Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Chapter Thirty-Four

I'm glossing over the war. Any Nieldic history book has a chapter about it in graphic detail, with contemporary photographs, modern artistic interpretations, famous quotes and some poor soldier's journal entry. I'll sum up the action though.
Pinn struck first; Petra kicked his sorry rear back to Rhinsla. She raised his soldiers and preemptively attacked Tara. Tara proved to be a nightmare for the next twenty years; werewolves coming out at night and killing zombies; zombies tearing exhausted soldiers and werewolves apart; civilians locking their doors and thanking their good fortune that werewolf proofing a house is overkill for zombie proofing a house. And the logistics were horrifying for both sides, lots of little islands with high cliffs, no where for runways and few for docks.

The military entered on the side of Pinn when necromancy became involved. No surprise there, Nielda hate undeath in every way, shape, and form. Did them no good, Petra had managed to establish supporters during the first year of the war. Mostly just radical non-conformists, Depressed looking teens, and the occasional actual warlock; her Death Cult was able to sabotage the fleet and much of the army was lured into easily eliminated positions. The dead were all raised as soldiers for her.

Anatolia became involved once it was clear no one would be paying an enlistment bonus. But they managed to make the situation worse as Lord Athuln insisted Pinn give him supreme command in return for their services. Athuln was a fool, and less than half the commander Pinn was; by the fourth year of the war the army was broken and the fleet was an unsalvagable mess of supply lines and buearacracy.

The invasion of Ukra, which had been only minorly involved, was a mind numbing failure. Apparently, D-Day for the Ukra invasion was Mead Monday; in a rather less drunken stupor the Ukran people managed to rather easily bludgeon the invading ghouls to death using a combination of non-weapons usually only seen in an action movie. Petra's defeat there enheartened the Rebel worlds, who launched another attempt to reclaim the streets of Tara.

Gasca remained uninvolved, in spite of attempts both to invade(Petra) and to negotiate(everyone else). It was rumored that there was a prophecy saying that while they would win the war, Knod would die if they fought. It followed that he was buying extra time to sire an heir. If there's one good thing that can be said of the Gascans(and there are in fact several) it's that they have managed to produce fantastic heirs even when the heir is an only child, and further that they have managed to keep that line going straight and true since Lady Alicea. It's a better line than the Imperial one. But I digress.

The critical center of the war would come when Pinn sent a task force to kill Petra herself. A task force consisting of the three most powerful mages in the empire, who weren't Petra.

No comments:

Post a Comment