much the entire population of the region against the drunig’s forces was possibly the worst matchup. And that showed in the casualties, much higher than expected, though most of them were civilians. The Count of Dawn was summoned to the capital to share his account of the war and to explain some of the decisions taken. In particular, the Count of Dawn received accusations of overconfidence in the face of very little solid data. The plan to destroy the Stairway from afar had barely succeeded, and the preparations for the siege had been barely enough to survive until the enemy broke. If the cultists had shown more resilience and/or the stairway had resisted the attacks, there was a big chance of losing not only the colonies, but a great portion of the Expeditionary Force as well. The Count of Dawn countered this accusations by saying that a safer but slower plan would have given the cultists the advantage, seeing as they, unlike the drunig, did not care about their own loses, and could throw every single man, woman and children to the walls to drown the defenders in blood. He also defended his plan saying that, whatever the evil purpose of the Stairway’s construction was, it was surely not a good thing, and thus they needed to act fast before its construction. All and all, the Count of Dawn managed to come out as a war hero, despite his many naysayers in high places.

The Crown also awarded knighthood to many of the heroes of the war, to honor their bravery and courage. Most of the recipients were members of either the Expeditionary Force or the colonial garrisons, although many civilians also received awards for heroism due to them fighting for the defense of the colonies. The most significant of this was the knighting of the gnoll that survived both the Battle of the Mudded Wastes (renamed by many historians later as the Battle of the Bibile Gates, even though the fight was many kilometers away from the city) and the Third Battle of Bibile, and had ultimately killed the High Priest leading the hordes of zealots. This event actually brought a lot of attention from other nations, since the mere idea of giving a nobility title to a gnoll was unheard of. Now Growgodorr the “Hero of Bibile”, he was given a leading role in the Gnoll Corps forces stationed in the colonies. According to rumors, it is said that the Gnoll Emperor himself, upon hearing the news, sent a reward and a message to Growgodorr, although what exactly either one contained is unknown.

The threat of “reality” had not gone away. The area around the ruins of the stairs still contained tons of the cursed material, and thus a series of walls were built around the area, blocking anyone to enter there. The Fortress of Corpses (the posthumous name the fortress where the Battle for the Stairs was fought, due to the mountains of dead bodies lying there) had to be cleaned up, and massive graves were dug to fit all of the cultists who died there. Once the fortress was safe and free of health risks, it was turned into the linchpin of the defenses that blocked the land from the piles of “reality” that used to be part of the accursed Stairway. The area is, even now, approached by cultists. The sheer strength of the walls and the low numbers keep them from doing any harm. Nevertheless, many experts speculate that the cultists are accumulating “reality” somewhere far from the drunig’s eye, and the need to reduce the army’s efforts in the area after the end of the war obstructs the vigilance in the area. The great cannons that were used in the Battle of the Stairs were brought to the colonies as both monuments to the war and as proper defenses against threats from the sea. Nowadays, any further colonial projects are mandated to be designed with a minimum of defense in mind, even if the land and local population seems to be friendly.