Session 35, First True Battle of the War

House Gorisonadhad prepared a large force of their regular troops supplemented by mercenaries.   The plan was essentially to make a punitive attack on Barony of Blue Peaks and Wooly Slopes Barony and raze them to the ground to eliminate the new governments there. They didn't think it was feasible that they could reconquer the errant provinces, but they at least wanted to deny their enemy the prize.   Due to good espionage work, King Henryk III essentially knew when and where they would attack and since he also knew that Queen Gwendolyn was going to blame him for interfering regardless of what he did, he might as well interfere a lot.   Beyond the obvious step of sharing his intelligence gained with the affected Border Barons, he sent a large number of his best troops to back up the Borderlanders.   The basic plan was to stage a a farce of a failed and feeble defense at a natural choke point and then let the Swynfaredian take the choke point uncontested. After the bulk of the troops passed through, a force from House Nerozik would capture and secure the choke point while a mix of Borderlander and Fumayan forces would harry the Gorisonad force with a series of ambushes in the mountains and forests between them and their path to the Blue Peaks settlements.   The Fumayan/Borderland coalition had a slight numbers advantage and a large terrain advantage brought on by superior intelligence, so the Swynfaredian only had a magical advantage. While the battle had many moving parts, Kormatin was tasked with leading his traditional companions, and others to counter or preemptively eliminate any powerful sorcerers.   Kormatin's normal adventuring companions (Bendek, Brigid, Ragani would form one squad empowered by Bendek's flying spells.   Another squad was formed around Lord Frydel Frymar's flying spells and the most elite warriors the Fumayan Masks had to offer: Brona, Brody, and Doman.   Before the battle, Kormatin asked for more soldiers and wanted an extra Abjurer in both groups capable of casting Dispel Magic. Kormatin got assigned woman named Genia. Kormatin also wanted someone who could hex on his team and ended up temporarily work with the Steward, Cadak. Kormatin insisted they had a couple skilled holy warriors to bulk up Frydel's squad a bit.   Kormatin's plan was that both his squad and Frydel's squad would try to decapitate the enemy leadership. Kormatin assumed one of the squads would have to engage an advance group and the other would keep going. And Kormatin assume that House Gorisonad hated him, they would probably target him and let the other squad advance relatively unopposed. A flying squad of hotheaded invokers led by Lord Iselwyn was among the expected opposition.   Kormatin and Frydel had a diviner from the Sabbatzarod Coven. They scryed over most of the battle lines and were able to fairly easily deduce that the commander was in the one area they couldn't scry. The flying enemy invokers were patrolling the air fairly obviously, no scrying required. The enemy front lines were spear-headed by high-tier orc undead with armor shield and weapons.   Kormatin advised the unit commanders to reassign theurgists to "heal" and/or turn the undead and opted to take on the enemy invokers to give Frydel's squad a head start at the enemy command center.   The initial phase of the battle went smooth as the ruse with the failed defense at the choke point was both convincing with most/all of the people escaping alive.   The seven-strong Swynfaredian squad of mostly invokers were all too eager to engage Kormatin and they flew over towards the Fumayan lines. Every member of Kormatin's team that lost his or her flying ability had a safe landed, and every member of the Swynfaredian that was forced to land ended up captured. Even without this home court advantage, Kormatin had his allies had an edge in skill.   Out of the seven members of the squad, three were killed (including the leader Iselwyn), three was captured and one fled (after being batted around by an air elemental). They dispelled a bunch of spells and caused Kormatin's crew to burn through a bunch of Feather Amulets, but they inflicted almost negligible damage otherwise.   The prisoners were a female Talon Warrior, a male Fang Warrior Abjurer/Invoker and a female Fang Warrior Abjurer/Invoker. Names pending.   After wrapping up that situation, Kormatin opted to resume the original plan of making a B-line for the command center of the enemy until a messenger bat told them that the undead were more powerful than anticipated and swept through the theurgists without even slowing down.   Kormatin redirected his team and quickly discovered that the "undead" were a large coed group of ogres and magically illusioned to look like undead.   The leader of the ogres was named Bruno, a Maylar theurgist of unimpressive power. They were illusioned by Lady Aerona ap Selwyth and led by Griffin ap Gorisonad and buffed by Lord Peredur ap Gorisonad. Kormatin and company did not know their names yet. There were some others too, but they had been slain or driven off before Kormatin arrived. Other sorcerers managed to preemptively eliminate any enemy diviners that could break their fake undead ruse or spot Lady Aerona. There were also some Talon Warriors.   After a hard battle, Bruno and all the ogres were killed (helped by Genia stripping of their illusions and buffs). Peredur and Griffin were killed. One of the Talon Warriors was captured and the rest were slain. Lady Aerona fled when she realized she could not defeat Kormatin and was running low on quintessence, and fled when she had the opportunity because the ogres were dogpiling on Kormatin.   Aerona had knocked Kormatin unconscious briefly with Phantasmal Killer before Cadak was able to remove his curse fairly quickly but not until after Kormatin got to live through his worst fears and lost a lot of temporary Willpower points.   Genia turned out to be an unexpected MVP and was very efficient at nullifying Swynfaredian sorcery. Once her services were not needed she began using her Abjuration to protect ordinary Fumayan and Borderlander soldiers.   Cadak helped a lot by pulling Kormatin out his nightmare coma but otherwise was only able to intermittently inconvenience enemies with hexes.   Ragani had a lot of bad luck with some weak casting rolls and failed attempts to summon that burned a lot of mana, so she fought fairly conservatively but the griffins she summoned did okay. She summoned her first elemental in this battle but this result was underwhelming.   Brigid and Bendek concentrated on taking out the Swynfaredian dragonbloods near the ogres than turned towards the Talon Warriors and ogres. Kormatin went after Aerona pretty single-mindedly after the hex until he was forced to target ogres to defend himself.   After defeating the ogres and their handlers, Kormatin rallied and flew towards the enemy commanders. Frydal and his team succeeded in their objective by themselves but they would not have been able to escape alive if Kormatin and his people didn't intervene.   With the commander dead and their heavy hitters neutralized, the vice-commander attempted to withdraw and then got stopped at the chokepoint as was King Henryk's plan forcing a mass surrender.   The Fumayan/Borderlander coalition won a decisive victory but they still took losses. Including loses an unexpectedly high number of theurgists assigned to undead duty.   End of Session