Battle of Crow’s Gorge

The Battle of Crow’s Gorge was a massive and decisive clash in late spring of 1253 CV between the orcish horde of Gol Garga and the combined armies of the XXXXXXXXX Alliance which had gathered to meet him there. As its name suggests, it was fought at the pass called Crow’s Gorge, which traverses the main range of the Bhodevars in northeastern Dranuria. The Alliance prevailed despite the superior numbers of the orcs, in large part due to the mysterious disappearance of Gol Garga himself on the eve of battle. This marked the final defeat of his dreaded horde, and the end of the twenty-year-long Great Orcish Wars.

The victory at Crow's Gorge prevented the horde from crossing the Bhodevars and pouring down the north slopes of the Dranurian massif, which would have enabled it to advance into the Phyridian Empire or turn east into Rhydain. Thus the outcome of the battle was widely celebrated as the unexpected salvation of those lands from the orc menace, although of course the fate of Gol Garga himself lingers as an unanswered question. Still, the greater part of his horde was wiped out on the spot, and its remnants split apart into a number of smaller groups that managed to escape south back across the pass. These, scattered and demoralized, were mostly chased down and destroyed piecemeal over the following months.

The name of the Crow’s Gorge pass actually comes from the deep ravine which runs along its western edge; the furious torrent of the upper Palla, a tributary of the River Obhre, churns and thunders over the rocks at the base of this gorge. The pass itself takes the form of a relatively flat alpine tableland, several miles long and quite barren, ringed by high peaks on three sides. Its northern edge slopes down to a series of stepped escarpments that eventually descend to the foothills of the Bhodevars and thence to the Verecian lowlands; at this northern edge of the pass, the ravine of the Palla opens out in a dramatic canyon mouth and the river flows down into the scarplands in a series of swift-rushing channels separated by many falls and rapids.

Opposite this northern edge, the south end of the pass rises to a saddle-point in the main ridge of the Bhodevars, the highest and narrowest part of the pass and the only gap in the range through which troops can march for over a hundred miles in either direction. Gol Garga’s horde had done just that in the days prior to the battle, amassing in their camps on the tableland of the pass while their stragglers made their way up from the south sides of the range. Meanwhile the armies of the coalition had gathered below the sill of the pass’s northern end.

On the dawn of the day of battle, the orcish horde was thrown into disorder by the discovery that Gol Garga had disappeared overnight. His various generals and warlords argued over what to do, and some of their troops (who had revered Gol Garga almost as a god, or as Korgul incarnate) lost their morale or took to brawling with each other. The commanders of the coalition, who had expected to fight a desperate stand at the northern mouth of the pass against the horde pouring down from above, took advantage of the confusion and launched an all-out attack which took the orcs mostly by surprise, with many of them still in their camps instead of formed up on the open ground.

The armies of the coalition thus overran the orcish camps and pushed the enemy back against the ravine of the Palla, driving countless orcs over the edge and into the raging river far below. The number of orcs that perished in this way cannot be known, but it can scarcely be less than a hundred thousand, perhaps many more. Meanwhile the spell-casters of the coalition armies--primarily a large cohort of Phyridian battle-mages, along with a great many Vanir-Vaati priests and priestesses from all across Orithea--fought and won a titanic magical duel with the shamans and warlocks of the horde. So many orcs plummeted to their death in Crow's Gorge that people living along the lower Palla and the Obhre, hundreds of miles downstream, still pull orcish skulls and their rusty weapons and helmets from the river, and it was said the fish of the Obhre grew fat on a diet of orc-flesh in the summer after the battle.