Ella the Enchantress confirms the Iron King's suspicions that the true power behind the Orc Lord was the Gorgon King to the East. The Gorgon King spurred and supported the aggressions against Skalgard, acting on his orders from the Karkothi Throneholds. Gathering her siege engines she met with Toj Firebeard and the Lunarmancer on the great plains of ice and rock outside the Gorgon King's impressive thick-walled fortress.
Joining the cause were the remaining dire bears and four great metallic dragons: Copper, Silver, Iron, and Bronze. The dragons took flight and led the battle against the mighty stone towers of the Gorgon King. Soon they were met on the field by a menagerie of monsters. Orcs, skeletons, goblins, fowlspawn, and dark dwarves manned the defenses. The great gates opened to release a small army of infantry, supported by displacer beasts, fomorian giants, and even a dreaded rhemorhoraz, a creature so unruly it killed even its handlers when their guard was down.
As the dragons assaulted the walls they took much of the soldiers bolts and blades, relentlessly crushing the guardians in their claws and powerful jaws. Flames and lightning courses through the defenders ranks, but most stood their ground in the face of certain death, for all knew the gallery of statues that the Gorgon King kept of those who had betrayed him.
The displacer beasts destroyed the seige engines, before Ella could blast the tentacled beasts with blasts of light and acid. The Lunarmancer engaged the fomorian giants, dodging beneath the lumbering giants to release blasts of lighting and wind that knocked them to the ground. The rhemorhoraz ate the dire bears, ripping through their ranks a s Toj Firebeard rushed beneath the things many legs and through the main gate. When he arrived in the main hall, a gallery of somber statues met him. The Gorgon King's throne was empty, and so Toj crept carefully through the complex searching.
Outside the tide had turned decisively for the attackers. The infantry on the walls were all vanquished or surrendered, and a great blizzard dragon defending the main keep was surrounded by the four metallic dragons, who circled their prey, waiting for the inevitable opening to slay their foe. The Lunarmancer and Ella finished the fomorians and turned to the rhemorhoraz, driving the thing off into the cold wilderness.
When they claimed the keep they found Toj Firebeard's petrified remains in an adjacent antechamber. The Gorgon King's magic was such that even the Lunarmancer and the Enchantress could not free him from its grip. The evil tyrant had fled through a cavern system into the underdark and on to where, none know.
News arrived slowly of other victories. In the Skallan Reach an elemental from the Eastern Midnight Sea had sunk the Winterskull war galleys sworn to Karkoth. In the Gulf of Kar, a Templar from Zaarnath named Dolranth sailed with several Zaarnathi infantry and sunk the Karkothi's royal battle barges, and he established a monastery to his Order of Light on the Plain of Ebon spires, where the freed slaves had worked tirelessly to restore that ancient ruins of the ebon spires to some of their former glory.
By decree of Mithraelfast, all regions raised militias from the local populace to help protect the League. The greatest response was found among the newly freed folk of the Karkothi lands to the east in the Icebound Wastes, and in Sarthel, but there a sizable number of new recruits in the lands of Vor Rukoth, White Raven, and Skalgard as well. Free men all of tribes and peoples joined in a common virtuous cause.
No comments:
Post a Comment