Battle of Everton

The Battle of Everton was a signficant battle in the Gartacan Campaign of the Second Uhekian Mage War. Both sides had clear objectives, accomplishing them in some way.

## Prelude

After his success in the Battle of Cardend, Hosmer and his forces remained quiet, simply building up their supplies. While minor skirmishes occured between them and the Templars, nothing majorly happened.

In Marcu **569PR**, Hosmer and the Mages moved out, hoping to threaten the capital of Uhek, Gartaca. He did this by splitting his armies up, sending Lindblad a different route while remaining with Hansson.

Solomon and his Templars figured an eventual attack on Gartaca would happen, thus he had prepared defences for it. However, he wasn't expecting the sudden change of the Mages and required a grouping of his forces. Needing time, he sent Nordlund and 1,000 troops to go and fortify the village of Everton.

## Location

The location of the battle was near the small village of Everton, which is along the way from Cardend to Gartaca. It had been fortified by the Templars to ensure that their heavy number disadvantage could be softened even just a little bit. Otherwise, the village was of no importance, simply being chosen for its position on the way.

## Objectives

### Mages

The Mages objective of this battle was to simply kill as many of the enemy as they can, forcing either a retreat or a surrender. While they were small in number, he could not simply pass the Templars who could threaten his supply lines.

Hosmer had little care for the villagers either, still believing in vengeance.

### Templars

The Templars objective was to delay the mages. Whether it be an hour or a few days, they just had to hold off the Mages advance. For, if they held them for even a short amount of time, it would mean the mages forces had to stop and would likely be mistimed with their second army, giving more time for Solomon.

## Battle

### Night Raid

Hosmer and his army was victory-drunk by this stage, still riding high off the Battle of Cardend, they had very little in terms of scouts. When this was relayed to Nordlund, he took a small amount of troops and attacked the Mages in the night.

Hansson and his troops were taken completely offguard, as Nordlund ran through the camp, burning supplies and killing whoever they saw. This quickly spread into a camp-wide fire, rousing many of the soldiers and creating a general panic. In the confusion, Nordlund and his troop were able to leave unscathed, having been successful in their attack.

### Follow Up

After a night of dealing with a huge fire, many of the soldiers were exhausted but it did cause Hosmer and Hansson to deploy better scouts and guards through the night. It was pun-intended, a huge wake up call.

Though before they could be effectively deployed, Nordlund launched another surprise attack on the tired mages. This time they fired 3 volleys into the camp, which was packing up ready for march, with some devastating results. Hansson and a detachment tried to follow but were ambushed again, again by Nordlund who almost struck down the Low General but narrowly missed when an underling jumped in the way.

Hansson was forced to retreat with his make-shift group and another 2 volleys were sent into the camp before it was over.

### Mage Encirclement

After the two successful attacks, Nordlund and his troops decided against pushing their luck and retreated back to Everton. When the mages did reach the village, it was already the afternoon, and instead chose to encircle it.

During the night, Nordlund turned down the idea of another night raid, as his scouts reported that Hansson had doubled the guards.

### Templars Hold

The next day, Hosmer disregarded Hanssons decision to keep the Templar group encircled and sent for an attack. The Templars were well defended and prepared for such a move, simply watching as their enemy soldiers ran through the various traps set up, all while being shot at by archers.

After an hour of getting no where, Hosmer called for his soldiers to fall back to the encirclement, being so unsuccessful that the Templars hadn't even come out for melee combat.

During the night, Hansson took control and the encirclement held.

### Nordlund's Charge

After two days of being encircled, Nordlund was running low on food. While they had wished to hold the mages off for as long as possible, he had chosen to take little in the terms of food in order to keep up the hit-and-run tactics. Sharing some of the food with the villagers also did not help, dropping his week-long rations quite quickly.

Encircled and knowing that the Mages would not prepare for another attack, Nordlund gathered his troops behind the houses of the village. Then, he simply pointed them at the direction of Gartaca and lead the charge.

The mages, including Hansson, were taken aback by the charge, expecting the Templars to hold out for longer, though had not realised the food situation. Quickly, the mage army formed into action, attempting to block Nordlund and his troops from escaping.

After some fighting though, in which both sides took some heavy casualties, Nordlund and his troops managed to break through. Going back to the hit-and-run tactics, the mages were unable to keep up, simply being attacked whenever they chased too far from the main group.

Hansson eventually called a halt to the chase.

## Aftermath

Both sides claimed victory from the battle, the Mages were able to claim that they had almost decimated Nordlunds forces while causing him to retreat.

The Templars were happy that Nordlund had held the Mages for so long, claiming victory in the time gained and the future mistiming of the two armies.

Hosmer, enraged, did allow his troops to raid the village and kill anyone living there. Before burning it to the ground, leaving nothing but ash in his wake.