Fourth Scourge

The **Fourth Scourge** began when Xurteus, the Dragon-God of Stars, arose in **5A12**, and the fiendish hordes surfaced in the southeast and southwestern regions of Morgaea.

## Beginnings

Lysadore was struck by the fiends first. The Lysadorens were taken completely by surprise, and the fiendish horde had soon taken all of Lysadore with only the capital, Venadrad resisting. Unchecked, the horde swarmed out into Ghallen and the Freemarks. Meanwhile, Venadrad closed its gates. In spite of this, refugees continued to flee to Venadrad, with hundreds camping outside the city gates.

## Fall of Venadrad

King Elaunzio and Queen Givana of Lysadore called for the Grey Order's aid. Lysadore's Ranger-Commander, Shakir, gathered a contingent of Lysadoren Rangers at the city, and called for a regiment of wyvern riders to help evacuate the city. Erenod, and his sister Lyrei, were among them. The Rangers advised fleeing Lysadore immediately in order to save as many lives as possible, but the royal couple insisted on trying to defend the city from the fiendish horde, ignoring the Rangers' warnings that the city was in no way prepared to withstand a siege. However, many of the ship captains still in the city chose to flee via Bianco Bay, leaving even fewer means of escape from the city. Eventually, discontent at the royals' misjudgment led to the Lysadoren Royal Guard turning on them, killing King Elaunzio before being defeated by the Rangers. To preserve morale, it was announced that the King was killed by fiends.

As the Rangers, and the surviving members of the royal court, prepared to withdraw, the walls were finally breached and the fiendish horde swarmed through the city. The Rangers were attacked by the Archfiend Xurteus itself just outside of Venadrad, killing Ranger-Commander Shakir, and most of the Rangers, along with the surviving members of the royal family, whom the Rangers had been trying to evacuate. Erenod and Lyrei, together with Amitia Farvale and a Lysadoren Raven mage named Ezrah, launched a diversionary attack on the Archfiend to allow the surviving Rangers the time to get their charges to safety. After a pitched conflict, they were able to delay the Archfiend and make a narrow escape.

## Evacuation of Gusten

The surviving Rangers regrouped at the city of Gusten in the Freemarks. The local citizenry devoted all their efforts to fortifying the city. Knowing that this would be insufficient to hold off the fiendish horde, Ranger-Commander Selaste had the Rangers construct improvised renwyls led by wyverns, which they could use to evacuate the populace. Lyrei oversaw the project, while Erenod delivered messages, and requests of support, to nobles and other potential military assets on behalf of Amatia Farvale. Although they were unable to evacuate everyone before the city fell, the Rangers managed to send a large number of refugees to Alepool.

## Other fronts

* Lougrick, the capital city of Netheren once again was besieged by the fiendish hordes.
* In the Adamantium, the Siege of Narbonal took place. With the help of the dwarves of Ondrathum, the siege was lifted at no small cost. The dwarves received many accolades of the ruling Archon and one of them even became an Exemplar.
* Maudet was barely hit, and drove the warbands of fiends within its borders back underground.
* The Adamantium refused to send any aid to the Freemarks or Netheren, bitter over the recent Crusades against them, while Maudet only committed a token force.

## The Siege of Lougrick

Lougrick was under varying degrees of siege by the fiendish hordes for the next eight years. Erenod was promoted to the temporary rank of Field-Commander and given charge of defending against the siege. Finally in the last days of **5A19**, the Rangers of the Grey were able to locate the entrance to the Underways, which the fiends were using to bring reinforcements into Netheren to join the siege. Lyrei then led a small sortie party out of Lougrick on their wyverns to collapse the passage. In spite of some casualties, the passage was collapsed and the fiendish horde were cut off from reinforcements.

With the horde isolated, Erenod led the bulk of the Grey Order and the Netheren Royal Army from a position southeast of the city against the main force of the fiends. Meanwhile, another contingent of Rangers, under the command of Lyrei, opened up a second front north of the city. The Rangers mined the area with 'skyburners'; a modified form of dwarven lucenium mining explosives donated by Ondrathum, which they baited with quality weaponry to lure the horde. A large number of fiends were destroyed in the initial blast, and afterwards, the Rangers attacked, massacring and forcing the retreat of auxiliary fiendish forces in the fork of the Dattenlush river. Combined with the main army's success, the siege of Lougrick was finally broken in the first days of **5A20**.

## Height

Despite all of their successes, **5A21** was the most dire year of the Scourge. The Freemarks were left all but devastated, and the fiendish hordes pressed further east. In return for a declaration of support for her regency from Erenod himself, Queen Argen of Netheren agreed to send the Netheren Royal Army to assist the Rangers in their campaign.

Fortress Hainesault became a makeshift Ranger fortress, and a refuge known as the Retreat was dug in the mountain, sheltering fleeing Umberland and Blackwall citizens. Blackwall was evacuated using the same method the Rangers used in Gusten years earlier. Thanks to a rabid wyvern, one train of renwyls was lost on the approach to the fiendish horde, but the rest reached the fortress. Together with the Champions of Alepool, the Rangers managed to evacuate hundreds of refugees to Fortress Hainesault.

Meanwhile, Erenod formed a formidable ensemble army including a large number of disenfranchised groups, including a company of apostate mages known as the Broken Circle, a group of casteless and surface dwarves named the Stone-Mother's Bastards and the Masterless, and former elven slaves from the Adamantium.

In **5A22**, he gathered Maudesian and Nether Rangers and marched to Alepool, where he organized an alliance between the Freefolk. The united army continued south.

## Battle of Ayesmare

By **5A24**, the fiendish horde had finally been pushed back to Ghallen and Lysadore. The allied forces decided to use this opportunity to try and bring the Archfiend itself to battle and thus end the Scourge. Amatia Farvale led the ground force on Arnaud's Barrow just outside the city of Ayesmare, with Ser Gaston de Montfort leading the cavalry. The Champions of Alepool were also among the ground force. The ground force attacked the gathered fiends there, and then laid an ambush for the Archfiend. Simultaneously, Erenod led a strike force of Rangers on wyverns to the skies above Ayesmare. Using a smaller version of the skyburner explosives, the Rangers barraged the city below to devastating effect, causing heavy fiend casualties. The fiends had no real way to combat the airborne Rangers, and the Archfiend was forced to take the field.

The Rangers struck, aiming to infuriate the beast and lure it back to their ground troops. They lost control of the rabid wyverns, however, splintering their strike force. Only a handful of wyverns followed the withdrawal formation, while the rest frantically assaulted the Archfiend. Cut off from their support, the Rangers concentrated all their riders on attacking Xurteus. Although most of them were killed during the ensuing battle, the unusual ferocity of rabid wyverns proved highly effective at tearing out chunks of the Archfiend's flesh, and with support of the archers and mages, the Rangers managed to collapse one of its wings. Xurteus was sent hurtling down, crashing into the streets of Ayesmare. The Rangers advanced on the city to finish their task, only to discover Xurteus had led them into a trap of its own; its flight had led the Rangers head first into range of legions of fiend archers, taking further casualties.

With only three Rangers left, Erenod flew his wyvern into Ayesmare, narrowly avoiding the archers and the Archfiend's attacks before finally driving his blade into a wound at the base of the Archfiend's neck made by the rabid wyverns, killing the beast at last, and bringing the Fourth Scourge to and end.

Captain Lambert Pelleneur of the Maudesian army was part of the Maudesian regiment of the ground forces during the battle. Lambert disregarded his orders, and aided the Lysadoren forces, saving them and their King, Azarda Adelberto Campalla from certain death. The King thanked his savior by elevating him to noble rank and giving him one of his daughter's hand in marriage, and when Lambert returned to Maudet, the Emperor felt obligated to follow suit and granted him a Marquisate.

## Aftermath

The effects of the Scourge persisted in Netheren, and the Underways, but were largely ignored by most, save for the Grey Order. So many fiends were slain in the final battles of the Scourge that it was easy for some to imagine that they would never return. This view persisted for many centuries after the final victory at Ayesmare, and would ultimately damage preperation efforts to repulse the fiends the next time they rose up under the command of an Archfiend, as the surface kingdoms were long convinced such an occurrence was impossible.

Erenod himself, who had died following Xurteus' death, was granted a hero's funeral, attended by kings and emperors from across Morgaea. As per Erenod's final request, his weapons and armor were returned to the Grey Order and placed in a memorial casket at Greyhold, adorned with horns taken from Xurteus' corpse, save for his helmet, which was lost in battle.

The wyverns went extinct within the following century, as their numbers were decimated during the Scourge.