The Karkothi countered the daring assault by the marines of Zembar, who managed to seize the siege weapons at the Crimson Ramparts, but were now hopelessly undermanned to guard their new position. From the dark jungles of Zannad crept an undead legion, skeletal and covered in creeping vines. Joining them at the gates of the Crimson Ramparts were great lumbering skeletal warriors, composed of the bones of many great beasts, fused together unnaturally.
The marines managed to seal the walled fortification, but this proved to only slow the inevitable. The skeletons threw their dark vines up over the walls and each time one was cut, two would quickly replace them. The great skeletal abominations pummeled the reinforced doors which had been broken down just days before. The marines held to the last man for three days, but in the end they all we slain to the last man, and their remains were carried back to the Throneholds to be granted the honor of resurrection as undead beings serving their new masters.
The brave men of Cernal, who had advanced on the Crimson Ramparts in Vailin's first assault, where no longer there to protect their families. The bulk of Vailin's thrust had been on the redemption of the villages of the Great Wildwood. The great skeletal hulks silently crept through the lands of Cernal at night, extinguishing the lights of every home they found along their path of terror. A few managed to flee to the hills to escape the slaughter, but even then they lived only to hear the howling cries of those they left behind in the valleys, as their hiding places were eventually discovered by the Karkothi's soulless hunters. A great wave of terror gripped the peoples of the Barony of Brandil, then on to Vailindor and the lands further south.
In the north, the Iron Wolfhold had sent their siege engines to their neighbor the Barony of Skalgard. Their worst fears confirmed, the Cloven Skull Orc horde descended from the steppes further east and laid siege to Skalgard's keep. The men of the Wolfhold and Skalgard struggled to repel the advance, but they were unfamiliar with each others forces and strategy, and so had trouble coordinating their defenses. The orcs brought in a great battering ram the length of a great sailing ship on six massive stone wheels. The head of the battering ram was shaped in the visage of a great skull and the engine's shaft was fashioned to be the axe buried in the skull. Skalgard's gates opened after a single blow and a great cheer chilled the hearts of the defenders. The farmers in the surrounding villages fled to the White Raven Chiefdom to the south, but many were captured by the orcs and sent east in chains to work in their mines building more fearsome weapons for their armies.
The Karkothi nobility declared a day of victory, sacrificing slaves, and holding great blood feasts throughout their dark crumbling cities.
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